January 31, 2006
Roe: when developments happen, they will happen quickly ::
legal — tagged conlaw, judges, legal, politics and SCOTUS
8:56 pm
For all you Due Process/abortion law people out there, here comes an interesting piece over at SCOTUSBlog about the a possible change in abortion law in the near future. The issue involves the 2003 Partial Birth Abortion Act, which the Ninth Circuit enjoined the federal government from enforcing. Although under current law it is no surprise the law was struck down. But what’s interesting (and also scary, if you support the protections of Roe) is that things could turn out substantially differently if the case winds up before the Supreme Court.
With a new Justice, Samuel A. Alito, Jr., on the Court, a majority might be assembled to reexamine that core question, and thus to revisit the 2000 decision in Stenberg v. Carhart striking down a state-level “partial-birth” ban. That was decided on a 5-4 vote, with Alito’s predecessor, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, in the majority.
I make no predictions on who will vote how on such a case. In fact, I won’t even wager to guess whether the Court will decide to hear the case. But in the event that they do decide to hear the case, we could very well be dealing with a different legal landscape when it comes to Abortion law, not to mention the right to privacy generally.
Old Law ::
legal photos — No Tags
6:34 pm
Old Law
Originally uploaded by Hart from Golborne.
Today’s law-related photo. Incidentally, it’s one of my favorites so far.
Winter commuting ::
narrative, photos, vermont — No Tags
9:44 am
snow line
Originally uploaded by jessamyn.
Jessamyn has a nice Flickr photoset of her recent commute to the Calef Library in Washington, Vermont.
January 30, 2006
What, exactly, is going on in Washington anyway? ::
weird, politics, tech — No Tags
9:52 pm
By way of MetaFilter (Jessamyn’s comment) comes this excellent Wikipedia RFC on whether IP addresses from the United States Congress should be banned for violating a whole host of site policies. Apparently, the whole conflict arose out of one Representative changing Wikipedia’s version of his biography to one officially sanction by his office. As is the general rule at Wikipedia, such a change is not acceptable, so the Wikipedia staff changed the biography back. A reversion war ensued. Details are a little fuzzy after that (for me anyway) but it sounds like the activity spread to other members of Congress shortly afterward. And according to the RFC,
The editors from these IP ranges are rude and abrasive, immature, and show no understanding of Wikipedia policy. The editors also frequently try to whitewash the actions of certain politicians. They treat Wikipedia articles about politicians as though they own the articles, replacing community articles with their own sanctioned biographies and engaging in revert wars when other users dispute this sudden change. They also violate Wikipedia:Verifiability, by deleting verified reports, while adding flattering things about members of Congress that are unverified.
More MetaFilter discussion on this second thread.
Bloviate ::
politics — tagged judges, legal, meta and politics
6:37 pm
Jessamyn noted in my previous post about the Alito confirmation that both New Donkey and Bull Moose use the word “bloviate” in their posts. I hadn’t made the connection myself, so it was more than a little weird when she called my attention to it. (My first instinct was that I screwed up and just posted the same pullquote twice—thankfully that wasn’t the case.) Anyway, I was curious to get a more precise definition, and found this from Dictionary.com word of the day: “[t]o speak or write at length in a pompous or boastful manner.”
That pretty much sums up what I was saying before, I think.
Judge Cashman: a Denouement ::
legal — tagged crime, legal, politics, vermont and vermont courts
6:11 pm
One last follow-up for the Cashman debate. Remember back when Judge Cashman stated his reason for giving the 60-day sentence was because the defendant Mark Hulett was ineligible for sex offender counseling in prison? Well, according to This article in the Boston globe, the state took the judge’s comments to heart:
In the aftermath of Cashman’s ruling, Human Services Secretary Michael Smith ordered the Department of Corrections to change its policy to allow low-risk sex offenders to receive treatment in prison.
