Revamping Philadelphia’s Tax System | 26 days ago | Last week, the City of Philadelphia Task Force on Tax Policy and Economic Competitiveness delivered to the mayor and City Council its final report, Thinking Beyond Today: A Path to Prosperity . Although the report includes analyses of and recommendations with respect to things such as business activity regulations, zoning, publicity, government procedures, health care and pension spending, and oth..
Why Didn’t the Federal Government Even Try to Argu.. | 26 days ago | I am currently in the process of drafting an amicus brief in the Supreme Court case of United States v. Comstock , on behalf of the Cato Institute and co-blogger Randy Barnett. As you can probably guess, we will be arguing that Article I of the Constitution does not give Congress power to retain custody of “sexually dangerous” persons held in federal prisons after their term of imprisonment ends...
Can Obama accept the Nobel Prize without congressi.. | 26 days ago | Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, Rep. Cliff Stearns, and Rep. Ron Paul say “no,” and have sent a letter to the President asking him to request congressional consent, which they expect would be speedily given. They point to the example of President Theodore Roosevelt, who created a committee, including the Chief Justice, to hold Roosevelt’s Nobel Peace Prize money in trust until he left office. After leav..
Precedential No. 43: TTAB Enters Partial Summary J.. | 26 days ago | Applicant Vudu, Inc. failed to ward off completely Hewlett-Packard's motion for summary judgment aimed at the mark VUDU for goods and services in classes 9, 35, 38, 41, and 42, relating to the broadcast, storage, and playback of video content. H-P relied on its registered mark VOODOO in standard character and design form (shown immediately below), for personal and gaming computers in class 9, and ..
Louis Brandeis and the Incorporation Doctrine | 26 days ago | I’ve read most of Mel Urofsky’s new biography of Louis Brandeis , and it’s an extremely good, and very informative, book. But I’m afraid that Mel vastly exaggerates Brandeis’s influence on the Supreme Court’s adoption of the “incorporation doctrine”, to wit: (1) p. 618: “Scholars now believe that the Fourteenth Amendment ... was intended to extend the protection of the Bill of Rights to the stat..
Benefits and costs: crime, crime avoidance, crime.. | 26 days ago | Crime has been a badly underestimated problem: more so among scholarly experts than among ordinary citizens or elected officials. A1% reduction in crime provides economic value — measured in terms of willingness-to-pay – of something like $15 billion a year. The material losses due to victimization are only a small part of the crime problem. For example, property losses from residential burglar..
Fourth Amendment Rights in a Storage Unit Obtained.. | 26 days ago | Today the Tenth Circuit handed down a very interesting Fourth Amendment decision, United States v. Johnson , on whether an individual can have a reasonable expectation of privacy in a storage unit rented with a stolen identity. As I understand the facts of the case, the defendant Johnson asked his girlfriend to rent a storage unit using a fake name where he could store his guns. Johnson and his g..
FBI Arrests Two Men for Allegedly Conspiring To At.. | 26 days ago | From the Justice Department press release : Two Chicago men have been arrested on federal charges for their alleged roles in conspiracies to provide material support and/or to commit terrorist acts against overseas targets, including facilities and employees of a Danish newspaper that published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in 2005, federal law enforcement officials announced today.... The def..
More on “[T]he Islamic Fundamentalist Charge That .. | 26 days ago | I blogged an item earlier today about the Catholic Archdiocese of Agana (Guam) for this paragraph in its criticism of the proposed Guam domestic partnership bill (links are in the original post): The culture of homosexuality is a culture of self-absorption because it does not value self-sacrifice. It is a glaring example of what John Paul II has called the culture of death. Islamic fundamentalist..
Google Wave Invitations and Audience Questions for.. | 26 days ago | I have a few Google Wave invitations that I'd be happy to extend to regular readers of this blog who would like to test out Wave. Send me an email at denniskennedyblog @ gmail.com with your email address and some info about what you'd like to use Google Wave for and I'll see how long they last. I'll especially look favorably on those who include a question for the audience Q & A segment of our ne..
Born to Run - The Live Version | 26 days ago | We went to see the Bruce Springsteen show in St. Louis on Sunday. I planned to blog about it last night, but the story of the cancellation of last night’s Kansas City show because of the death of Springsteen’s cousin and road crew manager had just broken and it seemed best to wait a day. In addition to extending my sympathies, I did want to note that I specifically noticed the performance of the ..
