Off the bench
11/14/12
By Erin Geiger Smith
Lawyers have been pretty vocal in their opposition to law
firms' mandatory retirement policies, and now it seems judges
are joining the fray.
On Wednesday, Pennsylvania and its officials were sued by
six state court judges claiming that its constitution, which
requires judges to retire at the end of the calendar year in
which they turn 70, violates the U.S. Constitution's Equal
Protection and Due Process clauses.
"The mere fact that a judge reaches the chronological age
of seventy does not affect his or her ability to perform
judicial duties, and the vast majority of justices and judges
reaching the age of seventy are capable of continuing to perform
those duties," says the suit, filed in state court in
Pennsylvania. The judges also cite scientific studies showing
that cognitive impairment among older Americans has consistently
decreased since the early 1900s.
A representative for the governor of Pennsylvania was not
immediately available for comment.
Robert Heim of Dechert is representing the jurists pro bono.
He told Reuters that, to his knowledge, this case is the first
of its kind in at least the last 20 years. In the early 1990s,
the U.S. Supreme Court did rule against judges in a similar age
discrimination case, Heim says. "But our argument is that the
times have changed, the facts about older Americans have
changed, and the law has evolved in a favorable way since
then. It's time for the courts to take a fresh look at this
issue."
As the judges say in the suit: "Some of our finest and most
experienced legal minds are being denied unfairly the
opportunity to serve the people solely because of their age."
If you're wondering, Heim will turn 70 in December. He says
he has no plans to retire.
Modern family problems
11/14/12
By Caitlin Tremblay
The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit
against a Utah school district for removing a book featuring a
family with same-sex parents, according to The Salt Lake Tribune.
The Davis School District took "In Our Mothers' House," by
Patricia Polacco, from library shelves after it was petitioned
by a group of 25 parents who said the book was "propaganda" and
"glamorizes and normalizes something that is a sensitive issue."
The ACLU filed the lawsuit on behalf of Tina Weber, who has
children in the district. Weber says she was shocked that "a
handful of parents had made a decision about whether everyone's
kids could have access to this book." The suit calls for copies
of the book to be returned to the shelves and for a permanent
injunction prohibiting the district from removing similar books
in the future. The ACLU says the lawsuit is a response to what
it sees as a violation of the First Amendment.
Utah, however, also has a state law that prohibits advocacy
or instruction on homosexuality, which is the school district's
reason for taking the book off the shelf. The ACLU says it will
fight this too, on the grounds that the state law "is being used
as reasoning to violate the First Amendment." The ACLU is also
calling for a declaratory judgment that the district may not use
the state's sex-ed law to restrict library materials.
Read the Reuters story here.
Oh, God!
11/14/12
By Dan Brillman
The United States, where the House of Representatives voted
in 2011 to reaffirm "In God We Trust" as the national motto, is
not the only country with a controversy surrounding official mentions of the Almighty, reports the Associated Press. This
week Brazilian prosecutor Jefferson Dias told a federal court
that "Deus Seja Louvado" ("God be praised") on the Brazilian
banknote, the real, is a "violation of the fundamental rights of
those that follow different religions or do not believe in God."
Dias said in a 17-page motion that he was acting on behalf
of all Brazilians, but his request has met with opposition from
religious leaders. "The phrase should make no difference to
those who do not believe in God. But it is meaningful for all
those who do...," Cardinal Odilo Scherer of Sao Paulo told a
Brazilian newspaper.
As The New York Times reports, the phrase is linked to the
Brazilian constitution, which states that the nation was formed
"under the protection of God."
Petraeus socialite's legal standing
11/14/12
By Suhrith Parthasarathy
When Florida socialite Jill Kelley, of Petraeus-gate fame,
phoned 911 to complain about the media vans parked outside her
Tampa home, she emphasized her status as an honorary consul
general. (In case you're losing track of the names, Slate has a primer.) "I have inviolability, so they should not be able to
cross my property. I don't know if you want to get diplomatic
protection involved as well," she told the operator, according
to the Associated Press. But as it turns out, Kelley's property
may not be as inviolable as she thinks it is, reports Max Fisher in The Washington Post.
