Death Penalty

* So, is the Ninth Circuit really the court that gets most frequently overturned by the Supreme Court? [Empirical SCOTUS]

* Buckle in marijuana enthusiasts, it’s going to be a long four years. [Huffington Post]

* Is there ideological discrimination in law school hiring? A debate. [TaxProf Blog]

* Death penalty sentences are down. Does the Dallas District Attorney want to change that? [Slate]

* You can stop talking like a lawyer. [Law and More]

* RIP to partner Andrew Thompson. [Cravath]

Are lethal injection protocols cruel?

* Barack Obama is churning through moves in the last few days of his presidency. Besides the high-profile commutation of Chelsea Manning’s sentence, he’s busy on land preservation, immigration, Guantanamo Bay and education. [CNN]

* A new report from the Congressional Budget Office is putting pressure on Republicans to decide what comes next, after they repeal the Affordable Care Act. [Washington Post]

* Eighteen people were arrested on the steps of the Supreme Court for protesting the reinstatement of the death penalty 40 years ago. [Law.com]

* A former USC football player apologized for lashing out at his attorney. Owen Hanson told VICE Sports his plea deal on charges of running an offshore gambling drug trafficking ring was a “bait and switch.” He’s since walked backed from those comments and affirmed he took the deal of his own volition. [LA Times]

* Chief Justice John Roberts will swear in Donald Trump as President of the United States on Friday. A look back at Trump’s insults lobbed at the Chief. [National Law Journal]

* When you ask for the death penalty, you shouldn’t be surprised when that’s what you get. [Texas Lawyer]

* Remember how Ted Cruz dared journalists to write about Jeff Sessions’s KKK prosecution? Yeah, how’d that pay off? [The Atlantic]

* Mitch McConnell’s playing a dangerous game — and the stakes are the Supreme Court. [Guile is Good]

* Jeff Sessions’s heart is besides the goddamn point. [Slate]

* There’s more than one way to be mindful. [Law and More]

* Trump wants to fill Gitmo, and that’s a problem. [Huffington Post]

It's impossible to sympathize with Dylann Roof, but consider the fallout of this sentence.

* After hearing powerful testimony from victims’ relatives, a federal jury sentenced Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof to death. [BuzzFeed]

* Dahlia Lithwick on yesterday’s Jeff Sessions hearing: the nominee “will be handily confirmed,” and Democrats “are rightly very, very afraid.” [Slate]

* An interesting puzzle for the Supreme Court: free speech and credit card fees. [New York Times via How Appealing]

* Also from Howard Bashman, also about free speech: Gibson Dunn partner Miguel Estrada “warns City of Philadelphia that his hourly rate is very expensive.” [How Appealing]

* More about Morrison & Foerster snagging former Justice Department national security chief John Carlin — the latest in a series of high-profile hires of former government lawyers, including Kathryn Thomson and Jessie Liu. [Law.com]

* Some good news out of the Charlotte School of Law: students might be getting their spring semester loan proceeds after all. [ABA Journal]

* Speaking of money, Volkswagen is going to pay a lot of it — perhaps $4.3 billion in fines — to resolve the federal criminal investigation into its cheating on vehicle emissions tests. [New York Times]

* Texas is real pissed they can’t execute anyone. [BuzzFeed]

* I feel justified about posting this because the appeal involves Holland & Knight, but really it is an excellent story about the human cost of America’s longest war and you should read it. [New York Times]

* Do you think the Supreme Court should release audio on the same day oral arguments take place? Then sign here. [Fix the Court]

* Yeah, I’d wanna settle this case quick if I were the McKinney, Texas, Police Department. [Slate]

* 2017 is shaping up to be the NRA’s wet dream. [Salon]

* Judge is super concerned about the Constitution once corporate profits are on the line. [Reuters]

* What’s publishing like after tenure? [TaxProf Blog]

She is up for parole...

* Uh-oh! What’s going on at Kirkland & Ellis? Sources say that the firm recently changed its framework for allocating equity partner profits, making deep cuts to some partners’ shares. Litigation partners were reportedly hit so hard by these changes that multiple sources called the situation a “bloodbath.” We’ll have more on this later. [Am Law Daily]

* Talk about a money shot: Attorneys Paul Hansmeier and John Steele, formerly of Prenda Law, have been charged in a “massive extortion scheme” after allegedly uploading porn videos they produced themselves to file-sharing websites so they could then sue those who downloaded the films for copyright violations. [NBC News]

* Kerrie Campbell, the Chadbourne & Parke partner who sued her firm for $100 million over allegations of gender discrimination, has asked a court to dismiss C & P’s counterclaim, referring to the claims therein as “in terrorem tactic” to silence other women at the firm and elsewhere who have similar bias claims. [Big Law Business]

