Legal minds on legal matters and whatever else strikes our fancy.
We filed three merits briefs in the past week: the Respondent's Brief in the anticipated employment discrimination case of Wal-Mart v. Dukes, No. 10-277 was filed earlier this week; the Reply Brief in Alford v. Greene, No. 09-1478; and the Petitioner's Brief in Nevada Commission on Ethics v. Carrigan, No. 10-568.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court ruled that people who are injured or killed by the side effects of vaccines cannot sue vaccine manufacturers for alleged design defects. Another day, another victory in the Supreme Court for a business defendant—and another victory for preemption, the legal doctrine under which state law can be [...]
On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear argument in DePierre v. United States, 09-1533, and decide a long-running dispute on what Congress meant by the term “cocaine base” for purposes of imposing mandatory minimum sentences under the federal narcotics statute. In 1985, Maryland basketball star Len Bias died of a cocaine drug overdose [...]
If you are a lover of music, pay attention. On February 18th, Radiohead released their eighth studio album entitled, The King of Limbs. Rather than a big CD release, the band released the album on their website in electronic format only. You can purchase it here. The CD will hit record stores on March 28th. [...]
I’m a sucker for those library book sales. You know – the ones where you pay a dollar for a hardcover and 25 cents for a paperback. Usually I pick up novels. Last week at Creighton’s main Reinert Library I couldn’t resist a book called Society without God. (I expect I was [...]
Last week a number of distinguished organizations released a new report meant to urge Congress and the President into making substantive changes to the way this country deals with crime. In my last post, I pointed out the strengths of the report. In this post, I want to discuss a few items that [...]
Last night, I read through most of the report entitled, Smart on Crime: Recommendations for the Administration and Congress. The goal of the report is to provide “analysis of the problems plaguing our state and federal criminal justice systems and a series of recommendations to address these failures.” For the most part, [...]
Ok, so neither team that I picked to go to the Superbowl even made it to their respective Conference Championship game. Whatever. I mean, the frickin’ Packers are World Champs, so what does that tell you? The world is coming to an end, that’s what. I’ll touch on the end of the [...]