“‘Absurd’ case? Prosecutors think not; A retrial is planned despite a scathing appeals court ruling.” This article appears today in The St. Petersburg Times.
And in related coverage, the newspaper has previously published articles headlined “Man with prescription may get new drug trial; Judge calls the prosecution’s stance absurd“; “Freed man still in limbo; He awaits the state attorney’s decision on whether he’ll be tried again on drug charges“; and “After 2 years in prison, a man is free – maybe; Prosecutors may retry him for having 58 pills,” along with an editorial entitled “The nonsensical trial over 58 Vicodin pills.”
You can access last month’s ruling of Florida’s Second District Court of Appeal at this link.
“Going past domestic partnership: The same-sex unions law I wrote was never supposed to be an excuse not to legalize marriage for all.” Today in The Los Angeles Times, Jackie Goldberg has an op-ed that begins, “Several weeks ago, the California Supreme Court set keyboards a-clacking in the offices of attorneys representing gay and lesbian couples seeking the right to marry. The court, which is considering their challenge to laws barring same-sex couples from marrying, asked for briefs addressing essentially this issue: Why are domestic-partner laws not enough?”
“Congress and the courts”: Darin R. Bartram has this op-ed today in The Washington Times.
“Terror Case Takes Winding Path in 2 Nations’ Courts”: This article appears today in The New York Times.
“Hurdles Frustrate Effort to Shrink Guantanamo”: The New York Times contains this article today.
“Bill Jefferson’s Constitution: The separation of powers protects Congress too.” This editorial appears today in The Wall Street Journal.
And The Los Angeles Times today contains an editorial entitled “Congressional privilege has its limits: A ruling protects members of Congress from unreasonable searches, but it’s not a ‘get out of jail free’ card.”
“Red Cross Is Sued by J&J Over Signature Emblem”: The Wall Street Journal today contains an article that begins, “Johnson & Johnson filed suit against the American Red Cross and some of its licensing partners claiming the charity misused the cross design that is its signature emblem, which also appears on J&J’s first-aid kits and bandages.”
And The New York Times reports today that “Johnson & Johnson Sues Red Cross Over Symbol.”
“The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Rightly Holds that Existing Customers Must be Notified When a Company Changes Their Contract Terms”: Anita Ramasastry has this essay online at FindLaw.
“Attitudes on gays in military shifting; The Pentagon and Congress have begun to soften their rhetoric on the controversial policy known as ‘don’t ask, don’t tell'”: This article will appear Thursday in The Los Angeles Times.
Available online from law.com: An article reports that “A Year Later, Police Still Don’t Know Who Killed D.C. Lawyer; GC Robert Wone was found stabbed to death in Arent Fox partner’s Washington, D.C., home.”
In other news, “2nd Circuit Rebukes Arbitration Panel for Limiting Fee Award.” My earlier coverage of yesterday’s Second Circuit ruling appears at this link.
And an article is headlined “Where Have All the Securities Class Actions Gone? It’s the end of an era: Securities class actions are way down, and the practice shows little sign of recovering.”
Available online at Reason: Radley Balko has an essay entitled “Getting Beyond Roe: Why returning abortion to the states is a good idea.”
And Jacob Sullum has an essay entitled “They Can Hear You Now: Congress protects America from privacy.”
“In Gonzo We Trust: They want to fire Alberto Gonzales and give him new eavesdropping powers?” Dahlia Lithwick has this jurisprudence essay online at Slate.
“Mo. Executions Could Resume After Ruling”: The Associated Press provides this report.
“Alito Reflects on His Role on the High Court”: law.com’s Tony Mauro provides this report.
A loss-supervisor at a Target store in Champaign, Illinois, while watching the real-time video feeds from the store’s exterior surveillance cameras, sees a man and a woman in a car who appear to be having sex: What happens next gives rise to a federal civil rights lawsuit that produced an appeal which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit decided today. You can access today’s ruling at this link.
“5 Hawaiians’ lawsuit against OHA back on”: The Honolulu Advertiser today contains an article that begins, “A group of five Native Hawaiians who want the Office of Hawaiian Affairs to spend most of its money on people with 50 percent Hawaiian blood or more will get another day in court. A panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco yesterday ordered U.S. District Judge Susan Oki Mollway to hear the case in her Honolulu court after she rejected it last year.”
And The Associated Press provides this coverage.
You can access yesterday’s ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit at this link.
“Pepperdine Univ. Discussion with Justice Alito on Supreme Court Arguments”: If you weren’t riveted to C-SPAN last night, you probably missed seeing this quite interesting program (RealPlayer required). As noted in this press release, Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. is currently at Pepperdine University School of Law to teach a class in Advanced Constitutional Law.
Isotopes on appeal: I’m not referring to the Albuquerque Isotopes, the AAA Pacific Coast League affiliate of the Florida Marlins.
Rather, today the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit decided a dispute between the United States and Russia over non-radioactive isotopes that allegedly had been stolen from Russia and transported to Canada before being shipped from Canada to a company based in Southgate, Michigan. Today’s ruling provides a partial victory for Russia on appeal.
“Supreme Court may consider part-timers’ Save Our Homes suit”: The Tallahassee Democrat yesterday published an article that begins, “Florida’s controversial property-tax cap for residents is finally drawing more than just sharp words from part-timers paying higher taxes for their beachfront homes.”
“Beloved courthouse jester Sy Gaer dies at 75; Longtime defense attorney Sy Gaer died at 75, leaving Miami’s criminal courthouse in mourning”: This obituary appears today in The Miami Herald.
