Fourth Amendment

* It’s checkout time at the Supreme Court, and courtroom correspondent Mark Walsh is ready to reveal what’s in his shopping cart. [SCOTUSblog]

* Being cited by the Supreme Court is usually something to boast about — but not always, as Adam Feldman notes in this thoughtful analysis of how much oral arguments matter. [Empirical SCOTUS]

* Will Baude breaks down the Court’s intriguing debate over stare decisis in South Dakota v. Wayfair. [PrawfsBlawg]

* Joel Cohen looks at why the federal judiciary gets better treatment from the press than the other two branches of government — and whether the differential is justified. [The Hill]

* Orin Kerr identifies an interesting issue: if a police officer uses Google Translate to try and request consent to search from a non-English speaker in that person’s own language, is the consent valid if Google Translate botched the translation? [Volokh Conspiracy / Reason]

* There’s a long and bipartisan tradition of… the federal government spying on reporters, as Charles Glasser explains. [Daily Caller]

* Speaking of the media, Jean O’Grady points out a helpful new resource from CQ for consumers of news, along with tips for how to tell whether or not a story is “fake news.” [Dewey B Strategic]

* If reforms come to university boardrooms, let’s hope they include law schools as well. [ProfessorBainbridge via Instapundit]

* An interesting new use of voice-activated technology, courtesy of Wolters Kluwer: getting insights into federal tax law. [Artificial Lawyer]

* If you’ll be in New York on Tuesday, July 17, raise your glass with fellow young lawyers, summer associates, and law students, at the UJA’s Summer Law Happy Hour. [UJA Federation of New York]

* The 2018 Go-To Law Schools rankings are out — where should you go to law school if you want a job at a top firm? Spoiler: not Arizona Summit. [Law.com]

* According to a new study, justices spend more oral argument time grandstanding today than they did 20 years ago. So give Clarence Thomas credit for at least not falling into this trap. [National Law Journal]

* A fascinating interview with George Pataki covering his path to politics, his current practice, and his concern over the rise of celebrity candidates. For our younger readers, George Pataki was the tall guy in last election’s GOP junior varsity debate that you didn’t watch. [Coverage Opinions]

* John Dean and Preet Bharara are among the amici listed in a new brief from Project Democracy challenging the administration’s role in the AT&T merger. Their argument is outlined at Lawfare. [Lawfare]

* Dean Erwin Chemerinsky lays out the big Fourth Amendment cases to watch this Term. [ABA Journal]

* Suing over vaccination programs? Check. Cracking down on protestors in the name of free speech? Check. Harassing schools over affirmative action? Check. Prosecuting corporate criminals? Not so much. [Forbes]

* Oh. And add “defending the right to block people on Twitter” to the legal fights Justice is taking up rather than prosecuting corporations. [Law360]

* Lawyers for Brendan Dassey of Making a Murderer have filed a writ of certiorari, asking the Supreme Court to review a decision made by the en banc Seventh Circuit that upheld his conviction for murder. Earlier, a federal magistrate overturned his conviction and a panel of the Seventh Circuit affirmed. This is totally going to be in the show’s sequel. [ABC 2 WBAY]

* A step in the right direction for gun control? During a Medal of Valor ceremony at the White House, President Trump announced that he’d directed Attorney General Jeff Sessions to draft regulations that would effectively ban the use of bump stocks. Now we’ll just wait a few months to see some action on AR-15s… [USA Today]

* Could it be? Could Justice Neil Gorsuch be on your side when it comes to privacy? Believe it or not, “[h]e may even become the Supreme Court’s next swing vote on Fourth Amendment issues,” and this term he’ll have more than an ample opportunity to swing on the issues of digital privacy and police search warrants. [VICE News]

* If you thought you couldn’t get rid of your student loans in bankruptcy, you were likely be right, but that could change. The Trump administration is looking into what it takes for borrowers to meet the “undue hardship” threshold for the discharge of federal loans in bankruptcy, and may clarify the standard. [Wall Street Journal]

* In perhaps the best student event ever, Howard Law rented out an entire movie theater so that students, faculty, staff, and alumni could see an opening-night screening of Black Panther. The school’s SBA co-hosted the awesomeness with Georgetown Law’s Black Law Students Association. Congratulations! [Law.com]

