SCOTUS
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Courts, Supreme Court, Supreme Court Clerks
Supreme Court Clerk Hiring Watch: New Year, New Hires
And some justices have already hired all their 2019-2020 clerks as well. -
Courts, Supreme Court
A SCOTUS Justice With Refined Taste For The More Decadent Things In Life
Want to dine like RBG? Here's a recipe for one of her favorites. - Sponsored
Early Adopters Of Legal AI Gaining Competitive Edge In Marketplace
How to best leverage generative AI as an early adopter with ethical use. -
Courts, Law Schools
The Most Popular Supreme Court Justices -- In Law School Casebooks
Yes, the late Justice Scalia is up there -- but he has some surprising company.
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Courts
Supreme Court Clerk Hiring Watch: Are Reports Of Justice Kennedy's Retirement Greatly Exaggerated?
Wow! Justice Kennedy has hired a full complement of four law clerks for the next Supreme Court Term. -
Supreme Court
New Cookbook Features Supremely Delicious Recipes From SCOTUS Justices And Their Families
There's a new cookbook out that's sure to sate the hunger of any attorney. -
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Law Schools
Justice Clarence Thomas Wants You To Know His Law Clerks Aren't 'TTT' -- No Matter Where They Graduated From
His clerks are the most diverse, hailing from 23 law schools since 2005. -
Morning Docket
Morning Docket: 11.27.17
* According to recently released tax records, a mystery donor gave more than $28 million to the Wellspring Committee to keep Justice Antonin Scalia’s Supreme Court seat in Republican hands and help get Neil Gorsuch confirmed. How awesome would it be if that mystery donor were the president himself? [Law Newz]
* The DOJ says Trump can appoint the interim director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under the Federal Vacancies Act, but the Dodd-Frank Act says the deputy director will head the agency in the absence of a permanent director. Now we have two dueling CFPB directors, AND there’s a lawsuit. Yay! [The Hill; CNN]
* FCC commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel is so against Chairman Ajit Pai’s “lousy plan” to do away with net neutrality that she wrote an op-ed to plead for help: “I’m on the FCC. Please stop us from killing net neutrality.” She encourages us to “make a ruckus” about this — and we really, really should. [Los Angeles Times]
* The layoffs are coming! The layoffs are coming! Along with Sedgwick’s announcement that the faltering firm intends to close its doors in early 2018 comes the news that it will shutter its back office operations center. Up to 75 people are expected to lose their jobs. It’ll be a not-so happy New Year. [American Lawyer]
* Start placing your bets: The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in New Jersey’s sports betting case next week, and is expected to issue a ruling in June. What’s the over/under on the high court overturning the federal ban on sports betting? Come on, SCOTUS, make Atlantic City great again! [NJ.com]
* Representative John Conyers Jr. will be stepping down from his platoon as the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee during an investigation into allegations that he sexually harassed his former aides. Even though a settlement was made in 2015, Conyers continues to deny the allegations. [New York Times]
* The InfiLaw System has been lowering the bar for minority law students for years and years and dooming them to hundreds of thousands of dollars of nondischargeable loan debt, and the man who started it all seems relatively disappointed with what’s happened and the awful outcomes students have seen. [Wall Street Journal]
* “I think when it’s all said and done, what you’re gonna see is there was nothing racial that motivated this.” The lawyer representing the white University of Hartford student who smeared period blood all over her black roommate’s things to get her to move out doesn’t think his client should be charged with a hate crime. [Hartford Courant]
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Morning Docket
Morning Docket: 11.20.17
* President Trump has added five names to his slate of judicial candidates to fill a nonexistent vacancy on the Supreme Court. Welcome aboard to Judges Brett M. Kavanaugh (D.C. Circuit), Amy Coney Barrett (Seventh Circuit), and Kevin C. Newsom (Eleventh Circuit), as well as Justices Britt C. Grant (Georgia Supreme Court) and Patrick R. Wyrick (Oklahoma Supreme Court). [New York Times]
* Did Trump obstruct justice in the Russia probe? We may soon find out. Special counsel Robert Mueller has requested all manner of documents from the Justice Department related to the firing of former FBI director James Comey. [ABC News]
