Barack Obama

Quote of the Day: But What About Law School?

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In the United States of America, no one should go broke because they chose to go to college.


– Barack Obama

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SCOTUS Slammed at SOTU;
Alito Mouths ‘Not True’ at the President

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Supreme Court SCOTUS State of the Union SOTU.jpgBarack Obama just finished up his first State of the Union address. Lots of interesting things: jobs, gays in the military, health reform capitulation c’mon we’re so close we’ve got to do something…. Oh, and nuclear power plants are back on the agenda. CHECK YOU RADIATION LEVELS.

But the biggest legal news, at least from the perspective of your Above the Law editors, was Obama’s smackdown of the Supreme Court — while six of the nine were sitting right in front of his face.

It was so harsh that it inspired Justice Samuel Alito to shake his head and to mouth the words “not true” at the president — very reminiscent of the “you lie” moment from the last time Obama spoke in front of a joint session of Congress.

The video and additional details — plus UPDATES, including a mini-debate between Kash and Lat, and a READER POLL — after the jump.

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Alito Mouths ‘Not True’ at the President”

ATL Lawyer of the Year: The Nominees

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Lawyer of the Year 2009 AboveTheLaw blog Above the Law ATL.jpgThanks to everyone who submitted possible nominees for our Lawyer of the Year award. We reviewed your 160+ comments and developed a slate of ten worthy candidates.

Before we reveal them, we’ll talk about a few folks we passed over. A number of you suggested Mike Leach, the lawyer turned football coach who was recently fired by Texas Tech University. Although Leach’s achievements on the gridiron are considerable, he’s more of a football figure than a legal figure, so he didn’t make the team.

A few of the lawyers you suggested, while certainly well-known, really belong to years prior to 2009. These include former New York governor and Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who resigned in disgrace after his dalliances with prostitutes came to light; former administrative law judge Roy Pearson, of the infamous $54 million (originally $67 million) pants lawsuit; and prominent IP litigator Jeremy Pitcock.

Also named: Kathy Henry, a former Legal Secretary of the Day, whose alleged oversight could have cost PepsiCo a pretty penny — over a billion dollars (until the default judgment was vacated). But since she’s a legal secretary rather than a lawyer (or even a law student), we passed her over.

So who made the cut? Check out the nominees and vote for your favorite, after the jump.

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Obama: Starting to Get the Hang of This Whole ‘Prejudging’ Thing

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Obama Nobel.jpgPresident Obama seems to have made up his mind about the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed circus trial that will be coming to a New York courthouse near you. The Associate Press reports (gavel bang: ABA Journal):

Obama, in a series of TV interviews during his trip to Asia, said those offended by the legal rights accorded Mohammed by virtue of his facing a civilian trial rather than a military tribunal won’t find it “offensive at all when he’s convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him.”

I’ve argued that Obama isn’t as cool as everybody makes him out to be, but that was certainly some cold-ass rhetoric. “[W]hen the death penalty is applied to him”? Damn brother, you sending in the Wolf too?
Of course, after the jump, the lawyer part of Obama’s brain kicks in and he backpedals like a professional cornerback.

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Career Alternatives for Attorneys: Preventing Dictatorship?

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Stewart Rhodes Stew Rhodes Oathkeepers Oath Keepers.JPGMeet Stewart Rhodes. He graduated in 2004 from Yale Law School, where his paper, “Solving the Puzzle of Enemy Combatant Status,” won a prize for the best paper on the Bill of Rights. Before entering the law, he served as a U.S. Army paratrooper.
What’s Rhodes up to now? Many military men turned lawyers troop off to large law firms, where the discipline and diligence cultivated in the armed forces help them succeed. Others join the JAG Corps or work for defense contractors.
But Rhodes, who was a non-traditional student at YLS, has taken a non-traditional career path since graduating.

