Hello? Guantanamo? It’s not as if you’d expect any sort of consistent policy on these matters from the imaginatively named Alliance for Justice. But it’s still strange that they’d open the door to future attacks on their own favored judicial nominees based on clients they represented long before reaching the bench. [Joel Cohen and Katherine Helm/Law.com, NLJ] More: John Steele at Legal Ethics Forum takes a different view, and I comment.
Posts Tagged ‘Fifth Circuit’
Obama nominates Judge James Graves, Jr. to Fifth Circuit
I can’t say I’ve made a study of Judge Graves’ overall career as a jurist in the Mississippi state courts, but if his record presiding over the notorious O’Keefe v. Loewen trial is at all typical, his wouldn’t exactly be a name high on my list. [AP/Law.com]
June 1 roundup
- Some California attorneys hoping to restart lucrative construction-defect litigation [Frith, Cal Civil Justice]
- Jury awards Seattle bus passenger $1.3 million for stair mishap [KOMO, Seattle Times]
- “Louisiana Bill Would Outlaw Insulting an Under-17-Year-Old By E-Mail” [Volokh, earlier] Update: bill watered down before passage, but still bad news for speech;
- “Attorney Fee Fight Gets Ugly in World Trade Center Litigation” [Turkewitz and more]
- Preventive detention law shows why we need to confine Congress [Sullum, Greenfield]
- Mass Fifth Circuit recusals in Comer v. Murphy Oil global warming case [Wood/PoL, Jackson] More: Shapiro, Cato, Wood/ShopFloor (a strategy to provoke recusals?)
- “By some estimates, circa 40 percent of cases in the Central African court system are witchcraft prosecutions” [Graeme Wood, The Atlantic]
- Lawyers who sued Facebook over “Beacon” to get $2.3 million in fees, class $0.00 [Balasubramani, SpamNotes]
“Lawsuits put global warming on more dockets”
Prisoners’ first-amendment rights
Protect “a letter to [a] girlfriend [stating] that a prison officer had sex with a cat” but do not protect mailing a prosecutor “a note written on toilet paper” saying “Dear Susan, Please use this to wipe your ass, that argument was a bunch of shit! You[rs] Truly, George Morgan.” (Morgan v. Quarterman (5th Cir. 2009)). W.C., sending us the case, comments, perhaps only semi-facetiously:
(i) He said “very truly yours.” Maybe he was trying to help her. He was at least sincere.
(ii) I wouldn’t mind doing a similar stunt to opposing in a case I have currently. I too would do so from a helpful perspective. Is that so wrong?
Ted Stevens indictment dismissed
And Larry Ribstein reasonably asks: What about Jeff Skilling?
Appellate lawyer chooses his words incautiously
And a Fifth Circuit panel eats him alive.