* In other Trump-related legal news, rather than continuing to have his re-election campaign or the Republican Party foot the bill for his legal representation in the Russia probe, the president has officially started to pay his own legal tab. [Reuters]
* Ohio Supreme Court Justice Bill O’Neill, who was considering running for governor, bragged about the fact that he’d been “sexually intimate with approximately 50 very attractive females.” After much backlash, he told his detractors to “lighten up” and offered a nonpology. He won’t be running for governor anymore. [Washington Post]
* FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is about to pull the plug on net neutrality, and Americans are too distracted by Thanksgiving to care. Luckily for us, Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel wants open hearings to take place before a vote is held. [Slate]
* “Probation is a trap and we must fight for Meek and everyone else unjustly sent to prison.” In the wake of rapper Meek Mill being sentenced to up to four years in prison for violating his probation, Jay-Z is letting everyone know he’s got 99 problems and the way the criminal justice system treats minorities is one of them. [New York Times]
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Morning Docket
Morning Docket: 10.30.17
* Former President Barack Obama has been called for jury duty in November, and unlike most Americans, he’s not looking for a way to get out of serving. [ABC Chicago]
* The pivot you’re looking for is in another castle: Now that a grand jury’s approved the first charges in the Russian collusion investigation and someone’s about to be taken into custody, President Trump took to Twitter to demand that Hillary Clinton be investigated. [New York Times]
* Paul Manafort is turning himself in. Surprise! (Is this really a surprise?) [CNN]
* Like it or not, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is planning to be around for the long haul. Don’t count on this “flaming feminist litigator” retiring any time soon. [The Hill]
* Justice Don Willett of the Texas Supreme Court, the state’s Tweeter Laureate, hasn’t tweeted a single time since he was nominated to the Fifth Circuit. How long will this god-awful silence from everyone’s favorite Twitter judge last? [Texas Lawyer]
* So long, borrower-defense rule? Betsy DeVos is thinking about only partially forgiving loans for students who were defrauded by for-profit schools. [AP]
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Morning Docket
Morning Docket: 10.23.17
* According to Justice Gorsuch, you don’t need to “suppress[] disagreement” to be civil. Disagreeable, eh? Maybe this is why there seems to be such animosity between him and Justice Kagan. [Associated Press]
* President Trump has reportedly promised to pay $430,000 to “defray the costs of legal fees for his associates, including former and current White House aides.” Meanwhile, some of his former associates have lawyers’ bills from the Russia probe that are higher than that. [Axios]
* President Trump has apparently been interviewing candidates (i.e., Biglaw attorneys with close connections to Rudy Giuliani and Marc Kasowitz) for key U.S. attorney positions, which is outside the norm for most presidents. Despite the gravity of the situation, Senator Lindsay Graham had a clever quip about the situation: “It’s kind of an extension of ‘The Apprentice,’ I guess.” The ratings on this will be YUGE. [CNN]
* “She can leave the country or she cannot get her abortion, those are her options?” Over the objections of the D.D.C. judge who ruled that the government must allow an undocumented 17-year-old seeking an abortion to get one, thanks to the D.C. Circuit, she needs to find a sponsor and further delay the procedure. [New York Times]
* Ex-Kaye Scholer partner Evan Greebel is on trial for conspiracy, and he’s desperately trying to distance himself from his former client, Martin Shkreli. He claims this was a big misunderstanding, and that he was victimized by Shkreli. [Big Law Business]
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Kids, Ruth Bader Ginsburg
The Perfect RBG-Inspired Bibs For Supremely Cute Babies
These Ruth Baby Ginsburg bibs are simply adorable. -
Supreme Court
Trump Predicts Justices Ginsburg And Sotomayor Will Die During His Presidency
Trump would just love it if a pair of powerful, outspoken women got out of his way.
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Supreme Court, Women's Issues
Back In The Day, This Judge Was Considered 'Too Pregnant' To Argue Before SCOTUS
The solicitor general's office has apparently 'evolved' since that time. -
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Supreme Court
Notorious R.B.G. Talks Trash About Gorsuch, Gerrymandering
She doesn't really seem to be a fan of either. -
Morning Docket
Morning Docket: 10.09.17
Ed. note: In honor of Columbus Day (and Canadian Thanksgiving), Above the Law will be on a reduced publication schedule. We’ll be back in full force tomorrow.