Why Aren’t Bad Prosecutors Held Accountable? | 26 days ago | Radley Balko, whose weekly crime column should be on your reading list, wants to know : As DNA exonerations continue to accumulate across the country, we’re left with some tough questions about accountability for the public officials who put innocent people in prison. Certainly in some cases honest mistakes can be forgiven. But what about cases ... where a prosecutor illegally withholds evidence ..
Yglesias at JStreet | 26 days ago | Matthew Yglesias : I was debating with Jon Chait at a J Street panel this morning on the subject of “what does it mean to be pro-Israel?” As expected, we disagreed on a number of points, most of which I was right on and he was wrong on. But one thing he said in his opening remarks that I really disagreed with was that there was an ambiguity running through the J Street constituency as to whether ..
Who is behind today’s anti-banker demonstrations? .. | 26 days ago | (photo from stopbankgreed.org ) During Tuesday’s lunch program at CNBC, anchor Bill Griffith asked who was behind the demonstrations at the American Bankers Association meetings in Chicago. The answer is clear: SEIU and a coalition of organizations, many of which are related with ACORN or that have commonly partnered with ACORN over the years. A few weeks ago, I was solicited to participate in to..
minilinks for 2009-10-27 | 26 days ago | CIA Invests In Social Network Monitoring Watch what you tweet! Intelligence agencies are investing in new tech to monitor and archive public activity on blogs and social networks. NYT Op-Ed: A Win For Free Speech The Times Editorial Board on why the Craigslist win in federal court matters. UK's MI5 Opposes 3 Strikes British intelligence is against cutting off internet access for accused pira..
Paul Caron on Drivers of Law School Cost from GAO .. | 26 days ago | Paul Caron, at TaxProf, has posted some executive summary parts and the link to a GAO report on drivers of law school cost as well as minority enrollment. Regarding costs of legal education, the GAO summary says: According to law school officials, the move to a more hands-on, resource-intensive approach to legal education and competition among schools for higher rankings appear to be the main fa..
Law school on the "Block Plan" | 26 days ago | For no particular reason, I was thinking today about the "Block Plan" (or "One-Course-at-a-Time") approach used at liberal arts colleges such as Colorado College and Cornell (IA) College. As the name suggests, students take (and professors teach) one class in an intensive 3 1/2- or 4-week block, take one week off, then move on to another single class. And at least Cornell plays up internship and o..
“[T]he Islamic Fundamentalist Charge That ... the .. | 26 days ago | Guess who takes that view? The answer lies in this document put out by the Catholic Archdiocese of Agana (Guam), criticizing the proposed Guam domestic partnership bill : The culture of homosexuality is a culture of self-absorption because it does not value self-sacrifice. It is a glaring example of what John Paul II has called the culture of death. Islamic fundamentalists clearly understand the ..
Scientology Faces Judgment in France... | 26 days ago | Here's a quote from an article in today's NY Times: The French branch of the Church of Scientology was convicted of fraud and fined nearly $900,000 on Tuesday by a Paris court. But the judges did not ban the church entirely, as the prosecution had demanded, saying that a change in the law prevented such an action for fraud . . . The case was brought by two former members who said they were pushed ..
Legal Scholarship in the Internet Age | 26 days ago | That was the subject of a recent symposium at Denver University’s law school. The DU Law Review’s online publication, DUProcess , published several short articles on the topic. I wrote on Connecting Laypeople with the Law Through Blogs , and began: “Blogging is creating a Golden Age of legal scholarship. For the first time in the memory of any living person, legal scholarship is now connecting ..
Slowing Down RCEs and Lengthening the Patent Term | 26 days ago | In a prior post, I discussed the USPTO's planned docket-change for applications associated with a request for continued examination (RCE). See Nudging Against RCE Filings . According to the RCE Docket proposal, when an applicant files an RCE, the pending application will be taken off the examiner's in-prosecution docket and placed in the "special-new" queue that is primarily filled with continuat..
Illegal to “Vilify” Religion (in a European Union .. | 27 days ago | Malta Criminal Code §§ 163–164 provides that, 163. Whosoever by words, gestures, written matter, whether printed or not, or pictures or by some other visible means, publicly vilifies the Roman Catholic Apostolic Religion which is the religion of Malta, or gives offence to the Roman Catholic Apostolic Religion by vilifying those who profess such religion or its ministers, or anything which forms t..
Should Lawyers Check Their Blackberries hour.. | 27 days ago | In our fast-paced world, it seems like such availability is expected. Certainly, a partner at a BigLaw firm apparently thinks associates should, sorta. You can read about it on ABA Journal’s Law News Now and Above the Law . In a nutshell, a partner asked an associate to send a fax to a client before the latter left the office, but junior forgot to check his emails and never got the word. My..
