Defamation

* The House Judiciary Committee has (finally) opened an impeachment investigation against President Trump, and has asked a federal judge to supply subpoenaed grand jury information related to Robert Mueller’s probe. [Washington Post]

* “I was OK this last term. I expect to be OK next term. And after that we’ll just have to see.” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has no immediate plans for retirement, saying that she’ll continue to take things “year by year” and “stay on this job as long as [she] can do it full steam.” [CNN]

* In case you missed it, here’s what SCOTUS justices have done on their summer vacation thus far: they’re allowing the Trump administration to use $2.5 billion of funds that were previously allocated to the Defense Department to start construction on the border wall. [New York Times]

* Just as LeClairRyan finds itself gasping its presumptive last breaths, the firm finds itself on the wrong end of a gender pay discrimination case. [Big Law Business]

* A federal judge has dismissed Nick Sandmann’s $250 million defamation lawsuit against the Washington Post. This probably means that Sandmann’s similar suits against CNN and NBC will be dismissed soon as well. [USA Today]

Which living people are truly libel-proof, with reputations so bad that defamation ceases to exist.

And now we have another fight over a test that's probably worthless anyway.

Catching up on the latest filings in this saga.

His motion is back on the docket... some of his letters aren't.

The best response to speech we don’t like is more speech, not threats of lawsuits which are often only available to the wealthiest among us to threaten others into silence.

* Impending constitutional crisis alert: President Trump is opposed to his White House aides — especially former White House Counsel, “real lawyer” Don McGahn — testifying before Congress because they already cooperated with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. [Washington Post]

* Meanwhile, fake lawyer Michael Cohen, who served as legal counsel to Trump for about decade, will soon report to his Federal Correctional Institution – Otisville, which has been referred to as a “castle behind bars.” At least he’ll get to hang out with The Situation. [Daily Beast]

* Bill Cosby is suing Quinn Emanuel over its “unconscionable fees,” claiming that the firm overstaffed his case to the tune of $8.55 million over the course of nine months. Maybe stop checking you emails so much? [American Lawyer]

* George and Amal Clooney will be on campus at Columbia Law tomorrow for the official launch of TrialWatch, an initiative that will monitor trials acros the globe to protect human rights and eventually create a global justice index. [Law.com]

* Another happy ending for Robert Kraft (for the time being): Prosecutors have been blocked from releasing footage that allegedly shows the New England Patriots owner receiving sexual favors in a massage parlor. [Reuters]

* On the next episode of “Empire,” Olabinjo and Abimbola Osundairo, the brothers who helped stage a racist and homophobic attack against Jussie Smollett, will file a defamation lawsuit against the actor’s attorneys. [Big Law Business]

* Cooley Law has a new president and dean following the departure of Don LeDuc. James McGrath will join the school from Texas A&M Law, where he serves as associate dean of academic support and bar services. Good luck! [WMU Cooley Law]

Boies Schiller brings powerhouse talent to bear in the fallout of sex-trafficking matter.

* Several weeks after its release, Over My Dead Body, Wondery’s new podcast exploring the Dan Markel case, continues to top the podcast charts — and creators Matthew Shaer and Eric Benson have some thoughts on why the case has seized the public imagination. [Inside Edition]

* The Keith Tharpe case, far from representing an isolated injustice, reflects and embodies the racist roots of the death penalty in America, according to Stephen Cooper. [CounterPunch]

* The fight against racism in the justice system has been going on (and will continue) for many years — and as Texas lawyer John Browning has discovered, trailblazing African American attorneys were fighting to integrate the bar of the Lone Star State as early as the 1800s. [Texas Lawyer]

* I’ve previously argued against treating blue slips as senatorial vetoes of judicial nominees, based on their consequences for the federal judiciary — and as Thomas Jipping points out, history supports treating blue slips as a senatorial courtesy, nothing more. [Bench Memos / National Review]

* Don’t be fooled by the high level of unanimity in the Supreme Court’s first few decisions of the Term; greater disagreement lurks in the “shadow docket,” as Adam Feldman explains. [Empirical SCOTUS]

* The compromise appropriations bill that saved us from another government shutdown could also advance the Trump Administration’s “remain in Mexico” policy for asylum seekers from Central America — which Stewart Baker believes “may offer a better solution to the immigration crisis than the construction of a few miles of new wall.” [Lawfare via Volokh Conspiracy / Reason]

* Actor James Woods is out of the woods in a defamation lawsuit arising out of an erroneous tweet of his, thanks to this interesting ruling by the Sixth Circuit. [How Appealing]

* Jean O’Grady is excited about Panoramic, the latest offering from Thomson Reuters, which transforms “the ambitious idea of merging workflow and billing into an actual product.” [Dewey B Strategic]

I guess high schools just don't teach defamation law anymore.

Justice Thomas uses a sympathetic plaintiff to take a dump on the case law.

