Anthony Kennedy

  • Morning Docket

    Morning Docket: 10.26.15

    * “Cases swing. I don’t.” Justice Anthony Kennedy would really like it if folks would stop referring to him as the high court’s swinger swing vote. In other news, the Supreme jurist thinks Legally Blonde is a “pretty good movie.” [Harvard Gazette]

    * Hey, everyone, it’s high time we did something about this law school debt crisis. Have you somehow never heard about or experienced this before (despite reading Above the Law for eons)? Not to worry, because the New York Times is on it! [New York Times]

    * “She’ll still be fighting for the things she cares about. But this time, she’ll be asking us to join her.” Irin Camron, co-author of Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg (affiliate link), thinks we’ll see more Badass Bader this Term. [New York Times]

    * The Pennsylvania Senate is trying to kick embattled Attorney General Kathleen Kane out of office because she’s working with a suspended law license. Come on, it must be pretty embarrassing when your AG can’t even refer to herself as a lawyer. [Morning Call]

    * According to Professor Paul Campos, the law school scam will keep on trucking thanks to the for-profit institutions — Arizona Summit Law, Charlotte Law, and Florida Coastal Law — that are run by InfiLaw. Well, at least they’re good at one thing, right? [The Atlantic]

    * Toke the vote! The next states that will likely legalize recreational marijuana by ballot referendum come November 2016 include California, Maine, Massachusetts, and Nevada. Vermont, on the other hand, may pass marijuana-friendly legislation. [Rolling Stone]

  • Morning Docket

    Morning Docket: 09.24.15

    * Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Anthony Kennedy, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg will be in attendance during Pope Francis’s Congressional address. Here’s hoping a certain someone doesn’t nod off in the middle of it. [National Law Journal]

    * This courthouse clerk is accused of trying to go out with a little too much style after being fired from his job. He allegedly tossed thousands of pages of court documents in the garbage before leaving the building, and he now faces up to 10 years in prison. [Houston Chronicle]

    * Lawrence Mitchell, the former dean of Case Western Reserve University School of Law, was supposed to return to the school this year after taking a sabbatical. Instead, he resigned. When it comes to this creeper, maybe that’s a good thing. [Cleveland Scene]

    * Sorry to burst your bubble, law schools, but if you think spending millions to complete major building projects during a serious downturn in applicants will result in a “Field of Dreams” type of situation, you’re flat-out wrong. [Big Law Business / Bloomberg BNA]

    * Good news, everyone! Thanks to this appeals court decision, registered sex offenders in Wisconsin will now be able to take pictures of children in public. Child predators have never, ever been so excited to assert their First Amendment rights. [WSJ Law Blog]

  • Morning Docket

    Morning Docket: 09.16.15

    * Justices Kennedy and Breyer seemed to be champing at the bit for a prolonged solitary confinement case last Term, and now they may have the opportunity to weigh in on one. Let’s see if the Supreme Court decides to let Justice Kennedy swing his vote around. [New York Times]

    * We all know that Mark Cuban isn’t that big of a fan of the Securities and Exchange Commission, but now he’s trying to inject himself into the debate over the agency’s use of in-house administrative law judges by way of filing a brief in support. [WSJ Law Blog]

    * Winston & Strawn elected Jeffrey Kessler to serve as its co-chair. He’s got experience running firms with others — he once served as a member of Dewey’s four-partner Office of the Chairman before the firm completely imploded. [Big Law Business / Bloomberg BNA]

    * IU Maurer Law is teaming up with Chapman and Cutler, an Am Law 200 firm, to create a two-year rotational program in finance and law. There’s just one catch: this is only for recent college graduates, not law school graduates. Oops! [Indiana Daily Student]

    * Lucrative niche alert: They’re calling this the green rush, but we don’t need to remind attorneys that green is also the color of money. By 2020, the market for legal recreational marijuana is going to be booming, with billions of dollars in business. [Fortune]

  • Sponsored

  • Morning Docket

    Morning Docket: 08.05.15

    * “There are no bathrooms, no air-conditioning, no good food. You don’t usually get good cellphone reception, either, and you can’t just quit and go somewhere comfortable.” Surprisingly, this Biglaw partner isn’t talking about his firm’s working conditions. [Miami Herald]

    * It’s going to be difficult for U.S. authorities to prosecute Walter Palmer, the dentist who killed Zimbabwe’s beloved lion, Cecil. Bringing this guy down under the Lacey Act is going to be a real task. If only this were a Pixar movie with a happy ending. 🙁 [Reuters]

