- Dodd-Frank major oops: Faced with new liabilities, agencies refuse to let their ratings be used in bond issuance [WaPo, Salmon] SEC scurries to suspend requirement for six months while it figures out what to do [Salmon]
- Left-leaning law lectern: study of newly hired lawprofs identifies 52 liberals, 8 conservatives [Caron, ABA Journal, Lindgren/Volokh]
- “Progress in protecting gripe site owners against silly trademark claims” [Levy, CL&P]
- “Congress Investigates Beck, Ingraham Advertisers” [Stoll]
- “Uncle Sam Kicks Out Legal Immigrants for Down Profits in Recession” [Shapiro, Cato]
- Judge punishes Goodyear for discovery heel-dragging by denying it chance to disprove liability in $32M case [Las Vegas Sun]
- “$2.3M verdict against Dole thrown out on fraud grounds” [PoL, background]
- Paul Campos vs. Elena Kagan: this time it’s personal [Lawyers Guns & Money]
Tagged as:
broadcasters,
discovery,
Elena Kagan,
immigration law,
law schools,
online speech,
sanctions,
trademarks,
Wall Street
- Kagan to senators: please don’t confuse my views with Mark Tushnet’s or Harold Koh’s [Constitutional Law Prof]
- Too much like a Star Wars lightsaber? Lucasfilm sends a cease-and-desist to a laser pointer maker [Mystal, AtL]
- Ottawa, Canada: family files complaint “against trendy wine bar that turned away dinner party because it included 3mo baby” [Drew Halfnight, National Post]
- “House left Class Action Fairness Act alone in SPILL Act” [Wood/PoL, earlier]
- Not so indie? Filmmaker doing anti-Dole documentary on Nicaraguan banana workers says he took cash from big plaintiff’s law firm Provost Umphrey [AP/WaPo, WSJLawBlog, Erik Gardner/THREsq., new plaintiffs' charges against Dole]
- Will liability ruling result in closure of popular Connecticut recreational area? [Rick Green, Hartford Courant; earlier]
- Class action lawyer Sean Coffey, running for New York attorney general, has many generous supporters [NYDN, more, WNYC (Sen. Al Franken headlines closed fundraiser at Yale Club)]
- “Judge Reduces Damages Award by 90% in Boston Music Downloading Trial” [NLJ, earlier on Tenenbaum case]
Tagged as:
age discrimination,
Al Franken,
attorneys general,
banana pesticide litigation fraud,
BP Transocean oil spill,
Canada,
Connecticut,
Elena Kagan,
New York,
politics,
Provost Umphrey,
recreation,
restaurants,
RIAA and file sharing
- “Kagan refused to identify anything the government couldn’t do under its Commerce Clause power” and “consciously left herself plenty of breathing room to cite foreign law inappropriately” [Ilya Shapiro, more]
- Multiple civil/criminal hats? “The odd responses of the attorney general to the oil spill” [WaPo editorial]
- Phillies Phanatic, “‘Most-Sued Mascot in the Majors’ Is Back in Court” [Lowering the Bar, which also hosts Blawg Review #271 this week]
- Federalist Society has a new blog;
- California will pay $20 million to woman abducted for nearly two decades [AP]
- Charges dropped against teen who tried to help lost kid in shopping mall [Lenore Skenazy, earlier]
- Two libertarians arrested after videotaping police in Greenfield, Mass. [Balko, earlier here and here]
- “‘Ambulance Chaser’ Lawsuits Hound Apple Over iPhone 4″ [Atlantic Wire]
Tagged as:
Apple,
baseball,
BP Transocean oil spill,
California,
cellphones,
Elena Kagan,
Federalist Society,
police
- “IP Lawyer Who Spotted Expired Patent on Solo Cup Lid Loses Quest for Trillions in Damages” [ABA Journal, earlier on "false markings" suits here, here, etc.]
