* Thieves made off with 5.5 tons of Nutella. Damn you Danny Ocean! [CBS News]
* Don’t try to play Baseketball in Canton, Ohio. [Legal Juice]
* The SEC finally allows companies to distribute disclosures via social media. Welcome to the 21st Century, SEC. [IT-Lex]
* Speaking of the SEC, Mary Jo White was confirmed by the Senate. [Fox Business]
* Chief Judge Alex Kozinski: “Can I get an oy vey up in here?” [COLLive]
* Kentucky is just all kinds of screwy. Lawyer jailed for not turning over documents/running drug ring. [AP]
* Energy law was number two in law firm activity this quarter. For the billionth quarter in a row, Third Amendment law failed to crack the top 10. [AOL Energy]
* Ha! “Thus, it seems that (as has so often occurred in IP law) the focus on the problems of copyright and patent has allowed trademark law to engage, unsupervised, in a great deal of mischief.” [Law of Fashion]
* Just a reminder: Legalizing gay marriage does not end discrimination. [National Law Journal]
Roger Ebert passed away last week, robbing us of a great film critic and an equally insightful social critic. Ebert loved the movies and his critical ire was only raised when films failed to live up to the standards he’d set in his own mind.
But one genre of film seemed to give Ebert consistent fits — the legal movie. From drama to comedy, if the film found its way into a courtroom, Ebert was likely on the wrong side of public opinion. As a tribute to the critic, we’ve gathered some of his reviews to pass final verdict on Ebert’s understanding of the legal genre….
We will be appealing this decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. If the Court takes the appeal, I will argue it personally as I have done in two previous cases over the past five months. In my last case, the Supreme Court accepted my argument and overruled the Ninth Circuit’s decision unanimously.
– Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne, commenting on the Ninth Circuit’s grant of federal habeas relief to Debra Milke, who has been on Arizona’s death row for 22 years.
(Why is Milke sometimes called the “Arizona sister” of Casey Anthony? Keep reading….)
Chief Judge Alex Kozinski speaking at Yale Law School last year.
Perhaps this should be “benchslap of a few days ago,” since it happened last week. But it’s never too late to read about Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, right?
This latest benchslap involves the Ninth Circuit setting aside a murder conviction. So you might expect the benchslap to be coming from a unanimous Supreme Court in a summary reversal.
But no. The benchslap — actually, make that benchslaps, plural — come from the Ninth Circuit. On the receiving end: the police, prosecutors, a state judge, and a federal judge. Names are named.
And I wouldn’t hold my breath while waiting for SCOTUS to reverse. This decision looks pretty safe….
* Michigan will assume control of Detroit pursuant to the state’s controversial “Emergency Manager Law.” How controversial? Michigan voters went to the polls to repeal the law last year… and the legislature said no. There’s a fitting symmetry that a law that denies the democratic rights of the people exists only because the legislature trampled on the democratic rights of the people. [WXYZ]
* A Harvard Law grad opens an e-commerce lingerie startup. The hook for her bra business is in-home fittings. Perfect for the cross-dresser who hates prying eyes. [Forbes]
* Rutgers-Newark and Rutgers-Camden have announced that they will merge into a single law school named “Rutgers School of Law” effective Fall 2014. The new school accomplishes the important goal of removing the words “Newark” and “Camden” from promotional materials. [TaxProf Blog]
* Professor Eugene Kontorovich explains how Chief Judge Kozinski’s piracy ruling actually advanced the liberal causes of the Law of the Sea and expanding the scope of the Alien Tort Statute. Yeah, but it also doomed us to destruction if Captain Kirk can’t get his act together in this new timeline. [Volokh Conspiracy]
* The producers of The Bachelor may need better lawyers. After they settled a claim with blogger Reality Steve, barring him from contacting cast and crew for spoilers, he’s publishing spoilers again. Reality Steve’s defense? The settlement agreement was silent on the matter of cast and crew contacting him. Touché. Reality Steve wins a one-on-one this week. [IT-Lex.org]
* Sometimes you just need to call the other player’s bluff. Right-wing legislators in Utah loudly parroted talk-radio scripts calling for Utah to reject federal grant money. Democrats in Utah agreed and voted to reject federal grants. Then Republicans started to panic. [Utah Political Report]
* Jon Stewart calls for the drowning of legal journalist Peter Lattman for being a wizard. Video after the jump….
Whenever a decision opens with the line, “[y]ou don’t need a peg leg or an eye patch,” you know you’re in for some fun.
In this case, the always colorful Judge Kozinski provides an entire opinion about piracy months before International Talk Like a Pirate Day. This time the pirates are whaling protestors from the Animal Planet series Whale Wars, and the Ninth Circuit thinks they need to leave some poor Japanese whalers alone.
In the process, Judge Kozinski delivers a scathing benchslap to the lower court judge who just so happens to have a much more famous brother (and niece).
Who is it? Batten down the hatches and let’s find out….
