My occasional take on important, cutting-edge or interesting legal news:
Legal News
Legal News
January 24th, 2015
On Friday, US District Judge Callie V.S. Granade ruled that Alabama's constitutional ban on gay marriage violated the due process and equal protection clauses of the federal Constitution's 14th Amendment, Christian Science Monitor's Jessica Mendoza reports. Continue Reading
January 23rd, 2015
Barrett Brown, a hacktivist, journalist and writer, was sentenced to 63 months in federal prison, less 28 months for time served, for threatening an FBI agent, for being an accessory after the fact in the unauthorized access to protected computers owned by securities firms and interfering with a serach warrant, The Dallas Morning News' Tasha Tsiaperas reports.
At issue was whether Brown was aware that a link he shared online... Continue Reading
January 22nd, 2015
The Connecticut Supreme Court has rejected a prior restraint case involving legal newspaper Connecticut Law Tribune, CLT's Thomas B. Scheffey reports. The court said the case had become legally moot because the trial judge retracted his order barring the Law Tribune from publishing a story with details from a juvenile court record. However, the newspaper appealed seeking "a ruling that this prior restraint violated the... Continue Reading
January 22nd, 2015
SCOTUSBlog's Lyle Denniston reports on oral arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday about a civil rights doctrine that rejects discrimination in housing even if it is not intentional, so long as it has a "disparate impact" on minorities: "At issue in the case of Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project is how far Congress went in 1968 in banning racial... Continue Reading
January 21st, 2015
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments today about a key civil rights doctrine in fair housing law: the disparate impact doctrine, which allows litigants to show that a policy is discriminatory by showing the results disproporionately affect one group of people, even if the discrimination isn't intentional, the Wall Street Journal's Robbie Whelan and Jess Bravin reports. At issue is the pattern of Dallas real-estate... Continue Reading
January 21st, 2015
Reuters' Lawrence Hurley reports that the U.S. Supreme Court appeared to be closely divided over a Florida judge's challenge to a law that bars judicial candidates from soliciting campaign contributions. Notably, the case was heard just about five years after the Supreme Court decided Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, who authored the Citizens United opinion, is likely to be the... Continue Reading
January 15th, 2015
The IRS has recently released rules to address aggressive debt collection from poor patients by nonprofit hospitals, ProPublica reports. The rules, required by the Affordable Care Act, will require nonprofit hospitals to "post their financial assistance policies on their websites and offer a written, 'plain language summary' of them to patients when they're in the hospital. If patients don't apply for assistance or pay their bills, then the... Continue Reading
January 15th, 2015
After dozens of schoolkids were killed by the Taliban, Pakistan has changed its constitution to allow military courts to try militants, the New York Times reports: "Among analysts and legal experts, the military courts have raised a slew of worries about the erosion of fundamental rights, the sidelining of the civilian judiciary and the prospect of soldiers’ wielding untrammeled power in a country with a long history of military... Continue Reading
January 15th, 2015
Does the right to free speech and free thought end where someone else's freedom of thought and freedom of speech start?
The issue is not an academic one with the killing of several Charlie Hebdo cartoonists and journalists in Paris and with a liberal Saudi Arabian blogger sentenced to 10 years imprisonment, 1,000 lashes, and a 1 million Saudi riyal fine (roughly $266,000) for insulting Islam, Foreign Policy's Michael Wahid... Continue Reading
January 14th, 2015
The Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press' Tom Isler reports on two lawsuits that have been brought in Missouri and New York to challenge secrecy over the grand juries that ultimately chose not to indict police officers in the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. "The two cases illustrate how strong the secrecy protections are for grand juries and how difficult it can be for the public to have any... Continue Reading
January 14th, 2015
The New York legislature is considering bills to restrict the use of drones by law enforcement, the Tenth Amendment Center reports: "Introduced on Jan. 7, Senate Bill 411 (SB411) by Sen. Gordon Denlinger (R-Syosset) and Assembly Bill 1247 (A01247) would ban law enforcement from using a drone in a criminal investigation with a few exceptions, and would prohibit any 'person, entity, or state agency' from using a drone for... Continue Reading
January 14th, 2015
Even though Kentucky bans same-sex marriage, Jefferson Family Court Judge Joseph O'Reilly granted a divorce to a same-sex couple married in Massachusetts, The Courier-Journal's Andrew Wolfson reports: "O'Reilly said that barring same-sex couples to divorce here violates the state constitutional guarantee that all people should be treated as equals." Continue Reading
January 13th, 2015
Politico's David Perera reports on a cybersecurity proposal that President Barack Obama put forth today. One key part, pushed for a long time, would provide limited safe harbors to firms that share cybersecurity information with the government: "A central portion of the White House’s plan would grant targeted liability protection to companies that share cyberthreat information with the government — removing what critics... Continue Reading
January 13th, 2015
David Schultz, writing on MinnPost, argues that Minnesota's system for selecting judges needs to be changed.
While judges are supposed to be elected, "studies have shown that approximately 90 percent of all individuals who become a judge in Minnesota do so initially by gubernatorial appointment, thereby circumventing the election process." Secondly, judicial candidates rarely face contested elections, and "more than a quarter of Minnesotans opt... Continue Reading
January 13th, 2015
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has changed the jury instructions that should be given about eyewitness evidence, which is often more fallible than people think, the Boston Globe's Travis Andersen and Martin Finucane report. While the defendant did not get his conviction overturned, the high court has issued new instructions to be used in criminal cases going forward, including "a warning that a witness’s... Continue Reading
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