* Here’s a question that far too many law school deans were faced with this fall: “What’s the best way to share a school’s bad bar exam results?” Some chose to be blunt and others chose to be empathetic, but at the end of the day, the news is devastating to recent graduates, so there’s only so much one can really do to soften the blow. [ABA Journal]

* Charleston church gunman Dylann Roof was convicted on federal hate crime charges and is now awaiting the punishment phase of his trial. In case you didn’t know, he’s also waiting to stand trial on state murder charges, which means he’s the first person in the modern era to face the possibility of federal and state death penalty sentences. [Reuters]

* A look at the unequal justice highlighted by the execution of Ronald Smith. [The Hill]

* Cherokee Nation says marriage is a fundamental right, opening the door to same-sex marriage. [Turtle Talk]

* The Los Angeles Times takes an interesting tack on Japanese internment. [Lawyers, Guns & Money]

* A look at the faithless elector lawsuit. [Salon]

* An easy way for out-of-work lawyers to pick up additional job skills. [Law and More]

* Loretta Lynch comes out swinging against Trumpism. [Slate]

* What happens when a Biglaw associate at a prestigious firm is allegedly injured so badly in the D.C. subway that he’s prevented from working as an associate at that firm? He files a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the Washington Metro Transit Authority, obviously. We’ll have more on this later. [Big Law Business]

* A federal judge has dismissed Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein’s bid for a recount in Pennsylvania as absurd, writing in a 31-page opinion that her theory of the hacking of the state’s electronic voting machines “borders on the irrational.” Ouch. [Reuters]

* Justice Stephen Breyer continued his assault against capital punishment this week, dissenting from his Supreme Court colleagues’ decision not to hear a death row inmate’s case. In that dissent, he didn’t discuss the evidence against the inmate, but rather, he discussed the evidence against the death penalty in America. [New York Times]

* Abortion-rights activists from the Center for Reproductive Rights have sought an injunction against the implementation of a controversial Texas regulation that would require the burial or cremation of fetal remains because it “imposes a funeral ritual on women who have … an abortion.” As if HB 2 wasn’t bad enough… [WSJ Law Blog]

* School-by-school results from the July 2016 administration of the California bar exam have finally been released (albeit not publicly, until now), and considering that the overall pass rate was the lowest it’s been in 32 years, law schools did not fare well. Which did the best, and which did the worst? We’ll have more on this later. [The Recorder]

Court deadlocked, Tie goes to the needle.

* President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of labor, fast-food executive Andrew Puzder, is a critic of the Obama Administration’s regulation in this area (and he’s a former litigator, interestingly enough). [Washington Post]

* Judge Bill Pryor (11th Cir.), a top SCOTUS contender in a Trump Administration, is beloved by conservatives — but confirming him could be a battle. [Bloomberg BNA via How Appealing]

* The Arkansas Supreme Court rules that married lesbian couples can’t put the names of both spouses on their children’s birth certificates. [WSJ Law Blog]

* SEC enforcement chief Andrew Ceresney will leave the agency by the end of this year; where might he wind up? [Law.com]

* Governor Andrew Cuomo met with the feds in connection with the corruption case brought against some of his former aides. [New York Times]

* Michael Jordan’s latest court victory — in an IP case in China. [Bloomberg]

* Alabama prisoner Ronald Smith is executed after the Supreme Court denies a stay, leaving SCOTUS review of the state’s unique “judicial override” system for another day. [New York Times via How Appealing]

* Fresh off a five-month stint in prison for defrauding clients, Todd Malacuso, a lawyer who once represented Casey Anthony, has been arrested and accused of conspiring to smuggle almost two tons of cocaine into the United States from Central America on his own plane. He’s being held without bail as he’s been deemed a flight risk. [Daily Mail]

* “Taking a fee when you’ve got people literally still paying off their credit cards is a lot different than when it’s essentially found money for the plaintiffs.” In a wide-ranging interview, Jason Forge, a partner at Robbins Geller, explains why plaintiffs’ lawyers in the Trump University fraud case decided to forgo attorneys’ fees. [WSJ Law Blog]

* SCOTUS justices seem poised to block Texas from executing a man due to the fact that an outdated definition of intellectual disability is being used in its capital punishment regime. Justice Stephen Breyer said that the Texas standard to determine impairment “would free some, while subjecting others to the death penalty.” [USA Today]

* “We are refusing to comment on speculation around partners being in discussion with other firms.” Biglaw firms are circling King & Wood Mallesons like vultures, hoping to pick off partners as its EUME operations struggle. Goodwin Procter and Chadbourne & Parke are reportedly in talks to extend offers to KWM partners. [Big Law Business]

* According to the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, President-elect Donald Trump and a Republican-led Congress may be able to tweak some elements of Dodd-Frank without completely dismantling or rewriting the law. After all, “federal agencies have wide latitude to undo reforms” and “there is room to change things.” [Reuters]

Ed. note: As mentioned on Wednesday, we will be publishing today, but at a reduced level. We’ll be back in full force on Monday. Hope you had a great Thanksgiving!