With the policy changed, Judge Cashman felt comfortable levying the sentence he did (3-10 years), now knowing that Hulett would receive sex offender treatment while in prison. And with that, I’ll temper the comments I made earlier about justice not being done when the judge handed down his second sentence. If the only thing preventing the judge from issuing the sentence was a bad state policy and that policy was changed, it doesn’t offend my sense of fairness so much when a judge changes the sentence.
At the end of all of this, I have to admit I’m pretty impressed with the way the executive and and judicial branches interacted over this case. Once I cut through all the bluster and puffery, it really sounds like both the executive branch and the judiciary tried at all times to do what was best under the law. If that results in Bill O’Reilly getting all up-in-arms for a couple of weeks then, well, I think it was a worthy price to pay.
But what’s the real problem? ::
politics — tagged judges, legal, politics and SCOTUS
10:46 am
I have to admit, I came late to the Alito debate. Mostly it was because the one time I turned on the hearings was the point at which Joe Biden donned a Princeton hat and took his alotted time not to talk about any substantive issues regarding the Alito hearing, but mostly—as near as I can tell—to hear himself talk. Overall it sounds like the hearings generally went the same way. Both sides created a caricature of the type of Jurist Alito has been over the past fifteen years, and then used that caricature to either hold him up or tear him down. But at the end of it all, no one really had a serious discussion about him and overall the hearings seemed to be a profound waste of time. Also, as a result of the hearings, it seems that Democrats and Republicans are coming out on two extremes on Alito’s confirmation. On the one hand, he should be confirmed without a fight (so say the Republicans) and on the other, Alito should be filibustered (see the arguments made by Democrats).
With that being the prevailing argument, it’s interesting to see what the centrist bloggers are writing about the who confirmation fight. For example, New Donkey argues:
If we are to have a filibuster, let it be one that is short on senatorial bloviation, and long on clear and concise persuasion. And if nothing else, maybe the debate will complicate Bush’s State of the Union Address.
It’s a nice idea, but if the actual confirmation hearings were any indicator, then the Democrats are in no position to start having such an argument. The Bull Moose makes the astute observation:
Here’s a useful rule of thumb when judging the political effectiveness of a nomination fight – have you come off worse than the nominee? And in the case of Alito, this is not even a close call. The Democratic opposition presented themselves as badgering, bloviating, politically correct, elitist, unattractive obstructionists. And the nominee comes off smelling like roses.
That suggests that the Democrats are going to have to reverse course in a pretty serious way if they are going to make a serious, substantive challenge to the Alito confirmation that we Americans, who don’t pay much attention to what goes on in the courts and who likely distrust what the third branch is doing, find palatable.
But there is a larger problem here, which isn’t about what Alito might do if he is confirmed, but rather, what the Senate has already done in the hearings. If you’re like me and think the Senate should take a more nuanced approach to governance, and to avoid such extreme, polemic arguments as the ones we saw with Alito, then it seems that they failed in their responsibility in a pretty serious way.
January 27, 2006
Judge Cashman modifies sentence ::
legal — tagged crime, judge cashman, legal, politics, vermont and vermont courts
5:36 pm
By way of TalkLeft, I found that Judge Cashman (previous posts: 1, 2) has, at the request of the prosecution, modified his sentence of Mark Hulett. After this modification, Hulett will serve 3 – 10 years in prison for his crime. I don’t have too much to add to the discussion, but I am concerned in cases where it seems that the decision of a court is based not on the facts of the case or the requirements of law, but rather on the shrill outcry of the public. This sentence modification is by no means the worst example of that happening, but, as far as I understand it, it’s also not justice.
Law photo of the day: Al Franken ::
weird, politics, legal photos — No Tags
1:08 pm
Dinner at Chipotle
Originally uploaded by maphu.
Because you never know what searching for the law on Flickr might bring: Al Franken, ordering at Chipotle the Twin Cities, in conjuction with an ACS event there.
January 26, 2006
Frogs and toads in Corporations ::
narrative, personal, legal — No Tags
3:53 pm
When getting to know a new professor, it’s kind of fun to see what sort of metaphors he or she uses to explain the more abstract areas of law they are teaching. I came across one of the more interesting of these metaphors in my Corporations class this semester. In that course, the professor made a comment during the first class that we must realize that Corporations law involves a certain amount of magic. If we do the magic right, then great things (or at least not-bad things) will happen. If we do it wrong then, and I’m quoting here “frogs and toads will come out of your mouth.”
