My occasional take on important, cutting-edge or interesting legal news:
Legal News
Legal News
October 31st, 2014
New York Law Journal's Mark Hamblett reports that the New York Court of Appeals is going to answer a question posed to it by the Second Circuit: does New York City's law governing debt collection apply to law firms? A federal district court judge held "in 2013 the law does not apply to plaintiff law firms that attempt to collect debts, and violates a provision of the New York City Charter because it purports to grant New York... Continue Reading
October 30th, 2014
Mother Jones has a piece asking if Americans can get a fair day in court: "These days, as more candidates for the bench face rough contests—buffeted increasingly by outside money, thanks to the US Supreme Court's 2010 decision in Citizens United—state judges around the country often raise six- and seven-figure sums, mount statewide campaigns, and fend off attack ads from groups that don't disclose their donors. This... Continue Reading
October 30th, 2014
Omar G. Encarnación, writing in Foreign Affairs, argues that the recent advance in ensuring same-sex couples can marry in the United States is much more modest progress on LGBT rights than one would think: "the United States lacks not only federal legislation protecting same-sex marriage but also federal laws banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The Employment Non-Discrimination Act, better known as ENDA -- a... Continue Reading
October 29th, 2014
Even though Congress repealed the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that banned gay members of the military of serving openly, a ban remains on transgendered people serving in the military, the Washington Post reports: "The ban remains firmly in place, with about two dozen service members known to have been discharged over the past two years, according to advocates." About 15,500 transgender people are serving in the... Continue Reading
October 29th, 2014
There's been a strange twist in two Montana Supreme Court races, the Independent Record reports: U.S. Sen. Jon Tester has accused Stanford University and Darmouth College of "voter manipulation" for their role in a mailer sent regarding the Supreme Court races. The 2014 "Montana General Election Voter Information Guide" rated that four candidates as more liberal and more conservative and was sent by a Stanford... Continue Reading
October 29th, 2014
There's been a strange twist in two Montana Supreme Court races, the Independent Record reports: U.S. Sen. Jon Tester has accused Stanford University and Darmouth College of "voter manipulation" for their role in a mailer sent regarding the Supreme Court races. The 2014 "Montana General Election Voter Information Guide" rated that four candidates as more liberal and more conservative and was sent by a Stanford... Continue Reading
October 28th, 2014
It's been quite a week for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. First, Justice Seamus P. McCaffery resigned from the court after he was suspended by his fellow justices amid allegations that he sent pornographic emails, attempted to fix his wife's traffic ticket, allowed his wife to receive thousands and thousands of dollars in referral fees from law firms and may have "attempted to exert influence" in judicial court... Continue Reading
October 28th, 2014
ProPublica's Robert Faturechi reports on how a push by a dark-money group to oust some Kansas judges running for retention has exposed a gap in that state's campaign finance laws. The group Kansans for Justice is encouraging voters to reject the retention of Supreme Court Justices Eric Rosen and Lee Johnson: "Even though the group has all the hallmarks of a political committee – it is soliciting contributions, plans to... Continue Reading
October 28th, 2014
The National Law Journal's Amanda Bronstad provides an overview of ballot initiatives affecting the courts that voters will be deciding to accept or reject:
In California, voters will decide if the $250,000 statutory cap on noneconomic damages in medical malpractice cases should be annually adjusted for inflation. If approved, the cap would be raised to $1.1 million.
In Tennessee and Florida, there are initiatives to change those... Continue Reading
October 27th, 2014
Law firm hiring has improved from the doldrums of the Great Recession, but complete employment recovery for lawyers isn't likely for a long time yet, Crain's Detroit Business reports. Contracting law school classes should help the market too. The class of 2013 was the largest in the history of American legal education, but the cohort of law students has drop from 52,000 law school students entering programs in 2010 to 37... Continue Reading
October 27th, 2014
Eugene Kontorovich, writing on the Volokh Conspiracy blog, comments that constitutional challenges to mandatory Ebola quarantines are unlikely to succeed. Lawyers for Kaci Hickox, a nurse forcibly quarantined by New Jersey after treating Ebola patients in West Africa, claimed she was deprived of her liberty in violation of the due process clause of the 14th Amendment. But Kontorovich says "brief review of the cases suggests it extremely... Continue Reading
October 27th, 2014
The PEN American Center is calling on the U.S. Justice Department to investigate how the press was treated by law enforcement covering the protests in Ferguson, Mo., following the death of Michael Brown, the St. Louis Business Journal reports. For example, police held reporters in areas away from the events they were covering and they flashed lights to hinder photographers. PEN American Center is asking the Justice Department "... Continue Reading
October 26th, 2014
Even though a a federal judge has ruled the judicial election system in Marion County, Indiana, unconstitutional, the system won't be fixed anytime soon, the Indiana Lawyer reports: "Indianapolis voters will go to the polls Nov. 4 and elect 16 Marion Superior judges, but in truth there’s no contest because who will win already is decided. Eight Democrats and eight Republicans selected in their respective parties’ May... Continue Reading
October 25th, 2014
We're embarking on an era when everyday objects will be connected to the Internet, whether it's devices in our home or it's devices we wear. Gigaom's Jeff John Roberts notes that digital privacy already is pretty limited. How will things look when even more objects are connected to the Internet? The problem, he says, is that Internet-connected objects "will start to pull all sorts of people — even those who aren... Continue Reading
October 25th, 2014
The Federal Communications Commission has entered the realm of data security for the first time--with a $10 million fine no less, the Washington Post's Brian Fung reports. The fine was levied against "two telecom companies that allegedly stored personally identifiable customer data online without firewalls, encryption or password protection. The two companies, YourTel America and TerraCom, share the same owners and... Continue Reading
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