Eugene Volokh

The Ninth Circuit hearts the First Amendment.

* Stop drinking the FCPA Kool-Aid. Kool-Aid doesn’t even taste good anyway. Unless you add booze. But I digress. [FCPA Professor] * Is it illegal to lie on Twitter? Some thoughts from Professor Eugene Volokh. [Volokh Conspiracy] * So you wanna get published in a law review, huh? Well, check this out, young padawan. [Prawfsblog] * Who are the top employment lawyers in America? [eBossWatch] * The ABA and New York Law School are butting heads on how to deal with time lost due to Sandy. [Legal As She Is Spoke via Constitutional Daily] * Lat is giving a talk at Vanderbilt Law School tomorrow. It’s open to the public and free, just like the pizza (but if you take the pizza, you have to stay for the event). [Vanderbilt Law School]

* A Hurricane Sandy survival guide. Key components? Food, water, booze, and prophylactics. Who’s ready for a hurricane Halloween party? [FindLaw] * California’s longest serving death-row inmate just got his sentence set aside by the Ninth Circuit. [WSJ Law Blog] * A few days before Thanksgiving, SCOTUS will decide whether to hear the Prop. 8 and DOMA cases. Happy holidays? [American Foundation for Equal Rights] * Sometimes the most effective self-defense weapon isn’t a gun, it’s a pot of soup. [Consumerist] * Harold Koh, former Yale Law School dean and current legal adviser to the State Department, sits down for a Legally Speaking interview at UC Hastings. [California Lawyer] * Additional thoughts, this time from Professor Eugene Volokh, on employers urging employees to vote a certain way. [Volokh Conspiracy]

* In response to our contest for the best law firm offices, Vivia Chen proposes a contest for the shabbiest law firm offices — and gets the ball rolling with one nominee. (Hint: CHECK YOU hallways.) [The Careerist] * Professor Eugene Volokh shares his views on the juicy leaked law review emails we covered earlier. [Volokh Conspiracy] * And Professor Josh Blackman has some ideas about the identity of the conservative professor discussed in the controversial emails. [Josh Blackman's Blog] * Villanova hired ESPN’s Andrew Brandt to be the director of the school’s Center for Sports Law. Students would probably be more excited if this meant ESPN was interested in hiring them. [SB Nation Philly] * Sumner Redstone of Viacom just donated $18 million to Boston University Law. Quick, Boston College, hurry up and find an old rich guy to make a multi-million dollar donation to your school! [Hollywood Reporter] * Reality TV hottie Reichen Lehmkuhl, perhaps better known for being Lance Bass’s ex-boyfriend, reports that he’s going to law school. He should be required to attend class without his shirt on. [Instinct Magazine]

Are law review editors biased against conservative scholarship? Leaked emails written by law journal editors raise this possibility.

* “Kanye West, Kelly Clarkson, and Nietzsche (figuratively) walk into the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Hilarity ensues.” [FindLaw] * The EPA gets benchslapped by the D.C. Circuit. [Instapundit] * What can law firms learn from… the Cheesecake Factory? Besides how to make people fat; Biglaw’s already great at that. [Adam Smith, Esq.] * If you enjoy gambling or legal hypotheticals, check this out. [Legal Blog Watch] * Professor Eugene Volokh examines the tricky tension between constitutionally protected speech and laws against blackmail. [Volokh Conspiracy] Professor Ann Althouse * Professor Howard Wasserman grades Representative Todd Akin’s apology for his “legitimate rape” remarks — and gives the congressman partial credit for “owning” it. [PrawfsBlawg] * Meanwhile, Professor Ann Althouse wonders: “Would the Democrats oust one of their own because he said one thing wrong?” [Althouse] * Don’t forget: tonight is the nomination deadline for our Lawyerly Lairs contest for the best law firm offices in America. [Above the Law] * Our commenting platform, Disqus, is having issues — which may explain why comments are mysteriously disappearing from the site. We apologize for the problem, which we are investigating. [Disqus]

If they held a contest for stupidest proposed legislation, this would have to win.

* Professor Eugene Volokh wonders if Justice Sonia Sotomayor is truly the first disabled justice. [Volokh Conspiracy] * Speaking of SCOTUS, should President Obama turn it into a campaign issue? First Amendment lawyer Marvin Ammori thinks so. [The Atlantic] * We recently mentioned Keith Olbermann’s lawsuit against his former employer, Current TV. Now Current is turning the tables with a countersuit. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight] * Threatening federal financial regulators: not a wise idea. Trader Vincent McCrudden learned that the hard way. [Dealbreaker] * “Get High, Get Mauled By Bear, Get Workers’ Compensation?” [Legal Juice] Yul Kwon: coming to a television near you. * Adventures in trademark law — starring model, socialite, and reality TV star Olivia Palermo. [Fashionista] * When is the best time to submit articles to law reviews? Professor Shima Baradaran is collecting data. [PrawfsBlawg] * One of ATL’s favorite celebrities — Yale Law School grad Yul Kwon, the first Asian-American winner of Survivor (as well as a former Second Circuit clerk and McKinsey consultant) — is returning to television, hosting a new show. What’s the show about? Find out, after the jump.

