Election Law

These laws were passed under the assumption that the conservative Supreme Court would provide legal cover to the efforts at racial disenfranchisement.

This SCOTUS case has appeared in a lot of decisions recently.

Know this tidbit?

North Carolina obviously enacted their voter laws in response to black turnout. The Court just called them on it.

* A judge who drank alcohol “on court premises” now has a lot of free time to drink in comfort elsewhere. [Legal Cheek]

* A fascinating research paper on how the media is leading everyone astray by portraying the Islamic State as lawless — their key to holding land is based in large part on their imposition of legal institutions. [Brookings Institute]

* Quinn Emanuel’s Susan Estrich is representing Roger Ailes. Am I alone in hoping she manages this case like she managed the Dukakis campaign? [Observer]

* The DNC Wikileaks fallout hits a law firm. Marc Elias of Perkins Coie is on record urging DNC officials to accuse Bernie Sanders of lying. I’m sure Perkins Coie will respond that he was just being “nuanced.” [Am Law Daily]

* F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone’s mother-in-law was just kidnapped in Brazil and is being held for a $36 million ransom. But, you know, let’s definitely have the Olympics there! [NPR]

* A review of the courtroom fates of a number of voter suppression tactics proposed around the country. [Economist]

* This University of Chicago professor is not happy with Judge Frank Easterbrook [Valparaiso University Law Review]

* The folks at Practice Panther took the ABA law school data and made this nice infographic. [Practice Panther]

* Are law firms being exploited by their clients to launder money? [Wall Street Journal]

* Richard McLaren is the law professor who laid the ground work for Russia potentially being banned from the Rio Olympics over a doping scandal. [New York Times]

* An analysis of the legal issues in the new Ghostbusters movie. [The Legal Geeks]

* Review of Anxious Lawyer (affiliate link), a new book by AtL columnist Jeena Cho and Karen Gifford. [Legal Ink Magazine]

* What does Rick Hasen think will happen in Texas now that the 5th Circuit has struck down its voter ID law? [KUT]

* Matthew Dowd and Robert Kulik, the lawyers turned children’s book authors we previously profiled, went on TV to discuss their work. [ABC News]

* The Fifth Circuit, sitting en banc, rules that Texas’s voter ID law violates the Voting Rights Act by having discriminatory effects on minority voters (but remands on the issue of discriminatory purpose). [How Appealing]

* It appears that yes, Roger Ailes is on his way out at Fox News — thanks in part to the work of lawyers from Paul, Weiss. [New York Times]

* Matt and Melissa Graves, the parents whose two-year-old son was killed by an alligator at Disney’s Grand Floridian resort, will not be suing Disney. [Washington Post]

* Congratulations to exoneree Jarrett Adams, who served nearly eight years in prison for a crime he did not commit, on his admission to the New York bar. [ABA Journal]

* Republican VP nominee Mike Pence is a lawyer, and his Democratic counterpart probably will be as well: shortlisters Tim Kaine, Thomas Perez, and Tom Vilsack are all lawyers, and James Stavridis is a law dean. [New York Times]

* A California man gets convicted in a plot to kill two prosecutors, two FBI agents, and federal judge Andrew Guilford — with a wood chipper. [Los Angeles Times via ABA Journal]

* A New York appeals court affirms a ruling in favor of Boies Schiller in a malpractice suit brought by fashion model Mary Anne Fletcher. [Big Law Business]

* A bit more about former Attorney General Eric Holder’s work for Airbnb (a development we noted yesterday). [American Lawyer]

Co-mingling of resources between the Trump Organization and the Trump campaign could be a no-no.

Y'all need to stop putting all your eggs in the Supreme Court's basket.

* Thinking of suing Donald Trump? Here are 5 things you need to know. [Law.com]

* Knowing what you know now, would you do law school all over again? Fascinating thought experiment. [Reboot Your Law Practice]

* Using the fraud defense to discharge law school debt at for profit schools is the new hotness. [Tax Prof Blog]

* Donald Trump is asking for campaign contributions from British politicians. They’re pissed about it, oh and by the way, it’s against campaign finance laws. [Talking Points Memo]

* RIP Ed Davis. Described as the best of the legal profession: smart, a fierce advocate for civil rights and above all, kind. [New York Times]

* Not your most typical legal job: the life of a PETA lawyer. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Joe Scarborough has weighed in on Donald Trump’s statement about Judge Gonzalo Curiel’s Mexican heritage. For the record, the former Republic Congressman thinks “[i]t’s completely racist.” [Politico]

* Based on comments Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have made, what will our next Supreme Court justice be like? [Empirical SCOTUS]

* They may hate him, but with the perspective of three years, it is clear Edward Snowden actually helped the legal intelligence community. [Lawfare]

* Donald Trump “fought back” against Elizabeth Warren, saying she made a “quick killing” in real estate after the economic downturn, but what do you know? Facts suggest otherwise (namely that she bought real estate in Oklahoma to help her family and their construction business). [Washington Post]

