The Justice Department has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take up a case involving Argentina and its defaulted debt, Global Post reports. Lawyers for the federal government argue Second Circuit precedent giving "hedge fund bondholders the power to pursue the country's non-US assets was wrong," Global Post further reports.
The Justice Department's brief increases the chance the justices will grant certiorari, Global Post also reports.
Colleen Logan, writing in the Huffington Post, writes about five reasons why the LGBT community is ready for same-sex marriage but not divorce. The upshot is that there are legal ramifications from state-sanctioned matrimony. Those include:
One- The law's notion of presumed parenthood does not protect non-biological mothers and fathers. "Until the law sees fit to protect both parents in a same-sex couple in the case of divorce, we won't truly be ready for marriage," Logan writes.
Two- Different tax treatment is going to ensue from same-sex matrimony: "Filing jointly may seem like a benefit, but what if your newly betrothed had huge tax debt that you didn't know about before you got hitched? Coupling your doom is the fact that that sweet little refund that you used to get as single and head of household is now a distant memory," Logan also writes.
Sinclair Broadcast Group has agreed to buy eight TV stations from Allbritton Communications Co. for $985 million. But the Federal Communications Commission is questioning Sinclair's plan to use "sidecar companies" in order to purchase the TV stations and skirt the FCC rules "governing the number of stations a broadcaster can own in a particular market," The Wall Street Journal reports. The move by the regulator is "an unusual level of scrutiny for a tactic that has helped fuel broadcast-industry consolidation," The Journal also reports. Among other things, the FCC asked Sinclair to show its sidecar companies are "financially independent and aren't controlled by Sinclair," The Journal further reports.
The U.S. Supreme Court is going to hear oral arguments tomorrow about the cross-state feud over pollution, USA Today reports. At issue is the Environmental Protection Agency's rule that "as many as 28 upwind states, mostly in the Midwest and South, ... slash ozone and fine particle emissions for the benefit of their Middle Atlantic and Northeast neighbors," the newspaper reports.
According to USA Today, 24 states want the circuit court ruling striking down the rule upheld by the justices. But nine states and six cities are asking for the rule to be reinstated.
An excerpt of the piece I wrote for The Connecticut Law Tribune on the Children's Law Center of Connecticut, which is celebrating 20 years of protecting children this year:
After 6-year-old Ayla was murdered, Judith Hyde heard a voice inside her head. The message: Create a children's legal advocacy center to represent young children in family court.
Hyde had founded the Child Protection Council of Northeastern Connecticut, which included a small program to provide supervision for court-ordered visits between parents and their children. During one of those visits, Ayla Rose Moylan was shot and killed by her father, who was apparently upset by his former wife's plan to remarry. The visit supervisor, Joyce Lannan, was shot too and ended up blinded in one eye.
Out of Ayla's death and out of Hyde's intuition came the founding of the Children's Law Center of Connecticut, an organization whose core service is providing legal advocates to children in highly contentious family court cases. Hyde wrote in a piece of literary writing that she shared with the Law Tribune that, after the shooting incident, she felt tired and wanted time to recuperate. But the voice inside pushed back, telling Hyde: "Now is the time when you will have people with you to make this happen."
Twenty years later, the center represents children in eight of Connecticut's judicial districts with plans to expand into Norwich next year if funding stays steady, according to Executive Director Justine Rakich-Kelly. The organization has been celebrating its 20th anniversary with a series of events this year, including its annual gala held on Dec. 6.
Read the full story here.
The U.S. Supreme Court has taken a case involving the issue of when software is patentable, The Wall Street Journal reports. The tech world is divided on where to draw the line on when software can be patented and when it can't: "On one side lie technology giants such as Google Inc., Facebook Inc., and Intuit Inc., which largely believe the Patent & Trademark Office has issued too many software patents in recent years, and would like to see courts apply a more exacting standard when reviewing them. On the other, lies a collection of big and small technology companies, including International Business Machines Corp., which worry that tighter standards on software patents could hurt innovation," The Journal further reports.
Research in Somalia shows that disaster relief should be focusing on resilience, or "building the capacity of a family or community to withstand shocks in a way that minimizes long-term developmental consequences." For example, the research showed that when women were empowered to be involved in household decision-making, resilience was improved: "Traditionally, Somali women don’t take a big role outside the household, where men tend to run the show. But during the crisis, the men were often absent. In search of income or assistance, they relocated to towns, distant grazing lands, or IDP camps. Women who were more empowered had the confidence to negotiate with elites to gain access to essential services, like health clinics and markets. Their children tended to be healthier and better fed."
A best practice developed by the Innocence Project to ensure accurate eyewitness identification could be running afoul of the First Amendment. The Daytona Beach News-Journal reports on local law enforcement's use of witness identifiation affidavits that direct witnesses to crime not to talk to the media; these affidavits were recommended to try to avoid wrongful convictions. Seth Miller, of the Innocence Project of Florida, told the newspaper that cases that receive a lot of media coverage can taint witnesses' opinions and potentially lead to wrongful convictions. But an attorney who practices in the area of media law said having law enforcement tell witnesses not to talk to the press violates their First Amendment rights.
The Washington Post reports on the criticism that the International Criminal Court is facing in Africa: "The 11-year-old court of last resort was set up to take on some of the world’s most heinous crimes. But its choice of cases has frustrated African leaders, who say that comparable crimes elsewhere in the world are being ignored and that race is a factor in the decision-making. With Kenya’s president and deputy president on trial, African leaders are pushing for changes that some ICC advocates say would undermine the court completely. At stake is the future of a court whose creation was touted as a major breakthrough in ensuring that those who commit crimes against humanity do not escape justice — a dream that African nations, more than any other region in the world , signed up for."
A tighter state secrets law under consideration in Japan could be troubling for reporters pursuing stories on governmental wrongdoing Foreign Policy reports: "There used to be a saying among Washington bureaucrats: A great way to leak information is to pass it along to Tokyo. Once hailed as a 'spy's paradise' because of its weak state secrecy laws, Japan is trying to reform its reputation as an information sieve with a hotly contested measure that would bring Japanese law more in line with U.S. national security policy -- perhaps with troubling implications. The bill ... would give agency heads discretionary power to classify 23 types of information in four categories -- defense, diplomacy, counter-terrorism, and counter-intelligence -- and stiffens penalties for leaking state secrets, even in cases of journalists exposing wrongdoing." The proposed law would mean governmental employees who share classified information with journalists could face up to 10 years in prison, and reporters could be prosecuted for encouraging the leaking of information, Foreign Policy also reports.
Reuters reports on the final enactment of the legislation, including that "journalists and others in the private sector convicted of encouraging such leaks could get up to five years if they use 'grossly inappropriate' means to solicit the information."
Lawyer and Legal Journalist