Last week, Chief Judge Alex Kozinski paid a visit to Yale Law School, where he made two public appearances. He had a Charlie Rose-style conversation with Noah Messing, YLS’s Lecturer in the Practice of Law and Legal Writing, and then he did an event with the Federalist Society, moderated by a current student, Jon Fougner.
Let’s hear what His Honor had to say, about a wide range of topics — his favorite opinion of his, tips for getting ahead in the legal profession, advocates who have impressed him over the years, why you shouldn’t take your mother to your oral argument, and why you should read Playboy (hint: it’s not for the articles)….
If you’re trapped in the office on this Friday after Thanksgiving — or, just as bad, stuck at a distant relative’s house with nothing to do — Professor Hadley Arkes of Amherst College and Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit are here to help.
Last weekend, at the National Lawyers Convention of the Federalist Society, Professor Arkes and Chief Judge Kozinski debated whether natural law should inform constitutional law. Let’s check out their most interesting debate….
Left to right: Alex Kozinski and Diarmuid O’Scannlain.
This week is an exciting one for conservative and libertarian legal nerds: the National Lawyers Convention of the Federalist Society starts tomorrow. I’ll be attending and covering the proceedings; if you see me, please say hello. (If you haven’t registered for the conference in advance, you can still register at the door.)
As always, the conference will overflow with legal luminaries. This year, two of the Ninth Circuit’s most notable names — Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, and Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain (for whom I clerked) — will be making presentations. Chief Judge Kozinski will debate Professor Hadley Arkes about natural law and constitutional law, while Judge O’Scannlain will moderate a panel about religious liberty.
To whet your appetite, let’s read more about both of these judges and some recent First Amendment fun at the Ninth Circuit….
– The introductory line to Chief Judge Alex Kozinski’s recent separate opinion in Garfias-Rodriguez v. Holder (9th Cir. Oct. 19, 2012). As noted by the WSJ Law Blog, the other opinions of the highly fragmented en banc court had more traditional designations, like “concurrence” and “dissent.” Howard Bashman was amused.
(Additional news out of the Ninth Circuit, of a serious and sad nature, after the jump.)
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Ed. note: The Asia Chronicles column is authored by Kinney Recruiting. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates, counsels and partners in Asia than any other recruiting firm in each of the past six years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com.
Deal flow has clearly picked recently up for most US associates, counsels and partners in Hong Kong/China and Singapore. We are on the phone with a lot of these folks on a daily basis, many of whom we have known for years. Further, the head of our Asia team, Evan Jowers, and Kinney’s founder and president, Robert Kinney, frequently meet in person with leading US partners in Asia to assess their needs and keep on top of the inside scoop at as many firms as possible. The need for legal recruiting help in Asia from experienced recruiters appears to be live and well. In March, Evan and Robert were in Beijing at such meetings, in April, Evan was in Hong Kong, and for half of June Evan will be in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Thus its pretty easy for us to tell when there has been an across-the-market pick up in capital markets and corporate work.
On an average day in Asia when Evan and Robert visit firms, they typically have 5 to 9 meetings a day, mostly with US partners in the market. The reason they have these meetings is not simply because Kinney makes a lot of US attorney placements in Asia and that a particular firm may have openings; instead these are just visits with friends. After years of working together as business partners, the folks at Kinney are actually these peoples’ friends. The firms Kinney work closely with in Asia (which is just about every law firm – call us if you want to know the one firm in the world we will never place anyone with again, ever, and why) look forward to the visits, or at least act like they do. After seven years in the market, many of the client partners are former associate candidates. Also, these US partners see Kinney as a very good source of market information as well, because they know how deep their contacts are in the market and how frequently they are speaking to counterparts at peer firms.
In a land that is right here and in a time that is right now, a technology has arisen so powerful that it can replace basic human document review. Is it time to bow down before our new robot overlords?
First, here’s a little story about me: my life in the legal world began as a paralegal. My first case was a GIANT patent infringement case that was already six years old and had involved as many as five companies, multiple US courts, the ITC and an international standards committee. I knew nothing about any of this.
On my first day, my supervisor (a paralegal with at least eight other cases driving her crazy) sat me down in front of a Concordance database with a 100,000+ patents and patent file histories. “Code these,” she said. I learned that “coding”, for the purposes of this exercise, meant manually typing the inventor’s name, the title of the patent, the assignee, the file date, and other objective data for each document. I worked on that project – and only that project – for at least the first six months of my job. After a week or so, time began to blur.
What I know, in retrospect and with absolutely certainty, is that as time began to blur, so did my judgment. So did my attention to detail. If you could tell me that I did not make at least one mistake a day – one inconsistent spelling, one reversed day and month, one incorrectly spaced title – I frankly would need to see your evidence. I would not believe it. The human mind is trainable but it is not a machine.
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* Thieves made off with 5.5 tons of Nutella. Damn you Danny Ocean! [CBS News]