Kelley was appointed last year by the U.S. Central Command
as an honorary consul of South Korea, a position that is
symbolic and has no official responsibilities, according to Foreign Policy. She does drive a Mercedes sedan with license
plates that say "Honorary Consul," but her property isn't
inviolable as a matter of international law, the magazine says.
What's more, her house is unlikely to qualify as a "consular
premises" under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations,
according to Opinio Juris, and whatever immunity she might enjoy
as an honorary counsel would likely apply only to diplomatic
representatives abroad, says Fisher in the Post, adding "Alas,
Tampa is still not considered a foreign country."
Who's the 'idiot'?
11/14/12
By Erin Geiger Smith
There is the old adage about the punishment fitting the
crime, and sometimes municipal court judges take that to a
particularly creative level.
Such was the case in Cleveland, where a 32-year-old woman
was ordered to stand on a street Tuesday holding up a sign that
said, "Only an idiot would drive on the sidewalk to avoid a school bus." She was ordered to do so after, you guessed it,
she drove on a sidewalk to pass a school bus that was unloading
children.
While this story got play because humiliation was used as a punishment tactic,
Cleveland is definitely not the first such place it has
occurred. In 2009, for instance, a judge in Texas gave an
abusive father the choice of 30 days in jail or 30 nights in a
doghouse. The man chose the doghouse in order to keep his job.
That anecdote was discussed by George Washington University
professor Jonathan Turley in June of this year in an AP article
citing an increase in so-called shame punishments. Turley told
the wire service that he has seen no evidence that such
punishments are any more effective than conventional methods and
are out of date.
Just because you're paranoid...
11/14/12
By Dan Brillman
Yesterday morning, apropos the Petraeus affair, we wrote
about the legality of government access to one's private emails
and the relative ease with which agencies can snoop.
In case you needed more proof that such prying has gotten
easier, we bring you Google's latest "Transparency Report,"
which shows the amount of times countries asked for "private"
user data in the first half of 2012. Going by the results, one
thing is clear: What one does online is increasingly less and
less private. (Hat tip: The Guardian.)
As it has in the past, the United States led the list of
countries' requests, asking 7,969 times for data affecting
16,281 users or accounts. Google either fully or partially
complied with 90 percent of these requests, the highest
compliance rate of any country. (India was second in the request
department with 2,369, and Japan took the silver in actually
getting data, at 86 percent.)
The report also tracks how many times governments asked that
content be removed from Google, and it rose sharply, by 46
percent. Google was asked 1,791 times to remove 17,746 pieces of
content, for reasons ranging from defamation to privacy to hate
speech. Forty-four percent of the content removal requests were
made by court order, the rest by governments or the police.
Heavy load
11/14/12
By Andrew Longstreth
Not all judges are created equal and neither are their
caseloads, according to a new study by Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data-gathering and research organization
based at Syracuse University in New York.
The report focused on 430 judges in 179 courthouses for a
70-month period ending in July 2012. Within each courthouse,
TRAC focused on the judge who sentenced the most defendants and
the judge who sentenced the least. The four courts where the gap
between the two groups of judges was biggest were: Los Angeles
(California Central), Beaumont (Texas East), Camden (New Jersey)
and Manhattan (New York South). TRAC points out that in each of
those courthouses, the judge with the highest caseload had twice
as many criminal cases as the judge with the lowest caseload.
The caseload gap in many courts raises questions about the
administration of justice, TRAC says. "Equal justice under the
law is a phrase engraved on the front of the Supreme Court
Building in Washington, D.C.," it writes. "But can this
ambitious promise be realistically met by a national court
system with extraordinary differences in the workloads imposed
on the individual judges handling cases in different parts of
the country?
Summary Judgments for November 13
Summary Judgments for November 12
Summary Judgments for November 9
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