If you watched the inauguration ceremonies, whether in person or on television, you may have noticed all nine Supreme Court justices out in force. Supreme fashions generated tons of talk on Twitter, especially Justice Alito’s snazzy sunglasses; Justice Ginsburg’s huge hat, which made her look like a toy soldier; and Justice Breyer and Justice Scalia’s jaunty skullcaps, discussed by Tony Mauro and Josh Blackman (among others). According to Kevin Walsh, Justice Scalia’s was a gift from the St. Thomas More Society of Richmond, Virginia.
That’s on the level of style. What about substance? How will the Supreme Court affect President Obama, and how will President Obama affect the Court, as we enter the 44th president’s second term?
So far this year, we haven’t had any huge commencement kerfuffles over graduation speakers at law schools. Last year, you’ll remember that Michigan Law was in a tizzy over Dean Evan Caminker’s pick of Ohio Senator Rob Portman as a commencement speaker. Portman is one of those anti-marriage equality types, and Michigan Law students actually organized a walkout to protest his divisive views.
This year, Michigan has gone with a much more conservative choice.
Paul Caron at Tax Prof Blog has published his annual list of law school commencement speakers. Michigan Law’s choice is boring, but let’s see if we can’t find somebody else on this list to get excited about…
* Prop 8 made an appearance today at the California Supreme Court before newly seated Justice Goodwin Liu. As suspected, the liberal Liu immediately made the proponents have sex with each other as he cackled “I hate families.” [Poliglot / Metro Weekly]
* Next time a TSA agent sticks her hand down your pants and cops a feel, try not to call it “rape” on your blog. Instead, maybe just admit that you were asking for it by showing up to the airport dressed in all them clothes. [Techdirt]
* After Labor Day, consider that “every day should be a day to care about working people.” And don’t forget that even though judges live in impenetrable fortresses of justice, they are people, too. [Underdog]
* Here’s a good one for the 1Ls. If you’re a grieving mother and your boss forces you to remove pictures of your dead daughter from your cubicle as if she never existed, is he intentionally inflicting emotional distress upon you? Nope, but he sure is a douchebag. [Courthouse News Service]
* “In my day, we used to walk 70 miles to school…” Next time grandpa forces you to hike the Grand Canyon and starts with this old codger rhetoric, give your mom a call. That’s not legal. [CBS News]
Grandpa's idea of fun.
* If you have time to read real books, maybe you should check some of these out from the library. Do those even exist anymore? Ugh, just download them to your Kindle. [Constitutional Daily]
* One is the loneliest number, especially if you’re supposed to be in a partnership. Professor Larry Ribstein has some ideas on what ought to happen post-breakup. [Truth on the Market]
* Ahoy, me matey. This law blogarrrr wants ya t’ know that if ya want t’ trade for booty usin’ yer gold doubloons, steer yer ship toward th’ land o’ many wives. [Adjunct Law Prof Blog]
Congratulations to Goodwin Liu — until today Professor Liu, but after today, Justice Liu.
In July, California Governor Jerry Brown nominated the 40-year-old Liu, a law professor at Boalt Hall, to serve on the California Supreme Court. The nomination was subject to the approval of a three-member state commission.
What did the commission have to say about the Liu nomination?
But he would be a justice on a non-SCOTUS court (for now). California Governor Jerry Brown just nominated Professor Liu, 40, to serve on the California Supreme Court.
How might Goodwin Liu’s nomination be received by the people of California? He’s smart, he’s liberal — er, progressive — but there’s one potential rub….
Reports indicate that cloture has not been invoked for Goodwin Liu’s nomination to the Ninth Circuit. That means the filibuster is still on. That means he’s going to be a law professor, not a judge (at least until the next election cycle).
Senators Susan Collins (R-ME), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), and the totally [curse words] Ben Nelson (Something – NE) all voted against Liu. Game, set, match.
Maybe Goodwin Liu and Miguel Estrada should start a support group.
UPDATE (2:40 PM): The vote to end debate failed, 52-43; 60 votes were required.
* Starbucks sued for not being nice to dwarfs. I propose to fix this by offering a dwarf-sized coffee that is the volume of a full-sized dwarf. That way, everybody would learn that dwarfs might be small in stature but huge if you had to drink one. [ABA Journal]
* Happy is the lawyer who has clients who are worse at math than he is. [Constitutional Daily]
* It’s not that I think cops shouldn’t be allowed to break down doors if they fear evidence is being destroyed. It’s that I don’t want cops to break down my door for the crime of “owning a door while black,” while invoking the “we thought we smelled pot and he was smoking the evidence” exception. [Law & Technology / Forbes]
* Whenever America and France get into a fight, I always picture some German dude sitting around saying “Jå, Iago. Now das taschentuch!” [Simple Justice]
* Doing hood rat stuff with your friends is less likely to land you in the adult court system now. [New York Times]
* The Quinnipiac Law School registrar might be headed to the pokey on mortgage fraud charges. Add/Drop is now… CLOSED!!!!! No idea what that means. [Hartford Courant]
* Several states are considering laws that would make it more difficult for college students and others to vote. College students fire back that they’re not going to take this lying down. But they’re going to get a little high first. [Washington Post]
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We currently have a number of active openings for associate roles at US and UK firms in HK / China, Singapore and two new in-house openings. As always, please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com in order to get details of current openings in Asia, as well as to discuss the Asia markets in general and what we expect for openings later this year. Our Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney will be in Beijing the week of March 25 and Evan Jowers will be in Hong Kong the week of April 1, if you would like to meet them in person.
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The last time I flapped my wings your way, I tried to make at least enough noise about your mobile phone to make you more than a little bit uncomfortable. I hope I did. If enough of us become anxious enough about the known and unknown unknowns and knowns in our mobile phones, then we can start making wise decisions about how to manage that information and its resultant investigations.
Today, I’d like to put a finer point on the last installment’s topic by asking a question that seemed to catch most attendees off-guard at a conference panel that I moderated last week: is there discoverable personal information in a mobile app? Our panelists’ answer was a uniform “yes” with one stating that, if he had to choose only one type of data that he could discover from a mobile phone, he’d choose app data. Why? Because there’s simply so much of it and because almost all of it is objective – not just user-created like an email – but machine-tracked like GPS, usage duration, log in and log out times, browsed web addresses, browsed actual addresses. Also, most of us seem to have the idea that data doesn’t actually “stick” to our mobile devices the way it “sticks” to our hard drives. Maybe there’s a disconnect based on the fact that our phones are mobile so we assume the data is mobile to?
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