Cultivated Compendium

Intellectual Property Watch reports that "a panel addressing negotiators this week at the World Intellectual Property Organization asserted the property rights of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities over traditional knowledge and genetic resources and called on delegates to draft an international instrument compliant with their internationally recognised rights." The WIPO meeting took place this week.

James Anaya, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous People, "criticised a proposal to exclude from disclosure requirement traditional knowledge in the public domain, and considered that databases or similar mechanisms might be useful but may not always be culturally appropriate, for instance where customary laws forbid disclosure to non-community members," Intellectual Property Watch further reported.

The Chicago Tribune reports on how a "little-known" provision in the Medicaid health-insurance expansion is going to increase the practice of the government asserting liens on patients' assets to recoup expenditures on medical costs: "The issue arises because of a provision in the long-standing laws governing Medicaid that compel states to recoup certain medical costs after a person dies, either via liens placed on an individual's home or claims on their assets." Liens are not asserted in private insurance policies bought on state-based insurance exchange.

The Tribune reports that new Medicaid patients could face liens even if they don't seek medical care: "In another twist, all new Medicaid patients in Illinois were placed into so-called managed-care programs, in which the state pays insurers on a per-member per-month basis. That means people like Rosato will be racking up health care costs even if they don't seek any medical care. In theory, that money could all come out of their estates once they die."

Some states, included Oregon and Washington, have tweaked their regulations to apply recovery efforts only to long-term care, The Tribune further reports. However, Illinois has not.

The Centers for Medicaire & Medicaid Services said it will provide guidance to states sometime soon.

President Obama's administration reports that the the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has agreeed to modify the surveillance program collecting telephone metadata. James Clapper, director of national intelligence, said in a statement: "As a first step in that transition, the President directed the Attorney General to work with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to ensure that, absent a true emergency, the telephony metadata can only be queried after a judicial finding that there is a reasonable, articulable suspicion that the selection term is associated with an approved international terrorist organization. The President also directed that the query results must be limited to metadata within two hops of the selection term instead of three." Now, according to Clapper, FISC approved those changes. The orders haven't been declassified yet.

Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore mailed letters this week to all 50 governors asking them to urge their legislatures to call for a national convention on amending the U.S. Constitution to ban same-sex marriage, the Associated Press reports. The chief justice also is "known on the national stage for fighting to display the Ten Commandments in a judicial building," the AP reports. Moore told the AP it's the only way to "stop judges who are finding new rights to gay unions." Moore also said he was upholding Alabama's ban on same-sex marriage.

An Article V convention has never been held.

Attorney counseling terrorism suspects have faced the violation of attorney-client privilege because of governmental surveillance, The Nation reports. One attorney discovered that every one of 42 phone calls with his clients had been recorded. Conversations between indicted defendants are off limits, but pre-indictment suspects are having their conversations with their lawyers surveilled, The Nation reports. Despite the arguments of many attorneys that they need confidentiality in order to represent their clients and gain their clients' trust, UCLA professor Norm Abrams struck a dour note: "'Given the fact that FISA modifies the otherwise applicable Fourth Amendment rules—the argument that FISA may also overcome the Fourth Amendment and attorney-client privilege, it’s not implausible.”'

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was in Hawaii this week, the Associated Press reports. When asked about Korematsu v. United States,  in which the Supreme Court upheld the convictions of two Japanese Americans for not reporting to an internment camp, Scalia said that it was wrongly decided. "But you are kidding yourself if you think the same thing will not happen again," Scalia said, according to the AP. Scalia cited a Latin expression meaning, "In times of war, the laws fall silent," the AP further reported.

A group of 73 "organic and conventional family farmers, seed companies and public advocacy interests" lost their effort to have the U.S. Supreme Court reconsider lower-court rulings that they could not be sued for violating Monsant's biotech seed patents if their fields became "inadvertently contaminated with its patented genetic traits for corn, soybeans, cotton, canola and other crops," Midwest Producer reports. Monsanto argued that a "'a blanket covenant not to sue any present or future member of petitioners' organizations would enable virtually anyone to commit intentional infringement,'" Midwest Producer further reports.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor said this week that the reason she uses the term "undocumented immigrants" instead of "illegal alien" is that "labeling immigrants criminals seem[s] insulting to her," the Associated Press report. Sotomayor further said: "'I think people then paint those individuals as something less than worthy human beings and it changes the conversation,'" the AP also reports.

Legislation to ban employment discrimination against LGBT Americans is stalled in Congress. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has cleared the way for President Barack Obama to protect LGBT federal contractors through executive action, Huffington Post reports. While backers of the legislation would prefer for the legislation to pass, they also would like to see the president protect as many people as possible as his authority allows for. "Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) noted that Obama taking executive action on the issue would be in line with his recent promise to be more aggressive using his own authority where Congress is deadlocked," The Post further reports.

Mayor Michael Nutter's administration opposes legislation pending in the Philadelphia City Council that would create legislative oversight of contracts for the legal representation of Philadelphians too poor to afford their own lawyers in family court and criminal court, The Legal Intelligencer's P.J. D'Annunzio reports. Instead of having individual attorneys take court appointments, the administration is trying to contract with a new private law firm to do that work.

A City Council committee passed ordinances that would authorize City Council to review contracts involving legal representation of poor Philadelphians of more than $100,000, among other proposed changes.

According to The Legal, Michael Resnick, Nutter's director of public safety, testified in opposition: "The point of my testimony is that we contract for other services that implicate constitutional rights, we do it well, and we don't need the charter to be changed."