* Justice Neil Gorsuch’s arrival as a member of the Supreme Court hasn’t been the most graceful, and word on the street is that some of his new colleagues on the bench may bear some ill will towards him. A rift might even be developing between Gorsuch and Chief Justice Roberts. [CNN]
* Because Gorsuch is the Supreme Court’s newest justice, he has to share his office with Leroy. He’s being hazed by Scalia from beyond the grave. [Associated Press]
* As part of its new legal strategy in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russian election interference investigation, the Trump administration has decided to — gasp! — be cooperative. Trump’s lawyers think that maybe if they play nice, Mueller will publicly clear the president’s name a little more quickly, or at all. [New York Times]
* In other news, President Trump took to Twitter this weekend to invoke the Federal Communications Commission’s equal time rules because he’s sick and tired of “unfunny” late-night TV hosts making fun of him without an opportunity to respond in kind. Perhaps you ought to stick with Twitter, Mr. President. [Fox News]
* Much like what happened with Traci Ribeiro’s case against Sedgwick, Winston & Strawn is trying to push Constance Ramos, a partner who left the firm amid allegations of gender bias and discrimination, into arbitration. [Am Law Daily]
* Lisa Bloom has been criticized left and right for taking on Harvey Weinstein as a client. Even her own mother, Gloria Allred, objected. Because mother knows best, Bloom resigned as counsel. Lanny Davis has also left the producer’s legal team. Down two lawyers, Weinstein was fired from his own company. [New York Times]
* A Michigan judge recently awarded joint legal custody and parenting time to a rape victim’s attacker. The child involved in this case is an 8-year-old boy, and the fellow who sexually assaulted his mother also happens to be a convicted sex offender. According to the victim’s attorney, “[t]his is insane”; she’s not wrong. [Detroit News]
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Non-Sequiturs
Non-Sequiturs: 10.06.17
* Salary hikes (in London). [Legal Cheek]
* Travel bans and compelling interests. [Dorf on Law]
* Speaking of SCOTUS, Adam Feldman reads the oral-argument tea leaves from the first week of the new Term. [Empirical SCOTUS]
* And devotees of Justice Antonin Scalia might want to check out Scalia Speaks (affiliate link), a collection of the late jurist’s speeches edited by son Christopher Scalia and former law clerk Ed Whelan. [Bloomberg BNA]
* Did this court just gut her whole job description? [New York Law Journal]
* It can be challenging for creators to protect their IP; could a small-claims court for copyright be the answer? [Copyright Alliance]
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Morning Docket
Morning Docket: 10.06.17
* The Trump administration asks the Supreme Court to toss the travel ban case on mootness grounds — and to scrub the lower-court rulings against it from the books. [How Appealing]
* Meanwhile, the District of Columbia won’t take the fight over its concealed-carry law to SCOTUS, fearing that the Court might just make the situation worse if called to rule on gun rights. [Washington Post]
* At age 86, Marty Lipton of Wachtell Lipton is still in the mix, issuing influential client memos on important issues of corporate law. [Big Law Business]
* Does the emperor have no clothes
robes? Zoran (Zoki) Tasic, a former Seventh Circuit staff attorney, calls out Judge Richard Posner over alleged errors in the judge’s new book (affiliate link) about the treatment of pro se litigants. [How Appealing]* Support staff at Hogan Lovells seem to love the firm’s buyout offers; the firm’s voluntary-retirement program attracted even more interest than expected. (Expect more on this later.) [Law.com]
* What does the future hold for the Obama administration’s proposed changes to overtime rules? Senators seek guidance from Cheryl Stanton, the former Alito clerk and Ogletree Deakins partner who enjoyed smooth sailing at her recent confirmation hearings to serve as head of the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division. [Bloomberg BNA]
* In other news about the fate of Obama-era regulations, it looks like the Trump administration will be rolling back the federal requirement for employers to include birth control coverage in their health insurance plans, expanding exemptions for religious objectors. [New York Times]
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Guns / Firearms, Supreme Court
The Supreme Gun Lobby Makes Us Afraid To Even Defend The Gun Laws We Have
If we ask the Supreme Court for help, they'll likely make everything worse.