Litigation

CO High Court: Finance Law Unconstitutional

Posted on March 22, 2010
The Colorado Supreme Court has found certain state campaign finance laws unconstitutional under the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Citizens United decision. Gov. Bill Ritter had asked the state Supreme Court for a ruling clarifying state laws in the wake of Citizens United, which lifted restrictions on corporations spending for independent advertising to support or oppose political [...

Two Judges Ponder Dangers of Money in TX Elections

Posted on March 22, 2010
It’s not every day that elected judges warn publicly about the “special dangers in money’s continuing influence on judicial campaigns” and concerns raised by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling. But exactly that has happened in Texas...

WI Campaign Changes Name, But Not Tune

Posted on March 22, 2010
Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a partner group of the Justice at Stake Campaign, says it no longer will use the name of the  the nonprofit group Citizens United in a campaign to overturn a Supreme Court ruling by the same name, an Associated Press article reports...

Monday Media Summary

Posted on March 22, 2010
JUSTICE AT STAKE American Courthouse: Ten Years Worth of Spending on Judicial Campaigns = 4 Months Interest For George Soros Dan Pero – 3/19/2010 NATIONAL SECURITY/COURTS National Law Journal: The risk no one’s talking about Gus P. Coldebella – 3/22/2010 Washington Post: Principles of national security Editorial – 3/22/2010 The Public Record: ACLU's Wizner: 'There's Nothing Military About Khalid Sheikh Mohammed' (v/video) Joshua Durkin [...

To access this complete feed in the blog feed reader login or register for free.

Deal Near on Closing Gitmo, Trying Detainees?

Posted on March 19, 2010
A national security deal between the White House and a bipartisan group of senators is getting closer. The deal would close the Guantanamo Bay military prison and try more terror suspects before military tribunals, according to a Wall Street Journal article...

MN Tea Party Leaders Oppose An Election Reform

Posted on March 19, 2010
A proposal to shield Minnesota judges from the influence of big-money politics in elections has drawn opposition from leaders of a group called the Minnesota Tea Party Patriots. A bipartisan group of reformers is supporting a proposed  constitutional amendment to replace partisan elections with up-or-down retention elections and to set up a non-partisan commission to evaluate [...

Virginia Thomas Warned on Consumer Law

Posted on March 19, 2010
Virginia consumer protection officials have sent Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, a warning letter about her fledgling advocacy group and required compliance with state law. Liberty Central Inc. is based in Virginia...

NY Times on West Virginia: ?From Scandal to Example?

Posted on March 19, 2010
The West Virginia legislature’s approval of a pilot plan for public financing of state Supreme Court elections won  praise from a New York Times editorial, headlined “From Scandal to Example in West Virginia.” The editorial recapped the saga that thrust West Virginia into the center of national debate over protecting public trust in the judiciary: A [...

Friday Media Summary

Posted on March 19, 2010
NATIONAL SECURITY/COURTS The New Yorker: Bin Laden's Body Amy Davidson – 3/17/2010 Washington Post/Post Partisan: Eric Holder’s bizarre comments on Osama’s corpse Eva Rodriguez – 3/18/2010 Washington Post: U.S. commander says bringing bin Laden to justice remains goal Craig Whitlock – 3/17/2010 Wall Street Journal: Deal Near on Gitmo, Trials for Detainee (subscription required) JONATHAN WEISMAN AND EVAN PEREZ – 3/19/2010 Washington Post: Eric Holder, [...

A Virtual Makeover at the Supreme Court

Posted on March 18, 2010
The Supreme Court has a new look–via its updated Web site, that is. The Web site redesign brought  “the site into the 21st century only a few years late,” observed The Blog of Legal Times. The blog assessed the redesign this way: “From a quick survey, it does not appear that the Supreme Court’s new site [...

Will Obama Resurrect Privacy Board?

Posted on March 18, 2010
Privacy advocates once again are once again calling on President Obama  to make a priority of nominating members to the defunct Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, and they are joined by congressional Democrats. As mentioned in Gavel Grab last November, the board first was constituted under the Intelligence Reform Act of 2004, and its members [...

Defending IA Judicial Independence, Part II

Posted on March 18, 2010
Another Iowa newspaper editorial has taken issue with  recent unsuccessful efforts in the legislature to move to direct election of state Supreme Court justices. The Iowa City Press-Citizen editorial made a strong case for protecting judicial independence...

Appeals Court Nominee Wins Unanimous Vote

Posted on March 18, 2010
Judge O. Rogeriee Thompson of the Rhode Island Superior Court will move to the Boston-based First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, as a result of a 98-0 confirmation vote in the Senate this week. She will become the first African-American judge and the second female to sit on the appeals court, according to an article in [...

Thursday Media Summary

Posted on March 18, 2010
JUSTICE AT STAKE ABC News: ABC News Exclusive: Study Shows Money Flooding into Campaigns for State Judgeships Matthew Mosk – 3/17/2010 NATIONAL SECURITY/COURTS Washington Post: KSM’s dispensable trial Benjamin Wittes and Jack L. Goldsmith – 3/19/2010 Wall Street Journal: Liz Cheney’s Big Question Daniel Henninger – 3/18/2010 Huffington Post: Pressure Building for Executive Decision on the Trial of 9/11 Mastermind Nathaniel Cahners Hindman – 3/16/2010 Politico: Liz [...

NY Bar Launches ?Gitmo and Beyond? Blog

Posted on March 17, 2010
If you’re getting virtual whiplash from keeping up with all the news about terror detainees, civil liberties and national security policy, the New York State Bar Association wants to help. The group has launched a comprehensive legal blog entitled “Guantanamo and Beyond: A Blog on Executive Detention, National Security and Due Process...