'Hall of Shame' Calls Out Bogus Internet.. | 27 days ago | San Francisco - Websites like YouTube have ushered in a new era of creativity and free speech on the Internet, but not everyone is celebrating. Some of the web's most interesting content has been yanked from popular websites with bogus copyright claims or other spurious legal threats. So today the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is launching its "Takedown Hall of Shame" to call attentio..
Masterpieces of the Universe | 27 days ago | In my Art Law class, we cover a variety of issues related to fine art, including ownership and public access. Museums are the largest holders of collections that are accessible to the public, and they are publicly funded. Many also consider some of our largest banks to now fall into that category. Since many bailed-out banks own precious works of art, does the public have the right to see them? Th..
Good News: You’re Making Less Money | 27 days ago | The Legal Intelligencer reports on a survey of law firm partner compensation among men and women, and I was struck by this line: Some good news out of the survey was that the gap in compensation between male and female partners shrunk in 2009. But the report also pointed out that the smaller gap is likely an overall effect of reduced compensation at the equity level generally. Between 2008 and 20..
typetext | 27 days ago | October 1995 - And The Child Witness Q. And lastly, Gary, all of your responses must be oral, okay? What school do you go to? A. Oral. Q. And where do you live? A. Oral.
Reply to Henry Farrell, Part II | 27 days ago | I mentioned before Henry’s defense of the laws of war. Here is the relevant passage. There is likely a very plausible case to be made that these norms ought to be much tougher and more restrictive than they are – even if they are not a product of power politics they are limited by these politics. Nonetheless, even if they are weaker than they should be, they are still a lot better than nothing. ..
McDonald’s Out of Iceland | 27 days ago | Just when you thought the global financial crisis was subsiding, with returns to growth in most leading economies, including the US, Europe, China, etc., we have a counter-indicator. The Financial Times reports today that McDonald’s is closing its three outlets in Iceland, citing the difficult economic environment: Iceland edged further towards the margins of the global economy on Monday when M..
Another MSM Mention | 27 days ago | We get a mention in today's 'Times' in the Times 2 section. One or two posters on the MA's private forum became a little cross (and in some cases rather pompous) at my picking up the early-release story there, but the Governor concerned was speaking openly and I feel no shame whatever at having brought an important issue into the public arena. Courts are open to the public, and the workings of the..
Blawg of the Day - New Jersey Law for Special Need.. | 27 days ago | The New York/New Jersey firm of Cole Schotz have attorneys working in the area of special needs planning, including preparing trusts for assets owned by special needs children, including preparing trusts for assets owned by a special needs child and preparing trusts to be the recipient of assets to be dedicated, by gift or inheritance, to a disabled or incapacitated individual. They started publis..
Will The Liberals Play The Role of Opposition on .. | 27 days ago | While the Liberal party indicated late in the summer that it would more actively oppose the Conservative government, apparently that may not apply to Bill C-46 and C-47, the lawful access legislation. Bill C-46, titled the Investigative Powers for the 21st Century Act, received second reading in the House of Commons yesterday with a referral to committee on the way. The bill contains n..
District Court Suppresses Contents of E-Mail Accou.. | 27 days ago | The New York Times Deals blog reports on a fascinating new computer search and seizure decision, and one that I think was very likely wrongly decided: Federal prosecutors hit another setback on Monday in their criminal fraud case against two former Bear Stearns hedge fund managers, Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin, after the trial judge in Brooklyn prevented jurors from seeing an e-mail in which..
TTAB Chief Judge J. David Sams to Step Down Novemb.. | 27 days ago | After 34 years with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, including 28 years at th e TTAB, Chief Judge J. David Sams will retire on November 1, 2009. Judge Sams joined the PTO as a trademark examining attorney in 1975. From 1979 to 1981, he served as chief legal assistant to the Assistant Commissioner for Trademarks. He was appointed to the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board in 1981 and was named it..
ICANN Contract Compliance Statistics | 27 days ago | Source: ICANN contract compliance team (which enforces the accrediation contact between a registrar and ICANN): For January to October 2009: 9 terminations of registrars 7 (contested) non-renewals of registrars 184 breach notices transmitted 4,290 enforcement actions 9,304 consumer complaints processed
Study Finds Canadian C-61 Anti-Circumvention Provi.. | 27 days ago | A new academic article published in the Journal of Information Law and Technology by Professor Emir Aly Crowne-Mohammed and Yonatan Rozenszajn, both from the University of Windsor, concludes that the anti-circumvention provisions found in Bill C-61 were unconstitutional. The authors argue that the DRM provisions were "a poorly veiled attempt by the Government to strengthen the contractual ri..
