Affirmative Action

  • Morning Docket: 08.04.17
    Morning Docket

    Morning Docket: 08.04.17

    * The White House announces ten new judicial nominations, including two for circuit courts (previously predicted in these pages). We’ll have more on this later. [Washington Times]

    * King & Spalding joins Jones Day and Sullivan & Cromwell as a “feeder firm” for the Trump administration. [Law.com]

    * Will the Trump Justice Department’s possible attack on affirmative action succeed? Law professors disagree. [How Appealing]

    * Michelle Carter, the woman convicted for basically texting her boyfriend into committing suicide, gets sentenced to 15 months. [ABA Journal]

    * White-collar criminal defense lawyers discuss what to expect from the grand jury convened by special counsel Robert Mueller. [National Law Journal]

    * The trend continues: fewer law school graduates, better employment statistics. [ABA Journal]

    * Elliot Katz, a leading lawyer in the self-driving-car space, motors from DLA Piper to McGuireWoods. [Law.com]

    * If you’ll be online in the afternoon on Wednesday, August 16, join me and ABA Legal Career Central for a Twitter chat about career paths for lawyers, especially alternative careers. [American Bar Association]

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  • Morning Docket: 08.02.17
    Morning Docket

    Morning Docket: 08.02.17

    * “We have a very crappy judicial system.” Judge Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit says the Supreme Court has far too few justices, and is calling for 10 more to be added to the high court’s ranks, as he thinks the current arrangement on the bench is “[m]ediocre and highly politicized.” Tell ’em how you really feel, Your Honor. [Chicago Tribune]

    * “This is deeply disturbing.” The Justice Department’s civil rights division is planning to sue colleges and universities that engage in “intentional race-based discrimination” in their affirmative action policies — that is, discrimination against white applicants. Hmm, wasn’t this recently before SCOTUS… twice? [New York Times]

    * RIP, billables: Microsoft wants to completely eliminate the billable hour by entering into alternative fee arrangements with all of the firms it works with in the future. Twelve Biglaw firms and one intellectual property firm will spearhead this movement as the company’s strategic partners. [Big Law Business]

    * The Department of Education has filed a motion for summary judgment in a suit brought by the ABA over public service loan forgiveness, claiming that its forgiveness eligibility determinations won’t be final until 10 years have passed and that any eligibility letters sent thus far are nonbinding and merely advisory. How comforting for law grads drowning in debt? [Law.com; ABA Journal]

    * The Senate has confirmed King & Spalding partner Christopher Wray as the new director of the FBI. During his hearings, Wray said he’d resign if he were ever asked to do something immoral or illegal, as his “commitment is to the rule of law, to the Constitution, to follow the facts wherever they may lead.” [CNN]

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  • Morning Docket: 11.10.16
    Morning Docket

    Morning Docket: 11.10.16

    * Before Donald Trump sets foot into the Oval Office, he’ll have to step into a federal courthouse to litigate claims made by former students who claim they were defrauded by Trump University. How in the world will they find an impartial jury? “This is a jury consultant’s nightmare to pick in a case like this. It will be taught in jury consulting school.” [Reuters]

    * Yesterday, in a silent act of protest against Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wore her “dissent jabot” during oral arguments at the Supreme Court. This summer, she famously remarked that she “[couldn’t] imagine what the country would be — with Donald Trump as our president.” [The Hill]

    * In his first 100 days in office, Donald Trump says he’ll appoint a conservative judge to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia, and his legacy may be the undoing of Supreme Court precedent, like overruling Roe v. Wade, ending affirmative action, striking down campaign finance laws, and invalidating gun restrictions. [Los Angeles Times]

    * How will Donald Trump’s presidency change the DOJ and the SEC? There will likely be changes at the top of both organizations. It’s speculated that Rudy Giuliani may be selected to replace Loretta Lynch as AG, but Trump has given no indication as to who he’ll choose to replace Mary Jo White as commissioner. [DealBook / New York Times]

    * If you’d like to know what it takes to become a law firm partner, these 338 lawyers who made partner within the last four years have some helpful hints for you. It seems to be a mixture of “hours, hours, hours” and being a man — two-thirds of those who were surveyed were men who had worked at their firms for five to 10 years. [Am Law Daily]

