“J’Accuse! Allegations Make News Even When They’re Unproven; Courts have long protected journalists’ freedom to report on lawsuits, regardless of what’s in those lawsuits.” Law professor Stephen L. Carter has this essay online at Bloomberg Opinion.

“Amy Coney Barrett Should Just Judge Without Bias Before Writing a Book on Judging Without Bias; It’s remarkably early in her term to receive this big of a book deal”: Dahlia Lithwick has this jurisprudence essay online at Slate.

“Talc plaintiffs urge Supreme Court to let $2.1 bln verdict against J&J stand”: Brendan Pierson of Reuters has this report (subscription required for full access) on plaintiffs’ Brief in Opposition filed yesterday in the U.S. Supreme Court.

“McConnell vents over ‘fake news'”: Alexander Bolton of The Hill has a report that begins, “Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday vented about his ‘frustration’ with media coverage of the Biden administration’s exploration of expanding the number of seats on the Supreme Court.”

“Justice Amy Coney Barrett sells Indiana home, listed for $899G; The justice’s husband Jesse Barrett said the South Bend home is ‘kind of a part of us'”: Janine Puhak of Fox News has this report.

“‘Retroactive’ Liability after Barr v. AAPC: Judge Stephanos Bibas ‘does not see how’ he can follow the plurality opinion.” Will Baude has this post at “The Volokh Conspiracy” about a notable federal district court decision issued yesterday.

“Supreme Court to Tackle a Rare First Amendment Test of Freedom of Association”: Tony Mauro has this post at Freedom Forum.

“Why the Supreme Court may need court-packing to keep its integrity: The court expansion debate may test the legitimacy of the Supreme Court itself.” MSNBC Opinion columnist Chris Geidner has this essay.

“‘It would be glorious’: hopes high for Biden to nominate first Black woman to supreme court.” Tom McCarthy of The Guardian (UK) has this report.

“Democrats press Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett to recuse in major First Amendment case”: John Fritze of USA Today has this report.

“State Supreme Court Diversity — April 2021 Update; Across the country, state supreme courts fail to reflect the diversity of the communities they serve and the diversity of the legal profession”: Janna Adelstein and Alicia Bannon of the Brennan Center for Justice have this report.

“Jury finds Madras man guilty of unlawful use of a gun in 2017 road rage encounter on U.S. 26”: Maxine Bernstein of The Oregonian had this article back in March 2019.

Yesterday, a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued this decision overturning the conviction, holding that federal prosecutors had improperly “assimilated into federal criminal law Oregon’s unlawful use of a weapon statute” to apply to a a road rage incident on a highway in the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in central Oregon.

“Sixth Circuit Grants Habeas Petition for Lower Court’s Objectively Unreasonable Application of the Confrontation Clause; A liberal result (granting a criminal defendant’s habeas petition) from a quite conservative judge (John Bush)”: Jonathan H. Adler has this post at “The Volokh Conspiracy” about a ruling that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit issued yesterday.

“A woman in Lakeland was killed by deputies. A judge rules the case should move forward.” Daniel Connolly of The Commercial Appeal of Memphis, Tennessee had this report back in December 2020 about a decision of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee.

According to Connolly’s article from last December, “In an unusual step, the judge published his own analysis of the available videos in the case, commenting on several individual frames.”

Yesterday, a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit issued this decision reversing the district court’s denial of qualified immunity.

According to yesterday’s Sixth Circuit ruling:

To the extent that the district court relied upon screen shots, as it apparently did here, to decide whether it was objectively reasonable for the officers to use lethal force, it erred. The deputies’ perspective did not include leisurely stop-action viewing of the real-time situation that they encountered. To rest a finding of reasonableness on a luxury that they did not enjoy is unsupported by any clearly established law and would constitute reversible error

So the lesson of yesterday’s ruling appears to be that video of fatal police-citizen encounters is good, but screen shots from the video to evaluate what’s going on are bad.

“Tribes and ANCs present grammar puzzle to Supreme Court, with $530 million at stake”: Liz Ruskin of Alaska Public Media has this report.

“Former Judge Michael Luttig Talks First Amendment, Impeachment and Coca-Cola; Michael Luttig chats with us about redesigning a first amendment icon”: Tony Mauro of The National Law Journal has this report.

“An ‘insane’ covid lockdown two miles from the Capitol, with no end in sight; For a year, 1,500 people held at D.C. jail have been confined to cells 23 hours a day in what experts call a grave human rights abuse”: Peter Jamison of The Washington Post has this report.