CRTC Posts Updated Stats on Do-Not-Call | 27 days ago | The CRTC has posted updated data on the experience with do-not-call. It reports that as of September 30, 2009, there have been over 7.6 million registrations and 200,000 complaints. The CRTC has 87 active investigations, issued 145 warning letters, 10 notices of violations, and imposed 7 administrative monetary penalties.
Legislative Summary of Bill C-47 | 27 days ago | The Library of Parliament has posted a legislative summary of Bill C-47, half of the lawful access proposal.
Does a Reference's Priority Claim to a Provisional.. | 27 days ago | In re Giacomini (Fed. Cir. 2009) (discussion of the briefs) Giacomini is appealing the BPAI's 102(e) rejection -- arguing that the patent asserted as prior art does not actually qualify as prior art. Giacomini's application claims priority back to November 2000. The asserted prior art patent issued in 2006, but was filed in December 2000. The prior art patent also claims priority to a provisional..
Happy Pro Bono Week | 27 days ago | It’s National Pro Bono Week . I’m presently involved in two pro bono cases: United States v. Drew and McCane v. United States . It might be interesting for our readers who are lawyers to say what pro bono matters they are involved in right now; I hope they will consider telling us in the comment thread.
Puzzling Suppression Decision in Email Search Case | 27 days ago | I'm as happy as anyone to see Fourth Amendment violations redressed, but a recent decision of Judge Block of SDNY, reported in The New York Times, leaves me scratching my head. Based on undisputed probable cause, the FBI obtained a warrant for an email account in a fraud case. Google turned over a CD copy of the account, and there was at least one "smoking gun" email. The judge suppressed for viol..
Positive feedback and strategic enforcement | 27 days ago | If a group of individuals subject to some rule face an enforcement mechanism that is limited in its capacity, their rates of rule-violation will be interdependent. Imagine a classroom of well-behaved children. When Johnnie throws a spitball at Suzie, Ms. Jones can give him her full attention, and Johnnie learns (and the others learn vicariously) that he can’t get away with throwing spitballs in ..
True twit | 27 days ago | Here are last week's greatest twits from @roncoleman: RT @ptolawyer: Subway sues Vegas restaurant for TM infringement -TacticalIP.com IP Bully of the Month? http://bit.ly/3c2lNO RT @nowsourcing: RT @toprank The Truth About SEO http://retwt.me/180kb RT @VBalasubramani: AutoAdmit web defame case settled http://bit.ly/1DX5kp (@bnatechlaw) case –> issues re online interaction, anonymity RT @..
Angels in the Backfield | 27 days ago | Here is an interesting story in the Times about a Georgia town in which a post-9/11 practice in which the cheerleading squad at a public high school "painted messages like “Commit to the Lord” on giant paper banners that the [football] players charged through onto the field." After someone raised concerns about this practice -- and, in one of the many fine twists in the story, that someone was a g..
A Response to Delahunty’s “The Fourth Amendment Go.. | 27 days ago | In a forthcoming essay, The Fourth Amendment Goes to War , Professor Robert J. Delahunty defends the October 2001 OLC opinion he and John Yoo wrote while at the Office of Legal Counsel on how the Fourth Amendment applies in the war on terror. The opinion concluded that the Fourth Amendment does not apply “to the use of the military domestically against foreign terrorists,” and that if it did appl..
Evan Brown gets a gig | 27 days ago | InternetCases.com's Evan Brown is now the Legal Correspondent for the Internet TV show Viral, produced by Veoh Networks. Can't hurt that Evan is a Sean Hannity lookalike. Me, I don't get gigs. I get other things, like some press from time to time, but gigs, no. I think I would like gigs, though. [...]
“Social media and the legal community” | 27 days ago | Here are highlights from the October 16th seminar in Hackensack, New Jersey that some of you may have missed. Participants were Frank Burgos, head honcho of MSM power North Jersey Media Group, Melissa Shuman, marketing director of the Cole Schotz law firm, Phillips Nizer's Stacey Salmon and Jason Chupik of Mediabistro.com – – plus, of course, [...]
MasterCard card. Card card. Card. | 27 days ago | A reader writes to New York Times Q&A guy Stuart Elliot with a question that's on a lot minds: What's with this “Mastercard card” stuff you hear on the commercials? There are, evidently, two answers, the second of which was LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION®'s guess and the first of which is… well, here, read it for [...]
