Overlawyered » military

November 22 roundup

Walter Olson — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 05:35:53 +0000

Furor continues over insider trading by Congress [Roger Parloff/Fortune, Bainbridge ("unimpressed" with reform proposal entitled STOCK Act), earlier] Rep. Bachus disputes claims in Peter Schweizer book [AW, Perry]
“Fort Hood victims’ families seek $750M from feds” [Kenneth Timmerman, Daily Caller]
“Chicago Lawyer Sues Southwest, Says Airline Breached Free-Drink Coupon Contract” [ABA Journal]
“Lawyer Solicitation: Penn State Sex Abuse Edition” [Turkewitz] Slate slags Merck CEO [Ted Frank]
Akaka Hawaii-racialization bill, smuggled in through the back door? [Ilya Shapiro, background]
Suits over Hurricane Irene electrical outages expected to spread [Connecticut Law Tribune, Chris Powell]
Fiasco envy? “RIAA Thinking Of Backing Righthaven” [Masnick, TechDirt] “Righthaven ordered to pay nearly $120,000 in attorney fees, court costs” [VegasInc., Ars Technica, American Power Blog]

Tags: airlines, contracts, Hawaii, military, RightHaven, Senate, terrorism, U.S. House of Representatives, Vioxx

November 22 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Making Veteran’s Day friends

Walter Olson — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 22:08:23 +0000

A staffer at Suffolk Law School in Boston solicited “much needed supplies to put in care packages to be sent to deployed troops” in Afghanistan, including a Suffolk student serving there. That didn’t sit well with Prof. Michael Avery, whose letter deploring the request, as well as the display of a large American flag at Suffolk, has been stirring discussion among Michael Graham listeners and Above the Law readers ever since.

Tags: Boston, law schools, military

Making Veteran’s Day friends is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“Lawyers should never come between a nation and its troops”

Walter Olson — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 16:55:17 +0000

Charles Moore, writing in the U.K. Telegraph, is dubious about Conservative proposals to turn a British “Military Covenant” of fair treatment for troops into enforceable law.

Tags: military, United Kingdom

“Lawyers should never come between a nation and its troops” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“UK advocacy group proposes to sue predator drone operators”

Walter Olson — Wed, 11 May 2011 13:38:40 +0000

Kenneth Anderson at Instapundit notes the latest outbreak of “lawfare,” the use of litigation against diplomatic and military actors. “As with most of these advocacy campaigns, the point is not to win cases, but to create a public narrative that says the practice is unsavory and illegitimate, and leverage that into personal legal uncertainty for officials, whether in office or once they leave government.” I’ve got much more on the phenomenon — and its large base of support in present-day legal academia — in Schools for Misrule.

Separately, Gabriel Schoenfeld at National Affairs argues that “when it comes to the American government’s efforts to provide for the common defense, a far-reaching legalism has taken hold,” and Anderson has more on the legalities of last week’s Bin Laden raid.

Tags: international human rights, military, terrorism

“UK advocacy group proposes to sue predator drone operators” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

No sign of Fort Detrick cancer cluster

Walter Olson — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 12:08:47 +0000

But that hasn’t stood in the way of a push to sign up clients for law firms in the vicinity of the Frederick, Md. armed forces base. [WJZ, Army Times]

Tags: Maryland, military, toxic torts

No sign of Fort Detrick cancer cluster is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

March 15 roundup

Walter Olson — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 13:37:58 +0000

“A conversation with class action objector Ted Frank” [American Lawyer]
Reviews of new Lester Brickman book Lawyer Barons [Dan Fisher/Forbes, Russell Jackson] Plus: interview at TortsProf; comments from Columbia legal ethicist William Simon [Legal Ethics Forum]
“Collective Bargaining for States But Not for Uncle Sam” [Adler] Examples of how Wisconsin public-sector unionism has worked in practice [Perry] Wisconsin cop union: nice business you got there, shame if anything were to happen to it [Sykes, WTMJ] “Union ‘rights’ that aren’t” [Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe]
“Minnesota House Considering Significant Consumer Class Action Reform Measures” [Karlsgodt]
10,000 lawyers at DoD? Rumsfeld complains military overlawyered [Althouse via Instapundit]
“Are Meritless Claims More Prevalent in Copyright?” [Boyden, Prawfs]
Claim: availability of punitive damages reduces rate of truck accidents. Really? [Curt Cutting]
Now with improved federalism: “The Return of the Lawsuit Abuse Reduction Act” [Carter Wood, more, earlier here].

