Legal News

An overinflated cover story

Posted on January 12, 2009
Newsweek got my attention with a law-of-war cover story by two heavyweights -- Stuart Taylor Jr. and Evan Thomas -- not to mention an unusual (for Newsweek) editorial illustration on the cover, by the talented Victor Juhasz. But the story is kind of a nothing-burger...

Liptak has to wonder: WWLD?

Posted on January 10, 2009
Tell me Adam Liptak didn't feel Linda Greenhouse staring down at his fingers as he typed this one. The day after Greenhouse published an op-ed calling a pending Voting Rights Act appeal a big honkin' deal (the case, she wrote, "promises to tell us more than almost any other about John G...

Prognostications on Wall Street prosecutions

Posted on January 08, 2009
Roger Parloff's cover story in the Jan. 19 issue of Fortune is the perfect antidote to the conventional wisdom that "someone" should go to jail for the financial messes we're in. Perhaps many someones should, and will. But, as Parloff documents in his meticulous but readable way, the complicated realities make payback a fairly elusive prospect...

Resource for would-be legal reporters

Posted on January 07, 2009
Just-discovered resource: Mark Grabowski, a Marist College journalism prof and law grad, has an extensive journalism-careers site, Cubreporters.org, where he includes a list of opportunities at the intersection of law and journalism -- in legal reporting, and in media law...

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We're Number 14!

Posted on January 07, 2009
The ABA Journal's "Blawg 100" readers' choice votes are in, and LawBeat placed second to last in the News category. Which isn't bad, considering this site isn't a source of legal news, nor does it fit the Journal's chief criteria: by lawyers (nope), for lawyers (nope again)...

"Creature Comforts" puts human (and animal) faces on policy debate

Posted on January 06, 2009
Joe Nocera's cover story in the Times Magazine, on "what led to the financial meltdown," was so compelling that I almost overlooked this remarkably good legal story by Rebecca Skloot. Her deeply reported and engaging story examines a topic prone to snap judgments...

Bloggy updates to a magazine story

Posted on January 06, 2009
Lest the last post makes you think I've gone all luddite, check this out: The writer whose NYT Magazine story so impressed me, Rebecca Skloot, has gone much further on her blog, Culture Dish. This is only the latest of several posts that expand on, and update, her magazine story...

Twittering trials: More access than we need?

Posted on January 06, 2009
Bob Ambrogi (crediting Social Media Law Student) posted a newsy, link-filled report on a Wichita Eagle courts reporter, Ron Sylvester, who's admirably pushing the envelope of public access to the courts. With links to stories from the Boulder Daily Camera and Colorado Independent, Ambrogi tipped me off that Sylvester had won the right to "tweet" from a locally newsworthy trial scheduled to start Monday...

Shane makes another run at Ivins case

Posted on January 04, 2009
It did not take long for The New York Times' Scott Shane to turn a skeptical eye on last summer's early onslaught of coverage of anthrax-attack suspect Bruce Ivins. To his credit, and his paper's credit, he explored those early warning signs in depth, yielding this front-pager five months later that stakes out a bold premise in the nut graf:With the F...

WaPo oversells (or under-proves) corporate crime story

Posted on January 02, 2009
The Washington Post's Carrie Johnson reports today on an end-of-year rush on settlements between the Justice Department and corporations charged with wrongdoing. It's a timely scoop, with ample examples to justify its claim that this is happening. A shakier aspect of the story is why the settlements are occurring...

Voice mistreats a legal-reporting treasure

Posted on December 31, 2008
When I first became interested in legal reporting, as a grad student at Missouri in 1980, Nat Hentoff's was one of the bylines I gravitated to. I came to admire his passion for civil liberties -- animated by reported fact, not just opinion derived from someone else's work...

WSJ scores with Gonzo interview

Posted on December 31, 2008
The Journal's Evan Perez scoops everyone else on the DOJ and Gonzo beats with what he bills (and I have no reason to disagree) as former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' "most extensive comments since leaving government." Perez leads with the not-so-surprising news that Gonzales plans a score-settling book, but goes on from there to quote the former AG with such zingers as these:"What is it that I did that is so fundamentally wrong, that deserves this kind of response to my service?" (referring to widespread pans of his performance in office)"[F]or some reason, I am portrayed as the one who is evil in formulating policies that people disagree with...

Herald questions Walsh "news," belatedly

Posted on December 29, 2008
When police in Florida two weeks ago announced they were closing the investigation into the murder of Adam Walsh, I criticized news coverage in general for playing along with a publicity stunt. But I did at least give a positive shout out to David Smiley of the Miami Herald for recounting the history that put the cops' announcement in its proper context...

Madoff report is just empty hype

Posted on December 28, 2008
The New York Post's business report is on my regular daily rounds -- not for its legal coverage, but for its coverage of the media business. Today provides a fresh reminder of why I should stay focused when I visit the  tabloid's site. The headline on this story by Kaja Whitehouse seems pretty clear:LEGAL PROS GET PRIMED FOR A PAYDAY FROM MADOFF SCANDALInstead, the brief story only purports to show that Bernard Madoff's investment-scam victims are racing to court ("lawsuits are swirling," the story claims enigmatically), with no mention whatsoever about how many lawyers or which lawyers are getting work as a result of said swirl...

Woodstein in the data-mining age

Posted on December 26, 2008
Miller-McCune editor John Mecklin clued me in to the latest rage inside the geek branch of investigative reporting: "computational journalism." He explains this nascent movement -- the next-generation computer-assisted reporting, using data-mining tools to help investigative reporters spot patterns in documents -- and ponders its potential to preserve accountability journalism in a hostile economy...

