campaign finance

* All the awesome things that Republicans have said about Merrick Garland. [Mic]

* A deep dive into the record of Chief Judge Garland, and it just might encourage Democrats who are worried that “moderate” is the most used descriptor for the jurist. [New York Times]

* The violence in this cycle’s electoral process may only appear historic in retrospect, and by then, it may be too late. [Medium]

* This is why we should all care about and support Chief Judge Garland’s nomination. [Slate]

* Analyzing Chief Judge Garland’s decision in SpeechNow v. FCC does not provide a reliable bellwether as to how he’d vote in a future campaign finance case. [Election Law Blog]

* The jury asks a female editor a shockingly sexist question during the Hulk Hogan v. Gawker trial. [Vox]

* Fun mashup of Hamilton, the musical, and Donald Trump. [YouTube]

Goldman has slapped a big old "SELL" on poor old JEB!

Ed. note: Happy Holidays! Above the Law will be dark tomorrow, Christmas Day. We’ll be back on Monday, December 28.

* Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin may be newly elected, but that hasn’t stopped him from reneging on campaign promises. [Wonkette]

* Here’s a fun hot take — Citizens United is to blame for Donald Trump’s rise, because he refuses to use Super PACs. Yeah, it’s pretty convoluted, but maybe this will convince… anyone on the right to do anything about campaign finance reform. [Huffington Post]

* Krampus violates the 8th Amendment and other constitutional ruminations on Saint Nicholas’s evil twin. [The Legal Geeks]

* This markup is what happens when lawyers get ahold of a Christmas carol. We should all be ashamed. [Legal Cheek]

* A bill that would prevent people from buying a gun while going through a divorce… yeah, that could be useful. [Slate]

* A New Zealand court ruled Kim Dotcom can be extradited back to the United States. [Wall Street Journal]

* If you have to send a work email on Christmas Day and you sign off this way, you are probably an asshole. [Daily Lawyer Tips]

* There are a bunch of theories to explain why crime rates have dropped over the last 25 years. [Vox]

* The ultimate California bar exam breakdown. [Bar Exam Stats]

It's highly likely that Donald Trump will call his attorney a "loser" after this fiasco.

* Today’s the first Monday in October, and we all know what that means. The Supreme Court starts its Term as disapproval of its work reaches a new high for recent years. [Gallup via How Appealing]

* And here’s Adam Liptak’s excellent overview of the new Supreme Court Term, so you can sound smart at cocktail parties this month. [New York Times]

* In other SCOTUS news, Senator Bob Menendez is fighting the bribery charges against him by relying upon a high court decision he once condemned — can you guess which one? [The Record How Appealing]

* Which presidential candidates get the most in campaign contributions from Silicon Valley lawyers? The second-place finisher might surprise you. [The Recorder]

* Elsewhere in presidential politics, Hillary Clinton will announce new gun-control proposals later today. [New York Times]

* Don’t rush off to law school just yet, but the legal sector did gain a few thousand jobs last month, layoffs notwithstanding. [American Lawyer]

* Dewey have any idea of when this jury will reach a verdict? [Law360]

* Super-mediator Kenneth Feinberg’s latest challenge: pension reform. [National Law Journal]

* Sonia Sotomayor talks about feeling like an outsider on the court… aaaaaaaand this is what white privilege means. [Slate]

* Vehicles you can still get a DUI while driving: Barbie Jeep, Zamboni, wheelchair, inflatable raft, motorized beer cooler. [Lowering the Bar]

* Step into the political slime and see how the halted campaign finance investigation into Scott Walker is being used to undermine regulations. [PR Watch]

* Fascinating speculation on who should be Donald Trump’s running mate — assuming, arguendo, the end times are upon us and he wins the Republican nomination. [Law and More]

* Debating Harvard Law professor Larry Lessig’s theories about the presidency. [Pacific Standard]

* Bound by Law? Tales of the Public Domain, a cheeky comic book sponsored by Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain is fun and useful for lawyers and nonlawyers alike. [Open Culture]

* Yes, Ohio, a man’s family does include his wife. [Volokh Conspiracy]

* Perverse incentives dominate Chinese victim compensation laws and drivers try to kill any pedestrians they may hit. [Slate]

* With the Dewey trial wrapping up, a look back at the history of firm honchos earning jail time. [Law360]

* Slick video explaining the everything wrong the way law schools market themselves to students. [Business Insider]

