Way back in the callow, innocent days of, um, February 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered its opinion in Clapper v. Amnesty International. The case stemmed from a challenge of the constitutionality of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, 50 U. S. C. §1881a.
If you didn’t pay much attention to the Court’s decision in Clapper back then, you might want to revisit it now that we know we’re all subject to NSA surveillance . . . .
For all the criticism the government takes for poor money management, they really do know how to bring in the revenue. They may not intend to bring it in, but they bring it in.
For example, the U.S. government has investments poised to make 55 cents on the dollar. And these investments are also almost impossible not to collect.
And these investments are you. Or at least those of you with government loans from law school.
Steven Harper, author of The Lawyer Bubble: A Profession in Crisis (affiliate link), reviews the problem — and the less than stellar proposed solutions coming from Congress and the White House…
Continue reading “Federal Government Profiting Handsomely Off Your Debt”
This site has a reputation for suggesting that law schools run students into debt and pocket the cash while providing less and less to their students. (I don’t have the time to find one story, but here’s every story Elie has ever written.) We have articles on increasing debt. We have features on the salaries of law school professors.
Some call the business model of law schools a scandal.
But you can’t really have a scandal without Senate investigations uncovering secret slush funds, right?
It looks like NYU Law School may have hit the Nixonian big time!
Stanley M. Chesley
People have strong opinions about Stan Chesley, the high-profile, hugely successful plaintiffs’ lawyer — or former plaintiffs’ lawyer, since he recently got disbarred in Kentucky and gave up his law license in Ohio (in a retirement application that was notarized by his wife, federal judge Susan Dlott). Here are some choice comments about Chesley, nicknamed the “Prince of Torts” and “Master of Disaster”:
And those bells are still ringing. Stan Chesley might not be back in the courtroom, but he’s back in the headlines in Ohio….
Continue reading “Disgraced Plaintiffs’ Lawyer Stan Chesley: He’s Baaack….”
Towards the end of my piece this morning about the administration’s ridiculous response to the leaked evidence and confirmation that the NSA is scooping up every single phone record (confirmed from Verizon at least, though you can assume it applies to everyone else as well) was a quick note mentioning that Senator Dianne Feinstein was saying that this was a continuation of the same program that had been going on for seven years. And, now, lots of Senators are coming out and saying the same thing. In fact, it appears that our 100 Senators all knew that this has been going on for seven years without telling us…
Several organizations filed a Complaint of Judicial Misconduct against Fifth Circuit Judge Edith Jones earlier this week. The complaint charges Judge Jones with a variety of offenses, but the headline-getter is the claim that she made racist remarks during her speech on February 20, 2013, hosted by the University of Pennsylvania’s chapter of the Federalist Society.
With no transcript or recording of the event, the 12-page complaint relies on the affidavits of a few individuals who attended the speech, including Marc Bookman, the Director of the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation. Bookman’s affidavit serves as the primary account, with the other affiants agreeing and adding relatively few details. About a week before the Penn Fed Soc speech, Bookman published an essay in Mother Jones titled “How Crazy Is Too Crazy to Be Executed?”, about Texas murderer Andre Thomas. Whether Bookman intended ahead of time to use his account of the Fed Soc event as the basis of a misconduct complaint or not, he was likely expecting to be offended when he attended a Federalist Society speech called “Federal Death Penalty Review” by a pro-death-penalty, Texas-based judge. Just a guess….
Continue reading “A Tale of Sound & Fury (But No Transcript): In Defense of Judge Edith Jones”
I think there are many who think of judges as politicians in robes. In many states, that’s what they are.
– Retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, criticizing the election of judges as she delivered the Rudolf G. Schade Lecture on History, Ethics and Law at Elmhurst College.
Forget horse heads — this is what you wake up to if you try to unionize at Burger King.
* Burger King sells burgers by celebrating that they are built with fictional union labor while actively interfering with workers forming real unions. This would be too much hypocrisy for some, but Burger King gets to have it its way. [Buzzfeed]
* I cannot top the subject line from the tipster: “Obama calls the nation to arms on trade secret theft, but the nation is at the mall.” [Orrick]
* A review of Logan Beirne’s new book Blood of Tyrants: George Washington & the Forging of the Presidency (affiliate link). I wonder what George Washington would say if the Senate blocked his judicial nominees? [Washington Times]
* Step One: Collect cash from government for doing business in downtown Manhattan. Step Two: “Close” the firm and move all the partners and cases to Blank Rome. Step Three: Refuse to pay back the money. [Thompson Reuters News & Insight]
* Why does everyone want to go to law school? I figured it was just to compete in the ATL Law Revue competition. [The League of Ordinary Gentlemen]
* Be nicer to the sea cows! [Lowering the Bar]
* This Craigslist job posting under “Legal/Paralegal Jobs” in San Diego: Accidental listing or sadly prophetic commentary on the legal job market? Just in case someone removes the listing, I’ll post a screenshot after the jump…
The appellate court facing the most complex workload in the country is also tiny and overworked. Only the First Circuit has fewer active slots, and with three vacancies, the D.C. Circuit has fewer judges than its sibling courts with 11 active judges.
So it should come as no surprise that some senators are actively trying to shrink the D.C. Circuit.
The crux of their beef is that actually filling the three vacancies on the court would constitute court packing, because no one on the Hill has bothered to pick up an AP U.S. History textbook and figure out what “court packing” means.
But when you strip away the partisan stupidity and actually look at the numbers, there’s a really good argument in favor of “court packing” because this Circuit could use an extra judge or two…
Continue reading “Senators Call For Shrinking Small, Overworked D.C. Circuit”
Republicans can’t make moderate white people afraid of Barack Obama just because he’s black. They’ve tried. And it works on the fringe birther/nutjob element that is already suspicious of people who use polysyllabic words, much less multiculturalism. But with moderate “I can’t watch Fox because the game is on” white folks, all the dog-whistle calls in the world don’t cause racial animosity towards the likeable Barack Obama.
But his black friends are a different story. Or maybe Obama just thinks that voters will be more racist towards blacks without his personal likability? But for whatever reason, Obama has shown no stomach for standing up and defending the black people in his life when the Republican scandal brigade comes for their blood sacrifice.
Remember Jeremiah Wright? If he had been a white preacher to a Republican candidate, he would have gone unnoticed. Instead, he sounded a bit like an angry black man. Obama put that brother on ice. Remember Susan Rice? She did… nothing? She’s not Secretary of State because Obama didn’t want a fight. Hell, Obama didn’t even go to the mattresses for Desiree Rogers, his social secretary who got punked and was replaced by a white woman.
Let’s just say that if I were the first black attorney general, I wouldn’t expect a whole lot of help from the first black president right now…
Continue reading “Will Obama Abandon Eric Holder Like All His Other Black Friends?”
A college graduate without student loan debt is akin to reading a kind quote about Kim Kardashian in a tabloid—it’s rare.
In the past eight years, student loan debt has nearly tripled to a whopping $1.1 trillion, and in the past 10 years, the percentage of 25-year-olds with such debt has risen from 25% to 43%
It’s gotten so bad, in fact, that New York Fed economists warned last month that the burden of student debt could stilt consumer spending by twentysomethings, as well as further hamper the recovery of the housing market and economy.
To get a better idea of what massive student loan debt (we’re talking over $100,000 massive) looks like, we talked to an attorney who graduated with a large student loan debt. We also consulted LearnVest Planning Services CFP® Katie Brewer to see just how their repayment plans stack up.
S. Fischer, 36, Attorney
Graduated: 2001
How Much I Borrowed: $100,000
What I Still Owe: $45,000
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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.
Keep reading »
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