* Time to nerd out! We’ll start with Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) firing a shot across on the bow on blue slips. [Politico via How Appealing]

* Speaking of judicial nominees, Professor Stephanos Bibas, nominated to the Third Circuit, has a long, long paper trail — including not just lots of law review articles, but letters to the editor from when he was a college kid. [CA3blog]

* Who knew that singer John Legend was a legal nerd? He’s all about “the challenge and the opportunity of federalism,” as Chris Geidner reports. [BuzzFeed News]

* It’s time for the courts to recognize that the Lemon test “is really and truly dead,” according to Daniel Blomberg of Becket. [Bench Memos / National Review]

* Meanwhile, Professor Orin Kerr identifies “an interesting question worth flagging for the Fourth Amendment nerds” out there. [Washington Post]

* Finally, Fifth Circuit guru David Coale has found something even wonkier than the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. [600 Camp]

* Congratulations to Erwin Chemerinsky, the next dean of Berkeley Law! [How Appealing]

* Speaking of deans, this Yale dean — note, not a dean at the law school — “loves diversity, except for ‘white trash.’” [Instapundit]

* The latest entrant into the FBI director sweepstakes: former senator Joe Lieberman, now senior counsel at one of Donald Trump’s “go-to” law firms, Kasowitz Benson. [Newsweek]

* “Americans like piece of paper? I have piece of paper!” [Althouse]

* In case you were wondering, “Did Rosie O’Donnell ever study constitutional law?” [NewsBusters]

* Legal nerds, let’s get ready to rumble! Professor Gerard Magliocca asks: “Is Justice Story overrated?” [Concurring Opinions]

* Shearman & Sterling partner (and podcaster) Richard Hsu is joining the Major leagues — legal recruiting firm Major, Lindsey & Africa, that is. [LinkedIn]

* Randy Maniloff interviews celebrated lawyer/author Scott Turow, whose new book, Testimony (affiliate link), just came out. [Coverage Opinions]

* An argument in favor of protecting your cellphone with your thumbprint and a password. [Katz Justice]

* “If you had to choose a law partner from the characters in Better Call Saul, who would you choose?” [Guile is Good]

* If you’re a law student interested in ediscovery, check out this contest, sponsored by kCura. [kCura via PR Newswire]

* President Trump included a signing statement when approving the funding legislation that will keep the government running through the end of September. In it, he questioned the limits of his spending power and suggested he’d ignore advance notice requirements for Congress when taking foreign policy and military actions, amid other troubling stances on legal matters. [Bloomberg Politics]

* In other news, sometime this week — possibly even later today — President Trump is expected to announce some of his picks for the more than 120 vacancies in the lower federal courts, all of whom are known for their “scholarly credentials and ‘intellectual boldness.'” As luck would have it, we already scooped predicted the names of many of the nominees. [New York Times]

* #NoFilter necessary for this case: The End, a Brooklyn coffee shop, has filed suit against Starbucks, claiming the coffee giant copied its Unicorn Latte with its highly Instagrammable Unicorn Frappuccino. The End registered the name of its whimsical drink with the Patent and Trademark Office in January, and seeks all profits Starbucks made from its sale of its mythical sugar bomb. [Newsweek]

* Even if you’re a passenger in a car, you’ll have no reprieve from police searches in this state. The Utah Supreme Court has ruled that police may ask for passengers’ identification and run background checks on them — without any suspicion of wrongdoing — during traffic stops, and that doing so will not stand as a violation of their Fourth Amendment rights. [FOX 13 Salt Lake City]

* Think you’ve found the perfect person to write you a law school rec letter? Think again. “Like in the world of dating, it helps if your partner/prospective partner is supportive of your plans.” Here are some red flags to look out for that may indicate your reference isn’t going to meet your deadlines, isn’t going to remember who you are, and isn’t going to write you a glowing letter. [U.S. News]

* Celebrity trial attorney Mark Geragos has filed a $100 million class-action lawsuit against rapper Ja Rule and entrepreneur Billy McFarland, the organizers of the ill-fated Fyre Festival, an event marked by “incompetence on an almost inconceivable scale.” In an interview with Variety, Geragos referred to the disastrous event as a “Petri dish of fraud, incompetence and hubris.” [Variety]