* K&L Gates loses more partners. This time McDermott picks up the spoils. But don’t cry for K&L, they nabbed a huge get off Paul Hastings. [Big Law Business / Bloomberg BNA]

* Remember when Sony got hacked? It unveiled some fun stuff, like how the new movie Concussion changed its plot around to avoid offending the NFL. [ABA Journal]

* As college football prepares to kick off tonight, Baylor has hired Pepper Hamilton to look into how the school handles sexual violence allegations in light of the rape conviction of former player Sam Ukwuachu. [Dallas Morning News]

* Here’s one of the dumbest arguments ever: Larry Lessig is liberal. About 47 years ago, unchecked campaign spending marginally helped a liberal (he did ultimately lose the nomination… and Nixon became president). Therefore, Larry Lessig shouldn’t be against money in politics. Signed, the former Executive Director of the Club for Growth. [The Daily Caller]

* Meanwhile, the GOP runs into the downside of Citizens United: arming a terrible candidate with so much money he won’t drop out. [Slate]

* George W. Bush shows up for jury duty. Sadly he wasn’t empaneled, which was a real shame for the prosecutors because you know he doesn’t need actual evidence to make bold decisions. [ABC News]

* Oops. Top Rand Paul operatives indicted. Jesus, Trump really is going to win this campaign, isn’t he? (skip to the next page to read the whole indictment). [National Journal]

* Here’s a clever way to get out of a traffic stop: call in a nearby murder. [Legal Juice]

* Performance-enhancing drugs are becoming a scourge in… eSports. Apparently getting really twisted on Adderall and playing StarCraft II for money is a thing. Well, pack it in everyone. We had a good run, human civilization. [The Legal Geeks]

* “A wealthy oligarchy of donors is dominating the 2016 election.” Not true. Based on the polls it’s dominated by an oligarchy of one. [Election Law Blog]

* Approximately 1.2 million New Yorkers have open arrest warrants. That… seems like a lot. Probably time to do something like this to restore sanity. [Talking Points Memo]

* Partner Emeritus has thoughts on summer associates. [What About Clients?]

* “Pay your f**king bill… don’t be a f**king shlub.” [South Florida Lawyers]

* Lex Machina is offering a free trial to its news Trademark Litigation Update newsletter. [Lex Machina]

https://www.scribd.com/doc/273626010/Benton-Et-Al-Indictment

This is why people riot.

Is this would-be presidential candidate breaking the law?

* “What Law Firms Can Learn From the Business Decisions of ‘Mad Men.'” I’m hoping the answer is “more drinking on the job.” [Legal Times]

* Hillary Clinton pledges to nominate SCOTUS justices who will overturn Citizens United. And if you agree with her, she’ll gladly accept your unlimited donations to her *wink* unaffiliated SuperPAC. [Jezebel]

* Seema Iyer talks about one of our favorite recent cases, Driskell v. Homosexuals. [MSNBC]

* Sometimes getting fired can be a positive. As they say the Chinese word for crisis contains the word “opportunity.” Crisitunity. [Wisconsin Lawyer]

* A great detailed piece on California’s recent decision to grant a law license to Hong Yen Chang, the Columbia Law grad denied his license over 100 years ago on the grounds of his “Mongolian nativity.” [Bloomberg BNA / Big Law Business]

* Bad: Being wrongfully convicted. Worse: The system strong-arming the wronged into signing away their right to compensation. [LFC 360]

* Should graduate students and adjuncts unionize? Depends. Do they want to be exploited by an unappreciative institution until their souls are sucked dry? Yes? Then no. [New York Times]

* Sen. Toomey wants Judge L. Felipe Restrepo on the Third Circuit. Maybe he should start talking to his obstructionist colleagues instead of whining to the paper. [Constitutional Accountability Center]

* PacerPro to automatically retrieve documents referenced in notices of electronic filing from PACER. That can help cut down on some mistakes… eh, Sidley Austin? [Law Sites]

* Thomson Reuters has a new social network for small law firms. For every post, users can push a little “thumbs up” icon to express, “I [and my successors, assigns, and heirs of my body, indicate my generally warm feelings, reserving all rights to reverse or withdraw this endorsement at any time for any reason whatsoever notwithstanding any prior representations] This!” [Legal Research & Writing Pro]

* The 2015 World Championship BBQ Cooking Contest in Memphis is this weekend. How does that relate to ATL? Bob Cornish, a D.C.-based attorney at Phillips Lytle LLP and a trained and certified expert in BBQ is a judge. [Memphis In May]