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Lawyer of the Day: Orly Taitz

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orly taitz.jpgOrly Taitz is a California attorney described by Wikipedia as “a leading figure in the ‘birther’ movement, which challenges whether Barack Obama is a natural-born citizen eligible to serve as President of the United States.” She started the Defend Our Freedoms nonprofit in order to wage the birther battle. We’re glad to see that its website does not have a photo of Obama with a question mark; instead, it has a tasteful image of Taitz’s head photoshopped over the Constitution, the American flag, and ALR volumes.
Earlier this year, Taitz went to federal court (M.D. Ga.) to request a restraining order on behalf of Army doctor Connie Rhodes preventing Rhodes’s deployment to Iraq. Taitz claimed that the deployment order was illegal because President Obama is not legally president, and attached among her evidence the obviously-faked Kenyan birth certificate for Obama that has circulated on the Internetz.
Federal judge Clay Land aborted that birther suit and reprimanded Taitz for filing a frivolous lawsuit. Shortly thereafter, Connie Rhodes wrote Judge Land a letter saying she found out about the lawsuit via media reports and had neither asked Taitz to represent her nor wished to resist her deployment.
Yet Taitz is still laboring over this suit and filed an order challenging Land’s dismissal of the case. He responded by giving her a two-week deadline to explain why he shouldn’t sanction her and fine her $10,000. On the deadline, she filed a motion to recuse Land from the case. He didn’t like that…

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Peering Into The Crystal Ball for Obama’s Judicial Picks
(Plus a live chat with the New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin)

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Barack Obama small President Barack Obama.jpgThe current New Yorker has an interesting piece by Jeffrey Toobin on President Obama’s judicial picks. Toobin took part in a live chat about the piece at NewYorker.com right now earlier today if you’re interested. (Try not to crash their website.).
UPDATE: The chat’s quite interesting. Toobin reveals why he likes Justice Souter best and answers this young wannabe judge’s question:

11:31 Guest: I’m a 25 year old law student, I want to be a judge, and my roommate smokes pot. How worried should I be? Do you think people will still care when I’m older?

11:32 Jeffrey Toobin: Don’t inhale! I’m kidding. I don’t think it will make a bit of difference. Our president has more or less admitted he was a pretty big pothead in his day, and it’s been a non-issue. Certainly the fact that your roommate smokes — not you — is irrelevant.

Toobin’s piece is available online to non-subscribers here. If you don’t feel like clicking through seven pages, here’s the ATL reader’s digest version:
Jeffrey Toobin small CNN New Yorker legal lawyer Above the Law blog.jpg

  • Aging liberal judges hung on through the Bush era, but once a Dem took over, they were ready to hang up their robes. Additionally, since 2006, Senator Patrick Leahy has prevented Bush’s nominees from getting through the Judiciary Committee. Now vacancies abound in the federal judiciary.
  • Bush kicked ass in choosing judges; Obama is taking his sweet time. In the first eight months of their respective terms, Bush nominated 52 judges while Obama has chosen 17.
  • Obama says he’s looking for “experiential diversity” in his judicial nominations: “not just judges and prosecutors but public defenders and lawyers in private practice.” But his first batch of nominees are mainly former judges, like SCOTUS justice Sonia Sotomayor and Indianapolis federal district judge David Hamilton, nominated by Obama to the Seventh Circuit.
    More bullets, after the jump.

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    (Plus a live chat with the New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin)”

    Хороший день, Comrade Pay Czar. Не снимите нас

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    Russia.jpgFriday was the last day for companies on the government dole to submit their pay plans to Kenneth Feinberg, our nation’s new Pay Czar. The new compensation commissar is as powerful as a mid-winter blizzard on the Eurasian Steppe. According to Law.com:

    The Obama administration’s “pay czar” is embarking on a review of proposed compensation packages for the top employees at seven companies that are on government life support, marking the first time a federal official will have veto power over how much private-sector executives are compensated.

    Kenneth Feinberg, who ran the government’s fund for families of the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, has 60 days to approve or reject the compensation plans submitted this week from bailout recipients. They include American International Group Inc. and General Motors.

    Can’t you just see a detail of Feinberg’s men assigned to follow Fritz Henderson (the new CEO of GM) during his training routine? One day maybe Fritz will outrun Feinberg’s men and climb to the top of a high peak and scream “Fein-BERG,” as he prepares for an epic final battle with Feinberg himself?