Assignment Desk: Rehab reform, state by state

Posted on December 23, 2008
The New York Times series "The Evidence Gap" turns its gaze toward a quasi-legal topic today: drug-rehab programs mandated and paid for with public money. The series is rooted in science, "exploring medical treatments used despite scant proof that they work and are examining steps toward medicine based on evidence...

LAT, SF Chron shine in latest on Prop. 8

Posted on December 20, 2008
When California Attorney General Jerry Brown yesterday changed his legal position in the Proposition 8 case, he threw journalists a challenge: Could they explain this latest twist in more than just raw political terms?The political story is obvious: Which side are you on? No matter what legal basis the AG provides for his position, it's clear that he has thrown his support to the anti-Prop...

Walsh news turns reporters into tools

Posted on December 17, 2008
Why is fonta href=http://news.google.com/nwshp?hl=enamp;tab=wnamp;ncl=1280759120 target=_blankpractically every news organization/a/font falling for the fake news event in Hollywood, Florida, in the Adam Walsh case? It's one thing for police to pull a PR stunt, announcing with a flourish (and with span style=font-style: italic;America's Most Wanted/span cameras rolling) that after 27 years they solved the case by naming the same suspect who was the chief suspect all along...

Haberman muffs line on Blago charges

Posted on December 16, 2008
How bad is the newspaper business? The New York Times can't even get its own writers and editors to read it. Columnist Clyde Haberman was having some regional fun with the Rod Blagojevich scandal -- chiding New Yorkers for letting Illinois reap all the government-corruption glory -- when he used this line:It’s not easy topping someone who, if the federal charges against him are true, tried to sell the Senate seat of the president-elect...

Chicago dailies barely glance at law angle

Posted on December 14, 2008
Until Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich announces whether he's resigning, the central question in the state's political crisis is fundamentally a legal one: Can Blagojevich's opponents remove him through impeachment or through a novel action filed with the state Supreme Court by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan? So how have Chicago's dailies done in covering those questions? Pathetically, at least so far...

Note to Sy Hersh: Get a listed number

Posted on December 14, 2008
One of the juicier journalism tidbits in Michael Isikoff's Newsweek cover story -- profiling the former Justice Department lawyer who says he was The New York Times' whistleblower source for the infamous National Security Agency wiretapping story in 2005 -- shows how fate can be so random...

Speaking out against sex-offender notification laws

Posted on December 14, 2008
Lisa Sandberg's Houston Chronicle story today sticks up for a politically dicey group: registered sex offenders who say their sex with minors wasn't all that bad. They may have a valid point, but it's a tough sell. Which is what makes Sandberg's contrarian story all the more thought-provoking...

California judges: a little thick?

Posted on December 11, 2008
Yet another California trial judge has issued a blatantly unconstitutional prior restraint to protect a defendant's pretrial rights, reports the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. This one's against the Ventura County Star. Several weeks ago, for similar reasons, the Orange County Register was censored, temporarily -- until a higher court with better legal research skills overturned it...

Schwartz gets NYT legal beat

Posted on December 11, 2008
For eight months I've been razzing The New York Times for not immediately naming a replacement on the legal affairs beat for Adam Liptak, once Liptak moved to the Supreme Court beat. True to the word editors gave two weeks ago, the Times finally came through -- with a great pick...

Innuendo watch: Jackson gets Blago'd

Posted on December 11, 2008
Jesse Jackson Jr. is rightfully a key figure in second-day coverage of the Rod Blagojevich scandal. But too many reports have unfairly buried Jackson in buzzwords and innuendo that will forever link his name to public corruption, and the only proof made public so far is the unchecked, surreptitiously taped word of Blagojevich himself...

Pat Fitzgerald's quote spree

Posted on December 09, 2008
What a day it was for legal reporting in Chicago. On the one hand, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald is a reporter's dream come true. The man is a quote machine! Behold:Governor Blagojevich has taken us to a truly new low. Governor Blagojevich has been arrested in the middle of what we can only describe as a political corruption crime spree...

Three levels of detail on Blackwater test case

Posted on December 09, 2008
The Times' Ginger Thompson and James Risen, covering the indictment of five Blackwater security guards in the shooting deaths of 17 Iraqi civilians last year, made me hungry for more legal details. Thompson and Risen forecast that the case will revolve around "the first test of the government’s ability to hold private security contractors accountable for what it considers crimes committed overseas...

Kozinski cover-up: I plead guilty

Posted on December 08, 2008
Scott Glover's latest revelations about 9th Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski's sense of humor brought back some memories -- and a little discomfort. Did I betray my journalistic mission? I don't think so, but I'll tell the story and let my reader(s) judge...

WaPo zooms in on circuit courts

Posted on December 08, 2008
Today's Washington Post shines a light on a judicial-nomination battleground -- in the circuit courts -- that usually is overshadowed by potential Supreme Court picks. It's an ambitious and deeply researched package. One story by Jerry Markon briefly but smartly makes the case for the circuit courts' importance, and why they're at a tipping point ideologically...

O.J. prison bids open at six, climb to 33

Posted on December 05, 2008
Today's sentencing of O.J. Simpson in his Las Vegas robbery case produced utter confusion over his sentence and parole eligibility. With multiple counts, consecutive and concurrent terms, deadly-weapon enhancements, and parole factors, reporters were all over the place in trying to pin it down...

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