Well this should be fun. Florida federal judge Roger Vinson has struck down the heart of Obama’s health care reform plan, finding that the individual mandate part of the bill is unconstitutional and therefore the whole thing is unconstitutional.
As Ashby Jones points out on the WSJ Law Blog, that makes the score 2 – 2. Two federal judges have upheld the law; two others have struck it down.
You know what that means? It means that very soon America will be operating under the Anthony M. Kennedy health care system. Does Justice Kennedy think that I have a right to health care? Does he think that pre-existing conditions should be covered? Is he comfortable having an entire nation’s health care system held hostage by a few insurance giants?
Exciting questions! I can’t wait to see how a man who nobody elected will decide our medical futures….
* Today’s decision by the Supreme Court in NASA v. Nelson dodges a big constitutional question — much to the chagrin of Justices Scalia and Thomas. [SCOTUSblog]
* Just like Monica Goodling, Danielle Chiesi admits to “crossing the line.” This afternoon Chiesi pleaded guilty to charges arising out of the Galleon Group insider trading ring. [Dealbreaker]
* Speaking of Wall Street-watching, check out this neat new website, ProxyMonitor.org. As James Copland of the Manhattan Group explains, the site’s comprehensive database of shareholder proposals sheds light on trends in corporate governance. [Point of Law; Proxy Monitor]
* Professor Glenn Reynolds wonders if his fellow Yale Law School graduate, Rep. David Wu (D-OR), has “undergone some sort of personality change.” [Instapundit]
* Congratulations to Amy Chua: she can haz her own internet meme. [BuzzFeed]
* Texas attorneys, you should pay attention to this proposed rule change. [Infamy or Praise]
* Twenty six states hate health care Obama. This law might be more screwed than someone with a pre-existing condition. [Los Angeles Times]
* Handcuffed, blindfolded, beaten, and begging to be deported. I think the Justice Department forgot the safe word. [Mother Jones]
* Thomas Jefferson School of Law has a great connection to paleontology. Dinosaurs are extinct, and so are jobs for fourth-tier law grads! [National Law Journal]
* J. Crew has to find someone to buy all of its overpriced clothing for more than $3 billion. Haven’t these shareholders heard of the clearance rack? [DealBook / New York Times]
* Hey 1Ls, Baker Botts is hiring, but only diverse candidates need apply. I’m guessing that diversity is based on bra size and skin color. [The Careerist]
* Lawyers who go to rehab are “terminally unique” — they’re self-centered a-holes. So what? Lawyers who don’t go to rehab are a-holes, too. [Huffington Post]
* When the Supreme Court refused to overturn gay marriage in D.C., gay couples and wedding planners alike were thrilled. Redundant? [Belief Blog / CNN]
I bet kosher weed would be better than regular weed.
* Judge Henry Hudson, the judge who struck down healthcare, has ties to a Republican consulting firm that did some work for Virginia AG Ken Cuccinelli. Of course he does. You don’t think this issue has an objective right or wrong legal answer, do you? [WSJ Law Blog]
* A Cardozo student thinks pot can be a useful study aid. [The Cardozo Jurist]
* Of course, it looks like Cardozo students already have ample access to weed. This pro-job video was but together by a ’10 Cardozo graduate. [Comedy Central]
* British judge calls verdict against her dog a “f***ing travesty.” [Guardian]
* Doesn’t looking at the Constitution on an iPad violate an originalist view of the document? [Young Lawyers Blog]
* German doctors claim they’ve used stem cells to cure H.I.V. This isn’t exactly a legal issue, but I really hope Congress won’t let religion stand in the way of the science I’ll need for new lungs and a new liver circa 2040. [Popular Science]
* Don’t forget to RSVP for our holiday party — tomorrow night at 6:00 at Bar 29. Our sponsors, Practical Law Company and ELR Search, promise us it will be off the hook. And I’ve promised to stay sober for at least one full hour before I start berating the people around me. [Above the Law]
* Speaking of our sponsors, check out our promo for the Livescribe Echo Smartpen if you are doing some Christmas shopping for a lawyer in your life. Also, I AM NOT KENAN THOMPSON. What’s up with that? Yes, we are both fat black guys, but I’m actually funny, not some random dude who can only do impressions of black people who haven’t been relevant in 20 years.