* You can win an early copy of The Curve, a brand new novel by Jeremy Blachman and Cameron Stracher, about a corrupt Trump University-style law school. They’ve set up a website for the fake law school in the book, and would love readers to check it out and submit their own worst law school story for a chance to win an advance copy. [Manhattan Law School]

* Who knows what the composition of the Court will be like when they hear it, but the Supreme Court will take on another racial gerrymandering case. [Election Law Blog]

* The D.C. Disciplinary Counsel took seven years to pass judgment on an administrative law judge who sued a dry cleaner for $60 million over a pair of pants. [Legal Profession Blog]

* What Muhammad Ali lost when he went to the Supreme Court. [Slate]

* Using the life of a passed appellate attorney as inspiration for practice. [Guile is Good]

* Does a sound legal case exist for indicting Hillary Clinton? [Beck’s Law]

* BuzzFeed turns down cold hard cash over its decision to turn away Trump for President ads. [Buzzfeed]

* The “Gig Economy” — things are only getting worse for adjunct professors. [Law and More]

* A judge has ruled that Andrew Schmuhl, the attorney accused of torturing and nearly killing the managing partner of the law firm his wife was fired from, will not be allowed to use an involuntary intoxication defense at trial. We may have more on this later today. [Washington Post]

* Congratulations to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg! A newly discovered species of praying mantis with a decorative neck plate, the Ilomantis ginsburgae, has been named after Her Honor thanks to her “commitment to women’s rights and gender equality… and her appreciation of the jabot.” This is an honor that is truly fitting for the Notorious R.B.G. [New York Magazine]

* Partners continue to head for the exits at Kenyon & Kenyon. This time, the chair of the IP firm’s life sciences and chemical prosecution practice fled for Fox Rothschild, and he took two others with him. What’s going on as this firm, and did they decide finally decide to officially pull the plug on the summer program? Let us know. [Big Law Business]

* “There’s absolutely no showing of any federal violation. The citizens of California are smart enough to know what their rights are.” Sorry, Bernie bros, but because unaffiliated voters’ rights haven’t been harmed, voter registration will not be reopened ahead of next week’s primary in the Golden State. Best of luck in the polls. [Los Angeles Times]

* People are still raging against this JOP: The Nevada Attorneys for Criminal Justice, a group of defense lawyers 150 strong, have filed an ethics complaint against Judge Conrad Hafen, saying he showed a “complete disregard for the law” when he handcuffed a public defender as she tried to represent her client. [Las Vegas Review-Journal]

* Boyce Martin Jr., chief judge emeritus of the Sixth Circuit, RIP. [Courier-Journal]

* The Workers Rights Consortium found that Nike bans its workers in a Vietnam factory from yawning, among other awful allegations. In related news, Nike will no longer allow independent monitoring of its factories. [Lawyers, Guns and Money]

* Sports writer Clay Travis proves it is possible to escape the legal profession and follow your dreams. I mean it probably won’t happen, but it doesn’t hurt to daydream on a Friday afternoon. [Hire an Esquire]

* Is hopping around from job to job like an excited bunny losing its stigma to potential employers? [Corporette]

* Hillary Clinton’s campaign lost a challenge to Virginia’s voter suppressing photo ID law. Yeah, this November’s going to run swimmingly. [Election Law Blog]

* Here’s how to avoid those truly terrible social interactions that can derail your career. [Law and More]

* Marijuana legalization is a growing trend, but what impact does the burgeoning industry have on poor communities? [Politico]

* The Good Wife is getting a spin-off on CBS’s new streaming service, loyal viewers will be happy, but it really should have been a musical. [Slate]

* Real estate developer, Greg Geiser is suing the family he evicted for organizing a protest in front of his house. [Huffington Post]

* If Bush v. Gore didn’t teach you that election laws are a mess, then this season of Veep will hammer the lesson home. [Strook]

* D.C. Circuit Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh knows the value of saying no — especially to a sitting president. [United States Law Week]

* Oh, this is fun, well, at least if you are an avowed Trekkie. There’s an amicus brief written entirely about the Klingon language. When arguing that Paramount cannot claim a copyright over the Klingon language, what better to spice up your prose than some quotes actually written in Klingon? [Popehat]

* A look at the most cited law reviews in Supreme Court opinions from the 2013 Term to the present. [Empirical SCOTUS]

* Wait — what did this Oklahoma court say? That forcing an unconscious woman to perform oral sex isn’t sexual assault? What. The. Hell. [Slate]

* Pauli Murray, lawyer, scholar and activist, just had a residential college named after her at Yale. [New York Magazine]

The GOP frontrunner adds another experienced operative to his team.

How did Don McGahn and Jones Day wind up representing the controversial candidate?

* 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]

Probably not -- but many lawyers at the firm wouldn't mind saying "you're fired" to the controversial candidate.

How would you feel about your law firm representing Donald Trump?

Election rules may be subject to change.