Category Archives: Bench & Bar

Ken Klukowski at Breitbart: Several major cases will be decided by the Supreme Court over the next six weeks, including historic issues such as gay marriage and affirmative action. These cases make the remainder of the Court’s term—which ends in June—one of the most carefully watched terms by millions of Americans.

Here.

National Law Journal: Harvard Law School has announced a pilot program under which Harvard undergraduates may apply and gain acceptance during their junior year, provided they agree to work for two years in between graduation and beginning their legal studies. If the pilot program succeeds, the law school might expand eligibility to juniors at other universities, assistant dean and chief admissions officer Jessica Soban said.

Weekly Standard (includes video): California congressman Devin Nunes made the claim yesterday that the Justice Department wiretapped telephones in the House of Representative’s Cloak Room, an exclusive part of the Capitol where members are able to privately interact with one another. Nunes made the claim on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show.

Politico: What should Obama do to take advantage of this momentum? It is time for him to focus on a neglected but important part of the nominations process: the problems with how senators supply the president with candidates to be nominated to the federal bench.

Chicago Weekly: Ginsburg’s decades-long struggle for women’s rights is likely to prove one of the most persistent endeavors in modern American legal history, but she expressed sadness that the prevailing attitude toward such efforts to advance gender equality remains lukewarm at best: “In some places, the word ‘feminism’ is the ‘F’ word.”

AP: The Senate Judiciary Committee has approved three of President Barack Obama’s judicial nominees for a full Senate vote — including one for the influential D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Washington Post: Recent law school grads face a tough job market, daunting student loans and — if they land a job — a demanding work environment. Steven Harper’s “The Lawyer Bubble: A Profession in Crisis”serves as a wake up call and warning for students disillusioned by the prestigious lawyers they watch on T.V.

The Hill: Holder said he recused himself early on in the DOJ’s investigation of what he described as some of the most serious leaks from government officials that jeopardized national security.

The Hill: “Attorney General Eric Holder, in permitting the Justice Department to issue secret subpoenas to spy on Associated Press reporters, has trampled on the First Amendment and failed in his sworn duty to uphold the Constitution,” said Priebus in a statement.

Fox News (AP): The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news.

Chicago Tribune: Forty years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade case legalized abortion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the case is not her “ideal picture” for resolving the controversial issue of abortion.

NY Times: President Obama’s latest cabinet-level nominees are running into deep resistance in the Senate, pitching Democrats and Republicans into another tense standoff over White House appointments.

The Hill: “That was my concern, that the court had given opponents of access to abortion a target to aim at relentlessly,” she said Saturday. “My criticism of Roe is that it seemed to have stopped the momentum that was on the side of change.”

SCOTUS LiveBlog is reporting that the U.S. Supreme took no action in Town of Greece v. Galloway (legislative prayer case) or Elmbrook School District v. Doe (public high school graduations in church buildings).

How Appealing reports: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit today issued an interesting per curiam ruling reminding counsel that repeated extensions of time in which to file a brief are disfavored, even for exceptional circumstances.

Atlanta J. Constitution: Even as automatic budget cuts force various federal agencies to cut spending, a group of federal judges from the Atlanta-based Eleventh Circuit went ahead with their 2013 Judicial Conference last week, spending several days – and maybe several hundred thousand dollars – at a golf resort and spa in Savannah, Georgia.

Volokh Conspiracy: As regular readers know, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Bond v. United States in January. The case raises the question of whether a treaty can increase the legislative power of Congress . . .  Yesterday, Paul Clement filed his brief on behalf of Ms. Bond. It is an excellent piece of work. Here is a taste . . .

The HIll: The partisan battle over President Obama’s Labor Department nominee ran hot again on Wednesday as Republicans used an obscure Senate rule to postpone a committee vote.

The American Prospect: To critics, the degree is little more than a scam making extra cash from attorneys desperate to burnish their credentials in a brutal legal job market.

Atlanta J. Constitution: Justice Hugh Thompson will be the Georgia Supreme Court’s next chief justice beginning Aug. 15, the court announced Thursday.

