Constitutional Law

* If you thought you were going to be making $180K after graduation, then you better lower your expectations by quite a bit. Be prepared to make less than $65K! The National Association for Law Placement has released its annual edition of the bi-modal salary distribution for recent law school graduates, and the wide chasm between peaks on the bell curve looks more unhealthy than ever. [Big Law Business]

* In the wake of the Democratic National Convention, everyone wants to know the names on Hillary Clinton’s Supreme Court shortlist. It might surprise you that insiders say President Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, is at the top of Clinton’s list of eleven potential candidates. We’ll have more information on this later today. [The Hill]

* “What we’re seeing is a sort of shift around social norms. Kennedy is the best Geiger counter. He’s a very good instrument for measuring that.” SCOTUS seems to be cutting back on its defense of religious freedom in favor of supporting government regulators, and the high court’s swinger has led the way in the wake of Scalia’s passing. [USA Today]

* Federal prosecutors from the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office and the DOJ are now investigating whether Mossack Fonseca, the infamous firm behind the Panama Papers, knowingly assisted its clients in laundering money and/or evading taxes. A firm spokesperson has denied all accusations of criminal wrongdoing. [Wall Street Journal]

* “You can sentence me to whatever you want, I guess. This sentence, I won’t outlive it.” Convicted murderer Drew Peterson was sentenced to an additional 40 years in prison in a murder-for-hire plot to kill prosecutor James Glasgow. In 2047, Peterson will be 93 years old, and he’ll be up for parole for the murder of his third wife. [Chicago Tribune]

Khizr Khan's rhetoric and flair using a prop was a standout moment from the final night of the Democratic National Convention.

* “No one I know likes law school. It was a bad experience. I wouldn’t wish it on a dog I didn’t like.” Indiana Governor Mike Pence, Donald Trump’s likely vice-presidential running mate, is an attorney whose law license is listed as “inactive in good standing,” and though he had a B average, he apparently hated law school — just like the vast majority of law students. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Faiza Saeed, who on January 1, 2017, will not only become Cravath Swaine & Moore’s first female presiding partner, but the first female to manage any Wall Street firm, will be joining a “sorority” of about 25 women who lead or serve as co-heads of some of the nation’s largest law firms. Congratulations on this historic appointment! [Law.com]

* Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg may have issued a “mea culpa” with regard to her remarks about presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, but legal scholars say her non-apology “does not unring the bell.” At the very least, she may be forced to recuse if Election 2016 turns into a Bush v. Gore situation. [WSJ Law Blog]

* The American Civil Liberties Union has pledged to file constitutional challenges to many of Donald Trump’s would-be political policies should be be elected president and try to enact them. Specifically, the ACLU finds Trump’s stances on immigration, American Muslims, torture, and freedom of speech to be problematic. [ABA Journal]

* The University of Houston Law Center and the Houston College of Law (formerly the South Texas College of Law) will face off in court today to resolve an emergency motion. The original Houston Law seeks to ban the new Houston Law from using its name or logo on merchandise, brochures, and promotional materials. [Houston Chronicle]

* In case you haven’t been keeping score like we have, these are the firms that recently raised salaries: Kilpatrick Townsend, Sutherland, Norton Rose Fulbright, Morgan Lewis (additional details), Troutman Sanders. 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]

* “The plan was always to retire after this summer, retirement just came a little sooner than I’d hoped.” Olympic gold medalist Shannon Vreeland isn’t going to the Rio Olympics this summer; instead, she’ll be swimming in the completely the uncharted waters of law school at Vanderbilt. Will she be the new Aquagirl? [SwimSwam]

* Worried about Brexit? So are clients who have hired Mischon de Reya lawyers to make sure the British government doesn’t try to leave the EU without consulting parliament. “Everyone in Britain needs the government to apply the correct constitutional process and allow parliament to fulfill its democratic duty,” says a firm partner. [Bloomberg]

* Judge Richard Posner would like to sincerely apologize for saying that the Constitution isn’t worth the time judges have spent studying it. What he really meant to say was that he thinks the Constitution is so vague that judges are simply “do[ing] the best they can” to make the 17th century document applicable to our modern world. [WSJ Law Blog]

* “I thought you wanted to do this. The time is right and you’re ready, you just need to do it! You can’t think about it. You just have to do it. You said you were gonna do it. Like I don’t get why you aren’t.” Michelle Carter, the Massachusetts teen who walked her boyfriend through his suicide via text, will stand trial for involuntary manslaughter. [AP]

Today in history the Constitution was ratified.

And Roberta Kaplan of Paul Weiss is leading the charge.

Bad break for Yelp.

A debate on presidential powers.

A long time ago in a con law classroom far far away...

These 11 potential justices are well within the mainstream of conservative legal thought.

Hastert would not have been prosecuted by the United States Department of Justice if he were simply another old retired wrestling coach with a bad past.