* Earlier this week, Justice Samuel Alito blocked a Louisiana abortion law, and now a divided Supreme Court has done the same, with Chief Justice John Roberts joining with the Court’s liberals to protect women’s right to choose without undue burdens. Justice Brett Kavanaugh penned the dissent — so much for “precedent on precedent.” [USA Today]

* After some back and forth over the threat of a subpoena, Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker has agreed to testify publicly on the Mueller probe before the House Judiciary Committee bright and early tomorrow morning. [Washington Post]

* “There’s no doubt that the talent wars in tax have definitely heated up.” As it turns out, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is really living up to its name in that it’s creating a lot of new jobs — for tax lawyers and accountants, that is. [Wall Street Journal]

* “I always thought of him as a good lawyer. I’m not so sure I think the same thing about him today.” Now that he’s serving as Trump’s counsel, New York lawyers simply “don’t understand” who the new and improved(?) Rudy Giuliani is. [Law.com]

* Students at Harvard Law really want the school to continue its support of a pilot federal clerk hiring program that prevents judges from offering clerkships until applicants have completed their second year of school. [Harvard Crimson]

* Lawyers representing Nick Sandmann, the Covington Catholic student who went viral after his run-in with a Native American elder during a D.C. protest, have sent an evidence-preservation letter to CNN prior to suing for defamation. [Daily Report]

Both sides of the Fairfax allegations retain counsel with some recent experience.

This lawyer is familiar with publicity and defamation claims.

Elon Musk probably didn't defame anybody when he was being a jerk on Twitter.

* Justice Department launches its bid to reverse LGBTQ rights. I’ll bet several liked beers that the timing isn’t a coincidence. [National Law Journal]

* Speaking of the Supreme Court, anthropomorphic hemorrhoid Charles Harder is asking the Court to get rid of Section 230 so every website can be sued into oblivion for defamation they don’t even commit. [The Verge]

* With Baker McKenzie chair Paul Rawlinson stepping down from exhaustion, other Biglaw managing partners line up to describe how hard they have it. [American Lawyer]

* Latham & Watkins partner takes Lording his position over everybody literally. [Legal Cheek]

* “Hey Google, what are sanctions?” [Law360]

* The DOJ may have won the stay it wanted, but it’s still staring down a trial over the census. [New York Law Journal]

* Judge set to resolve one of the many shady election law problems plaguing Georgia. [Courthouse News Service]

But the judge seems to have changed his mind about her.

* Valparaiso celebrated earlier in the week after reaching an agreement to send its beleaguered law school to Middle Tennessee. Tennessee’s education officials have killed the idea of hosting another middling law school with extreme prejudice. [Chicago Tribune]

* Ninth Circuit judge displays deliberate ignorance in what appears to be a looming decision to keep college athletes out of court. [Courthouse News Service]

* Whenever you doubt the stupidity of humanity, remember people accused of global financial fraud tend to email each other explicit descriptions of what they’re doing. [Law360]

* Boies Schiller will act as special prosecutor in the Joe Arpaio appeal in what should be the easiest appellate layup ever. [The Recorder]

* Republican judge dismisses lawsuit against Republican politician. [Huffington Post]

* Jeff Sessions tells the Heritage Foundation that he doesn’t approve of this idea that courts might consider themselves some kind of “check” or “balance” on the executive branch. [National Law Journal]

* Ralph Baxter thinks Biglaw needs to change its business model to succeed. [American Lawyer]

* Fun fact of the day: According to David Brock, a onetime member of “Kavanaugh’s cabal,” the D.C. Circuit judge has an “unhealthy obsession with the Clintons — especially Hillary.” He urges senators to vote no on Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. [NBC News]

* After repeatedly denying that he had an affair with Stormy Daniels, President Donald Trump now says he he “will not bring any action, proceeding, or claim” against her for speaking out despite her nondisclosure agreement. All she has to do is give back the $130,000 hush-money payment she received from Michael Cohen. [Washington Post]

* The Democratic Coalition has lodged a perjury complaint against Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh with the Justicec Department, and will soon file an ethics complaint with the D.C. Circuit. Oh, the irony that the grievance will be reviewed by SCOTUS nominee in waiting, Chief Judge Merrick Garland. [Mediaite

* President Trump will provide sworn answers to written questions in the defamation suit filed by former Apprentice contestant Summer Zervos. Considering Marc Kasowitz thinks his client is “immune” from this suit, things could get interesting. [Reuters]

* The U.S. legal sector has lost jobs for the second month in a row, and legal employment is now slightly down year-over-year. Hopefully these job numbers rebound, because law schools have started accepting record class sizes again. [American Lawyer]

* Could this be the year that law firms break out of their cycle of tepid growth? [American Lawyer]

* In ordinary times, Roy Moore’s laughable lawsuit against Sacha Baron Cohen would be bigger news. We do not live in ordinary times. [Law360]

* One would have thought “independence” would be “having a lifetime job with no oversight and an impossibly onerous removal process.” But, “independence” really means “only answering hypotheticals that don’t raise potentially serious questions about a guy’s fig leaf of a judicial philosophy.” This is why it’s so important to be a textualist! [Courthouse News Service]

* It makes for a nice, vapid buzzword, but there actually is an “I” in “Team of Nine.” [National Law Journal]

* A federal judge has banned the Texas “bury your zygote” law. Don’t worry Texas, your boy Brett’s will make sure you don’t have to worry about this ever again. [NPR]

* Shocking no one, lawyers think Brexit was a bad idea. [Legalweek]

* Oh, and we’re going to “open up libel laws” now. [CBS]