This Is Why I Don't Do The ICANN Reading For The F.. | 27 days ago | I'm here in Singapore at the ICANN meeting. The third version of the Draft Applicant Guidebook to the new TLDs is out. As to timing, the initial word is that the process will be kicked even further into the future. ICANN suggested in the opening remarks that the application process itself, intially scheduled for early 2010, may not even start until 2011. There are TLD start-ups out there carrying..
Court upholds eBay forum selection clause | 27 days ago | Tricome v. Ebay, Inc. , 2009 WL 3365873 (E.D. Pa. October 19, 2009) Everyone who signs up to use eBay has to assent to the terms of eBay's User Agreement. Among other things, the User Agreement contains a forum selection clause that states all disputes between the user and eBay must be brought to court in Santa Clara County, California. After eBay terminated plaintiff Tricome's account, Tricome s..
Booker's Children: The Strange Segregationist Orig.. | 27 days ago | The title of this post was inspired by a conversation I had with Anders Walker (SLU), who appeared in our enrichment series at FSU this past Thursday; in truth, I hope something like it will be the title of his next book project. Anders gave a legal history talk discussing the range of responses to Brown v. Board, emphasizing how some Southern politicians used the cultural politics of Brown to foc..
More Great Publicity for the Miami Law Foreclosure.. | 27 days ago | You know you are having a good day when 'Above the Law' (ATL) writes something positive about you — and that was my experience this afternoon with University of Miami Law School Puts Some Money into Public Service . In addition to not making me look bad — indeed, making me look nice — I especially liked the conclusion of the piece, The recession has created a huge need f..
Client Service Is Hard.
| 27 days ago | Client service is hard . Thanks to Dan Hull at What About Clients? for the eloquent reminder.
Market Discipline? What Market Discipline? | 27 days ago | The New York Times reports that Congress and the administration might soon reach some kind of view on legislation for addressing “too big to fail” institutions. Off the table is Paul Volker’s proposal to re-establish some line between commercial banking and proprietary trading — some updated Glass-Steagall demarcation. On the table is the Treasury’s proposal to designate various institutions as..
When Pusher Comes To Shove | 27 days ago | I have heard of criminals straining to avoid detection, but this bloke seems to have gone to the other extreme, by refusing to strain when requested. In police argot, a confession is often known as a 'cough'. Our man wouldn't have dared.
Federal Circuit Proposed Changes to Rules of Pract.. | 27 days ago | The Federal Circuit has proposed a set of about two-dozen amendments to its Rules of Practice. Under 28 U.S.C. § 2071(b), the court is required to provide "public notice and an opportunity for comment." Any comments on the rules are due to the Federal Circuit clerk by November 5, 2009. Below, I discuss some of the proposed changes. Rules 8(d) and 18(d) Stays Pending Appeal : Often a losing party ..
Rifqa Bary — the 17-Year-Old Convert from Islam to.. | 28 days ago | 13 Central Florida News reports: Bary will be turned over to a foster family that’s already set up for her in Ohio. However, her transfer home will remain a secret.... Bary’s time in Florida may be short lived, but her parents still have a long way to go to get to their daughter back home. As you may recall, Bary claimed her parents threatened to hurt or kill her because of her conversion; her pa..
The Truth on the Merger Guidelines | 28 days ago | Our friends over at the Truth on the Market have organized an online symposium on the recent Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission announcement that they will solicit public comment and hold joint workshops on the Horizontal Merger Guidelines (”HMG”). The symposium will run today and tomorrow, and the line-up includes a bunch of terrific folks, including Joe Ferrell from the FTC.
Bloggingheads, cont’d. | 28 days ago | Henry Farrell continues our conversation about my book . One thing he says is that international law should not be regarded as a single entity, which is either “good” or “bad,” but is a label attached to a multitude of cooperative arrangements undertaken by states, which should be evaluated on their own terms. Security Council resolutions have no inherent moral valence, even though they are iss..
Discount for Marketing Strategies Conference | 28 days ago | As a follow-up to my post earlier today on the ABA Law Firm Marketing Strategies Conference , I am now able to offer readers of this blog a special "friends and colleagues" discount off the registration price. If you are interested, e-mail me at ambrogi-at-gmail.com or DM me on Twitter for the form that will give you the discount.
