Orin Kerr

Non-Sequiturs: 07.15.11

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Stephen McDaniel

* Is the D.C. Circuit is okay with TSA screeners touching your junk? Professor Orin Kerr discusses an opinion handed down today. [Volokh Conspiracy]

* According to his mother, Mercer Law grad Stephen McDaniel — a “person of interest” in the investigation of the death of Lauren Giddings — would like to serve on the Supreme Court someday. He might want to get a haircut first. [Macon.com]

* Speaking of SCOTUS, here’s Linda Greenhouse’s scorecard for the Term that just finished. [Opinionator / New York Times]

* Could a change in Irish law result in priests going to prison? [Catholic News Agency]

* Can a criminal defendant assert a Batson claim based on sexual orientation? [Poliglot / Metro Weekly]

Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe): all grown up now.

* Lawyer turned novelist Arin Greenwood offers conflicting thoughts on the Canadian legal troubles of comedian Dave Foley. [Washington City Paper]

* “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Lawsuits”: Justin Tenuto reviews “the most interesting, amusing, and preposterous claims from a decade of Potter case law.” [Legally Easy]

* Has diversity taken a hit during the recession? Not on the campuses of the University of California, according to Heather Mac Donald. [City Journal via Instapundit]

* How can legal departments implement new technology to increase the value they provide to their organizations? [Above the Law (sponsored content)]

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Quote of the Day: Members of the Elect Stick Together

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That’s very impressive support. Off the top of my head, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like it. Washington is a small place, and informal channels will generally get word back to the relevant folks in the Senate without a public letter…. But the fact that so many conservative former clerks publicly support [Alison] Nathan’s nomination [to the S.D.N.Y.] is quite impressive.

– Professor Orin Kerr, commenting on a letter signed by 27 former Supreme Court clerks in support of the nomination of Alison J. Nathan, a former law clerk to Justice John Paul Stevens who has been nominated to a judgeship on the Southern District of New York.

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Non-Sequiturs: 03.07.11

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DNA is pretty, oh so pretty.

* 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 Legally Blonde, and now The Five Hundred. [Deadline.com]

* Are computers better than attorneys at document review? Maybe — but they’re definitely more attractive. [Constitutional Daily]

* Protip for litigators: “Pull Your Pants Up Before Going to Court.” [Gothamist]

* Elsewhere in fashion news, a Seventh Circuit panel (Posner, J.) holds that it’s constitutionally protected to wear a t-shirt that says “Be Happy Not Gay” to your high school. But it’s still really… gay. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Litigation to advance a worthy cause (although it seems odd, in a “cart before the horse” sort of way, to file the press releases before the actual lawsuit). [The Snitch / SF Weekly]

* Blawg Review #301: it’s all about communication. [Not Guilty via Blawg Review]

* Congratulations to Professor Brian Fitzpatrick of Vanderbilt Law on receiving the 2011 Paul M. Bator Award (won previously by a long list of blawg celebrities, including M. Todd Henderson, Orin Kerr, Jonathan Adler, Eugene Volokh, and Randy Barnett). [Federalist Society]

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HLS Potpourri: Professor Nesson Victim of Phishing, While Students Fish for Constitutional Protection from the TSA

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First of all, Happy Chanukah. May your candles burn bright.

It is certainly possible that some lowly internet hacker was trying to take advantage of some holiday compassion when he or she hacked the email of Harvard Law School Professor Charles Nesson. Nesson is a well-known figure in “internet and the law” circles — as well as to readers of A Civil Action, who know him as “Billion Dollar Charlie” — but today he’s just another victim of a phishing attack. An email went out to the HLS community this morning claiming that Nesson was stuck in the U.K. and in desperate need of money.

We can’t be sure if Nesson will be able to find and bring charges against the hacker, but let’s hope that if he does he isn’t forced to rely on HLS students for legal advice…

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The Estate of Ms. Smith Goes to Washington (Again)

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Anna Nicole Smith: her candle burned out long before her legend ever did. And the great beauty’s legend continues to grow, over three years after her untimely death in February 2007, as litigation involving her estate contributes to the development of a rich body of law regarding bankruptcy and probate law — in a tribunal no less distinguished than the Supreme Court of the United States.

Over at USA Today, Joan Biskupic has this report:

The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to hear an appeal from the estate of Anna Nicole Smith, the late Playboy model and TV reality-show star, in the decades-old dispute over an inheritance from her tycoon husband.

The action, involving a sensational set of characters in an otherwise dry case at the intersection of probate and bankruptcy law, came on a day of varied court business that included acceptance of 14 new cases for the 2010-2011 term that officially begins Monday.

Sounds scintillating. Let’s get all up in Anna Nicole’s business, shall we?

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Non-Sequiturs: 09.08.10

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Stephen Zack wants a $5 footlong.

* Which four firms do in-house counsel fear the most? [Law 360]

* Professor Orin Kerr offers a more concise version of my analysis from yesterday of politics and Supreme Court clerk hiring, viewing the issue as a principal-agent problem. [Volokh Conspiracy via Instapundit]

* Speaking of the principal-agent problem, Ted Frank explores it in the context of class-action litigation — and has some harsh words for the “coddled Ivy-League defense attorney that’s afraid of the inside of a courtroom and goes home at night feeling vaguely guilty that he’s working for The Man.” [Point of Law]

* Why isn’t the California Attorney General appealing the striking down of Proposition 8? Because “the filing of an appeal under such circumstance would be frivolous.” [Metro Weekly]

* Good news for the next set of Blagojevich jurors. [Chicago News Cooperative]

* What types of questions should law students ask during OCI interviews? [Lawyerist]

* Stephen Zack, the Boies Schiller partner who recently took over as president of the ABA, was just named the Hispanic National Bar Association’s “Lawyer of the Year.” That man is one wise Latino. [ABA Now]

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Judge Kozinski Doesn’t Track with the Ninth Circuit on GPS and the Fourth Amendment
Calls his fellow judges ‘cultural elitists’ when it comes to privacy.

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Chief Judge Alex Kozinski gives a thumbs up to privacy for the poor

A user’s manual that’s 200+ years old can be difficult to apply to modern technologies. Thus, it’s been a challenge for judges interpreting the Fourth Amendment as it applies to police surveillance via GPS tracking devices on cars.

There has been a plethora of precedents set across the country as to whether slapping a GPS tracker on a car is considered a “search” and whether a warrant is needed. A Wisconsin state court decided last year that warrantless GPS surveillance is okay. Within a week of the Wisconsin decision, a New York state court disagreed. More recently, the D.C. Circuit ruled that GPS tracking is indeed a search, and introduced what the Volokh Conspiracy’s Orin Kerr called a “mosaic theory of the Fourth Amendment,” i.e., that a series of discrete facts may be public, but their aggregation may violate privacy rights. Kerr dissed the D.C. Circuit’s mosaic ruling, but Cato’s Julian Sanchez was a fan.

The Ninth Circuit got in on the GPS-Fourth Amendment throwdown too. As noted by How Appealing, a Ninth Circuit panel — consisting of two of the court’s more conservative members, Diarmuid O’Scannlain and Randy Smith, and Judge Charles Wolle (S.D. Iowa), sitting my designation — ruled that police officers who placed a GPS device on the underbed of a suspected drug dealer’s car while it was parked outside of his house did not violate his constitutional rights.

Chief Judge Alex Kozinski was not happy about their decision. He wrote an angry dissent from the denial of rehearing en banc, accusing the judges of “cultural elitism,” by granting privacy rights to the rich but not to the poor…

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Calls his fellow judges ‘cultural elitists’ when it comes to privacy.“

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