A Pennsylvania judge dismissed a harassment charge against a Muslim man who allegedly attacked an atheist dressed up as "Zombie Mohammed." Since then, everyone has been talking about and arguing over this case. What do you make of it?

Where would lawyers be without open (and absurdly expensive) access to Westlaw and Lexis-Nexis for legal research? They’d have to trudge down to the closest law library and read real books made of paper. They’d have to head over to the courthouse and pull actual files with non-electronic documents inside of them. In a time where legal texts are used solely for decorative bookshelf purposes, that is just too much to ask. But that is the behavior that two lawyers would expect of their professional colleagues. Do they have any chance of winning their class action copyright suit?

* How can you tout your achievements in a cover letter without sounding like a tool? Here are some pointers from Professor Eugene Volokh. [Volokh Conspiracy] * The “unbundling” of legal services is a big buzzword when talking about the direction of the profession. But, as Jordan Furlong posits, should lawyers and law firms start thinking about “rebundling”? [Law21.ca] * Benchslap of earlier this month: the Fourth Circuit smacks around some saucy AUSAs. [Legal Blog Watch] * “[P]ublic drunkenness is not illegal in NYC.” (Elie will be glad to hear this.) [Gothamist] * How will SCOTUS rule on the Stolen Valor Act? Mike Sacks reads the oral argument tea leaves. [Huffington Post] * Chris Christie to Warren Buffett: if you want to pay more taxes, “just write a check and shut up.” [Dealbreaker] * A Harvard Law School student, Matthew Schoenfeld, stands up for a good cause. [Harvard Law School News]

[T]his might be a helpful alert to lawyers who are hiring someone to try to promote their sites: It’s possible that the promotion might consist of behavior that is par for the course for purported penis enlargement products, but not really in keeping with the sort of reputation that lawyers generally seek to cultivate. — […]

Welcome to the latest edition of Above the Law’s Grammer Pole of the Weak, a column where we turn questions of legal writing and English grammar and usage over to our readers for discussion and debate. On Friday, thanks to popular demand from our readers, we turned to a contested issue among lawyers. What is the preferred past tense form for the verb plead -- pleaded or pled?

In last week's Grammer Pole, we called upon you to choose between nationalities instead of Supreme Court justices. When it comes to the placement of punctuation marks in relation to quotation marks, do you favor the British approach or the American approach? Let's review the differences....

* Lincoln Caplan writes about Bill Stuntz — “America’s leading thinker on criminal justice, and its hardest to categorize” — in a review of Stuntz’s posthumously published book, The Collapse of American Criminal Justice (affiliate link). [Democracy: A Journal of Ideas] * Ben Kerschberg identifies eight great law and technology resources — including Above the […]

* Some thoughts from our colleague Matt Levine on the Justice Department’s opposition to the AT&T/T-Mobile merger. [Dealbreaker] * Judge Sam Sparks (W.D. Tex.), king of the benchslap — yes, we already covered his latest handiwork, so no need to email the “kindergarten party” order to us again — has blocked key parts of the […]

* Professor Eugene Volokh poses this question to his readers (we considered a similar query before): “I Got Awful Grades My First Year in Law School. Should I Quit?” [Volokh Conspiracy] * I’m not that familiar with canon law, but I don’t think it looks favorably upon alleged groping of teenage girls. [La Crosse Tribune] […]

Is a ban on "truck nuts" unconstitutional? Actually, do you even know what "truck nuts" are? Ignorance may be bliss, but it's time to enlighten yourself....

* The three defendants in the civil wrongful-death action brought by Robert Wone’s widow are keeping their mouths shut. [National Law Journal] * But their former house is open — and once again on the market, for the tidy sum of $1.6 million. [Who Murdered Robert Wone?] * Professor Eugene Volokh wants to know, with […]

* The Supreme Court opens the door, but just a crack, to prisoners seeking access to DNA evidence. [SCOTUSblog] * The legal job market is getting better, right? Right? [Vault] * Hall, J., dissenting — from the grave. [How Appealing] * Harvard Law School is always ready for its close-up: first The Paper Chase, then […]