“Court denies test drugs to dying patients; Terminally ill people do not have the right to get unapproved, potentially lifesaving treatments, an appeals panel rules”: David G. Savage has this article today in The Los Angeles Times.
My earlier coverage of yesterday’s en banc D.C. Circuit ruling appears at this link.
“Swapping votes on Web is ruled as free speech; Appeals court OKs site that connected Nader, Gore backers”: Bob Egelko has this article today in The San Francisco Chronicle.
My earlier coverage of Monday’s Ninth Circuit ruling appears at this link.
“Backlash Hits Annuities Tied To Stock Market; Wave of Lawsuits Take Aim At Sales Practices, Suitability Of Equity-Indexed Products”: An article in today’s edition of The Wall Street Journal reports that, “In the biggest such case, the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis last month upheld the class-action status of a lawsuit that covers more than 400,000 investors who bought equity-indexed annuities from Allianz Life Insurance Co. of North America, a unit of Munich-based Allianz SE and the top seller of this type of annuity in the U.S.”
“Why The Reporter’s Shield Law Pending Before Congress Should Be Approved, But Not Before the Blogger-as-Reporter Issue Is Expressly Addressed”: Julie Hilden has this essay online at FindLaw.
“Vacancies Whittle Away Right’s Hold On Key Court”: This front page article about the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit will appear Wednesday in The Washington Post.
“Court Rejects Patient Right to Use Drugs Being Tested”: The New York Times on Wednesday will contain this article.
My earlier coverage of today’s en banc D.C. Circuit ruling appears at this link.
“Litigious Judge’s Future Unclear; Plaintiff in D.C. Pants Lawsuit May Not Be Reappointed”: This article will appear Wednesday in The Washington Post.
This appeal “requires us to consider an issue on which other circuits have split and ours has not yet explicitly spoken: whether juvenile adjudications constitutionally may be used as predicate convictions to support an ACCA enhancement.” A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit today issued this decision permitting juvenile adjudications to be used as predicate convictions to support an increased sentence under the federal Armed Career Criminal Act.
“Court Rules Out Terminally Ill for Tests”: The Associated Press provides a report that begins, “Terminally ill patients do not have a constitutional right to be treated with experimental drugs, even if the medicine is not likely to be approved before they are dead, a divided federal appeals court said Tuesday.”
And at “SCOTUSblog,” Lyle Denniston has a post titled “New limit on rights of the dying heads to Court.”
“Under the California Constitution’s liberty of speech clause, should we review the constitutionality of an ordinance that sets closing times for adult entertainment establishments under strict scrutiny, intermediate scrutiny, or some other standard?” A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit today issued an order certifying that question for resolution by the Supreme Court of California.
Horsemeat and the standards for an injunction pending appeal: The lone remaining plant in the United States that slaughtered horses to make horsemeat for human consumption was based in Illinois, and the company brought suit in federal court to challenge the constitutionality of a recent amendment to the Illinois Horse Meat Act, making it unlawful for any person in the state to slaughter a horse for human consumption.
An Illinois federal district court rejected a challenge, but today a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit issued a decision explaining why it has ordered a stay of enforcement of the Illinois law pending resolution of the merits of the appeal. Circuit Judge Richard A. Posner issued the majority opinion, in which Circuit Judge Ilana Diamond Rovner joined. Chief Judge Frank H. Easterbrook, by contrast, voted nay on the injunction pending appeal.
Unanimous three-judge Second Circuit panel overturns as contrary to law a NASD arbitration panel’s limited award of attorneys’ fees to a prevailing age discrimination claimant: The claimant had challenged the award of fees as too low and contrary to law, and today the Second Circuit agrees. What makes today’s decision noteworthy is how infrequently challenges to arbitral awards succeed in court.
In Abigail Alliance case, en banc D.C. Circuit holds that the Constitution does not provide terminally ill patients a right of access to experimental drugs that have passed limited safety trials but have not been proven safe and effective: You can access today’s en banc ruling at this link.
In today’s 8-2 ruling, the two dissenters were in the majority in the original three-judge panel’s 2-1 ruling that recognized a substantive due process right for a mentally competent, terminally ill adult patient to access potentially life-saving post-Phase I investigational new drugs, upon a doctor’s advice, even where that medication carries risks for the patient. The dissenting judge on the original three-judge panel wrote today’s majority en banc decision. My earlier coverage of the three-judge panel’s ruling can be accessed here.
The Abigail Alliance case is also noteworthy because it altered the manner in which the D.C. Circuit announces the entry of orders granting rehearing en banc, as detailed in this earlier post.
“White House Challenges Critics on Spying”: This article appears today in The New York Times, along with a news analysis headlined “Bush Still Wields the Threat of Terrorism.” The newspaper also contains an editorial entitled “The Fear of Fear Itself.”
The Los Angeles Times today contains an article headlined “Bush administration defends spy law; The White House rejects claims that the new measure allows electronic ‘drift nets’ to snare U.S. citizens” and an editorial entitled “The politics of fear: Democrats wary of being tagged as soft on terrorism caved in on an unacceptable surveillance law.”
The Washington Post reports that “Same Agencies to Run, Oversee Surveillance Program.”
And The Boston Globe contains an editorial entitled “All tapped out on civil liberties?”
“California video game law blocked by judge; State ban on sales to minors called unconstitutional”: Edwin Garcia and Howard Mintz have this article today in The San Jose Mercury News.
And The San Francisco Chronicle reports today that “State ban overturned on violent video game sales to minors.”
You can access yesterday’s ruling of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California at this link.
