Lifetime supply
2/25/13
By Dan Brillman
Should there be limited terms for Supreme Court Justices? In a Los Angeles Times op-ed, Georgia State Law Professor Eric Segall says that the Founding Fathers did not envision the current situation when they created the lifetime appointment rules. When justices simply time their exit to coincide with the presidency of their political bent, that suggests a “government of men, not of laws,” he writes.
Longer life spans sometimes also mean diminished mental capacity, Segall argues. He cites the examples of William O. Douglas, who stayed on the bench following a stroke and “was so disoriented that the justices decided not do decide any cases in which his vote would matter,” and Thurgood Marshall, who in his declining years reportedly just copied William Brennan’s vote.
Segall’s main objection seems to be the unchecked power afforded by a lifetime appointment. “Even people of great character and humility can eventually be tempted to abuse their power under such circumstances,” he writes.
Electing judges is an option, he says, but that has its own problems, which would become even more pronounced at the highest court where so many ideological battles are fought. Segall offers one alternative that has been proposed by others: an 18-year term and a salary for life.
Lonely lady
2/25/13
By Anna Louie Sussman
The
prosecution of one woman who played a role in the
mortgage fraud crisis - and only one woman - reveals
the lack of appetite for true justice, David Dayen writes
in Salon.
Lorraine
Brown was the president of DocX, a subsidiary ofLender
Processing Solutions in Jacksonville, Florida,
which supplied so-called “robo-signed” paperwork, the mass-produced forged or
false documents used in court proceedings to establish the right of a mortgage
servicer to foreclose on borrowers during the housing crisis.
Brown has pleaded guilty in several jurisdictions to counts
of racketeering, wire and mail fraud, and will likely face fines and prison
sentences of five to 20 years. That’s not
enough, writes Dayen.
“Lorraine
O. Brown did something wrong and definitely deserves to go to jail. But
she was a rung in a very large ladder that extended up to the executive suites
at Wall Street banks - that is, trustee banks like Bank of New York Mellon and even Deutsche
Bank, and even those investment banks that worked on the securitization deals
like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Bear Stearns. They needed falsified
documents because of their own improper work in the securitization
process. All Brown did was provide a service,” he writes.
“The state and federal charges against
Brown claim that she committed a conspiracy to forge and fabricate mortgage
documents. But apparently it was a conspiracy of one,” he writes. “Until the entire criminal enterprise is
rounded up and brought to justice, we will see the same kind of schemes, with
other Lorraine O. Browns, in the future.”
Gun fight
2/25/13
By Suhrith Parthasarathy
A federal appeals court in Denver ruled on Friday that the
Second Amendment's guarantee of a right to bear arms does not extend to the
right to carry a concealed firearm in public, the Associated
Press reports. The 10th Circuit ruling upheld a district court’s decision dismissing a lawsuit
by a Washington state resident against Colorado’s Department of Public
Safety. Gary Peterson claimed that his Second Amendment rights were violated when Colorado
denied him a concealed-handgun license. Colorado
recognizes weapons permits issued by other states only when those states
reciprocate with the same recognition. As Washington does not recognize
Colorado permits, Peterson was denied a license by Colorado.
The three-judge panel of the 10th Circuit cited a 2008 U.S. Supreme Court ruling
which held that many 19th-century
prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons are
legal even though the Second Amendment grants an individual right to keep and
bear arms. “In light of our nation’s extensive practice of restricting
citizen’s freedom to carry firearms in a concealed manner, we hold that this
activity does not fall within the scope of the Second Amendment’s protections,”
the judges ruled.
End of the affair
2/25/13
By Anna Louie Sussman
Lawyers
for former
International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahnare suing to ban a book by
an Argentine lawyer who says she had a seven-month affair with him, the
Telegraph reports.Strauss-Kahn was accused in May 2011 of attempting to rape a
hotel maid in New York. While the charges were ultimately dropped, the
allegations ended his French presidential hopes and his career at the IMF.
The
book, “Beauty and the
Beast,” is due out on Wednesday, but Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers call it a"violation of the intimacy
of private life. They are seeking 100,000 euros ($132,000) in
damages not only from the author and her publisher but
also from Le Nouvel Observateur, a French weekly magazine that
published excerpts from the book last week.