- Like we’re surprised: Linda Greenhouse favors sentimental (”Poor Joshua!”) side in 1989 DeShaney case and hopes Elena Kagan does too [NYT Opinionator, my take a few years back]
- Why is Le Monde in financial trouble? For one thing, firing a printing plant employee costs €466,000 [Frédéric Filloux, Monday Note via MargRev]
- “Will these salt peddlers stop at nothing?” Michael Kinsley on NYT sodium-as-next-tobacco coverage [Atlantic Wire]
- “‘Victim’ Gets $4.17 Coupon, Lawyers Get $10 Million Cash”: Expedia class action settlement [John Frith, California Civil Justice Blog]
- Scruggs investigation finally over as feds drop probe of political operative P.L. Blake; several figures in Mississippi scandal are up for release soon from prison [Jackson Clarion Ledger]
- $20 billion Gulf spill fund: “Oil Gushes and Power Rushes” [Sullum, Althouse]
- “NYC Naked Cowboy to Naked Cowgirl: Stop copying me” [AP]
Tagged as:
BP Transocean oil spill,
class action settlements,
Dickie Scruggs,
Elena Kagan,
France,
newspapers,
NYC,
P.L. Blake,
patent marking,
salt,
Supreme Court
- Oh dear: Elena Kagan praised as “my judicial hero” Aharon Barak, ultra-activist Israeli jurist flayed by Posner as lawless [Stuart Taylor, Jr./Newsweek] Kagan and executive power [Root, Reason]
- More on efforts to get feds to redesign hot dogs and other choking-risk foods [NYT, earlier]
- Amid brouhaha over Rand Paul views, Chicago firefighter-test case provides reminder of how discrimination law actually plays out in courts today [Tabarrok, MargRev]
- So please, Ken, tell us what you really think of this Mr. Francis (”Girls Gone Wild”) and his nastygrams [Popehat]
- More on SEIU’s tactic of sending mob to banker’s home in suburban Maryland [Volokh and more, earlier]
- “Intensive Parenting Enforced: Parents Criminal Liability for Children Skipping School” [Gaia Bernstein, ConcurOp on a California bill]
- Julian Ku unimpressed with United Nations officials’ claims that Arizona immigration statute violates international civil rights law [Opinio Juris] Plus, a complaint to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights [Kopel, Volokh] Ilya Shapiro analyzes statute’s constitutionality [Cato]
- Bill moving through Congress would force states, localities to accept unionization, arbitration for public safety workforces [Fox, Jottings] And here comes the giant federal bailout of union pension funds [Megan McArdle]
Tagged as:
Arizona,
discrimination law,
Elena Kagan,
fire departments,
immigration law,
international human rights,
Israel,
judges,
labor unions,
nastygrams,
testing
- Pennsylvania attorney general subpoenas Twitter in search of critics’ identities, then backs down [Volokh and more, Levy/CL&P, Romenesko, Wired "Threat Level"]
- Letting kids have unsupervised time in NYC park not actually against the law [Free-Range Kids on "Take Your Kids to the Park, and Leave Them There Day"] Related from Lenore Skenazy: Spiked Online and Salon, “The War on Children’s Playgrounds”
- Uh-oh: New York chief judge Jonathan Lippman endorses massive new Civil Gideon legal-aid entitlement [ABA Journal, and the NYT cheers]
- “Novartis Hit With $250 Million in Punitives in Gender Bias Case” [NYLJ, WSJ Law Blog (blaming bad defense trial strategy) and more, ABA Journal, Hyman]
- Med-mal law has done very well for two attorney brothers in Georgia [Atlanta Journal-Constitution via Pero]
- Kagan’s Oxford thesis revealed: judges shouldn’t make it up as they go along in quest of social justice. Sensation ensues! [WSJ Law Blog, related on political-branch deference] And were the SG’s judicial-restraint principles activated by Graham v. Florida? [Stuart Taylor, Jr., National Journal]
- Federal Elections Commission as net regulator: “How the DISCLOSE Act will restrict free speech” [Brad Smith/Jeff Patch, Reason]
- “Law Professor Confesses ‘I’m a Criminal’” [Tim Lynch, Cato]
- Argentina: “Parts of Anti-Plagiarism Bill Lifted from Wikipedia” [Lowering the Bar, TechDirt]
Tagged as:
civil gideon,
crime and punishment,
Elena Kagan,
Georgia,
medical malpractice,
online speech,
Pennsylvania,
sex discrimination,
Twitter,
Wikipedia
- Sorry, guys, but being a law dean who treated conservative scholars with cordiality and fairness doesn’t mean you’ll either 1) be anything but a predictably liberal judge yourself, or 2) show any particular unusual persuasiveness with conservative colleagues on the bench. Jim Copland invites us to consider the example of Guido Calabresi;
- As part of their job duties, persons who hold the office of Solicitor General sometimes sign their name to arguments they’d reject out of hand if hearing the case as a judge. We’d better hope this is the case with Kagan’s defense of the federal law on depictions of animal cruelty, in which she advanced what Chief Justice Roberts rightly called the “startling and dangerous” position that the protections of the First Amendment should be subject to case-by-case cost-benefit balancing. Jacob Sullum explains.
- Mark Moller contributes some perspective worth considering on the military-recruitment issue. More: Roger Pilon.
- Not my view alone: “We are seeing what government by the faculty lounge looks like,” writes Michael Barone. More: David Wagner. “My experience with Prof. Kagan” accounts: Elie Mystal, Above the Law, and Sasha Volokh, Volokh Conspiracy.
- “Libertarians respond to the nomination” [Damon Root, Reason "Hit and Run"]. Views of Miguel Estrada and Stuart Taylor, Jr. [Moller, Cato] While in the Clinton administration, she took “pro-plaintiff” stances on liability reform [Mark Hofmann, Business Insurance quoting Victor Schwartz, via Ted at Point of Law] More from Jim Copland [City Journal] She helped beef up Harvard’s Berkman Center on intellectual property; does this mean she’s sympathetic to “fair use” concerns? [Cavanaugh, Reason "Hit and Run"]
Tagged as:
Elena Kagan
I’m one of the participants in a National Review Online symposium on how Republican senators should approach Elena Kagan’s Supreme Court nomination (earlier). And I’ve got a big link roundup at Cato at Liberty this morning pulling together some highlights of what’s being said about her, including some not-especially-reassuring reports on her views of administrative/regulatory law and First Amendment law.
P.S. As for Left critics of Kagan, Ted at Point of Law thinks they’re being foolish: she’ll deliver a voting record as Justice very similar to what a more outspoken ideologue would have done, without exposing President Obama to as much flak in the confirmation process.
Tagged as:
Elena Kagan