ABC Report Cites JAS, Partners on Campaign Cash

Posted on March 17, 2010
A study to be released soon by the Justice at Stake Campaign, the Brennan Center for Justice and the National Institute on Money in State Courts shows unprecedented sums of cash flowing into campaign accounts of state judges around the country, according to an ABC News exclusive report...

Virginia Budget May Cut Up to 10 Percent of Judgeships

Posted on March 17, 2010
A  two-year, $82 billion budget recently passed by Virginia’s General Assembly would  make a sizable hole in authorized judgeships statewide, eliminating, by one estimate, as many as 10 percent of some 400 state judgeships. The belt-tightening comes at a time when Virginia Chief Justice Leroy R...

JAS Partner Seeks Full Campaign Disclosure in MI

Posted on March 17, 2010
The Michigan Campaign Finance Network, a watchdog group, is urging Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land to help bring “real transparency and accountability to state election campaigns” through a declaration of rigorous financial-disclosure rules following the U...

JAS Partners Support AK Merit Selection

Posted on March 17, 2010
Two partner groups of the Justice at Stake Campaign have filed amicus briefs with a federal appeals court supporting Alaska’s merit system for selection of judges. In September, a district court judge dismissed a lawsuit challenging the system’s constitutionality (see Gavel Grab)...

Judge Faces Voters After Decision, and Tragedy

Posted on March 16, 2010
In southern California, a judge made what seemed like a routine ruling in a domestic dispute involving separated parents and their baby, letting the father keep partial custody of his son–over the warnings of the mother. The ruling blew up when the 25-year-old father shot and killed the 9-month-old child and himself ten days later...

Editorial: Elected Judges ?Under a Shadow?

Posted on March 16, 2010
Count a resounding vote for up-or-down retention elections, and against “a party-political circus,” from a blunt-speaking editorial in the Santa Fe New Mexican. The editorial points out that after their initial appointment by the governor, state judges must run in a partisan contest: “They had to pass a merit-selection board before the governor appointed them ? but [...

Citizens United Miffed at Same-Name Protestors

Posted on March 16, 2010
Citizens United, the nonprofit group that won a landmark victory in a recent Supreme Court decision, isn’t chuckling about a Wisconsin watchdog group’s use of its name in a campaign to overturn the court ruling. According to an Associated Press article, Citizens United asked Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a partner group of the Justice at Stake Campaign, [...

Stevens on Retiring: ?Options Open?

Posted on March 16, 2010
Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens intends to retire sometime within the next three years and will make a decision soon about staying on the court for another term. That’s the news reported by the New York Times and Bloomberg, among others, based on a profile of Justice Stevens in The New Yorker by Jeffrey Toobin...

Virginia Thomas Starts Lobbying Group

Posted on March 16, 2010
Virginia Thomas, whose husband is Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has started a tea-party linked lobbying group called Liberty Central Inc. According to a Los Angeles Times article, the step by “Ginni” Thomas (as she is known) “could test the traditional notions of political impartiality for the court...

Tuesday Media Summary

Posted on March 16, 2010
DETAINEE LAWYERS NPR/Talk Of The Nation: Should Lawyers Represent Terrorists? (w/audio) 3/15/2010 Forbes: Let’s Not Kill All The Lawyers Richard A. Epstein – 3/16/2010 Brennan Center For Justice: No more Witch Hunts for DOJ's "Al Qaeda Lawyers" Emily Berman – 3/15/2010 Wall Street Journal: Gitmo’s Indefensible Lawyers Debra Burlingame and Thomas Joscelyn – 3/15/2010 American Prospect/Tapped: Let’s Talk About Detainee Operations In Iraq...

JAS Cheers Passage of WV Finance Bill

Posted on March 15, 2010
The Justice at Stake Campaign applauded a vote in West Virginia’s legislature for public financing of state Supreme Court elections, saying it put the Mountain State in the forefront of such efforts nationwide. “In 2004, West Virginia became a national symbol of the dangers of special-interest spending on court elections,” said Bert Brandenburg, JAS executive [...

MI Chamber Seeks Campaign Finance Clarification

Posted on March 15, 2010
Michigan’s Chamber of Commerce has asked Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land for a declaratory ruling on existing state law in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling. The Chamber requested a ruling that it can pay from its treasury for advertising that urges the election or defeat of candidates, according to a [...

LWV President: ?Buck Up, Mr. Chief Justice!?

Posted on March 15, 2010
Mary G. Wilson, president of the League of Women Voters of the United States, would like Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. to know that “a little honest feedback can be a good thing.” Wilson wrote a letter to the editor of the Washington Post about Justice Roberts’ recently expressed doubts on Supreme Court justices attending [...

Editorial Urges ?Reality TV? at Supreme Court

Posted on March 15, 2010
The New York Times is editorializing in favor of “reality TV”–when it comes to the U.S. Supreme Court, that is. The newspaper’s editorial picks up on a recent poll showing more than 60 percent of voters  favored televising the proceedings of the Supreme Court, and it laments that the court  “seems determined to keep its work [...

Critic Lodges Ethics Complaint against MO Bar

Posted on March 15, 2010
James Harris, the leader of a challenge to the way Missouri selects its judges, has brought an ethics complaint against the Missouri Bar. According to a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article, the complaint alleges the Bar, created by the state Supreme Court, should educate–not advocate for or against a political position–and has spent large sums to campaign [...

Bloggers, promote your law blog by nominating your blog for inclusion in USLaw.com's Law Blog Directory and RSS Reader. Benefits described.