Tags: class actions, copyright, labor unions, Lester Brickman, military, Minnesota, police, public employment, punitive damages, sanctions, Ted Frank, Wisconsin

March 15 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Law schools roundup

Walter Olson — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 17:07:01 +0000

Looks as if ROTC will return to Yale and Harvard despite some misgivings at the latter institution over the military’s treatment of transgendered persons [Atlantic Wire, Weekly Standard; also see my Daily Caller interview]
California state bar urges U.S. News to factor racial diversity into law school rankings [Althouse]
Right-of-center commentators clash on Ninth Circuit nomination of Berkeley lawprof Goodwin Liu [Damon Root, Reason]
Odds of this resulting purely from chance distribution would seem pretty low: of 32 members of Congress who have Harvard degrees, 29 are Democrats [Stoll, Future of Capitalism]
Rather disrespectful review of new Ronald Dworkin book [Simon Blackburn, Times Higher Ed]
There’ll always be a legal academia dept.: “Multidimensional Masculinities and Law: A Colloquium” [UNLV/Suffolk via LaborProf]

Tags: bar associations, Harvard, law schools, military

Law schools roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Federalist Society videos online

Walter Olson — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 14:55:43 +0000

The Federalist Society has posted numerous videos from its recent National Lawyers’ Convention, including sessions on the aggressive regulatory stance of today’s Environmental Protection Agency, the constitutionality of Obamacare, anonymity and the First Amendment in media and campaign-regulation law, NYU’s Richard Epstein debating Yale’s Bill Eskridge on the court battle over California’s Prop 8, recusal and campaign rules for judges, Dodd-Frank, and the Christian Legal Society v. Martinez case on accreditation of student groups, among other topics. And civil procedure/Iqbal-Twombly buffs may be interested in a luncheon panel held just yesterday in D.C. (I was in the audience) in which four law professors (Don Elliott of Yale, Martin Redish and Ronald Allen of Northwestern, and Rick Esenberg of Marquette) outlined ideas for reforming the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to reduce discovery costs and improve screening of cases in the earliest stages of filing.

The video above is of the Society’s 10th annual Barbara Olson Memorial Lecture, in which Second Circuit Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs provocatively criticizes legal academia and other precincts of influential legal thinking for misunderstanding the role of the military and its relation to the law.

Tags: campaign regulation, discovery, Environmental Protection Agency, Federalist Society, law schools, military, pleading, recusals, same-sex marriage

Federalist Society videos online is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

November 24 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 16:20:34 +0000

Jack Park on Bruesewitz v. Wyeth vaccine preemption case at Supreme Court [Heritage]
Incidentally happening to assure lawyers more access to work: Harvard’s Tribe devises “access to justice” initiatives for Obama administration [BLT]
New Haven cops accidentally photograph themselves deleting video of an unlawful arrest [Balko]
How elite law culture miscomprehends the military [Second Circuit chief judge Dennis Jacobs speech at Federalist Society convention, YouTube]
“Later, Bad Lawyer”: a blogger heads to prison [Greenfield]
Reform medical liability? Depends on how badly you want neurosurgeons’ services [Michael Lavyne, NYDN]
“Cab-rank principle” in legal ethics explained [Lawyers' Lawyer, Australia; via Legal Ethics Forum]
$3.5 million award to unsuccessful suicide-while-in-custody is one of long series of such cases [six years ago on Overlawyered]

Tags: ethics, legal blogs, medical malpractice, military, police, preemption, suicide

November 24 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“Marine recruit sues Corps for making him exercise in the summer”

Walter Olson — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 05:18:50 +0000

“A Marine recruit is suing his recruiters and the U.S. Marine Corps after he suffered a heat stroke during what he claims was vigorous physical activity in extreme heat conditions.” [SE Texas Record via (language) Popehat]

P.S. Note readers’ comments on the differences between the “pre-entry” training at issue here and the boot camp that would follow actual enlistment.

Tags: military

“Marine recruit sues Corps for making him exercise in the summer” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system