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  • Morning Docket: 06.30.16
    Morning Docket

    Morning Docket: 06.30.16

    * In case you haven’t been keeping score like we have, these are the firms that recently raised salaries: Kaye Scholer, Lynn Pinker Cox & Hurst, and Kasowitz Benson. If you’re worried you’ve missed any of our coverage on pay raises, you can check out our omnibus 2016 salary chart where we collect these stories. [2016 Salary Increase / Above the Law]

    * Brexit isn’t just the financial undoing of a nation anymore: Boston Beer, the brewer of Sam Adams Boston Lager, has filed an intent-to-use trademark application to turn Brexit into a hard cider made from apples sourced in the UK. Just close your eyes, think of England, and take a swig before the next time you look at your 401(k). [WSJ Law Blog]

    * This term at the Supreme Court was a big letdown for conservatives. First, Justice Antonin Scalia passed away, and then the high court continued to shift leftwards, leading liberals to prevail in some of the Court’s most influential decisions, from affirmative action to abortion rights. Better luck next term, conservatives. [Washington Post]

    * Even though the school has offered buyouts to all of its tenured faculty and laid off staff, Dean Andrea Lyon says the worst is over for Valparaiso Law. Meanwhile, the school’s former dean says it could close, but doesn’t think it’s likely. Right now, he’s more worried about whether Valpo’s former students will survive. [Indiana Lawyer]

    * Trinity Western University may have to take its law school aspirations to the Supreme Court of Canada. As it stands, there are three provinces that refuse to accredit the law school based on the fact that students and staff must sign a discriminatory covenant to abstain from sexual activity unless it’s between husband and wife. [CBC News]

    * Former TV Judge Joe Brown can no longer practice law in Tennessee because he’s been placed on disability inactive status. Brown had a petition for discipline filed against him this fall after an unseemly outburst in court, which he now blames on complications from diabetes medication, hypertension, and stress. Get well soon. [Commercial Appeal]

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  • Morning Docket: 04.15.16
    Morning Docket

    Morning Docket: 04.15.16

    * Ted Cruz may not like dildos, but he doesn’t seem to mind legal weed. Earlier this week, the Republican presidential candidate said that while he opposes federal legalization of cannabis, states should be free to experiment because the Constitution allows for it. Colorado’s legalization of recreational marijuana is safe and sound, for now. [Denver Post]

    * “It was a very pleasant meeting, but it has changed nothing.” Senate Republicans may want nothing to do with confirming D.C. Circuit Chief Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, but they’ve sure been taking their sweet time telling him “no” during their courtesy meetings with him. Some of these seemingly pointless meetings have gone on for more than an hour. [New York Times]

    * Chief Judge Garland may be wasting his time with these lengthy meetings, though, because if the jurist isn’t confirmed before the upcoming presidential election, Senator Bernie Sanders said during last night’s Democratic debate that if he wins, he’d ask President Obama to withdraw his nomination, as he doesn’t think that Garland would pass his progressive litmus test on Citizens United. Are you still feeling the Bern? [TIME]

    * Lawmakers in several states have passed bathroom bills that enable bigotry in the name of protecting religious rights, but what you may not have known is that there is one lawyer behind them all. Mathew Staver of Liberty Counsel — who was recently in the news for representing Kentucky clerk Kim Davis — says he’s doing it to push back against the Supreme Court’s Obergefell ruling legalizing same-sex marriage. [CBS News]

    * Professor Richard Sander of UCLA School of Law, whose claim to academic fame is his “mismatch” theory of affirmative action, has been trying to get more than 30 years’ worth of data from the State Bar of California for quite some time in an effort to continue his research into the “large and persistent gap in bar passage rates among racial and ethnic groups,” and now he’s finally going to get his day in court. [WSJ Law Blog]

    * David Gherity, a former Minnesota lawyer who was falsely accused of setting his girlfriend on fire using accelerants like alcohol, lotion, hair spray, and fingernail polish remover, has filed a civil rights suit against the police and prosecutors who kept him in jail for about two months. Gherity, who was suspended from practice in 2004, alleges a violation of the “protected interest in his good name.” [Twin Cities Pioneer Press]

    Staci Zaretsky is an editor at Above the Law. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments. Follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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