Will the departing Obama administration Department of Justice persuade the departing administration of Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake to lock the city into an expensive, rigid police consent decree? [George Liebmann, Baltimore Sun]
Posts Tagged ‘Department of Justice’
The powers of the U.S. Department of Justice
The U.S. Department of Justice, taken all in all, is the most dangerous of the domestic agencies. Whichever presidential candidate won — in this case Donald J. Trump — stood to “inherit extremely broad powers that are subject to no meaningful oversight by the other two branches.” [Elias Groll, Foreign Policy]
Litigation roundup
- House passes Stop Settlement Slush Funds Act of 2016 [James DeLong, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, Republican Policy Committee, earlier]
- “Enough is enough”: judge in surgical-mesh case decries tactical angling in multidistrict litigation (MDL) process, reminds lawyers of sanctions authority [Glenn Lammi, Washington Legal Foundation] Related: “Repeat Players in Multidistrict Litigation” [Elizabeth Chamblee Burch, Mass Tort Prof]
- E-mail scanning: “So-called ‘privacy lawsuits’ that essentially enrich a cottage industry of plaintiffs’ lawyers…” [David Kravets, ArsTechnica]
- GM, 3-for-3 at winning ignition-switch trials, settles a couple of bellwether cases [Margaret Cronin Fisk and Laurel Brubaker Calkins, AP/Walla Walla, Wash. Union-Bulletin, CarScoops]
- New Jersey judge disallows plaintiff’s experts’ “made for litigation” methods in talcum powder case [Michele Barnes and Clifton Hutchinson, K&L Gates]
- “Lawyers Suing Lawyers: Texas mass tort attorney sues other mass tort attorney over robocall recruitment tactic” [U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform]
Prosecution roundup
- Fourth Circuit will review forfeiture case of “pre-conviction, pre-trial restraint of untainted property” [Ilya Shapiro, Cato]
- “Voodoo Science in the Courtroom: The U.S. has relied on flawed forensic-evidence techniques for decades, falsely convicting many” [Alex Kozinski, WSJ; ABA Journal] “Highest court in Massachusetts throws out another shaken-baby syndrome conviction” [Radley Balko on Boston Globe]
- Federal judge Andrew Hanen gets results! “Justice Department orders more ethics training for lawyers” [Politico, earlier]
- Like settlement slush funds, contingency-fee prosecutions divert money from the public fisc to influential private players [Margaret (“Peggy”) Little, CEI]
- California appeals court: Orange County district attorney’s office’s war on a judge was legal but represented “extraordinary abuse” [C.J. Ciaramella]
- “New Jersey Bill Would Punish Eating, Drinking While Driving” [Reason]
George Will on settlement slush funds
George Will’s new column is on settlement slush funds, a favorite topic around here. A Wall Street Journal op-ed the other day by Andy Koenig observed that tens of millions of dollars from settlements with big banks by the Obama Department of Justice and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman are being directed to liberal political groups allied with Obama and Schneiderman, rather than to customers or taxpayers. Earlier here, here, here, here, here, etc.
Crime and punishment roundup
- Virginia “one of a minority of states that suspend driving privileges — in most cases, automatically — for failing to pay court costs and fines arising from offenses completely unrelated to driving.” [Washington Post editorial]
- D.C. Circuit “Rules DOJ Discovery Blue Book Off-Limits … For Now” [Jonathan Blanks, Cato]
- “The New York Times Knows Florida’s Self-Defense Law Is Bad but Can’t Figure Out Why” [Jacob Sullum]
- “We often hear that almost no one goes to prison simply for using marijuana.” But add “near a school”… [David Henderson]
- A forensics roundup from Radley Balko;
- “When Everything Is a Crime: The Overregulation of Ordinary Life” [Harvey Silverglate conversation with Reason’s Nick Gillespie]
Could the White House be “tyrant-proofed”?
How would one go about “tyrant-proofing” the U.S. presidency, after years in which many were happy to cheer the expansion of White House power so long as the office was held by someone *they* liked? Key point in Ben Wittes’s 3-part series at Lawfare: the hardest to tyrant-proof are not the extraordinary and covert national security powers held by the chief executive, but the everyday powers over the Department of Justice and regulatory agencies [parts one, two, three].
More: Neither Donald Trump nor his progressive opponents have shown themselves loyal to the principle of the rule of law [John McGinnis, Liberty and Law] Nature of the Presidency lends itself to authoritarianism and despite retrenchment under Coolidge and Ike, that’s been the trend for a century or more [Arnold Kling] And quoting William & Mary lawprof Neal Devins: “A President Trump could say, ‘I’m going to use the Obama playbook’ and go pretty far.” [Marc Fisher, Washington Post] And: Tyler Cowen on FDR, McCarthy, the politics of the 1930s-50s, and “our authoritarians” versus “their authoritarians.”
“U.S. prosecutors launch review of failed FedEx drug case”
After the stunning collapse of the Department of Justice’s case, will any lessons be learned? [Dan Levine and David Ingram, Reuters; my take earlier]
“The Judge Who Tried to School the Feds”
Texas Lawyer profiles Judge Andrew Hanen, the one who ordered Department of Justice litigators to be sent back for ethics classes.
“A Century of Surveillance”
Arbitrary and intrusive executive power, with the threat it can pose to individual rights and the rule of law, is not some novel development of the past Presidency or two (or three or four). It goes back to the earliest days of the Republic. “American Big Brother: A Century of Political Surveillance and Repression,” a recent Cato project, ties together episodes from the Palmer Raids through surveillance of pacifists to LBJ’s bugging of opponent Barry Goldwater’s campaign plane to the debates over the USA Patriot Act and the crypto wars. And this tidbit from 1962:
JFK Wiretaps Steel Company Executives
Angered at steel price hikes and suspecting price fixing among steel companies, President Kennedy ordered the wiretapping of several steel company executives, and his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, ordered FBI raids on the homes of the executives and journalists who had covered recent steel company shareholder meetings. While the raids produced an outcry from the business community, covert surveillance did not become public until long after JFK’s death.