Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘Barack Obama’

Election-season YouTube takedowns

They seem now to be part of the accepted armament of campaign law. “Of course the McCain-Palin team could counter-notify, but the DMCA’s 10-14 business day waiting period makes that option next to useless, when ’10 days can be a lifetime in a political campaign.'” (Seltzer/Citizen Media Law, Levy/CL&P; but see Ron Coleman, Oct. 15: process need not be as slow as waiting period implies).

Related: Does trademark law allow candidates to suppress some types of opposition keyword advertising, as when candidates put up negative ads keyed to each others’ names? [Levy/CL&P]

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Notable debate moment

“McCain challenged Obama on where he’s broken with his party, and Obama offered some specifics: A vote for tort reform, ‘which wasn’t very popular with trial lawyers’ and which divided Democrats, and support for charter schools and clean coal technology.” (Ben Smith, The Politico, Oct. 15).

Co-blogger Ted (who, it should be noted, is actively supporting McCain this fall) has written on Obama’s legal reform votes here and here.

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McCain and Palin guilty of “criminal incitement”?

[Cross-posted from Point of Law]. I’ve got a new piece just up at City Journal in which I examine last week’s boomlet of interest around the liberal blogosphere in the notion that by riling up campaign crowds about Obama’s links to Bill Ayers, John McCain and (especially) Sarah Palin have engaged in “incitement to violence” of a “borderline criminal” nature that perhaps should even draw the attention of the Secret Service or FBI. (For examples of this boomlet, look among the several hundred occurrences of “Palin + incite” at Technorati between October 7 and 13; I also include a sampling as links in my piece). The article originated in a short post at Point of Law that City Journal asked me to expand into a longer treatment. I must say I find it fascinating that many bloggers, Huffington Post writers, etc. could so casually jettison the hard-won victories of free-speech liberalism, which fought long and hard against “incitement” theories by which criminal penalties might be applied to inflammatory speech. The idea of exposing your opponents to investigation or even arrest because you don’t approve of the contents of their speeches doesn’t seem like a particularly liberal one to me.

More: Stephen Bainbridge takes note.

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October 14 roundup

  • Don’t miss Roger Parloff’s tour de force coverage in Fortune blowing whistle on that dodgy suit in Moscow against Bank of New York Mellon, adorned by participation of lawprofs Dershowitz and Blakey [PoL overview, main article]
  • Digital remixes and copyright law [Lessig, WSJ]
  • Surgeon at Connecticut’s Greenwich Hospital revealed as drug abuser, Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder now pressing suit on behalf of general class of patients, which sounds like it means “whether harmed or not” [Greenwich Time, Newsday via TortsProf weekly roundup]
  • Chicago sheriff halting foreclosures, or maybe not, reportage is confused [Reuters, big discussion at Steve Chapman blog] And is Obama taking the idea national with bid for 90-day moratorium on foreclosures? [AP]
  • Foie gras-style financial gavage? “None of banks getting government money was given a choice about it, said one of the people familiar with the plans.” [Bloomberg, Bernstein @ Volokh] More: Ann Althouse, Kuznicki/Cato at Liberty.
  • Trey Allen law firm in Dallas agrees to pay $840,000 restitution after profiting from staged car crash scheme, but Allen’s lawyer says client wasn’t aware of any fraud [ABA Journal]
  • Smoking bans, alcohol taxes contributing to steep decline of English village pubs [Newsweek]
  • Bias-law panel rules Wal-Mart within its rights not to hire a female applicant for Santa Claus position [eight years ago on Overlawyered]

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Microblog 2008-09-23

  • @carney John Carney on short selling “I want a personal uptick rule. No one can be mean to me unless it’s preceded by good news about me.” #
  • Megan McArdle on the run on money market funds, thanks @petewarden Atlantic #
  • George Will implicitly endorsing Obama? Sure looks like it WaPo #
  • Kevin LaCroix keeps a tally of credit crisis investor lawsuits D&O Diary thanks @lilyhill #
  • Moose causes 9-car pileup right here in the NYC suburbs, Sarah come help White Plains Journal-News #
  • Politicshome USA is pretty neat election site even aside from their flattering the heck outta me Overlawyered #

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Microblog 2008-09-22

    I’ve renamed these telegraphic roundups “microblog” which seems more approachable than “Twitter”. Better name suggestions are welcome.
  • Many countries had booms in housing finance, why was our meltdown worst? EconBrowser #
  • Hail of dead cats from blogosphere for Paulson bailout plan PoL #
  • Stunningly bad McCain idea: have Andrew Cuomo run SEC Mickey Kaus #
  • Business historian John Steele Gordon on origins of mortgage meltdown NYT Freakonomics guest post #
  • Going after lawyers in mortgage mess? New York Law Journal #
  • Obama to pick centrists for high court? Not if advisers Minow and Tribe can help it Kerr @ Volokh #

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“Obama, McCain make a joint appearance — in frivolous lawsuits”

Famous persons often attract the attention of serial or scattershot lawsuit-filers, including inmates filing handwritten complaints. Senators McCain and Obama are luckier than many defendants because of the principle cited by a federal judge as he dismissed one recent complaint: “Members of Congress are absolutely immune from lawsuits, such as this one, arising from the performance of their official duties.” But such suits do “require both the defendants and the judicial system to pay attention”, and sometimes employ attorneys to file multi-page formal motions in response. (Michael Doyle, McClatchy, Sept. 12 via How Appealing).

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September 11 roundup

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White House race roundup

  • High-profile trial lawyer and Hillary fundraiser John Coale now backing McCain, believes plaintiff-friendly Sen. Lindsey Graham, a confidant of the GOP candidate, will sway him on liability issues [Gerstein, NY Sun, Tapper/ABC, Haddad/Newsweek] More on McCain-Graham friendship [New Republic]
  • Reasonably neutral evaluation of contrasting McCain and Obama positions [Chris Nichols, NC Trial Law Blog]
  • No Naderite he? Sen. Biden has generally taken a “protect the golden goose” approach toward his state’s niche as provider of corporate law [Pileggi, Bainbridge]
  • Palin’s views on legal reform mostly unknown; Alaska (like Delaware) has one of the most highly regarded state legal systems, and wouldn’t it be fun if the state’s distinctive and longstanding (if somewhat attenuated) loser-pays rule got mentioned in the campaign?
  • Lending spice to campaign: prospect that victorious Dems might criminally prosecute Bush officials [Guardian (U.K.), Memeorandum, OpenLeft (“we’ll put people in prison” vows whistleblower trial lawyer/Democratic Florida Congressional candidate Alan Grayson)] Some differences of opinion among Obama backers on war crimes trials [Turley (Cass Sunstein flayed for go-slow approach); Kerr @ Volokh (Dahlia Lithwick doesn’t think it has to be Nuremberg or nothing); earlier]
  • If anyone’s keeping track of these things, co-blogger Ted is much involved with the McCain campaign this fall, I am not involved with anyone’s, so discount (or don’t discount) accordingly.

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More on Joseph Biden

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