My occasional take on important, cutting-edge or interesting legal news:
Legal News
Legal News
June 5th, 2015
Former judge Amanda Williams has been indicted for allegedly lying to a grand jury, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Bill Rankin reports. Williams came to national attention after This American Life reported that "she behaved in a tyrannical manner and locked up some drug court defendants indefinitely," Rankin writes. Continue Reading
June 5th, 2015
The first non-lawyer legal technicians authorized to provide some legal services in Washington state have passed their qualifying examination, Robert Ambrogi blogs on Law Sites. Seven of nine passed.
The program seeks to help bridge the access-to-justice gap by licensing non-lawyers to provide legal advice in some areas, including domestic relations. Continue Reading
June 2nd, 2015
The U.S. Supreme Court has made it harder for prosecutors to convict people who make threats on social media, The Washington Post's Robert Barnes reports.
Petitioner Anthony Elonis was convicted of threatening to kill his estranged wife, law enforcement officials and a kindergarten class through Facebook posts written in a rap lyric-esque way; he was convicted under a federal law that makes it a crime to communicate '''... Continue Reading
May 31st, 2015
Texas has enacted a law making it easier for convicted defendants to get DNA testing, according to the Innocence Project.
People who have been convicted of crimes now have to show that there a reasonable likelihood that evidence contains DNA, Texas Lawyer's Angela Morris reports. The law was enacted in response to Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rulings strictly interpreting Texas' "post-conviction DNA testing statute... Continue Reading
May 31st, 2015
The D.C. Circuit has refused to block the release of videos showing a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay being force-fed, The Intercept's Cora Currier reports. Media organizations are seeking footage of Abu Wa'el Dhiab's force-feedings, and the district court granted their motion to unseal and release the video.
The court concluded that the district court's decision was not an immediately appealable order and that it lacks... Continue Reading
May 31st, 2015
The D.C. Circuit has refused to block the release of videos showing a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay being force-fed, The Intercept's Cora Currier reports. Media organizations are seeking footage of Abu Wa'el Dhiab's force-feedings, and the district court granted their motion to unseal and release the video.
The court concluded that the district court's decision was not an immediately appealable order and that it lacks... Continue Reading
May 31st, 2015
The Washington Supreme Court has ruled that state's law allowing defamation defendants to get cases thrown out early violates the constitutional right to a trial by jury, the Volokh Conspiracy's Eugene Volokh reports. The anti-SLAPP law says defamation plaintiffs can only move forward with their cases if they can show they would prevail by clear and convincing evidence, and the Washington Supreme Court said this... Continue Reading
May 29th, 2015
The Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, won't allow homeowners to get forgiveness on their mortgages even if they owe substantially more on their homes than they are worth, The Huffington Post's Ben Hallman reports. Leaders of FHFA think that giving debt forgiveness to some homeowners would encourage other people to stop paying their mortgages in order to get debt... Continue Reading
May 27th, 2015
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that bankruptcy judges can decide issues that would normally be handled by federal district judges--if the parties involved consent, Supreme Court Brief's Marcia Coyle reports. The consent can be implied.
Sotomayor opined that it doesn't violate the separation of powers to allow bankruptcy courts, which are created by Congress under Article I of the Constitution, to decide... Continue Reading
May 26th, 2015
The U.S. Supreme Court is considering whether low-income taxpayers can only receive subsidies for health insurance if they purchased their policies on state-run insurance exchanges, not federal exchanges. The four words at issue in the Affordable Care Act? "Established by a state." The New York Times' Robert Pear reports that the two dozen Democrats and Republicans involved in writing the law say those four words were not... Continue Reading
May 25th, 2015
The Canadian province Ontario has empowered patients and their caregivers to control the types of services they receive at home, The Canadian Press reports. The self-directed care program will start with pilot projects first with the goal "to give patients and their caregivers more flexibility and control over the care they receive by involving them more in the planning and coordination at the start." Additional funding will... Continue Reading
May 25th, 2015
Who knew? Texas is the last state in the country to have a "pick-a-pal" system in which grand jurors are selected through a list of individuals prepared by an acquaintance chosen by a local judge. Texas legislators have approved bills to end this method of selecting grand juries, the Houston Chronicle's Brian Rosenthal reports.
The difference between the state House and state Senate versions is a provision requiring... Continue Reading
May 23rd, 2015
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has ruled that New York can exclude "Choose Life" license plates from the state's specialty license plate program, The Volokh Conspiracy's Eugene Volokh writes. The Department of Motor Vehicles found that the plates are patently offensive, which the Second Circuit, 2-1, upheld.
The license plates are nonpublic forums in which "the government may select which speech... Continue Reading
May 23rd, 2015
The Justice Department has issued its first guidelines for the use of domestic drones by law enforcement, saying that the use of drones must not violate civil rights or the right to privacy, the Associated Press reports. The department said drones can't be used just to monitor protests and other activities protected by the constitution. Continue Reading
May 22nd, 2015
While West Virginia does not have an academic-freedom exemption to its public records law, that state's high court has ruled that documents that are "internal memoranda" from a university researcher's examination of the impact of mountaintop-removal mining on public health are exempt from disclosure.
The Charleston Gazette's Ken Ward Jr. reports that Alpha Natural Resources' efforts to get West Virginia... Continue Reading
Lawyer and Legal Journalist
