My occasional take on important, cutting-edge or interesting legal news:
Legal News
Legal News
October 2nd, 2014
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has ruled that New York's top financial regulator can tackle online lending businesses run by two American Indian tribes in Oklahoma and Michigan, the New York Times reports: "In their lawsuit, the tribes — the Otoe Missouria Tribe in Red Rock, Okla., and the Lac Vieux Desert Bank of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians in Watersmeet, Mich. — argued that their sovereign status... Continue Reading
October 2nd, 2014
A small, elite group of law firms is handling a larger portion of the U.S. Supreme Court's docket, Tony Mauro reports in The American Lawyer: "In the term that ended in June, the justices decided a meager 67 argued cases, less than half the caseload they handled in 1990. Three firms argued seven cases each, and two argued in six—meaning that just five firms fielded lawyers in half of the court's cases."
The firms... Continue Reading
October 2nd, 2014
The Allentown Morning Call's Steve Esack has a startling exclusive about Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Seamus P. McCaffery: "Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Seamus McCaffery forwarded at least eight sexually explicit emails to an employee in the state attorney general's office who later shared them with more than a dozen others, emails reviewed by The Morning Call show. McCaffery is the first judicial figure whose... Continue Reading
October 1st, 2014
A coalition of newspapers, photographers and others are seeking to block enforcement of Arizona's law that criminalizes the "sale, publication or display of nude photos or sexual images without the subject’s consent," the National Law Journal reports. Michael Bamberger, a First Amendment lawyer and one of the counsel on the case, told NLJ "this is a supposed revenge-porn statute that does not require revenge... Continue Reading
October 1st, 2014
The U.S. Supreme Court is facing a circuit split on whether the federal government can provide tax subsidies to low-income workers to obtain health insurance on the federally-run insurance exchanges, SCOTUSBlog's Lyle Denniston reports. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has said no (but the en banc court is going to hear the case in December). The Fourth Circuit has said yes. U.S. District Judge Ronald A. White, who sits in... Continue Reading
September 30th, 2014
Now that the Pennsylvania Superior Court has thrown out a requirement that a former Supreme Court justice write apology letters to every judge in Pennsylvania on her picture showing her in handcuffs, prosecutors says that Joan Orie Melvin should be resentenced and face incarceration for using the resources of her chambers on her judicial campaigns, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports. Melvin is appeaing her conviction to her... Continue Reading
September 30th, 2014
California Governor Jerry Brown has vetoed a bill that would have allowed judges to inform juries when a prosecutor has intentionally withheld evidence, according to the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, sponsor of the bill, said in a statement "we need this bill to stop the few prosecutors whose zeal for convictions lead them to cut corners on justice. We can’t wait decades to free the innocent while the true... Continue Reading
September 30th, 2014
New York's approval rate for parole applications has been sliced in half since 2005, falling from 52 percent to 24 percent between 2005 and 2013, City Limits' Bill Hughes wrote earlier this month.
Jim Murphy, a former county legislator in Schenectady County and a longtime volunteer with the New York chapter of CURE, Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants, said he has been plugging parole board statistics into... Continue Reading
September 29th, 2014
The landmark World Conference of Indigenous Peoples has been far from the limelight "during a frantic week in New York when world leaders gathered to discuss climate change and the security situation in Syria and Iraq," Radio Australia reports. Kalama Oka Aina Niheu, who is from Hawaii, told Radio Australia that the conference did not provide an avenue for indigenous peoples to voice their concerns about climate change and... Continue Reading
September 29th, 2014
Lawyers for the Justice Department has moved to keep the public out of a court hearing on the practice of force feeding detainees at Guantanamo Bay, reports Politico's Josh Gerstein. Syrian Wa'el Dhiab has complained that the force-feeding procedures are too harsh.
The government's motion to seal the court hearing appears to be under seal too, Gerstein said. "'There is no reason to close the upcoming... Continue Reading
September 29th, 2014
Government officials in Ferguson, Mo, want to charge "nearly 10 times the costs of some of their own employees' salaries" before they will release records about the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, the Associated Press reports. The records could be released without charge under Missouri's Sunshine Act if officials determined that the materials were in the public interest, the AP reports. The AP notes that "price-... Continue Reading
September 29th, 2014
The Legal Intelligencer's P.J. D'Annunzio and Hank Grezlak report on the latest judicial corruption scandal in Philadelphia: "The recent guilty plea of a Philadelphia Municipal Court judge to case-fixing charges and the suspension of two other judges, all occurring with the Philadelphia Traffic Court scandal still fresh in the public's mind, has seriously damaged the reputation of the Philadelphia judicial system, members of... Continue Reading
September 28th, 2014
The Federal Circuit, which has exclusive appellate jurisdiction over patents, has made patent law more favorable to patentholders, leading to a surge in litigation, Vox's Timothy B. Lee reports. The U.S. Supreme Court has been scrutinizing the intermediate appellate court more frequently, reviewing a record six rulings last term, Lee further reports: "In a new essay, University of California, Hastings law professor... Continue Reading
September 28th, 2014
The Washington Post's Craig Whitlock reports the White House is preparing a policy to require federal agencies to publicly disclose where they fly drones domestically and what they do with the "torrents of data collected from aerial surveillance": "The presidential executive order would force the Pentagon, the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies to reveal more details about the size and... Continue Reading
September 27th, 2014
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has filed a two lawsuits against companies in Michigan and Florida for allegedy discriminating against transgender employees, the Los Angeles Times reports: "Both lawsuits cite violations under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which offers protections against sexual discrimination, in a move that marks the first time the federal government has used the law to protect transgender workers against... Continue Reading
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