Cassell, Paul G., Marsh, James and Christiansen, Jeremy M., The Case for Full Restitution for Child Pornography Victims (2013). George Washington Law Review, Forthcoming; University of Utah College of Law Research Paper. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2260479

Richard A. Epstein at WSJ: Law schools are under siege. Applications have dropped to around 54,000 annually, from around 100,000 in 2004. First-year enrollment has slipped to under 40,000 students, from 50,000 in 2010. Jobs are scarce—especially for students coming from lower-tier law schools. The average annual tuition has risen to just over $40,000 per year, from about $23,000 in 2001. Average debt on graduation has followed suit, jumping to about $125,000 in 2011, from $70,000 in 2001. No wonder many experts expect perhaps a dozen schools to close their doors within a year while other schools slash their class size, faculty and staff to stay open.

AL.com: Mike Bolin, the Alabama Supreme Court justice voted five days ago to become Jefferson County attorney, has withdrawn as the county’s top legal adviser.

ABA: The committee updating the American Bar Association’s law school accreditation standards hopes to wrap up its initial review by the end of 2013, but the group remains nowhere near a consensus regarding job protections for law faculty—perhaps the most controversial item on its agenda.

SCOTUS Blog: A unanimous Supreme Court ruled today in McBurney v. Young that a state can restrict its own freedom of information law to its own citizens without violating the Privileges and Immunities Clause or the dormant Commerce Clause.  We covered oral arguments here.

The National Law Journal: It turns out that if you ask 30 different law professors, practitioners, judges and bar association leaders how to fix legal education, you’ll get about 30 different answers.

SCOTUS Blog’s Live Blog Today reports (Amy Howe): “It appears that the Court (once again) did not act on 12-755, Elmbrook School Dist. v. Doe, the high school graduation case.”

SCOTUS Blog: Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer, 74, broke his right shoulder Saturday morning in a fall from his bicycle in downtown Washington, the Court said in a news release.

WorldNetDaily: U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, in remarks that largely have escaped notice, has claimed that “creating a mechanism for [illegal aliens] to earn citizenship and move out of the shadows… is a matter of civil and human rights.”

The Gazette: Their amendment to House File 120, the judicial branch budget bill, would lower the salaries of the four justices on the seven-member court who were part of the unanimous Varnum v. Brein decision to $25,000 – the same as a state legislator.

CANewsService: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia told UC students that the Constitution is not a living document to be reinterpreted with every new generation, but a rigid set of rules which can be amended by lawmakers or citizens as society evolves.

Lyle Denniston reports at SCOTUS Blog: The Obama administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to restore the President’s power to fill vacancies in government posts when the Senate is out of town. The petition argued that the D.C. Circuit Court got it wrong in January in sharply curtailing that authority.  (The Circuit Court’s ruling — discussed in this earlier post – is attached as an appendix to the petition but also can be read here.)

Philly.com: State Sen. Daylin Leach (D., Montgomery) says he is trying to help speed what could be a contentious confirmation process to replace Justice Joan Orie Melvin who is stepping down May 1 following her conviction on political corruption charges. That leaves the high court with a 3-3 split along party lines.”This is the deciding vote,” said Leach in an interview. “This was a sincere effort avoid nasty partisan confirmation fight,”

Blog of the Legal Times: The Senate confirmed Jane Kelly to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit on Wednesday, faster than any other circuit court nominee during the Obama administration. How in less than three months did she navigate a process that has come to represent partisan bickering and Senate gridlock?

SCOTUS Blog has this post of relist petitions to watch. It includes Elmbrook School District v. Doe, 12-755 (fourth relist).

Boston Globe: New Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan is appointing a Judicial Selection Commission to advise her on judicial nominations.

James Taranto at Wall Street Journal: It’s one of the basic contradictions of contemporary feminism: On the one hand, it’s supposed to be about choice for women; on the other hand, some choices are more equal than others–and certain ones, such as marrying young, provoke extreme hostility, as the Patton kerfuffle demonstrated.

Findlaw: With the collapse of the entry-level legal job market, and the unfathomable employment statistics that go along with it, one would expect that the pool of potential law students would shrink.

Findlaw: Earlier this week, Chief Justice John Roberts sent Congress proposed changes to all your favorite sets of federal rules: Appellate Procedure, Bankruptcy Procedure, Civil Procedure, Criminal Procedure, and Evidence. Those proposals were posted on the Supreme Court’s website Friday afternoon.