“If they
succeed, it will be the first time a book has been banned in France since The
Big Secret, the 1996 work by the late François Mitterrand's doctor, in which he
revealed the former president had suffered from prostate cancer since 1981,”
the Telegraph reports, noting that French courts are generally reluctant to ban
books and restrict freedom of expression.
The Argentine lawyer, Marcela Iacub,
wrote an essay defending Strauss-Kahn after he was accused of rape, which she says
prompted him
to send her a solicitous text message. Their affair ended in 2012 in a final
encounter for which Iacub received medical treatment after Strauss-Kahn bit her
ear, she says.
Suing R2-D2
2/25/13
By Anna Louie Sussman
Two lawyers have launched a website
soliciting victims of robotic surgery, the website Digital
Trends reports.
On www.badrobotsurgery.com, Dr. Francois Blaudeau and Matthew Moreland offer help to
those who have suffered injuries from such procedures, which might have led to tears and/or burns of the intestines, punctured blood
vessels, cut ureters and severe bowel injuries.
“The lawyers claim robot surgeries can
cause benign problems that would otherwise never happen if performed by a real
doctor. Except, of course, that these robots aren’t exclusively automatons -
most robot surgeons are controlled by doctors so they can reach places human
doctors can’t without tearing the patient’s body wide open,” Digital Trends says.
Helping hand
2/25/13
By Anna Louie Sussman
Democrats support two new bills designed to help women because they want to help the trial lawyers who fill the party’s coffers, argues
Betsy Woodruff on the conservative website National Review Online.
The Violence Against Women Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act “won’t help women much but will make life way
better for the wealthy trial lawyers who make it rain for the DNC (Democratic
National Committee) and its candidates,”
Woodruff writes
Republicans are opposed to the VAWA measure in part because it makes it
easier to sue domestic violence shelters for discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals, says Woodruff. For example, “If a single-sex shelter for women didn’t let a
gay man stay, it could face a lawsuit. In other words, the new provision is bad
for women and good for trial lawyers,” she says.
Similarly, the Paycheck Fairness Act “basically makes it
much easier for employees to sue their employers over wage discrimination,”
which would probably force businesses to devote “mammoth” resources to fighting
lawsuits and insuring against them.
Woodruff reports that Democrats received three-fourths of
the more than $230 million donated by trial lawyers in 2008, and that vocal
proponents of the Paycheck Fairness Act, including New York Senator Kirsten
Gillibrand, get major donations from law firms and trial lawyer associations.
The
emotional nature of this legislation puts Republicans in a lose-lose position,
Woodruff writes.
“Democrats
win either way by pushing this legislation - either they realize all their
legislative goals and do a big favor to their allies in the trial-lawyer lobby,
or Republicans block their efforts and give them endless fodder for campaign
commercials and fundraising letters.”
Routed by 66
2/25/13
By Ted Botha
The Route 66 Malt Shop in Albuquerque, New Mexico, might
become as iconic as the road it's named after but for the wrong
reasons. It's refusing to follow the rest of the city and raise
its minimum wage.
Owners Diane Avila and Eric Szeman plead poverty and say
that the increased payouts will sink their business, according
to Watchdog.org. "We had the choice to close the business and
destroy 18 years of blood, sweat and tears and hundreds of
thousands of dollars over the years and fire 12 people or
disobey the law," said Szeman.
In November, two-thirds of Albuquerque voters passed an ordinance raising the minimum wage there from $7.50 an hour to
$8.50. Route 66 says it will pay cooks the $8.50 but won't up
the wage for tipped staff, whom Szeman says make more than $20
an hour in tips anyway. In his State of the Union speech last
month, President Obama called for raising the national minimum
wage from $7.25 to $9 an hour.
"I think that (the $9 minimum) would kill businesses across
the country," Szeman says. "A lot of us are just barely getting
by."
Activist group Progress Now Mexico organized a protest in
front of Route 66 earlier this week, and critics have called on
city officials to crack down on the owners and force them to pay
the higher wage. Mayor Richard Berry said it's the job of the
city attorney's to enforce the ordinance, according to Watchdog,
but the attorney, David Tourek, said he wouldn't step in unless
the city council gives him the authorization and the money.
Summary Judgments for February 22
Summary Judgments for February 21
Summary Judgments for February 20
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