My occasional take on important, cutting-edge or interesting legal news:
Legal News
Legal News
December 9th, 2014
Parents of children killed in the Sandy Hook school shooting two years ago have filed wrongful death claim notices on the behalf of their children, the Hartford Courant's Dave Altimari reports. Filing the notice does not mean that the parents will definitely proceed with lawsuits, and no defendants are filed in the notice. But Altimari indicates that "sources said several families met over the weekend with lawyers from Koskoff,... Continue Reading
December 9th, 2014
Less than half of law school graduates who took the July 2014 bar exam in California passed, the Los Angeles Times' Jason Song reports: "The 48.6% pass rate in California is a drop of nearly 7 percentage points from the previous year; nearly 8,500 people took the test in July. The last time the passage rate dipped below half was in 2005." Brian Z. Tamanaha, a critic of legal education and a law professor at the Washington University School of... Continue Reading
December 9th, 2014
The House Transportation is going to be holding a hearing Wednesday about the status of the Federal Aviation Administration's regulations for commercial drones, The Hill's Tim Devaney and Lydia Wheeler report: "Pressure is mounting from the GOP and the business community for the FAA to approve the use of commercial drones, though, Republicans acknowledge the need to address certain safety and privacy issues."
In a separate... Continue Reading
December 4th, 2014
SCOTUSBlog's Amy Howe reports that there was bipartistan backing for the introduction of cameras in the Supreme Court at a House Judiciary Committee subcommittee hearing Wednesday. The bill under consideration would authorize, but not mandate, the Supreme Court to allow televised proceedings. Mickey Osterreicher, the GC for the National Press Photographers Association, "noted that interest in the Supreme Court is high when, as now,... Continue Reading
December 4th, 2014
U.S. Senator Diane Feinstein, D-California, plans on introducing legislation to strengthen drone safety laws, Lawfare's Cody Poplin writes. The legislation would expand the moratorium on private drone use unless the FAA authorizes it, while imposing felony penalties. The bill would require a "safety certification for expansions of private drone use," Feinstein wrote to the head of the FAA. Continue Reading
December 4th, 2014
The Second Circuit appeared skeptical during oral argument Tuesday over the Authors Guild's claim that it's not fair use for Google to scan millions of out-of-print books and post them online, Gigaom's Jeff John Roberts reports. The guild argued the scanning project is not fair use because it is commercial in nature, Roberts reports, which was a shift in strategy after "Judge Denny Chin awarded a decisive victory to... Continue Reading
December 3rd, 2014
The New York Times' Adam Liptak reports on the U.S. Supreme Court's oral arguments today on whether Peggy Young was unlawfully discriminated against by UPS when the company refused to assign her to lighter duty during her pregnancy: "The basic question in the case, Young v. United Parcel Service, No. 12-1226, was what to make of language in the pregnancy law that requires employers to treat 'women affected by pregnancy'... Continue Reading
December 3rd, 2014
A Staten Island grand jury cleared a NYPD police officer in the death of Eric Garner while he was held in a chokehold after being arrested for allegedly selling loose cigarettes, the New York Post's Larry Celona and two others reports. Garner's death was caught on a video that went viral and involved the same specter of white-officer brutality toward white men that the Michael Brown case has inspired. City Council Speaker Melissa... Continue Reading
December 3rd, 2014
Several conservatives have joined United Nations human rights lawyers seeking to stop the execution of a severely mentally ill Texas man. Scott Panetti's execution is slated to proceed today at 6 p.m. unless last-minute appeals filed yesterday have any effect, UPI reports.
Kathryn Kase of the Texas Defender Service told the Los Angeles Times, '"He thinks the prison system implanted a listening device in his teeth and knows... Continue Reading
December 3rd, 2014
The Federal Aviation Administration has said no to a petition from the Electronic Privacy Information Center to conduct rulemaking about the privacy and civil liberties concerns raised by drones, Gizmodo's Adam Clark Estes writes. The FAA, which has to prioritize making rules when immediate safety or security concerns are at stake, said privacy is not an immediate safety concern, but "conveniently, the agency didn't comment... Continue Reading
December 2nd, 2014
U.S. Senators Michael Bennett and Orrin Hatch are circulating a draft bill to exempt some electronic health records, including medical charts and health histories, from the FDA's oversight, Reuters' Christina Farr reported last week. Medical technology that is classified as posing a low risk to patient safety would be exempt from FDA regulation. Bradley Merrill Thompson, an FDA-specialist with the Washington D.C.-based... Continue Reading
December 2nd, 2014
The Washington Post's Sari Horwitz continues that newspaper's fantastic coverage of issues in Indian Country. This latest installment looks at how American Indian youth sent into the juvenile justice system are just locked away most of the time. There is no schooling, counseling or vocational opportunity at the juvenile facilities like the one on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota (which has been known to be... Continue Reading
December 2nd, 2014
According to a report in Reuters, several leaders of major American corporations are threatening to start siding with the foes of healthcare reform if President Barack Obama's administration does not stop challenging some workplace wellness programs: "The programs aim to control healthcare costs by reducing smoking, obesity, hypertension and other risk factors that can lead to expensive illnesses. A bipartisan provision in the 2010... Continue Reading
December 1st, 2014
Ohio is preparing to join the ranks of several other states that have enacted provisions to keep secret their execution procedures, The Marshall Project's Maurice Chammah reports. The American Board of Anesthesiology has warned that it might revoke the certificate of any anesthesiologist who participates in an execution. A proposed Ohio law would protect doctors' licenses if they participate in executions. The law also would... Continue Reading
December 1st, 2014
SCOTUSBlog's Amy Howe reports that, after oral argument in the U.S. Supreme Court today, there is no clear path for victory for Anthony Elonis or the federal government in a case testing the First Amendment boundaries of "true threats." At issue is whether Elonis' criminal liability for his violent, rap-like Facebook posts should be judged by whether he intended to place his ex-wife, an FBI agent and others in fear... Continue Reading
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