National Review: In the letter, nine Republicans on the HELP committee, including ranking member Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.) and Rand Paul (R., Ky.), ask that the mark-up occur later than Wednesday, when it is currently scheduled, saying that the nomination is “premature for consideration because there are a number of requests for information that remain outstanding.”

TribLive: Senate Democrats, largely shut out of budget talks the past two years, may enter budget season with clout. The minority party has something Republican Gov. Tom Corbett needs: votes for a Supreme Court nominee.

Washington Times: A Bush-era rule that forbids some federal AIDS money to go to groups unless they “explicitly” oppose prostitution and sex trafficking is heading to the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday.

Richard Wolfe at USA Today: Fights against AIDS, sex traffic collide at high court At stake is a little-known provision in the law, intended mainly to combat HIV/AIDS, requiring most outside organizations that receive federal funds to have policies “explicitly …

Yale Daily News: Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor LAW ’79 told a ballroom packed with around 425 women about her grueling work ethic, the importance of not being limited by personal circumstance and even her occasional feelings of inadequacy despite her successes.

AP: The Supreme Court won’t stop some federal judges from getting cost-of-living increases promised to them by Congress but never paid.

Blog of the Legal Times: A group of 360 ABA members from all 50 states came to D.C. for the group’s annual ABA Day, which included trips to Capitol Hill on Wednesday and Thursday. The lawyers urged members of Congress to quickly fill empty seats in the federal judiciary and support increased funding for federal courts and the Legal Services Corp., the largest civil legal aid provider in the United States.

CNSNews: The Social Security Administration says judges should decide 500 to 700 disability cases a year. The agency calls the standard a productivity goal, but the lawsuit claims it is an illegal quota that requires judges to decide an average of more than two cases a workday.

Meir Feder of Jones Day at SCOTUS Blog: The unanimous rejection of a view so firmly established in the lower courts may seem surprising. And yet, at the risk of indulging in 20/20 hindsight, I think that rejection was close to inevitable – at least once the Court decided in Sosa that the ATS did not make all international law violations actionable, and that any cause of action would have to be created “if at all, with great caution,” in a manner akin to the creation of federal common law and implied rights of action.

Russell Wheeler at Brookings: Last week, Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Charles Grassley (R-IA.), said “we hear a lot about the vacancy rates. There are currently 86 vacancies for federal courts. But of course, you never hear the President mention the 62 vacancies that have no nominee. That is because those 62 vacancies represent nearly 75 percent of the total vacancies.”

Blog of the Legal Times: Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez might be nominated to lead the Department of Labor, but the inner workings of Department of Justice took center stage at his confirmation hearing Thursday on Capitol Hill.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: But the agreement announced by Johnson and Baldwin calls for partisan parity. Each senator, regardless of whether he or she belongs to the same party as the president, will appoint three members to a six-member nominating commission. Johnson pushed for the change, and had the leverage to get it. That’s because individual senators currently enjoy effective veto power over federal judicial nominations in their own states.

The Hill: The judicial appointment process has been broken for two decades. Through the first two centuries of our republic, the Senate was renowned as the world’s greatest deliberative body, the home of lawmakers and statespeople who understood not only the impact of soaring rhetoric but also the value of collaboration and compromise. Senators assiduously exercised their authority to provide advice and consent on judicial nominations.

Citizen Link: Liberty Counsel testified before Congress today outlining one of a series of incidents that suggests the Department of Justice (DOJ) violated the Constitution by initiating prosecutions for political reasons.

Ed Whelan at NRO: I’ll add another reason: Perez, in his current capacity as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in the Justice Department, signed on to the Obama administration’s brief in the Hosanna-Tabor case, a brief that was remarkably hostile to the religious-liberty right of churches and other religious organizations to select their own faith leaders.

NY Times: Liberals are tearing into a Republican plan to reduce the number of judges on the country’s most important appeals court, calling it a political ploy to keep President Obama from making the court less conservative.