* President-elect Donald Trump will likely pick a lawyer as his nominee for Secretary of State: Rudy Giuliani (NYU Law ’68) or Mitt Romney (Harvard Law ’75). [New York Times]

* Where do broken hearts go? Some precedents for Chief Judge Merrick Garland to follow from unsuccessful Supreme Court nominees. [Associated Press via How Appealing]

* A pre-Thanksgiving ruling from the Florida Supreme Court that gave one prisoner something to be grateful for could signal more upheaval to come in the nation’s second largest death row. [BuzzFeed]

* Three more judges participated in Pennsylvania’s “Porngate” email exchanges — but it seems that Bruce Beemer, the state’s new attorney general, won’t be naming names. [ABA Journal]

* What does the future hold for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and its chief, Chicago Law grad and former SCOTUS clerk Richard Cordray? [New York Times]

* It’s not just a plot line from Suits: Reginald Taylor, accused of posing as a lawyer by stealing an attorney’s bar number, apparently delivered decent results for his clients. [The Daily Beast]

* Don’t mess with (federal judges from) Texas, Mr. President; Judge Amos Mazzant, who blocked President Obama’s proposed extension of overtime pay, isn’t the first Lone Star jurist to cause problems for the Obama Administration. [New York Times via How Appealing]

* Thinking of hitting the movies over the long weekend? Tony Mauro shares our own Harry Graff’s enthusiasm for Loving. [National Law Journal]

* A useful new resource for journalists, media lawyers, and anyone else interested in libel law -- from Charles Glasser, another lawyer who successfully called Donald Trump's bluff (as the New York Times just did). [LexisNexis] * Relatedly, Marc Randazza discusses the phenomenon of the libel-proof plaintiff. [Popehat] * The Florida Supreme Court just declared the death penalty unconstitutional. So that's a thing. [NPR] * The duty to warn in the Marvel Universe -- does Luke Cage need to tell his attackers that they're about to break their hands punching him? [The Legal Geeks] * Interesting... law schools have really cut back on the AALS Faculty Recruitment Conference. Almost 60 fewer schools in attendance. [PrawfsBlawg] * Using algorithms for sentencing? Just in case you wanted to introduce flash crashes to criminal justice. [Medium] * Meticulous deep dive into the Apple v. Samsung oral argument. If Samsung paid this much attention to detail they probably may not have exploding phones. [Empirical SCOTUS] * Mike Papantonio's got a new show coming to RT next month: America's Lawyer. [RT]

* Rudy Giuliani will be taking a “voluntary leave of absence” from Greenberg Traurig thanks to his activities related to Donald Trump’s campaign for the presidency. Is Giuliani’s move truly voluntary, or was the prominent partner forced to take a break as Election 2016 draws closer and the race for the White House becomes even more heated? We’ll have more on this development later today. [Observer]

* In 196 deals with a total volume of $379.6 billion, White & Case is ranked No. 1 on Bloomberg’s M&A charts for global deals in the first three quarters of 2016. The firm surpassed the likes of SullCrom (No. 2), Wachtell Lipton (No. 3), Davis Polk (No. 4), and Skadden (No. 5). This time last year, Skadden was leading the pack. [Big Law Business]

* In one of the first cases related to race that SCOTUS grappled with this Term, some say it appeared as though the justices may side with a black death row inmate in search of a new sentence because his own lawyer used an expert witness at trial who testified that the man was more likely to be dangerous in the future because of his race. [Reuters]

* Government lawyers continue to flock to Biglaw firms, and this time, the lateral hire is a “true patriot, who believes in service to the nation as a calling.” WilmerHale welcomes Alejandro Mayorkas, a former U.S. Attorney who has worked for the the past three years as No. 2 at the Department of Homeland Security. Congratulations! [WSJ Law Blog]

* “I just hope that when people think the rules don’t apply to them, they will think twice before they abuse their power.” Thanks to a California law signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, it is now a felony punishable by up to three years in prison for state prosecutors to tamper with evidence or hide exculpatory material from the defense. [Los Angeles Times]

When you can't even tell the truth to yourself about what you are doing, it's a pretty good indication that what you are doing is wrong.

* Michael Chertoff, who once led the Whitewater congressional investigation, in now endorsing Hillary Clinton. [Bloomberg View] * No, Donald Trump does not understand libel laws. [GQ] * The New York City Council's investigation into the removal of deed restrictions from Rivington House. [Cityland] * Thoughts on strategies for surviving this year's election for African-Americans. [Equal Citizenship Movement] * The year in Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement actions. [FCPA Professor] * Tim Kaine's tortured history with the death penalty. [Buzzfeed]

Solos and small-firm lawyers already have it bad enough.