Pedestrian Appeals Disorderly Conduct Case

It isn’t just Sen. Larry Craig who’s changed his mind about pleading guilty to a disorderly conduct charge. The case of Brooklyn man who spent a night in jail after apparently being charged with disorderly conduct simply because he was standing on a public sidewalk in Manhattan may soon help…

Oct 18, 2007 11:31 PM CDT

Frozen Embryo Gets Day in Court

A frozen embryo has not only retained a lawyer to file a federal court case over planned stem cell research but has strong objections to a previously enacted California ballot measure. Martin Palmer, a Maryland attorney who says he represents the “preborn” plaintiff, Mary Scott Doe, argued against a 2004…

Oct 17, 2007 9:03 PM CDT

MA Leans Harder on Mortgage Lenders

In the latest of a series of aggressive efforts by the state of Massachusetts to deal with the local effects of a national crisis in mortgage lending, the governor announced today that he plans to pressure lenders in the communities hardest-hit by foreclosures to agree to “short sales.” The term…

Oct 15, 2007 8:53 PM CDT

American ‘Unlawful Combatants’ Abroad?

As efforts continue to address controversial killings of civilians in Iraq by private American military contractors, some United States officials reportedly are asking whether such conduct could put the U.S. in violation of international treaties. If so, it may be that those responsible for the killings could be characterized as…

Oct 15, 2007 6:46 PM CDT

‘Legal Wonk’: What Larry Craig Wants, Court Can’t Give

If Sen. Larry Craig is lucky, a Minnesota judge, as expected, will refuse to let him revoke his guilty plea to a disorderly conduct charge. That’s because a trial over the charge will only serve to further embarrass the embattled Republican from Idaho, without giving him what he wants—public proof…

Sep 28, 2007 5:11 PM CDT

Life for 48 Murders, So Why Me?

The notorious Washington state killer who murdered 48 women didn’t get the death penalty. And Robert Yates Jr. didn’t, either, when he confessed in a Spokane County plea deal to murdering 13. But two of the killings about which he gave information wound up being prosecuted in a separate case…

Sep 27, 2007 6:25 PM CDT

Top Med Mag: No Vaccine-Autism Link

Although thousands of cases are being pursued alleging a link between childhood vaccines and autism (see “No Longer Immune” in the July 2006 ABA Journal), it’s doubtful that causation can be proven. In fact, a study published today in the New England Journal of Medicine concludes there is no causal…

Sep 26, 2007 10:33 PM CDT

New Laws Seek to Ban Iraq T-Shirt Sales

“Bush Lied. They Died.” Those words, on a T-shirt, along with the names of U.S. soldiers who have been killed in the Iraq war, have sparked outrage—and legislation in five states. They now ban the use of names of soldiers killed in Iraq for commercial purposes unless surviving family members…

Sep 24, 2007 8:50 PM CDT

NYU Law’s Dworkin Wins $750,000+

A renowned law and philosophy professor at New York University has been awarded a prestigious prize for his scholarship. Its value is variously given as $750,000 or $800,000. Ronald Dworkin, 76, who has a joint appointment at Oxford University in Britain, has won the Holberg International Memorial Prize for his…

Sep 20, 2007 8:34 PM CDT

Court to Parents: No Tough Love, No Cars

A lack of tough love has cost two Washington state parents their cars. Because they didn’t act quickly enough to snatch back their car keys from a son who apparently was using their vehicles to deal drugs, according to authorities, they were properly seized by the government under drug-forfeiture laws…

Sep 19, 2007 11:48 PM CDT

Lawyer Sanctioned for Katrina Suit

A testy federal judge has ordered a New York City lawyer to pay $24,000 in a fine and attorney fees for filing a frivolous suit on behalf of a Hurricane Katrina victim who was evicted by Catholic Charities. The Albany judge said the suit against the Catholic church by lawyer…

Sep 19, 2007 11:32 AM CDT

Stanford Class for Laity: Think Like Lawyer

An all-star faculty lineup at Stanford Law School is offering an ambitious and perhaps unprecedented course for nonattorneys. In a single quarter, 12 professors will attempt to teach graduate students in other disciplines to think like a lawyer, reports the Stanford Daily. The whirlwind tour of the legal profession is…

Sep 18, 2007 5:24 PM CDT

Religion Statute May Allow Gitmo Claims

Four former Guantanamo Bay military prison detainees who claim American officials abused them there haven’t had any luck trying to sue the U.S. government over alleged constitutional rights violations. But redress may be possible under a 1993 statute that says the government must have a compelling reason for infringing on…

Sep 17, 2007 3:48 PM CDT

ACLJ is Key Contender in Religious Cases

Most lawyers are probably familiar with the ACLU. Far fewer attorneys may have heard of the ACLJ. However, the two civil rights organizations—sometimes fighting together and sometimes on opposing sides—are both key players in ongoing efforts to protect religious rights. The ACLJ—American Center for Law and Justice—is a leading Christian…

Sep 5, 2007 12:44 AM CDT

Law In the Age of Terror

Six years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, much of the legal system’s role in the war on terror remains unresolved.

Should the courts take a backseat to the executive branch, as they have historically done during wartime? Or, in this new kind of conflict—with no hope of a discernible, state-sanctioned end—should the courts hold the executive branch as accountable as they would in peacetime?

Neither view seems likely to win out. Rather, we seem to be stumbling toward a third way: building, bit by bit, a new paradigm of the law of terror—defining the limits of executive power, civil liberties, defendants’ rights and the independence of the judiciary with a system that borrows from the law of both wartime and peacetime.

Sep 1, 2007 9:00 AM CDT