Cultivated Compendium

A Connecticut panel, appointed to review the state's public records laws in the wake of the Sandy Hook school shootings, heard testimony related to its charge to "recommend to lawmakers how to alter the delicate balance of victims' right to privacy and the public's right to know about crimes and the operations of agencies like police departments," The Connecticut Post reports.  One father whose son was murdered asked: '"What right do have to see my son's body or hear his last moments, just because such information is in a government file cabinet?"' The Post reported. But proponents of disclosure testified it would keep law enforcement accountable for their response in emergency situations.

The Washington Post has a great explainer on why the exchanges for American consumers to buy health insurance policies are buggy and having problems since they opened. One issue: "the site needs to interact with a large number of databases operated by various federal and state agencies. If these back-end systems are poorly designed, it could take months or even years to straighten out the mess," The Post reports.

Broadcasters who lost their copyright challenge in the Second Circuit to Aereo's Internet streaming service of free broadcast TV programming are going to seek certiorari in the U.S. Supreme Court, Variety reported in an exclusive. Contrary rulings against Aereo rival FilmOn X could set up a circuit split if the Ninth Cicrcuit followed the lead of trial-court rulings.

There was a lot of buzz about the study finding that half of the links in U.S. Supreme Court cases don't work anymore. Moreover, 70 percent of the links in law reviews and other law journals also have rotten away. But what I love about this study is that the scholars behind it are part of an effort to come up with a solution.

Jonathan Zittrain wrotes that "the Harvard Library Innovation Lab has pioneered a project to unite libraries so that link rot can be mitigated.  We are joined by about thirty law libraries around the world to start Perma.cc, which will allow those libraries on direction of authors and journal editors to store permanent caches of otherwise ephemeral links."

Academics are great at revealing problems, but how often do they also figure out a way to solve them?

(Hat tip to Sarah Kiley for sending this post my way.)

The Atlantic blogs on a report from the Brennan Center for Justice on "what the surveillance state does with our private data" as a strong synthesis of everything that's been revealed in recent months. Further, The Atlantic writes, "even though the people being spied on are often totally innocent, the government stores their information for a very long time."

The full report is here: http://www.brennancenter.org/publication/what-government-does-americans-...

The Washington Post has a piece that begins: "Courts from Moscow to Murmansk sent out a broad and uncompromising message Tuesday: Russian authorities will not tolerate protest, not from the weak or the powerful, not on land or at sea." A photojournalist and Greenpeace activists detained after a protest of Arctic drilling were denied bail in one case. In another case, a man with disabilities was confined to indefinite psychiatric treatment after being arrested at a protest when Vladimir Putin was inaugurated.

A British study found 1/3 of "British people in their 50s and above said they had experienced age discrimination, researchers reported in the journal Age and Ageing. That included being treated with less courtesy or getting poorer service at restaurants and hospitals," Reuters Health reported. The impact? One researcher said "frequent perceived discrimination may be a chronic source of stress and build up over time, leading to social withdrawal and reluctance to go to the doctor," Reuters Health also reported.

The Philadelphia Inquirer has this report on a judge ordering a new trial in a Pennsylvania Innocence Project case: "Calling the original trial evidence 'extremely weak' and newly uncovered evidence compelling, a Philadelphia judge has granted a new trial for two men serving life for the 1995 robbery-murder of a North Philadelphia business owner."

The First Amendment Center has this report from Tony Mauro on six First Amendment cases on the U.S. Supreme Court's docket this year, including a case in which media groups are worried that news organizations could be left exposed to defamation lawsuits involving true news reports. That case regards a Colorado Supreme Court decision upholding a defamation judgment against an airline whose report about a "disgruntled employee was largely true."

One case over campaign finance was argued today. The Washington Post has "everything you need to know about McCutcheon vs FEC" and why it could be the next Citizens United:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/10/08/supreme-court-...

Nonprofit Quarterly reports that many American Indian legal practitioners are finding that “'basically any issue headed for the Supreme Court is probably not going to be decided in favor of the tribes.”' Their advice? Avoid going to the U.S. Supreme Court if at all possible. The other strategy is make the cases as strong as possible: the Native American Rights Fund and the National Congress of American Indians have created the Tribal Supreme Court Project to work up cases before going to the highest court in the land.

In December, the Supreme Court will hear a case about the interpretation of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. My prior post on that case: http://www.cultivatedcompendium.com/news/us-supreme-court-set-hear-argum...