Cultivated Compendium

Steven J. Harper, has written a column in The American Lawyer challenging Professor Steven Davidoff Solomon's piece in the New York Times in which Solomon argued that the current state of the legal profession is improving. Point by point, Harper says there is not support for Solomon's argument that new law graduates are entering an improved job market. Overall, employment in the legal market "is still tens of thousands of jobs below its 2007 high," Harper notes. He notes that 24 percent of graduates still responding to a job survey were no longer practicing law. He also notes that dysfunctional market keeps law schools alive because they can admit students who can obtain "unlimited federal student loans for which law schools have no accountability with respect to their student employment outcomes."

New York Times editor Gretchen Morgenson argues that investors need a more muscular Securities and Exchange Commission. Even though billions of dollars have been paid by financial firms to settle regulatory and legal actions related to the mortgage crisis, most of that money went to the Department of Treasury or states. The SEC has collected $2.6 billion in penalties and disgorgement of profits in its actions, but class actions on behalf of stockholders and debtholders has recovered much more for investors, Morgenson reports. In six cases involving both private lawsuits and SEC action, the SEC recovered $400 million, while private plaintiffs recovered $3.8 billion. The agency "is clearly hamstrung in its efforts to generate recoveries on behalf of harmed investors" and should be authorized by Congress to be able to recover penalties equal to investor losses, Morgenson argues. Investors also should be able to bring private actions udner the securities laws, she argues.

Research by social scientists shows that criminals, even violent ones, mature out of lawbreaking before middle age, The Marshall Project's Dana Goldstein reports: "Homicide and drug-arrest rates peak at age 19, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, while arrest rates for forcible rape peak at 18. Some crimes, such as vandalism, crest even earlier, at age 16, while arrest rates for forgery, fraud and embezzlement peak in the early 20s. For most of the crimes the F.B.I. tracks, more than half of all offenders will be arrested by the time they are 30."

The reasons for this are myriad. The parts of the brain that govern risk and reward are not fully developed until age 25. And some crimes are too physically taxing for older people.

And the problem, Goldstein reports, is that sentencing in the U.S. is out of whack with this research. Forty-seven percent of federal inmates are serving sentences of more than 10 years, which is longer than the typical duration of a criminal career. And many people are being kept in prison even though they are physically unable to threaten anybody, Goldstein concludes.

Foreign Affairs' Timothy William Waters suggests that--now that the Palestinian Authority has joined the International Criminal Court and the ICC has acknowledged that Palestine accepts its jurisdiction--there could be trouble for the ICC if it prosecutes a case against Israeli forces operating in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel argues that Palestine is not a state, and the "ICC is a weak institution; prosecuting Israel could prove fatal," Waters writes. On the other hand, avoiding the pursuit of a legitimate case against Israel would make the weak institution irrelevant, especially because ICC has only prosecuted cases in Africa so far, Waters further wrties.

Waters also notes that now that Palestine's citizens can be tried for their own violations: "Standing trial for war crimes is a funny way to prove you’re a state, but if Hamas keeps firing rockets at Israel, Palestinians may get their day in court."

The Huffington Post's Nick Wing examines how rap lyrics are being used to incriminate young black men. Jurors are being told to view lyrics as "as literal autobiography, rather than metaphorical or exaggerated storytelling. This works with disturbing effectiveness, critics say, because rap songs often contain lyrics that reinforce racial stereotypes about black males and hyper-sexuality or violence -- helpful when the prosecutor is trying to make the defendant out to be an actual criminal." Wing says that, under the same lens, the songs of Johnny Cash, Third Eye Blind, Guns N' Roses, Neil Young, Maroon 5 and others would be considered confessions and evidence of their connection to actual crimes.

People with disabilities are fighting Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's proposed changes to long-term managed care in the state's budget, The Marshfield News-Herald's Liz Welter reports. They are concerned that changes to managed care would trade a community-centered system with a state-wide approach run by out-of-state insurance companies. They also are concerned that the autonomy the current system gives them to direct how some of their care is carried out would be eliminated.

The U.S. Supreme Court, 5-4, ruled in the past week that healthcare providers can't force states to raise Medicaid rates to keep up with rising medical costs, the Associated Press' Sam Hananel reports. The mostly more conservative justices in the majority said that private medical providers have no private right to enforce Medicaid funding laws because Congress did not create such a right.

The case involved five centers in Idaho that provide care to developmentally disabled children and adults, which claim that Idaho ignoring rising costs by keeping reimbursement rates low.

After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that two Georgia mental health patients are entitled to care in the community, there has been a push by the U.S. Department of Justice to move patients out of state hospitals, The Augusta Chronicle's Tom Corwin reports. Transfers from institutional to community settings can't be carried out over the opposition of patients, if their placements can't be reasonably accommodated or if patients wouldn't be able to benefit from being out in the community.

There have been unintended consequences of the court ruling in Georgia. The state has not been meeting patient-care standards and there have been a number of unexpected deaths in community-care homes, Corwin reports. U.S. District Judge J. Leon Holmes ruled 3.5 years ago that the Justice Department was seeking to enforce patients being moved to community settings even though parents and guardians of patients hadn't asked for it.

Corwin found that the death rates for patients in long-term care in the community is higher and that many parents fear that "patients will not receive a comparable level of care in the community, and particularly for the many medically fragile patients, this could prove fatal." 

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Viken of South Dakota has ruled that the state Department of Social Services has been violating the rights of American Indian parents when removing their children into the foster-care system, NPR's Laura Sullivan reports. Hearings over the termination of parental rights and custody rights have been short as a minute, parents have not been allowed to speak during some hearings, and Native children have been placed largely in the homes of whites. 

The lawsuit was brought on behalf of the Oglala Sioux and Rosebud Sioux tribes.

According to the Associated Press, the Tennessee Senate has voted to ban drones from recording jails as well as ticketed events with more than 100 people in attendance. The law was requested by the NFL's Tennessee Titans.

A different version of the bill passed in the House and a compromise version has to be negotiated, the AP reports.