They Judged the Cartoons, but Did Not Read the Boo.. | 28 days ago | This morning NPR ran a story on Yale University’s decision to force the Yale University Press to remove all depictions of the prophet Muhammed, including several controversial Danish cartoons, from Jytte Klausen’s book The Cartoons that Shook the World . As had already been reported, the University’s decision was based, in part, on various outside experts on national security, terrorism, and Isl..
Disenchanted with the New Facebook? | 28 days ago | I'm hearing it everywhere. People are pretty heated over the changes Facebook rolled out last week.
Other than some technical problems I'm having with errors and actually using the site, I think there is actually some good potential in the changes they've made.
First, let me reassure you that your "old" News Feed view is still there!
Just choose "Status Updates..
Law Firm Marketing Strategies Conference | 28 days ago | Sorry that I will not be able to attend, because the ABA Law Firm Marketing Strategies Conference looks like it will be a great program. Check out the schedule and list of speakers . The conference is Nov. 12 and 13 in Philadelphia. Cost of the program ranges from $795 to $995 depending on your registration category.
U.S. News Surveys Out; Info Available Here | 28 days ago | Late last week, law professors everywhere -- four at each school -- received the annual U.S. News survey asking them (as well as lawyers) to assess the quality of every JD program in the country on a scale of 1-5. In ranking law schools, U.S. News considers "input" measures like the LSAT score and GPA of incoming students, and "output" measures like bar passage and employment rates. In between, an..
ODR Cyberweek Starts Today | 28 days ago | The seminal annual event in online dispute resolution, ODR Cyberweek , kicks off today and continues through Friday. This free-of-charge and entirely online event features an array of discussions, simulations, demonstrations and other activities related to ODR. It is sponsored by the National Center for Technology and Dispute Resolution . Here is a program of events and a guide to navigating it al..
Tracking the Use of Continuations | 28 days ago | Mark Lemley and Bhaven Sampat have released a new working paper that uses PAIR data to draw some conclusions about the current patent system: Conclusion : The evidence illuminates the patent prosecution process as a continuing negotiation between examiner and applicant. That negotiation does not end with an initial or even a final rejection. Interviews and amendments after final play an extremely..
How Can Asking Questions Improve Tax and Spending .. | 28 days ago | One of the friction points in the debate between those advocating major tax reductions or even elimination and those advocating funneling money through government programs is the allegation that government involvement in projects and activities generates higher inefficiencies because of presumed waste. Another friction point is the contention by those trying to reconcile these competing positions ..
More on partisan media | 28 days ago | Jack Balkin has a great post linking the White House-Fox News feud to the rise (or re-rise) of the adversarial partisan press in the early 21st century. Fox, Balkin argues, is the heir to the party press of the late 19th-century, when newspapers were owned, operated, and controlled by the various political parties. Although not party-owned, Fox is aligned with one party, so as to be a virtual poli..
typetext | 28 days ago | July 1993 - The Expert and the Tooth Fairy From Robinson C. Ramsey of Wharton, this excerpt from the deposition of an economist - taken by Darryl Carter of Houston (Soules & Walace). Q. Well, let me ask you this: You've determined that in your best judgment to fully compensate Mr. White for the present value of his future loss of projected earning capacity, Mr. White would have to be paid approxi..
Precedential No 42: TTAB Denies Fraud Summary Judg.. | 28 days ago | The Board has now populated the post- Bose fraud landscape with another precedential decision, this one aimed at the proper pleading of a fraud claim. It points out that allegations made solely on information and belief "must be accompanied by a statement of facts upon which the belief is founded." Moreover, "[a] pleading of fraud must also include an allegation of intent." Asian and Western Class..
Blawg of the Day - eDiscovery 101 | 28 days ago | Bill Tolson is director of legal and regulatory solutions at Mimosa Systems, so he knows quite a bit about electronic discovery. He's blogging about the subject at eDiscovery 101 , where he's discussing legal holds, the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM), and the occasional legal joke.
Making Legislative History for Law Review Purposes | 28 days ago | Use of legislative history is famously controversial for purposes of statutory interpretation. But sometimes, the meaning of the law is clear but the actual motivation of the legislators that passed it is still interesting. I faced that issue for a paper I wrote on the Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of 1965. No one doubted that the Act removed racial and ethnic bars from an immigration..
Links for 2009-10-25 [del.icio.us] | 28 days ago | Michigan Law Review Correctional Offender Network - Montana Department of Corrections National Cancer Institute - Comprehensive Cancer Information Neurolaw and Criminal Justice | LLRX.com How to Prep for an XP-to-Windows 7 Upgrade: FAQ - PC World Windows 7 Review - PC World Windows 7: Upgrade Checklist - PC World GamingTechLAW
Net Neutrality in Canada Still a Work in Progress | 28 days ago | The release last week of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission's report on Internet traffic management - known as the net neutrality decision - attracted national attention. Canadians, Internet service providers, and politicians debated whether the regulator had struck the right balance in addressing how ISPs manage Internet traffic. While some headlines seemed to sug..