    * SCOTUS justices are jet-setting across the world this summer, with RBG in South Korea and Vietnam, Roberts in Japan, Scalia in Italy, Kennedy in Austria, and Breyer in England. Let’s hope no one has to evacuate a plane via emergency chute. [National Law Journal]

    * If you’re considering applying to law school and you decide to visit one this summer, aside from students huddled in dark corners of the library who are crying over their employment prospects, there are a few things you should be looking for. [U.S. News]

    * The mother of Sandra Bland, the woman who hanged herself in a Texas jail cell last month, has filed a wrongful-death suit, alleging that her daughter shouldn’t have been arrested in the first place and was improperly supervised by guards. [New York Times]

  • Non-Sequiturs

    Non-Sequiturs: 07.16.15

    * Not just a liberal wet-dream: the case for the disbarment of Ted Cruz and Greg Abbott for defying the Supreme Court on same sex marriage. [Talking Points Memo]

    * How does an addicted lawyer survive the first year of law school? [Cubanity / Brian Cuban’s Recovery Rantings]

    * Defense attorney William C. Costopoulos channels 40 years of experience into a new suspenseful novel (affiliate link) about domestic terrorism. [Soul Witness]

    * It took Justice Kennedy less than a week to make this union “a little more perfect.” Guess he (or his clerks) work(s) well under pressure. [San Diego Tribune]

    * Before we start throwing around the word God around in the context of the law, we should understand what was originally intended by the term. [Legal History Blog]

    * Color Elie surprised: Donald Trump makes his financial disclosures… though the details aren’t yet public. [CNN]

    * An open-source guide for unpacking legalese. [Law Sites]

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  • Morning Docket

    Morning Docket: 06.30.15

    * Which Biglaw firm is going to be changing up the way that it recruits new attorneys? That would be Quinn Emanuel. It’s planning to majorly scale back on summer associates and do something completely different. We’ll have more on this news later today. [WSJ Law Blog]

    * An undergrad who once had high hopes for law school decided to ditch his legal aspirations in favor of stand-up comedy. His mom is mad since it’s a “path that has no specific stability.” She obviously hasn’t read up on law school job stats lately. [Indy Channel]

    * Justice Kennedy should consider trading in his robes for a superhero’s cape, because he just swooped in to the rescue, again. With a 5-4 vote, SCOTUS stayed the Fifth Circuit’s decision regarding the closure of the majority of abortion clinics in Texas. [NPR]

    * Damn you, Dewey leaders! Per recent testimony in the criminal trial of the failed firm’s former top brass, but for news of the criminal probe spreading like wildfire throughout the profession, D&L could’ve merged with any number of firms to save itself. [Am Law Daily]

    * Some pretty major firms think they have better things to spend their Biglaw bucks on than donations to legal aid organizations. Only five firms were willing to publicly disclose more than $1 million in donations. [DealBook / New York Times via American Lawyer]

  • Morning Docket

    Morning Docket: 06.22.15

    * Everyone’s a winner at Nixon Peabody, especially the millennials! The firm is doing away with the corner-office model in favor of office space reminiscent of that of tech companies, where everyone’s offices — from paralegals to partners — are the same size. [Washington Post]

    * A former North Dakota Law student is suing the school, as well as several administrators and professors, because he alleges they dismissed him via email in May due to problems with his application. Man, that’s almost as harsh as a break-up text. [WDAZ]

    * Justice Kennedy knows a lot of people who are gay, but that doesn’t mean he’ll recognize a constitutional right to same-sex marriage just because of his circle of friends and colleagues. He’ll likely do it because he knows “how meaningful this is.” [New York Times]

    * The Supreme Court is currently considering an emergency appeal out of Texas after the Fifth Circuit refused to stay a decision that would all but close the vast majority of abortion facilities in the state. Give this law the good old coat hanger, SCOTUS. [Associated Press]

    * Last week, Justice Kennedy basically invited litigants to challenge the constitutionality of solitary confinement because it “exacts a terrible price.” Step right up and become one of the first to test the power of the SCOTUS swing vote on this issue. [Los Angeles Times]

    * “Having a woman leader is no longer exceptional.” The number of women law school deans is on the rise. They make up 40 percent of incoming law school leadership, and currently comprise 30 percent of all law deans. Nice work! [National Law Journal]

    * After pleading guilty to a felony count of vehicular manslaughter back in March, California lawyer Hasti Fakhrai-Bayrooti was recently sentenced to four years in prison for killing a cyclist while driving high on prescription drugs Xanax and Suboxone. [Daily Mail]