Cultivated Compendium

The Hill reports on the oral arguments held in the U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday on the authority for the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate pollution that crosses state lines. The case could be tied because Justice Samuel Alito Jr. recused himself, leaving four justices each from "the bench's liberal and conservative wings," The Hill also reports. 

At issue is a rule by the EPA requiring 28 states to cut back on their coal-fired power plants that "'contribute significantly'" to the air problems in other states, The Hill also reports.

The case of the auction of sacred Hopi masks in France highlights the lack of protection for indigenous peoples' culture under intellectual property law in Western countries.

The Associated Press reports that the Drouot auction house in France sold 25 sacred Hopi Kachina masks, despite protests, for $1.6 million this week.  "Though a judge ruled last week that the sale of the artifacts is legal in France, the American Indian Hopi tribe says the artifacts represent their ancestors' spirits and cannot be sold as merchandise," the AP also reports. Also included in the sale was objects from the San Carlos Apache tribe and a Zuni tribe altar.

The AP decided against publishing images of the objects "because the Hopi have long kept the items out of public view and consider it sacrilegious for any images of the objects to appear." 

Bloomberg Businessweek reports that the India Supreme Court upheld a "153-year-old colonial-era law that criminalizes gay sex, leaving it up to lawmakers to amend the legislation in a setback for homosexual rights in the world’s second-most populous country."

Niranjan Sahoo, an analyst with the New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation, told Bloomberg: '“Indian society is largely conservative, feudal, and lawmakers have the same values. So any proposal of this nature with radical consequences won’t see the light of day.”'

The two-judge panel said that the law was constitutional. However, an appeal to a five-judge panel is planned.

Even though same-sex marriage has been authorized in New Jersey in court decisions, "key Senate Democrats" are seeking to codify the court decisions, The Newark Star-Ledger reports. Legislators want to protect the right to same-sex marriage from being removed by future courts. For example, state Sen. Raymond Lesniak (D-Union), told the newspaper that one of the rationales for the court decision to legalize same-sex marriage was that "gay couples in civil unions would be denied federal benefits because they were not married. If the federal government gave them benefits, Lesniak said, the rationale for the decision could be undercut, which is why it needs to be written into law."

The U.S. Supreme Court has decided against granting Pfizer's appeal of a $142 million award in favor of Kaiser Foundation's health plan and hospitals regarding the off-label marketing of the Neurontin epilepsy drug, Bloomberg Businessweek reports. The Supreme Court's action also means that a national class action can proceed in which insurance companies, union funds and employers are suing for paying for coverage of "ineffective dosages of Neurontin" on the basis of aggregate data showing a correlation between Pfizer's off-label marketing and the number of off-label prescriptions, Bloomberg Businessweek further reports.

The New York Court of Appeals ruled today that Fox News reporter Jana Winter is protected by that state's media shield law from identifying her anonymous law enforcement sources in reponse to a Colorado defendant's subpoena, Politico reports. New York's highest court was sharply divided in a 4-3 decision.

Winter had an exclusive about a notebook belonging to James Holmes, who is charged with the mass killing at the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado.

The majority said a ruling against Winter would violate New York's strong public policy favoring the protection of journalists, which made New York "'the media capital of the country, if not the world,"' Politico reports. The dissent said Colorado laws should apply.

Joan Orie Melvin, a former Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice convicted of using the resources of her judicial chambers on her political campaigns, is arguing that the charges against her should be dismissed or that she should get a new trial or sentence, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports. Orie Melvin's defense counsel said in their brief to the Pennsylvania Superior Court that the trial judge, Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Lester G. Nauhaus, was biased, as demonstrated by expressing "'personal opinions and improperly commenting on the evidence in front of the jury,'" the Pittsburgh paper reports. 

Nauhaus crafted an unusual sentence for Orie Melvin, including ordering her to write apologies on a picture of herself in handcuffs to every judge in Pennsylvania.

Joan Orie Melvin, a former Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice convicted of using the resources of her judicial chambers on her political campaigns, is arguing that the charges against her should be dismissed or that she should get a new trial or sentence, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports. Orie Melvin's defense counsel said in their brief to the Pennsylvania Superior Court that the trial judge, Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Lester G. Nauhaus, was biased, as demonstrated by expressing "'personal opinions and improperly commenting on the evidence in front of the jury,'" the Pittsburgh paper reports. 

Nauhaus crafted an unusual sentence for Orie Melvin, including ordering her to write apologies on a picture of herself in handcuffs to every judge in Pennsylvania.

Five regulatory agencies are going to be voting today on the Volcker rule, which limits the ability of banks to invest in hedge funds or trade the money they hold for their own gain, The New York Times reports. Meanwhile, "lobbyists for Wall Street banks and business trade groups," including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, are hinting that they will litigate to undercut the rule, The Times further reports.

At the same time as the financial sector plans to fight the rule to some extent, "Wall Street is also throwing resources into compliance.  Banks are writing new compliance manuals, training their traders and rewriting computer programs that effectively automate whether a trade is out of bounds under the Volcker Rule," The Times also reports.

The five agencies are the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Comptroller of the Currency.

The U.S. Supreme Court looks like it is prepared to throw out a pilot's $1.4 million award for defamation, Reuters reports. According to Reuters, the 2001 Aviation and Transportation Security Act immunizes airlines from defamation suits based on security-threat reports, so long as those "reports were not intentionally false or misleading." The Colorado Supreme Court said it did not need to decide whether the reports about the airline pilot (that he was mentally unstable and could be carrying a gun) were false before deciding whether the airline had immunity. The U.S. Supreme Court, however, "seemed to take issue with that conclusion" during oral argument today, Reuters concludes.