How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment | 28 days ago | Thanks to Eugene’s generosity, I will have access to this space all week to expound what I see as a great moral and practical imperative: to put our new knowledge of what controls crime into use, with the goal of achieving “half and half”: half as much crime and half as many people behind bars in a decade as we have today. ( Here’s the a book-length version of the argument. ) ********* Enginee..
Should Israel Attack Iran? | 28 days ago | That was the topic of a conference last Friday at the American Enterprise Institute. The three panelists who addressed this question agreed that an Iranian nuclear arsenal would be worrisome indeed, not because Iran would immediately incinerate Tel Aviv, but because it would almost certainly use its conventional forces and its terrorist infrastructure more aggressively once it enjoyed the protec..
The Wall Street Journal on Alvarez v. Smith | 28 days ago | The Wall Street Journal has an editorial urging the Supreme Court to rule in favor of the property owners in Alvarez v. Smith , an important property rights case that I have been trying to draw attention to for a long time (see my recent Findlaw column on it and previous posts on the subject here and here ): With states and cities struggling with deficits, one fertile source of revenue has been m..
Pay Controls Once Again-Becker | 28 days ago | I sympathize with all the people who are upset by the very large bonuses, stock options, and other compensation received by heads of some financial institutions that ran their companies into the ground through bad investments. However, I also believe it is a big mistake to have a pay czar, Kenneth Feinberg, impose sharp cuts over the salaries and other compensation of the seven financial institut..
Broadening Search: Is Google Enough? | 28 days ago | My latest technology column for the ABA Journal is out. It's called " Broadening Search " and it focuses on shortcomings people are finding with an over-reliance on Google search and covers some alternatives to Google for certain types of searching. As I like to say, "The next generation of search is arriving, if you know where to find it." In the column, I recommend that you assemble a toolbox o..
UM Foreclosure Fellowships in TIME Magazine | 28 days ago | TIME Magazine has a great story by Tim Padgett on UM's Foreclosure Fellowships, Another Housing Crisis: A Shortage of Foreclosure Lawyers . Nice quotes from Yolanda Paschal, one of our great Fellows, from Carolina Lombardi, a senior attorney at Legal Services of Greater Miami Inc., and a few words from me. I'm glad that our program is getting some recognition. As the article says, the for..
The Electronic Legal Pad and the Post-Paper Practi.. | 28 days ago | Tom Mighell and I have recorded another episode of The Kennedy-Mighell Report podcast and it's now available on the Legal Talk Network and on iTunes , with an RSS feed here . The episode is called " The Electronic Legal Pad and the Post-Paper Practice of Law " ( show notes website ) and here's the episode description: Will lawyers ever move past the ever-present legal pad as their most trusted to..
And Don't Forget About Neil Peart.... | 28 days ago | At the Volokh blog, David Bernstein has a post about those "touchy Canadians." He writes: Some Canadians are rather touchy about criticism from Americans regarding freedom of speech in Canada. The irony of this touchiness is that the Canadian Supreme Court has based its free-speech jurisprudence, at least in the context of antidiscrimination concerns, in large part on the theories of left-wing Ame..
It is Time for an Electronic Legal Pad? | 28 days ago | That's the question that Dennis and I ask in our latest Kennedy-Mighell report podcast, titled The Electronic Legal Pad and the Post-Paper Practice of Law . In this episode we're talking about the idea of "touch" technologies, and whether lawyers will want to make use of them. What spurred our discussion is the recent release of Windows 7 , which contains some new touch screen capabilities. We als..
Re-thinking Structured Settlements | 28 days ago | S2KM continues its strategic analysis of the transitioning structured settlement market with an update and re-publication of S2KM's public structured settlement wiki.
Pay Caps for Financial Executives--Posner | 28 days ago | Limiting the compensation of a handful of employees at a handful of firms can't have any effect except to benefit the firms' competitors by making them more attractive places to work. The limitations are a form of scapegoating designed to appease public anger over the high incomes of financiers who precipitated an economic collapse that has caused widespread suffering, much of it to people who, u..