* Floyd Mayweather’s lawyer says that his client will post Suge Knight’s insanely high $10 million bail if he wins his fight against Manny Pacquiao. Suge says he was “really going to pull for him to win, but now [he’s] going to have to pray for him to win.” [Los Angeles Times]

* Northwestern University School of Law is launching a first-of-its-kind loan repayment assistance program to help grads in “modestly salaried private sector jobs” — that is, if you make less than $85,000, the school will pay your loan interest for up to a year. [National Law Journal via CBS]

* If you haven’t heard, the class of 2014 was much more employed than the class of 2013 by a factor of a few percentage points. Apply to law school right now! (No, don’t do that. The class of 2014 was smaller, so it looks like the job stats were better.) [ABA Journal]

* “[T]he jury is out and the only sane thing you can say about Dentons is check back in three years.” Hot on the heels of the announced merger between Dentons and McKenna Long, many lawyers are running for the exits. [Big Law Business / Bloomberg BNA]

* If you’re interested in going to law school on the east coast, then you may want to take a look at this list of schools, ranked by total employment of the class of 2014. We’d shudder to see what this list would look like if only long-term, full-time jobs were used. [BostInno]

* A lawyer who’s suing former U.S. Representative Aaron Schock on behalf of a campaign donor says he’s been unable to locate the disgraced politician to serve him. What will happen now? We bet you can find out on the next episode of Downton Abbey. [ABC News]

* David Simon, the creator of The Wire, weighs in on Baltimore. He points blame at a police force rooted in “a culture that taught them not the hard job of policing, but simply how to roam the city, jack everyone up, and call for the wagon.” F**k. [Talking Points Memo]

* In Colorado, marriage is defined as one man and… well, that’s all you need actually. [Business Insider Law & Order]

* No sooner did I tweet Chief Justice Roberts for his cynical inconsistencies than Brianne Gorod offers a more charitable theory about the jurist. [New Republic]

* Hull takes a stab at explaining his problem with the parlance of email. [What About Clients?]

* A fly on the wall at the post-Obergefell chambers conference. [Law Prof Blawg]

* Professor Hasen examines Williams-Yulee. [Election Law Blog]

* Another reality TV legal run-in: the restaurant from “Welcome to Sweetie Pie’s” settles a discrimination suit over an employee claiming she was fired for refusing to join a prayer session. I think the important question here is: there’s really a show called “Welcome to Sweetie Pie’s”? [Missouri Lawyers Weekly]

* Did you follow that child custody hearing over letting an 11-year-old attend a P!nk (is this how we write that now?) concert? Because it was crazypants. [Bronzino Law]

* Could the Uber class action suit spell relief for contract attorneys? [Law and More]

* Ballard Spahr’s Chair Mark Stewart talks about the competition between law firms and the distribution of… oh, face it, you just want to hear him talk about hiring Rogers Stevens of Blind Melon as an associate. [Bloomberg BNA / Big Law Business]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzXBlzvxuMs

* Supreme Court actually limits speech rights and upholds a Florida ban on judicial candidates’ direct fundraising. Here’s the excellent plain English breakdown of Williams-Yulee. [SCOTUSblog]

* Former NYS Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver pleaded not guilty to a superseding indictment. [NY Law Journal]

* Professor Dorf analyzes the sex discrimination rationale in the same-sex marriage case. [Dorf on Law]

* $1 million in sanctions upheld against a Philadelphia lawyer. [Legal Intelligencer]

* So this is what they mean by practicing “sexy” law. 2015 list of 100 top Hollywood attorneys revealed. [Hollywood Reporter]

* In an increasingly rare bipartisan act, patent reform is back on the agenda. [Corporate Counsel]

* According to a new study by Harvard University, nearly 50% of millennials believe the criminal justice system is unfair. Welcome to the party kids. [NY Post]

* Rand Paul is running for president. He says we need to “clutch[] the Constitution in one hand and the Bill of Rights in the other.” Pretty sure those were the same thing. And I’m very sure Senator Paul is leaving out the whole “end of slavery” amendment in his idealized vision of liberty. [YouTube]

* With all these states banning travel to Indiana over the RFRA, Professor Gerard Magliocca muses about the constitutional limits of states protesting other states. It’s somewhere between banning non-essential employee travel and armed invasion. [Concurring Opinions]