    In the meantime, here are more reasons why being a lawyer right now is better than being a banker.

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    Obama Likes ‘Em Young

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    Obama Change.JPGAfter taking some criticism for appointing federal judges who need to wear Life Alert buttons Underneath their Robes, Obama seems to be reversing course. Politico reports:

    On Friday, Obama nominated Abdul Kallon, 40, of Birmingham, Ala., and Jacqueline Nguyen, 44, of Los Angeles, Calif., to district court judgeships. The two lawyers are the youngest of the 12 judicial nominees Obama has put forward since taking office.

    While the appointments are a departure from this administration’s past habits, they are representative of Obama’s commitment to diversity on the bench:

    Don’t tell the birthers, but both Nguyen and Kallon were born outside the U.S.! Nguyen was born in Dalat, Vietnam and fled with her family in the evacuation of Saigon… Kallon was born in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

    Including more immigrants will make Barack’s bench look more like America. And these new people might be around a long, long time.
    Obama goes young(er) with new judge picks [Politico]
    Old World [The New Republic]

    Morning Docket 5.22.09

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    baseball.jpg* Republicans slam Obama for his “empathy” standard for his SCOTUS nominee, citing an earlier speech on the Senate floor emphasizing a different standard. [The Washington Post]
    * Speaking of Obama, is he “the best lawyer to occupy the U.S. presidency since William Howard Taft”? [Foreign Policy]
    * The Yankees held a moot court in a room off the clubhouse. Would you want to face a jury of Derek Jeter and Johnny Damon? [The New York Times]
    * The Justice Department has arranged for the first Guantanamo inmate to be tried in a New York court. [The Washington Post]
    * Shuttered Chrysler dealers may have a tough time fighting their closures in court, due to the freedom that bankruptcy laws give courts to tear up contracts. [The Wall Street Journal]
    * Immigrants are being deported in the middle of their court cases. [The Los Angeles Times]

    Morning Docket 5.21.09

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    Craigslist small.jpg* President Obama will talk about his plans to close Guantanamo in a national address in order to rally support from the public after getting shut down by members of Congress. [CNN]
    * After quietly accepting charges from several states, Craiglist is fighting back. The company sued South Carolina’s attorney general for violating free speech and the Commerce Clause with his prosecution threats. [San Francisco Chronicle]
    * A “flamboyant” high profile defense attorney in New Jersey who was famous for saying “no witness, no case” has been charged with having key witnesses murdered. [New York Times]
    * “Manhattan prosecutors have charged a New York personal injury lawyer with stealing $650,000 in client settlement money. [ABA Journal]
    * Despite his liberal tendencies, David Souter treated the business community well. Will Obama’s successor do the same? [Wall Street Journal]
    * The pitfalls and benefits of power of attorney. [New York Times]

    Morning Docket 02.24.09

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    cross.jpg

    * SCOTUS will look at the separation of church and state when they decide whether “a cross to honor fallen soldiers can stand in a national preserve in California.” [The Los Angeles Times]

    * Lawyers say Madoff must have had help with his Ponzi scheme. [Bloomberg]

    * Attorney General Eric Holder visited Guantanamo yesterday to see what is needed to close the prison. [The Associated Press]

    * Meanwhile, a Pentagon official who inspected Guantanamo at Obama’s request is under fire from human rights activists for filing a report (which declares Gitmo humane) that is little more than good public relations for the administration. [The New York Times]

    * What do you do when your boss gets indicted for securities fraud? You get another job. A team of seven bankruptcy lawyers left Dreier LLP for Epstein Becker Green. [EBG]

    * A federal judge encouraged the Obama administration to decide whether to keep pursuing a case against 11 Vietnam War Veterans accused of trying to overthrow Laos’s communist government. [The Associated Press]

    * Judge says: UBS must respond to the U.S. lawsuit seeking disclosure of 52,000 names of people who allegedly used Swiss accounts for tax evasion. [Bloomberg]