Help me pick an constitutional law textbook | 28 days ago | This spring I will be adjunct teaching at Denver University, Sturm College of Law. The course is “Advanced Topics in Constitutional Law: Fourteenth and Second Amendments.” The course will be mainly 14th Amendment, plus some Second Amendment (which is happens to be a good topic with which to study 14th Amendment original intent/meaning and incorporation), plus shorter treatment of the rights in Ar..
Arguing for Corporate Liability Under the Alien To.. | 29 days ago | If I were to sit down and sketch out in a single sentence or two each the current approaches (”theories” is way too strong for what I mean here) arguing for corporate liability in the Alien Tort Statute, what would they be? I give it a shot as bullet points below; I welcome any additions, if you were trying to give a short but reasonably comprehensive list of litigation approaches in favor of f..
Prosecutors Investigate Student Investigators | 29 days ago | It appears that some Cook County prosecutors don’t like journalism students looking into whether innocent people may have been wrongly convicted, so they’ve decided to investigate the students. The NYT reports : For more than a decade, classes of students at Northwestern University’s journalism school have been scrutinizing the work of prosecutors and the police. The investigations into old crim..
The Harms of a Health Insurance Mandate | 29 days ago | Tyler Cowen discusses the effects of an individual insurance mandate in today’s NYT. A taste: Americans seem to like the idea of broadening health insurance coverage, but they may not want to be forced to buy it. With health care costs high and rising, such government mandates would make many people worse off. . . . Defenders of a broad health insurance mandate argue that it will lower average co..
Sunday Song Lyric | 29 days ago | “Weird Al” Yankovic turned 50 on Friday. (Can you believe he’s been around that long? And that he has a new album?) Yankovic’s exceedingly goofy, and quite clever. He also has a song off of his 2006 album, Straight Outta Lynnwood , that seems somewhat appropriate for the VC: “I’ll Sue Ya.” It begins: I sued Taco Bell ‘Cause I ate half a million Chalupas And I got fat! I sued Panasonic They ne..
Where Do We Go From Here? | 29 days ago | We seem to be in the Phoney War phase of the economic crisis at the moment. With an election due next Spring at the latest most politicians are reluctant to draw our attention to the truly enormous hole in our public finances, and to the sacrifices that will be required to put matters right. I am no economist, but if you read around a bit you will find that even serious academics are running out o..
Books I Would Recommend to those Who Disagree With.. | 29 days ago | Megan McArdle and Tony Woodlief give their answers to an interesting question: What three books would you recommend to a thoughtful person who disagrees with you politically, in the hopes that reading them will change their mind? My recommendations would depend a lot on whether the person in question disagrees with me from the right or from the left, and also on the extent of their previous knowl..
People’s Names in Computing | 29 days ago | Some terms (and in this I include brand names) are based on people’s names, either the full names or abbreviations or other variants — czar, Mirandize, Ford, watt, HP, and so on. Some of those terms are used in relation to the programming or use of computers (though they need not be used solely in relation to computers); HP is one. Some of those, unlike HP, are based on the names of people who we..
Libertarianism and Culture, Round II | 29 days ago | Kerry Howley has responded to my post criticizing her essay on libertarianism and culture. I don’t think her response actually answers most of my main points, however. Kerry criticizes me for asking for a “bright line rule” about what cultural values libertarians should care about: The lack of libertarian tolerance for ambiguity is an unfortunate thing. “Be more precise,” Ilya says. He says this ..
Some Friendly (Really) Advice to JStreet | 29 days ago | JStreet , which bills itself as a “pro-peace, pro-Israel” lobby, and aims to be a progressive counterpart to AIPAC, is having its convention starting tomorrow. Unlike some in the pro-Israel community, I’m not hostile to JStreet. First, I know one of the bigwigs in JStreet, and though he and I don’t have much in common politically, he’s a good guy and certainly is “pro-Israel”. Second, from appr..
Government Commits to Withdrawing Lobby Spyware Ch.. | 29 days ago | Bill C-27, the anti-spam bill, is nearly through the Industry Committee with a limited number of changes. The Liberals have already stated that they would not be bringing forward the amendments promoted by the copyright lobby that would have permitted unauthorized access to personal computers in some situations. The same issue arose during Question Period in the House of Commons on Thu..
Canadian Musicians vs. Canadian Recording Industry.. | 29 days ago | The government continues to play catch-up with the copyright consultation submissions (my submission appeared on Friday). It has just posted two interesting contrasting submissions: the Canadian Music Creators Coalition , actual Canadian musicians who warn against DMCA-style reforms and Don Hogarth , CRIA's communication person, who warns against people who warn against DMCA-style reform..
