My occasional take on important, cutting-edge or interesting legal news:
Legal News
Legal News
September 17th, 2013
Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas civil court records are not available to the public on-line once trials start out of the concern that jurors will access information they shouldn't know about, like settlements with other defendants, while sitting on cases, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports. The dockets are instead available at the judges' chambers. The Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association told the Pittsburgh paper that other... Continue Reading
September 17th, 2013
Monsignor William J. Lynn was the first Catholic Church official in the country to be convicted of a crime related to the sexual abuse of youth who were directly abused by other clergy, not Lynn. Today, the Philadelphia Inquirer's Joseph A. Slobodzian reported on the Pennsylvania appellate arguments challenging Lynn's conviction on the grounds that the crime Lynn was convicted of--endangering the welfare of child crime--could not apply... Continue Reading
September 17th, 2013
Some words from Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, assistant professor of law at the UDC David A. Clarke School of Law, on the US Constitution this Constitution Day: "The rule of law that structures almost every aspect of our lives – from criminal codes to capital punishment – finds its development and enforcement in the institutions created by the Constitution. The key, of course, is to re-imagine these ordinary parts of our lives as... Continue Reading
September 17th, 2013
The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto asks tongue-in-cheek if Russia President Vladimir Putin would be a journalist under the definition set out in the journalist federal shield law pending in the U.S. Senate. Covered journalists would include those with a considerable amount of freelance work in the last five years. Taranto then wrote last Friday: "To answer the question our headline poses, at least the definition is not so broad... Continue Reading
September 17th, 2013
Rather than expanding Medicaid to cover more Pennsylvanians when the mandate to have health insurance kicks into effect, Pennsylvania Tom Corbett proposed yesterday that funds for the expansion instead be used to help state residents get private health insurance. The pitch will need federal approval.
When the US Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the insurance mandate under Congress' taxing power, the court separately... Continue Reading
September 17th, 2013
The city of Philadelphia is close to changing its model of providing lawyers to criminal defendants and family-court litigants too poor to afford their own lawyers and for whom the Defender Association of Philadelphia is conflicted out of representing. Currently, individual attorneys take those appointments, but the city is contemplating having one for-profit law firm do the bulk of the work. But The Legal Intelligencer reports one of the main... Continue Reading
September 17th, 2013
After Governor Chris Christie vetoed legislation passed by the New Jersey Legislature to approve same-sex marriage last year, a poll shows he is getting middling reviews on his handling of the issue. Thirty percent think Christie has been above average in handling the issue and 31 percent think he has been below average on the issue. The governor is up for reelection and leading in the polls. The Asbury Park Press reports proponents... Continue Reading
September 16th, 2013
As the stage is set for a US Supreme Court ruling on whether the governmental capture of metadata violates the Fourth Amendment's protections against unlawful search and seizures, the Foreign Policy has a gripping profile of National Security Agency Director and Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander. One source told FP that, '"Alexander tended to be a bit of a cowboy: 'Let's not worry about the law. Let's just... Continue Reading
September 16th, 2013
The Lawrence Journal-World reports: "One group that won't be required to have health insurance when the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate goes into effect next year is American Indians, of which Douglas County has a larger-than-average population. The health reform law often known as Obamacare mandates that Americans carry some type of health insurance in 2014 or be fined. The 2010 law does, however, exempt certain people... Continue Reading
September 16th, 2013
Two of the causes closest to my heart-- disaster relief and people with disabilities--intersect in this piece on how the early dissemination of information is crucial to improve disaster relief for people with disabilities.
September 16th, 2013
Two recent losses by litigation-funding outfits led to this interesting report from the Wall Street Journal. One tidbit: "Litigation finance is a growing field that now includes a number of specialty firms that maintain multimillion-dollar portfolios devoted to legal investments. Hedge funds and individual investors also occasionally purchase stakes in litigation as part of a broader investment strategy. There at least five litigation-... Continue Reading
September 16th, 2013
GigaOM's Mathew Ingram argues that the federal shield law for journalists pending in the U.S. Senate is a bad idea because it would "allow the government to define who gets to be a journalist and who doesn’t." Ingram further argues, even though senators tried to draw a line between freelance journalists and Wikileaks, the leaker web organization "is clearly a media entity — a key part of what Harvard law... Continue Reading
September 16th, 2013
Five Philadelphia judges have had their financial records subpoenaed by federal prosecutors, including in connection to a convicted felon who was an active Democratic Party fundraiser and who won a lawsuit, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. Sources told the Inqy they were unsure of the focus of the investigation beyond interest in cases being possibly fixed. Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Seamus P. McCaffery also is the subject to a... Continue Reading
September 16th, 2013
The Washington Post's Robert Barnes reports on the latest legal disputes in the custody dispute over Baby Veronica between her adoptive white parents and her biological American Indian father: "Since a deeply divided Supreme Court ruled in Veronica’s case in June, here’s who else has had a say: two South Carolina courts, three Oklahoma courts, the Supreme Court of the Cherokee Nation, a battalion of lawyers, two governors... Continue Reading
September 16th, 2013
Buried in this story on a meeting of American Indian tribes and federal prosecutors is a statistic showing that federal prosecutions of crimes on reservations increased 54% from 2009 to 2012. The lack of resources to pursue law-breaking on tribal reservations, particularly sexual violence against American Indian women, has been a huge issue in recent years. As novelist Louise Erdrich said in an interview about her most recent novel... Continue Reading
Lawyer and Legal Journalist
