- Emerging newspaper business model: copyright lawsuits against bloggers? [Kravets, Wired, Ron Coleman, TechDirt, PoL]
- Five NYC hospitals to use “health courts” to seek agreements before medical malpractice cases go to trial [WSJ]
- Serpentine asbestos politics behind “California state rock” fracas [Cal Civil Justice, more, PoL, Bailey, earlier here and here]
- From Andrew Grossman: “Feinberg: ‘priests, mayors or even sheriffs could vouch for [BP trust fund] claims of local businesses.’ Has he ever been to Miss, La.?!”
- Va. lawyer, real estate agent sanctioned for “frivolous claims supported by wild speculation” [ABA Journal]
- An injury lawyer reads and reacts to my first book, The Litigation Explosion [Alan Crede]
- Le Corbusier’s writing made him sound like certain pro se litigants [Johnson, PrawfsBlawg]
- “Tip: Photoshopping Self Into Charity Photos Not Likely to Reduce Sentence” [Lowering the Bar, more]
Posts Tagged ‘crime and punishment’
“Rape by deception” in Israel
“A Palestinian man has been convicted of rape after having consensual sex with a woman who had believed him to be a fellow Jew.” [Guardian] Rape by deception is a crime in many although not all jurisdictions, with impersonation of a woman’s husband or lover being one classic fact pattern giving rise to charges; two years ago, in a debate over such a law in Massachusetts, critics expressed unease about which other sorts of misrepresentations might be reached as well [CBS News]
As for the civil-law side, a few years back (to quote from the manuscript of my forthcoming book Schools for Misrule):
a Northwestern law professor, building on the undeniable fact that many persons behave badly on the dating market, proposed as a remedy the development of a new tort of “sexual fraud,” which would allow lawsuits for cash damages against persons who use lies or insincerity to get others to sleep with them (“Of course I’m not married.”) It was one of the year’s most widely hailed and talked-about articles.
More: Max Fisher, Atlantic Wire (rounding up reactions); Eugene Volokh (including link to discussion of Massachusetts bill). And: comments from Andrew Sullivan’s readers.
“Reputations Don’t Return When Prosecutors Drop Charges”
Some collateral damage of white-collar prosecution. [David Glovin, Bloomberg]
Dear Congress: stop criminalizing things
Unless you can truly offer a good reason for doing so, argues Heritage’s Brian Walsh. Heritage issued a joint study last month with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and no, that is not as odd an alliance as it may sound. [Insider Online]
June 20 roundup
- Happy Father’s Day! Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy proposes criminal penalties for parents who skip parent-teacher conferences [WJBK via Welch, Reason]
- Plaintiff’s bar takes to online marketing in big way, Boston’s Sokolove firm has 20-employee team [WSJ Law Blog]
- Stuart Taylor, Jr., “The Myth of the Conservative Court” [The Atlantic]
- Happy Father’s Day, cont’d: that “sex offender” neighbor could turn out to be this poor guy [Stephen Mason, Psychology Today via Alkon]
- Libertarians debate anti-discrimination law [David Bernstein and others, Cato Unbound]
- Despite trial lawyer lobbying push, Congress declines for now to create “aid and abet” securities-fraud liability [Bainbridge] “Overcriminalization in the Financial Reform Legislation” [David Rittgers, Cato]
- As international “human rights” proliferate, they’re being applied for businesses’ benefit too, to some advocates’ displeasure [Bader, Examiner]
- Happy Father’s Day, cont’d: Virginia Supreme Court rules child can sue dad after traffic collision for not strapping her properly into car seat [OnPoint News]
New sentencing blog
SentenceSpeak is hosted by Families Against Mandatory Minimums (via Douglas Berman and Scott Greenfield).
May 24 roundup
- Pennsylvania attorney general subpoenas Twitter in search of critics’ identities, then backs down [Volokh and more, Levy/CL&P, Romenesko, Wired “Threat Level”]
- Letting kids have unsupervised time in NYC park not actually against the law [Free-Range Kids on “Take Your Kids to the Park, and Leave Them There Day”] Related from Lenore Skenazy: Spiked Online and Salon, “The War on Children’s Playgrounds”
- Uh-oh: New York chief judge Jonathan Lippman endorses massive new Civil Gideon legal-aid entitlement [ABA Journal, and the NYT cheers]
- “Novartis Hit With $250 Million in Punitives in Gender Bias Case” [NYLJ, WSJ Law Blog (blaming bad defense trial strategy) and more, ABA Journal, Hyman]
- Med-mal law has done very well for two attorney brothers in Georgia [Atlanta Journal-Constitution via Pero]
- Kagan’s Oxford thesis revealed: judges shouldn’t make it up as they go along in quest of social justice. Sensation ensues! [WSJ Law Blog, related on political-branch deference] And were the SG’s judicial-restraint principles activated by Graham v. Florida? [Stuart Taylor, Jr., National Journal]
- Federal Elections Commission as net regulator: “How the DISCLOSE Act will restrict free speech” [Brad Smith/Jeff Patch, Reason]
- “Law Professor Confesses ‘I’m a Criminal’” [Tim Lynch, Cato]
- Argentina: “Parts of Anti-Plagiarism Bill Lifted from Wikipedia” [Lowering the Bar, TechDirt]
May 18 roundup
- Upside-down logic of Supreme Court’s Comstock, Graham cases: imprison youthful offenders for life only if they haven’t had protections of formal trial [Popehat, Pilon, Shapiro, Volokh, Pattis] Kennedy returns to use of international “consensus” as guide in constitutional interpretation [Shapiro, Bader]
- Connecticut AG Richard Blumenthal, noted scourge of misleading ad promotion (as in the Sony ghost blurber case), falsely claimed Vietnam service [Raymond Hernandez, NY Times] Cf. the curious “Harvard swim captain” claims investigated by Chris Fountain. More: AllahPundit.
- Louisiana politico Theriot: my suit against online critics is meant not to shut anyone up but to pick up useful tips on governance [Times-Picayune, Jefferson Report, Volokh, NY Times]
- South Carolina juries not allowed to hear evidence about seat belt use in car crashes [Pero]
- More links on “Lady KaGa” Supreme Court nomination [Cato at Liberty, Ted at PoL]
- Risk of “minor” injuries may result in end to Naval Academy tradition of stunt climb [John J. Miller, NRO]
- “Art of the Steal,” documentary on epic battle over donor intent in case of suburban Philadelphia Barnes collection [Kauffmann/TNR, L.A. Times, CultureGrrl/ArtsJournal]
- “Why Good Intentions are Often Not Enough: The Potential for Ethical Blindness in Legal Decision-Making” [Kath Hall (Australian National University), SSRN via Andrew Perlman, Legal Ethics Forum]
Dutch nurse imprisoned for six years over patients’ unexplained deaths
And then came the second look [Scott Greenfield]
On foreign bribery, two-tiered justice?
Several recent investigations of large companies under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) have resulted in large fines as punishment for bribery payouts totaling hundreds of millions. Now a FCPA prosecution of an individual, Charles Paul Edward Jumet, for improperly paying $200,000 to obtain lighthouse and buoy contracts in Panama, has resulted in a 7.25 year prison sentence. While Jumet’s conviction is based on other charges as well (making false statements to federal agents), Mike Koehler at FCPA Professor wonders whether justice is being served equally.