Legal News

Dreaming of "the enlightened newsroom"

Posted on September 23, 2008
Steve Weinberg has just published a major contribution to the literature of criminal justice journalism. Writing in Miller-McCune magazine, Weinberg -- a freelancer and veteran University of Missouri journalism professor -- turns the tables on the usual tales of heroic investigative reporters freeing innocent prisoners...

The Docket: 09/22

Posted on September 22, 2008
As week two of the Wall Street crisis dawns, all the talk is still of bailouts, acquisitions, and questionable assets. That's as it should be, but the legal background of this story cannot be ignored for long either. This week's Docket gives the meltdown's lawyers the spotlight: Law...

Wall Street bailout and the courts: an early heads-up

Posted on September 22, 2008
One of journalism's leading constitutional experts (self-taught category) has weighed in on the emergency financial bailout plan with this fascinating analysis of the role that the courts might play in any legal challenge. SCOTUSblog's Lyle Denniston did what he's so good at -- reading a document (in this case, the administration's legislative plan racing toward a vote in Congress this week) and running it through his enormous database of Supreme Court precedent (that would be his brain)...

Mystery solved: a blog with (gasp!) editorial standards

Posted on September 22, 2008
I raved this morning about a Lyle Denniston story on SCOTUSblog, and by the time I got back to my computer late in the day it was gone. I asked Denniston why and got this response:After I put up the post, early this morning, we had a conversation about it -- initiated by me, incidentally -- that follows from some recent efforts we have been making to keep the blog more focused on the Supreme Court -- that is, on activity directly before the Court, on the way predictably to the Court (for example, the domestic detention case from 4th Circuit), and in direct reaction to the Court (for example, the Guantanamo followups to the Boumediene decision)...

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Where did all the laws go? A reporter explains.

Posted on September 20, 2008
WaPo's Jerry Markon has a smart folo on last week's Virginia Supreme Court ruling striking down a state law that punished e-mail spammers. Markon notices a pattern where the state passes aggressive, boundary-pushing legislation, and then gets slapped down by state or federal courts...

Times comes clean about flawed report

Posted on September 20, 2008
When Adam Liptak's Sidebar column gave national exposure to a new Tulane Law Review study last January, it set off much blog chatter and followup articles elsewhere. This month, with Sidebar still on hiatus and Liptak busily diving into his new Supreme Court beat after moving to D...

Murky handling of Palin e-mail hack

Posted on September 18, 2008
Did the hackers who broke into Sarah Palin's Yahoo e-mail account break the law? Michael Shear and Karl Vick don't help put their readers anywhere near an answer to that question in this Washington Post report on the hacking incident. They quote John McCain's campaign manager as saying it's "a violation of law...

American Exception: the book?

Posted on September 18, 2008
Say goodbye to the Times' extraordinary American Exception series. Its author, Adam Liptak, confirmed in an e-mail that today's installment probably was its last -- which I had pretty much guessed, since Liptak is busy preparing for the new term on his new beat, starting in less than three weeks...

The Docket List

Posted on September 17, 2008
Since there's no such thing as too many lists, we're happy to announce a new blog feature that will highlight some of the best investigative and interesting legal reporting out there. If you have any suggestions, feel free to send them to rsmascarenhas [at] gmail [dot] com...

Did Gellman shamelessly recycle Cheney material?

Posted on September 16, 2008
Was I too quick to see fresh insight in Barton Gellman's excerpts from his Dick Cheney expose Angler, published Sunday in The Washington Post (and followed up with part two yesterday)? Yes, according to a review today in the Times by Michiko Kakutani, who all but accuses Gellman of a clip job -- one bordering on story-theft:“Angler” grew out of a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of the same title that Mr...

Leen dusts off old notes for remembrance of cocaine cowboy

Posted on September 16, 2008
Search the Washington Post's site for bylined articles by Jeff Leen, and you'll come up empty. He has a desk job -- but a critically important one in the paper's devotion to public-affairs journalism -- as the assistant managing editor in charge of investigative reporting...

Book excerpt: Gellman advances NSA story

Posted on September 14, 2008
What with all of the books published on the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping -- see a good starting point on related posts here -- I would not have assumed there were many new stories to tell about the lawyers involved, and the events surrounding their drafting and debates...

Two very different takes on Larry Craig arguments

Posted on September 12, 2008
Give a reporter a decent amount of column inches -- and a gift for explaining complex legal arguments in plain English -- and his readers are much better able to form an opinion about a news event that otherwise invites snap judgments. That's the lesson from today's coverage of appellate arguments in the Larry Craig airport-restroom case...

Blogger reminds AmLaw to tell whole story

Posted on September 11, 2008
Overlawyered's Walter Olson wins the legal-journalism editor's award of the week. When Olson read Brian Baxter's report in yesterday's AmLaw Daily about the $688 million legal-fee award to plaintiffs' class counsel for their work in the $7.2 billion Enron class action settlements, he zeroed in on Baxter's use of one source: John Coffee...