* Florida public defender disbarred over sex and drugs with inmates. Amazingly, this is not just an update of this story about… a Florida public defender allegedly caught banging an inmate. What’s going on with these Florida public defenders? [NY Daily News]

* Law firms know they need to radically change their model and yet haven’t done anything about it. But they’re telling GCs it’s the clients’ fault for not pushing firms harder to change. Holy blame the victim, Batman. [Law360]

* As some of you may have heard by now, Milbank Tweed is ditching its downtown home for relatively law firm-free Chelsea. Cue Steve Winwood: “Back on the High Line again…” [Real Estate Weekly]

* Law school rechristening its building over its namesake’s KKK ties. Political correctness run amok — remember when you could support lawless acts of terrorism against minorities and be venerated by institutions of higher learning? [CBS News]

* Judge Alan Simon has already received a suspension after a commission found a “history of bullying and verbally abusing court staffers” and now he may be losing his job. [Law360]

* Cass Sunstein explains the Constitution with Darth Vader’s help. As it turns out he’s got a book about it too (affiliate link). [National Law Journal]

* A panel discusses the labor and employment implications of legalized marijuana. Pretty sure Afroman already covered these when he intoned: “I was gonna go to work but then I got high/I just got a new promotion but I got high/now I’m selling dope and I know why yea hey/cause I got high/cause I got high/cause I got high.” [Corporate Counsel]

* A breakthrough, “gotcha” moment on cross-examination in a big case is such a holy grail achievement of Matlockian proportions that we should celebrate it whenever it happens. Skadden managed to net one in a $2.1 billion suit this week. [Litigation Daily]

* Kirkland & Ellis offering “emotional fitness training” at its offices. Pretty sure the curriculum for Biglaw attorneys should be a primer on Wheaton’s Law and this video with the word “baseball” replaced with “law.” [Kirkland & Ellis]

Know this tidbit?

* 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]

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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.

Professors don't like getting stood up by their students. And this one isn't going to take it anymore!

* Professor Victor Williams of the Catholic University of America School of Law, who’s been called the “Republican Lawrence Lessig” by some, is running a write-in campaign for president with the sole intent of eliminating Ted Cruz as a candidate due to his birth in Canada. He alleges that the Texas senator committed ballot access fraud by falsely swearing that he was a natural born citizen. Thanks to Williams’s allegations, a primary disqualification hearing is being held today in New Jersey. [PR Newswire]

* Does SCOTUS have a diversity problem? One justice thinks so. In the wake of President Obama calling attention to his nominee’s whiteness, Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted the Court’s homogeneity, saying that SCOTUS is currently at a “disadvantage from having [five] Catholics, three Jews, [and] everyone from an Ivy League school.” [TIME]

* Here’s an interesting theory: According to Patterson Belknap senior partner Gregory Diskant, because the Senate has failed to give President Obama its advice and consent with regard to his Supreme Court nominee, it can be said the Senate waived its rights, leaving Obama free to appoint Judge Garland to the high court. [Washington Post]

* “There is something seductively subversive about having a name that has a secondary street meaning, which, by the way, is not necessarily a bad thing to think of your lawyers as being.” MoFo — a law firm that’s perhaps known as Morrison & Foerster in more conservative circles — has fully embraced its sexy “street name.” [Big Law Business]

* Prosecutors say former House speaker and disgraced Dickstein Shapiro partner Dennis Hastert paid $3.5M to silence a boy he sexually abused, and molested at least four more children. Because the statutes of limitations have long since run on those crimes, he’ll likely serve only six months for banking crimes related to his hush-money payoffs. [AP]

Barack Obama participates in a wide-ranging Town Hall with students and faculty at University of Chicago Law.

* Legal showdown averted (for now): the feds were able to access the data on the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone without any help from Apple. [Washington Post]

* A Harvard Law School grad stands accused of a $95 million fraud scheme — yikes. We’ll have more on this later. [ABA Journal]

* Does a sentencing delay violate the Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial? Some on SCOTUS seem skeptical. [How Appealing]

* Georgia Governor Nathan Deal announces his intention to veto the Free Exercise Protection Act, which critics claimed would have protected discrimination as a form of religious liberty. [New York Times]

* Hillary Clinton takes Republicans to task for their handling of the current Supreme Court vacancy. [Wisconsin State Journal via How Appealing]

* Some thoughts from Professor Noah Feldman on the recent Seventh Circuit ruling about the use of form contracts on the internet (which nobody reads). [Bloomberg View]

* Save money (on taxes), live better: a federal judge strikes down a tax levied by Puerto Rico on mega-retailer Wal-Mart. [Reuters]

* The Bracewell law firm, now sans Giuliani, elects Gregory Bopp as its new managing partner. [Texas Lawyer]

The Last Week Tonight host tackles Apple's clash with the government over iPhone security with trademark wit.

Once he was targeted for death. Later, he became one of the most recognizable faces in sports.