Legal minds on legal matters and whatever else strikes our fancy.
The Supreme Court's decision today in Dukes v. Wal-Mart is a major victory for Wal-Mart, for consumers, and for the many women who depend on Wal-Mart for jobs and a livelihood. Pacific Legal Foundation filed a friend of the court brief in the case (and this brief in the Ninth Circuit before that). The case [...]
I visited the University of Washington School of Law back in April. What I found at UW was a strong commitment to freeing the innocent. In 1997, Jacqueline McMurtrie founded the Innocence Project Northwest (IPNW) at UW. Overall, the IPNW has helped overturn 15 convictions for prisoners in Washington State. In addition to assisting [...]
We filed a merits brief this week: the Petitioner’s Brief in Golan v. Holder, No. 10-545, filed on June 14, 2011.
Bond v. United States, 09-1227, June 16, 2011 The 10th Amendment reserves to the states that authority not specifically granted to the Federal Government, and prior Supreme Court cases have suggested that only states may challenge federal action on 10th Amendment grounds. The Petitioner assaulted her romantic rival with caustic chemicals, and [...]
Yes, even after watching David Kazzie’s video about the fun and joy of law school, even after weighing the investment risk versus reward of attending law school, and even after heading Elie Mystal’s repeated warnings, I am still determined to follow through with my dream. In August, my wife, son and I will be moving to [...]
I just read a very interesting article from the NY Times on a bill that might be reintroduced in the Texas legislature. The bill would ban "intrusive" airport searches, such as pat-downs that touch "the anus, sexual organ, buttocks or breast of another person including through the clothing, or touches the other person in a manner [...]
Two Fridays ago, I attended the daylong Washington, DC, Judicial Conference on implicit bias. Implicit bias, as I observed in my prior post on Connick v. Thompson, is bias that is unconscious rather than conscious. The fact that bias is implicit, however, does not mean that it is not invidious. Implicit bias [...]
Janus Capital Group, Inc. v. First Derivative Traders, 09-525, June 13, 2011 The Petitioner created an investment fund–a separate legal entity–and served as advisor and administrator to the fund. Securities law forbids “any person” to “make any untrue statement” related to the sale of securities. The Respondent alleged that the Petitioner drafted [...]
Yesterday, Adam Liptak at the NY Times covered a Supreme Court trend: the Justices’ use of dictionary definitions in their opinions. He writes that: In May alone, the justices cited dictionaries in eight cases to determine what legislators had meant when they used words like “prevent,” “delay” and “report.” Over the years, justices have looked [...]
Microsoft Corp. v. i4i Ltd. Partnership, 10-290, June 9, 2011 The Respondent sued Microsoft for infringing its computer document editing patent, and Microsoft countered that the patent was invalid. Microsoft appealed the district court’s holding that an invalidity defense must be proven by clear and convincing evidence. A unanimous Court (J. Sotomayor [...]