Having been exposed to exactly zero Harry Potter, I didn’t know what he was talking about. But then today—most likely for the benefit of people like me, who know nothing about Harry Potter—he was more explicit: if you cast the right spell (that is, file the right paperwork that insulates your client, structure the business in the right way, etc.), then you can create great things with the law; but if you cast the wrong spell (or neglect to cast a spell at all, I suppose) then terrible things will happen to your client (for example, they will be held personally liable for the debts incurred by their company). Kind of a nice metaphor—and it had its entertainment value as well, which is more than I can say for some of the other explanatory devices I’ve been exposed to over the past few years…
Shared iTunes ::
personal, tech — No Tags
10:22 am
Shared iTunes
Originally uploaded by gjs.
One interesting thing that’s happened since I started VLS two and a half years ago is that the number of Mac (and, by association, iTunes) users on campus has grown substantially. As a result of that growth, when I bring my computer on campus, I see a growing list of people sharing their music libraries. That’s kind of cool.
But I bring this up because I was trying to figure out (a) whether anyone is listening to my music, and (b) what they’re listening to. The preferences pane in iTunes will give me the number of users connected, but that doesn’t answer question (b). So, before today I was running a simple command: lsof | grep mp3, which told me which mp3 files were open (and yes, if you encode in AAC format, you can do a search for m4p, etc.). In my search for more information, I did a quick search for “iTunes who’s connected” on Google, and found a command that will provide even more information. It looked nice at first, but upon giving it a try it spit back information that was of little help.
Preliminary results show that Talking Heads (I forgot I even had them on my hard drive!) and The Wrens are pretty popular today.
January 23, 2006
At the intersection of law, politics, and bad patent policy ::
politics, legal — No Tags
8:24 pm
The Financial Times has an interesting piece today about the ongoing RIM/NTP patent case. After RIM lost their most recent appeal, it looks like a lot of people are going to have to go without their Blackberries in the near future. But then I noticed this part of the article:
If an injunction were to be imposed, NTP has agreed that government employees, including those at the Securities and Exchange Commission and Justice department, would be excluded from any service suspension.
Interesting political move. Just think: if Congressional employees all had their Blackberries shut off, how long do you think it would take before a limited patent reform bill was introduced that effectively mooted this case?
Madrid police ::
legal photos — No Tags
2:29 pm
babyfuzz
Originally uploaded by Nad.
Today’s law-related photograph.
January 22, 2006
My old neighborhood ::
narrative, photos — No Tags
5:16 pm
IMG_1012
Originally uploaded by mattluce.
More Milwaukee photography. I used to live right up the street from where this shot was taken, on the other side of the apartment tower. When I lived there, I would come down to the river to take photographs not entirely different from this one.
A3G update ::
weird, meta, legal — No Tags
4:54 pm
I used to read Article III Groupie when it was up and running, but when it was taken down shortly after the author’s alter ego David Lat met with Jeffrey Toobin for a New Yorker piece in November of last year, I (for obvious reasons) stopped reading. Based on the irreverent tone of the site, not to mention some of the dirty gossip its author many times engaged in, I could only imagine what sort of hell David Lat was going through at his job during the fallout after his revelation.
Now David Lat has reemerged in a NY Times profile. What’s particularly interesting is (a) how the U.S. Attorney handled Lat after the revelation (he didn’t fire him, but at one point suggested that if Lat had an opportunity to continue blogging, he might consider taking it), and (b) U.S. Appeals Court judge Alex Kozinski figured out who David Lat was long before Lat talked to the New Yorker. Regarding the second point, the article doesn’t go into any detail on how Kozinski figured out Lat’s identity—I would love to hear that story.
Anyway, Lat will apparently be a co-editor over at Wonkette for a month, where I’m sure he’ll fit right in.
