The living, breathing Second Amendment 

12/18/12

By Andrew Longstreth 

Over the last few decades, gun rights activists have scored major wins in legislatures and courts across the country. Perhaps their most shining achievement came in 2008, when the U.S. Supreme Court, in District of Columbia v. Heller, found that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to possess a handgun for self-defense within the home.

But the political winds appear to be changing in the aftermath of the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. Lawmakers who have long supported gun rights are considering new regulations, such as a federal ban on assault weapons like the one used by gunman Adam Lanza.

Could the gun rights activists beat back such a ban in the courts? Perhaps not.

After Heller, the Wall Street Journal's Law Blog, noted, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the existing ban on assault weapons in Washington. Writing for a 2-1 majority in a decision last year, Judge Douglas Ginsburg found that the ban was justified because the weapons are "dangerous and unusual" and that a ban is "likely to promote the Government's interest in crime control in the densely populated urban area that is the District of Columbia."

Even before the Connecticut shooting, Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Irvine, School of Law, argued that a ban on assault weapons is not inconsistent with Heller, which was about the right to handguns. "The court was very clear that this is not an absolute right, and nothing in the court's opinion implies that there is a right to have all forms of weapons," he wrote in September.

Jeffrey Toobin of The New Yorker appears to agree that a federal ban would be upheld, but not for legal reasons. Political power was the basis for the Heller decision, and politics would lead the court to uphold a ban on assault weapons, according to Toobin. "In other words, the law of the Second Amendment is not settled; no law, not even the Constitution, ever is," he wrote.

Class warfare 

12/19/12

By Dan Brillman 

In the ongoing debate about the value in the marketplace of a law degree comes the following from the Wall Street Journal (registration required): news about unusual elective courses that seem more in line with freewheeling undergraduate exploration than with specialized legal education.

On the extreme end of the spectrum are courses featuring the Chinese meditative practice of Qi Gong and the culture of Icelandic blood feuds. The latter is offered at the University of Michigan to teach negotiation skills, the law school's dean, Evan Caminker, told the Journal.

Proponents argue that such courses are valuable for the legal world that awaits them, but opponents, many of whom maintain that the third year of law school is superfluous, say that schools need to turn out lawyers who are ready to pass the bar and start practicing.

Supreme Court justices have also weighed in, with Justice Antonin Scalia telling an audience earlier this year that the courses sometimes have less to do with educating the student than catering to the interests of the teacher. "Professors like certain subjects that they're writing a book on, so they teach a course in that subject," he said at the University of Wyoming.

Death sentences decline 

12/18/12

By Suhrith Parthasarathy 

The number of death sentences handed down in 2012 by U.S. courts is the second-lowest since the penalty was reinstated in 1976, according to a new study released by the Death Penalty Information Center. Seventy-five people were sentenced to death this year, a 75 percent decline from 1996, when there were 315 such sentences. The report by the Washington-based non-profit organization also states that convicts on death row were executed only 43 times in 2012, representing a 56 percent decline from its peak in 1999.

Only nine states carried out executions last year, with four (Texas, Oklahoma, Mississippi and Arizona) responsible for over three-quarters of the total nationwide. This year also saw Connecticut become the fifth state in five years to abolish the death penalty. California came similarly close in a ballot measure in November, with 48 percent of the electorate voting to repeal capital punishment in the state, which hasn't carried out an execution in nearly seven years.

The report also highlights a few cases where a death row inmate was released after being found innocent, such as Damon Thibodeaux, who, after extensive investigation that included DNA testing, became the 141st person to be exonerated and freed from death row since 1973.

When lawyers just say no 

12/18/12

By Erin Geiger Smith 

For every seemingly ridiculous lawsuit a plaintiff brings, there are, one assumes, countless others for which potential litigants couldn't retain a lawyer.

Walter Olson of Overlawyered has pointed out a thread on Reddit that asks lawyers to discuss the "stupidest case" a potential client has asked them to take. One caveat when perusing the list: Contributors may not be lawyers, and they could be making up their tales. But it's still an amusing catalog.

Entries include a request for pro bono representation of a clown who wanted to sue another clown for stealing his street routine, as well as a neighbor angered by new landscaping at the house next door that resulted in unwanted pebbles near her property line. One contributor said a man wanted to sue the library that had banned him for a single day, and another mentioned a client who wanted to bring a patent infringement case demanding damages amounting to "$20 quadrillion dollars four times over."

Lawyers being lawyers, many of the comments include discussions about whether the cases might actually be viable.

Alicia Keys sued over "Girl on Fire" 

12/18/12

By Caitlin Tremblay 

Alicia Keys' new single, "Girl on Fire," is the subject of a new lawsuit, and no, it has nothing to do with Katniss Everdeen, the girl on fire in the "Hunger Games."

The song, currently No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100, caught the attention of songwriter Earl Schuman, who claims it steals from his 1962 song "Lonely Boy," according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Schuman's song, which was recorded by Eddie Holman and released as "Hey There Lonely Girl," hit No. 2 on the Billboard charts. He says that two seconds, yes seconds, of Keys' song is identical to his. The lyrics in question? "She's a lonely girl."

There are similarities, but is it enough for a copyright suit? Schuman was apparently alerted by a music critic, because his complaint cites a large portion of an article by the critic as proof.

Decide for yourself: Find Keys' song here (with the lyrics in question at 2:26) and Schuman's here.

Summary Judgments for December 17 

Summary Judgments for December 14 

Summary Judgments for December 13 

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