Hype alert: A trend in search of solid proof

Posted on September 11, 2008
Donna Leinwand and her editors should have looked a little more closely at the headline and lede of this USA Today story, which race beyond the evidence that she has dug up. Headlined (at least online) "Public Defenders Reject New  Cases," the story starts: Public defenders are being hit so hard by budget cuts and growing caseloads that offices in several states are refusing to take on more cases because they say defendants' rights are being hurt...

Symposium explores new media and legal reporting

Posted on September 10, 2008
A University of Arizona Rehnquist Center symposium, "New Media and the Courts," held yesterday in Tucson, looks like it was a thoughtful, star-studded affair, with reporters Joan Biskupic and Tony Mauro, among others -- not to mention a Supreme Court justice (Stephen Breyer) for added spice...

Greenburg and veep race: now it makes sense

Posted on September 09, 2008
Back when Jan Crawford Greenburg announced she was pulled from the Supreme Court beat to cover the vice presidential races, I groused about ABC's lack of support for the law beat. But Greenburg's remarkable Legalities blog post today -- cheekily titled "Girltalk" -- wipes away any regrets...

Chron scrutinizes Kent case gag order

Posted on September 09, 2008
The Houston Chronicle's federal courts reporter Mary Flood reports on a strict gag order imposed in the pending criminal case against federal judge Samuel Kent. Flood's straight-news approach is nonetheless transparently skeptical about how far the visiting judge in the case, Roger Vinson of Pensacola, will go to inhibit publicity -- and public information -- including his revelation in the gag order that he intends to hold some hearings in chambers...

Conservatorship: the mystery of the day

Posted on September 08, 2008
So, by what authority can the U.S. Treasury take over the two publicly owned mortgage-finance giants, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae? Good luck finding the answer in first-day coverage by the big three that you'd expect have more answers than others: the Journal, Times, and Post...

New book on Nebraska Press case

Posted on September 05, 2008
In his post about a panel discussion in Washington last night, Tony Mauro breaks the news -- well, news to me -- that a University of Nebraska historian, Mark Scherer, has written a new book on one of the most important Supreme Court cases for legal reporters...

Final reminder: Monday's fellowship deadline

Posted on September 04, 2008
There's still time to apply for a $3,000 legal-reporting fellowship. The deadline is Monday. If you want to get all legalistic about it, that means by 11:59 p.m. EDT on Monday. Let your freelancer friends know.

The death of legal journalism (slightly exaggerated)

Posted on September 04, 2008
Journalist Sarah Kellogg wrote a long reported piece in the September issue of Washington Lawyer, published by the D.C. Bar, on the decline of traditional legal journalism and the rise of citizen media and other forms of Web-based legal information outside the confines of mainstream news media...

Kristof's readers write a valuable P.S.

Posted on September 04, 2008
When I praised Nick Kristof for the way he handled his Steven Hatfill apology, I promised to revisit the public comments on his column. And they're worth everyone's time. On a single day, before the Times closed the discussion, the board filled with 149 comments that remind me why we journalists need more direct exposure to our readers...

Glater exonerated in yachting-story mishap

Posted on September 03, 2008
On Sunday, I dinged Jonathan Glater of the Times for incompletely telling the tale of an America's Cup yachting dispute between two billionaires. Today's Times puts the blame where it belongs: on Glater's editors. The updated version of the story includes a correction that explains what I found lacking...

Brandweek writer's two-year quest for court file

Posted on September 02, 2008
Jim Edwards may have just screwed the pooch. But I applaud his moxie -- not only pressing for access to public court files for two years, in a New York civil suit that's newsworthy and inexplicably kept private, but now he's taken it public in this Judicial Reports story...

Law in the Green Zone

Posted on September 02, 2008
Discussions between magazine writers and their editors aren't always fit for public consumption. But this one is: Robin Sparkman interviewing Ben Hallman about his cover story in the September issue of The American Lawyer. Sparkman, the magazine's executive editor, walks Hallman through a how-he-did-it discussion that's a useful and interesting lesson in telling complicated, deeply reported tales...

Newsweek critic shoots, misses

Posted on September 02, 2008
A University of Texas-El Paso psychology professor, who volunteered his consulting to the defense in the Mineola Swingers case in Tyler, Texas, used the well-read Romenesko letters section to accuse reporters covering the case of "shallow, sensationalistic coverage...

Fetal-homicide followup: enterprising, but a few holes

Posted on September 02, 2008
Kudos to D.C.-based Michael Doyle for asking whether the claims, pro and con, that were made when Congress debated the Unborn Victims of Violence Act have proven true. The answer: No, on both counts. Neither the great benefits nor the horrors that proponents and opponents predicted have happened, Doyle reports...

Yachting and lawyers in a confusing mix

Posted on August 31, 2008
Usually when I get frustrated about lawsuit stories, it's because a beat reporter from another field -- say entertainment, fashion, business, or sports -- writes about litigation without clearly or accurately explaining what's going on. Here we have a sporting dispute mired in litigation, with an incomplete story that happens to have been written by one of the Times' best legal writers...

Reminder: 9/8 deadline for fellowship bids

Posted on August 29, 2008
Attention, freelancers: After the Labor Day holiday, you have less than a week until the application deadline for the Carnegie/Newhouse School Legal Reporting Fellowships program. I announced the program here last month. The program is explained fully here, and that's where you'll find the program guidelines and application form...

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