* That’s one way to set a Guinness Book record: use slaves. [Lowering the Bar]

* Jenner & Block managing partner Terrence Truax talks about the legal market and the vital importance of technology. [Bloomberg BNA / Big Law Business]

* The Department of Justice has released its report on the long-running story of New Orleans prosecutors allegedly posing under assumed names to poison the well. Long story short, they did it and it was wrong. [Observer]

* Wisconsin’s campaign finance issues are messed up. [LFC 360]

* Senate Republicans are contemplating abolishing filibusters for SCOTUS nominees. This could go one of two ways: it could work out nicely for them, or explode in their faces. It’s like a choose your own adventure game. [POLITICO]

* When it comes to the upcoming gay marriage cases before SCOTUS, “[e]very lawyer involved will want to argue.” Remember, when you’re given the chance to make history, you better hope that you’re on the right side of it. [National Law Journal]

* “[I]f there is one decision I would overrule, it is Citizens United.” Even RBG thinks this campaign finance decision is one of the Supreme Court’s “darkest hour[s].” [Salon]

* SCOTUS refused to stay Charles Warner’s execution, but it agreed to grant cert on his lethal injection case days after his death. Better late than never? [New York Times]

* The NFL has drafted Ted Wells of Paul Weiss to blow up the absurd controversy that is “Deflategate.” Come on, who cares if the Patriots cheated again? [WSJ Law Blog]

* Do you know any chronic Biglaw firm-hoppers? How many firms are too many to lateral to? Three? Five? Seven? Jesus Christ, for this guy, try 10 firms. [Am Law Daily]

* Eric Holder gave millions to Nazis! Or at least that’s how Darrell Issa will put it. But seriously, the Department of Justice has a long-standing policy of allowing Nazi war criminals to collect Social Security payments if they agree to get the hell out of the U.S. [Associated Press via New Europe] * A Cleveland attorney, Peter Pattakos, is not worried about contracting Ebola, even though he was in a room with a current Ebola patient, because Pattakos is neither a crazy person nor a cable news producer and realizes that he never exchanged bodily fluids with the patient. As he points out, “I’m much more likely to be mistakenly killed by a police officer in this country than to be killed by Ebola, even if you were in the same bridal shop.” [Cleveland.com] * Chanel is suing What About Yves for trademark infringement. The question Professor Colman asks is whether “we really want a trademark ‘protection’ regime in which mark ‘owners’ can prevent creative, non-confusing uses of ‘their property.'” [Law of Fashion] * One for the career alternatives file: Miami lawyer who ranks local restaurants opens his own restaurant. At ATL we rank law schools, maybe we should open our own law school. [Southern District of Florida Blog] * Academic publishers fighting the war on common sense by charging an arm and a leg for access to research that is written and peer reviewed by other people for free scored a victory on Friday when the Eleventh Circuit rejected the lower court’s articulation of educational fair use in the digital age. [The Chronicle of Higher Education] * Balancing parenthood and the “jealous mistress” that is the practice of law. [Jed Cain] * An amazing symposium on campaign finance reform from the NYU Law Review and the Brennan Center for Justice. It’s a wealth of content. [NYU Law Review] * Josh Gilliland from The Legal Geeks gave a presentation on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Law at the San Diego Comic Fest, which sounds much more fun than any “and the Law” class I ever took. He’s provided his slideshow presentation…

There's no truth without Ruth, and she pulled no punches in this interview.

* The United States is launching air strikes against ISIS in Syria and Iraq, but some have been compelled to wonder whether it’s legal under international law. Of course it’s legal, under the Rule of ‘MERICA, F*CK YEAH! [BBC]

* Dewey know whether this failed firm’s former COO can get out of paying $9.3M to its bankruptcy trustee? Dewey know whether we’ll ever be able to stop using this pun? Sadly, the answer to both questions is no. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Marc Dreier of the defunct Dreier LLP has been ordered to testify in person in his firm’s bankruptcy case in Manhattan, but he’d rather stay in the comforts of his prison home in Minnesota. Aww. [Bloomberg]

* Dinesh D’Souza won’t have to do hard prison time for his campaign-finance violations. Instead, he’ll be spending eight months in a “community confinement center,” which sounds just peachy. [New York Times]

* Northwestern Law is launching a campaign to fundraise $150M to be spent on an endless supply of Chick-fil-A sandwiches financial aid for students and curriculum improvements. [National Law Journal]

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