* Bad news for Howrey: Gary Bendinger, co-chair of litigation, is leaving for Sidley Austin, along with two other litigation partners, Gregory Ballard and Kevin Burke. [Am Law Daily]
* Quipped our tipster: “Three cheers to annoying psychology undergrads getting mugged in West Harlem. At least Dino BBQ is here to stay.” [Columbia Spectator]
* Just like last year, there’s some humorous motion practice going on as a result of Auburn college football scheduling. [Birmingham News]
* My pay during my AUSA days wasn’t great — but at least it was greater than zero. [S**t Law Jobs]
* It’s not too late to submit an entry for our law firm holiday card contest. [Above the Law]
* Or to RSVP for our holiday party (although we’re almost at capacity). [Above the Law]
Judge Henry E. Hudson (E.D. Va.) just struck down a key provision of President Barack Obama’s signature health care reform law — namely, the requirement that most Americans obtain health insurance. Judge Hudson held that the insurance mandate exceeds Congress’s authority under the Commerce Clause. Links to coverage are collected below; Judge Hudson’s 42-page opinion is available here (PDF, via Dahlia Lithwick).
* The Canadian Supreme Court is debating whether a woman can give prior consent for unconscious anal sex. When it’s that cold, I guess you do really freaky things to stay warm. [Vancouver Sun]
* Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court is just plain being anal. Yesterday, the Court rejected the first of the Obamacare lawsuits, because it came too soon. That’s what she said. [CNN]
* Connecticut has added an eleventh man, Steven Hayes, to its death row. If executed, Hayes will be only the second inmate in the state to actually die since 1960. [ABC News]
* Oklahomans wanted to keep sharia law from sweepin’ down the plain, but a federal judge just kept everything from goin’ their way. [Wall Street Journal]
* Not just gay people kill themselves when they get bullied -– alleged child murderers do, too. Nancy Grace has to set up a trust dedicated to finding the missing son of a former guest who committed suicide. [Washington Post]
* The ACLU says that the government is trying to impose the death penalty on Anwar al-Awlaki without a trial. Kind of like the jihad he wants to impose on U.S. citizens, no? [Los Angeles Times]
* Think twice next time before you bitch about your employer on Facebook, because you might just get canned. [New York Times]
* A federal judge allows state challenges to Obamacare go forward. Whatever, wake me up in 15 years when we have to have the single-payer debate again. [Wall Street Journal]
* The purpose of teaching lawyers how to act isn’t to help them become better liars. [End Scene, Exit Right]. [Underdog]
* Musical chairs: congrats to Lat’s former Wachtell colleague, Scott Black, who has left the SEC and joined Hudson Bay Capital Management as general counsel and chief compliance officer. [Dow Jones]
* If buying soda with food stamps is outlawed, only outlaws with food stamps will have soda. Wait…what? [New York Times]
* More than 100 lawyers have applied to lead the way against BP and their big oily hole. Big names like David Boies, Mike Espy, and Derriel McCorvey, who “noted that he was an all-Southeastern Conference defensive back at Louisiana State University.” [Associated Press]
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.
The US associate openings we have in law firms are in the usual areas of M&A, cap markets, FCPA / white collar litigation, finance, and project finance. The most urgent of our top tier (top 15 US or magic circle) law firm openings in Asia (among many other firm openings that we have in Asia) are as follows:
• 2nd to 5th year mandarin fluent M&A associates needed in Beijing and Hong Kong at several firms;
• Korean fluent 2nd to 4th year cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 5th year Japanese fluent M&A associates needed in Tokyo;
• 4th to 6th year mandarin fluent cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 4th year M&A / cap markets mix associate needed in Singapore.
In a land that is right here and in a time that is right now, a technology has arisen so powerful that it can replace basic human document review. Is it time to bow down before our new robot overlords?
First, here’s a little story about me: my life in the legal world began as a paralegal. My first case was a GIANT patent infringement case that was already six years old and had involved as many as five companies, multiple US courts, the ITC and an international standards committee. I knew nothing about any of this.
On my first day, my supervisor (a paralegal with at least eight other cases driving her crazy) sat me down in front of a Concordance database with a 100,000+ patents and patent file histories. “Code these,” she said. I learned that “coding”, for the purposes of this exercise, meant manually typing the inventor’s name, the title of the patent, the assignee, the file date, and other objective data for each document. I worked on that project – and only that project – for at least the first six months of my job. After a week or so, time began to blur.
What I know, in retrospect and with absolutely certainty, is that as time began to blur, so did my judgment. So did my attention to detail. If you could tell me that I did not make at least one mistake a day – one inconsistent spelling, one reversed day and month, one incorrectly spaced title – I frankly would need to see your evidence. I would not believe it. The human mind is trainable but it is not a machine.
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Well this should be fun. Florida federal judge Roger Vinson has struck down the heart of Obama’s health care reform plan, finding that the individual mandate part of the bill is unconstitutional and therefore the whole thing is unconstitutional.