Above the Law: An obvious point to make here is that these rankings don’t seem to distinguish between prestige of clerkship. Were these feeder judges or non-feeder judges, circuit courts or district courts, Article III courts or non-Article III courts? In the land of law, these things are very important. Considering how coveted clerkships are and how closely we hold U.S. News rankings to our hearts, this is information we’d love to see.

Mercury News: Despite Gov. Jerry Brown’s insistence that California’s prison overcrowding “emergency is over,” a special federal court panel on Thursday rejected the state’s bid to end judicial oversight of the prison system and threatened to trigger contempt proceedings if the administration does not meet a December deadline to shed more inmates.

Ed Whelan at NRO: Nearly everyone seems to assume that, if she gets past the standing/jurisdiction issues to reach the merits, Justice Elena Kagan will vote to strike down the federal Defense of Marriage Act and California’s Proposition 8. Somehow clinging to a naïve faith in the power of reason, I continue to hold out a tiny (okay—a very, very tiny) hope that she, and all of the other justices, will instead recognize that DOMA and Prop 8 are constitutionally permissible—that it is legitimate for the federal government in its realm and for the state governments in their realms to maintain the perennial definition of marriage as a male-female union.

Above the Law: Since then, we’ve been receiving reports of 2Ls around the country being hired as law clerks during this current semester, before they even have their spring grades.

Reuters: Lawmakers held a spirited discussion on the immediate future of the National Labor Relations Board on Wednesday, after a recent appeals court ruling that cast doubt on the board’s authority to make decisions.

Constitution Daily: Lyle Denniston looks at how the sequester could affect the ability of the accused to get justice in court if resources for public defenders are cut.

NY Times: Sri Srinivasan, President Obama’s nominee to one of the country’s most politically significant appeals courts, breezed his way through an uneventful Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday that ended with at least one Republican saying he would support the nomination.

Add New Post ‹ Alliance Alert — WordPress

Observer-Reporter.com: “We were told under all circumstances that we were inherently equal,” he said, adding that he’s always been perplexed by people who assume he should think a certain way because he’s black. “My family was not inferior. I have never believed it and I never will.”

Politico: Since 1948, every president except for Obama has had at least one of his nominees confirmed to the court. Obama cannot tolerate a filibuster of Srinivasan. If Republicans filibuster, he should break it. After the hearings, Obama should nominate a judge for each of the court’s remaining three vacancies.

Pittsburgh Tribune: He said he would like to see the high court include justices from law schools other than Harvard and Yale, which dominate the bench today. Thomas went to Yale, with which he has had a contentious relationship. “I’ve been all over the country. … There is something valuable about these people from modest neighborhoods who work their way up,” he said.

Harvard Gazette: James Lindgren, a law professor at Northwestern University, began with numbers, citing a study in which only 13.2 percent of faculty at the country’s 100 largest law schools reported being “Republican or Republican leaning.” Of law school faculty that have donated more than $200 to a political party, 81 percent have donated to Democrats (91 percent at HLS), according to the study. “My opinion is that there is some discrimination in law school hiring,” Lindgren said.

SCOTUS Blog has posted its most recent Petitions to watch. Alliance Alert readers may find a couple of cases of particular interest.

Washington Post: President Obama nominated three candidates for full terms to the National Labor Relations Board on Tuesday, urging the Senate to confirm the nominees quickly.

AP: The Senate has confirmed New Jersey judge Patty Shwartz to serve on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

NY Times: “The health care model is unbelievably subsidized, and while I favor finding some version of it for legal needs, it is never going to be ratcheted up to that level,” Professor Wilkins of Harvard said. “We should think more about public-private partnerships and loosening up some of the restrictions on law practice without junking them all. What we need now is experimentation, like what is happening in South Dakota.”

NY Times: “The event is a recognition by a great institution of France of the institution to which I belong, the Supreme Court,” Justice Breyer said after the ceremony on Monday. “Our institutions flow from the enlightenment, and we’ve always seen our institutions working together.”

Times Union: Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Friday nominated Sheila Abdus-Salaam, an appellate justice in Manhattan, to fill the final vacancy on the state’s highest court, where she will be the first black woman to serve.

Billings Gazette: Senior U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull, who has been under a misconduct investigation for forwarding a racist joke email last year and who went on senior status last month, will leave the federal bench on May 3, said Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Alex Kozinski on Tuesday.