Torture
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Courts
When Pork Comes To Shove, It Isn't Always Easy To Know Why A Thing Is Constitutional
Jurisprudence is kind of like sausage making — it only gets more complex once you understand the process. -
Torture
Sketches of Torture
Torture doesn’t work. It might elicit information, but by its nature, that information is suspect. Meanwhile, our humanity and values have been compromised for questionable, if any, gain. - Sponsored
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International Law
Looks Like The International Criminal Court Is Going To Be Prosecuting Americans For Torture
Is the U.S. about to face a war crimes prosecution?
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Crime
Criminally Yours: What's So Bad About Waterboarding?
Not only is torture inhumane and against the law, but it's ineffective and unnecessary. -
Crime, Legal Ethics
Law Student Allegedly Involved In Torture Plot Becomes Lawyer
You too can pass character and fitness -- even if you're alleged to be part of a torture case. -
Technology
DOJ Has Blocked Everyone In The Executive Branch From Reading The Senate's Torture Report
And obviously it all has to do with FOIA exposure. -
Morning Docket
Morning Docket: 09.16.15
* Justices Kennedy and Breyer seemed to be champing at the bit for a prolonged solitary confinement case last Term, and now they may have the opportunity to weigh in on one. Let’s see if the Supreme Court decides to let Justice Kennedy swing his vote around. [New York Times]
* We all know that Mark Cuban isn’t that big of a fan of the Securities and Exchange Commission, but now he’s trying to inject himself into the debate over the agency’s use of in-house administrative law judges by way of filing a brief in support. [WSJ Law Blog]
* Winston & Strawn elected Jeffrey Kessler to serve as its co-chair. He’s got experience running firms with others — he once served as a member of Dewey’s four-partner Office of the Chairman before the firm completely imploded. [Big Law Business / Bloomberg BNA]
* IU Maurer Law is teaming up with Chapman and Cutler, an Am Law 200 firm, to create a two-year rotational program in finance and law. There’s just one catch: this is only for recent college graduates, not law school graduates. Oops! [Indiana Daily Student]
* Lucrative niche alert: They’re calling this the green rush, but we don’t need to remind attorneys that green is also the color of money. By 2020, the market for legal recreational marijuana is going to be booming, with billions of dollars in business. [Fortune]
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Morning Docket
Morning Docket 05.21.15
* Modern Family star Ariel Winter wants to go to law school. Aw, that’s a shame — she seems so smart. [E!]
* Five major banks will plead guilty to felony charges over allegations they illegally manipulated the dollar/euro exchange rate and pay over $5 billion in fines. Attorney General Loretta Lynch described the scheme as “brazenly illegal.” [National Law Journal]
* Preet Bharara is making the rounds as a law school commencement speaker, find out why Lat calls him, “surprisingly entertaining for a prosecutor.” [Wall Street Journal]
* Despite release of several hundred pages of the report on CIA abuse and torture a federal judge will not require the disclosure of the full report citing evidence that Congress intended to “retain control” over it. [Legal Times]
* Stay at home moms with JD are now commanding “bonuses” from their spouses — at least on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. [American Lawyer]
* Bail is set at $1 million for each of the bikers arrested in Waco after the deadly brawl. [CNN]
* ConAgra Foods will plead guilty to criminal charges over a 2007 outbreak of salmonella that was traced back to peanut butter. [NPR]
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Non-Sequiturs
Non-Sequiturs: 12.17.14
* Rudolph sues for discrimination. This is why you should always let guys play in your reindeer games. [Bolek Besser Glesius LLC]
* Congressional gridlock may call off… the Super Bowl? At least the Bears have other things to worry about than planning for the post-season. [Redline]
* Hot damn, Keith Lee. “ABA 509 Matriculant Data On All Ranked Schools.” That’s… wow. [Associate’s Mind]
* The Senate torture report may be an ugly, but there’s an argument that it hides a silver lining. [What About Clients?]
* What isn’t the D.C. Circuit doing today? [Constitutional Accountability Center]
* Document reviewers may have known that emails weren’t really private for years, but other professions understood the lack of true privacy much longer. [Law and More]
* David is interviewed about Supreme Ambitions (affiliate link). [ABA Journal]
* Bill O’Reilly invites on an “HLS student” — who is also a conservative commentator — to say a bunch of racial codewords under the guise of exam extensions. Look, I wouldn’t ask for an exam extension if my leg were caught in a bear trap, but you know what? I couldn’t care less if other people got extensions. Quit your whining (and appearing on TV) and go study for your own damn self! [Fox News]
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Non-Sequiturs
Non-Sequiturs: 12.16.14
* Law firm suffers Viagra hack. If it persists for more than four hours… [Legal Cheek]
* An in-depth and frightening look at “Witness 40” in the Ferguson Grand Jury proceedings: a bipolar woman with a long history of making racist comments who lived nowhere near Ferguson and testified only after Officer Wilson’s story was revealed — which she parroted back. Bob McCulloch thought this was a stellar witness. Bob McCulloch is also bad at his job. [The Smoking Gun]
* Charleston local government wants InfiLaw out of town. Is there anyone left who wants InfiLaw to take over Charleston? [TaxProf Blog]
* Congratulations to U.S. Attorney Sarah Saldaña on her confirmation as head of ICE. [International Business Times]
* Pet piercing will soon be illegal in New York, so get that dope nose ring for your dog today! [Lowering the Bar]
* Canadian “band” Skinny Puppy demands $660,000 from the U.S. government for using their music as torture material without permission. As a compromise can we just pledge to strap Dick Cheney down and force him to listen to 15 consecutive hours of Skinny Puppy and call it a day? [Gawker]
* Cleveland WR Andrew Hawkins pens a thorough, even-handed takedown of butthurt police union leaders demanding he apologize for taking the stance that police should try not to kill unarmed 12-year-olds. So apparently this is what the Browns are good at. [Talking Points Memo]
* David chats about the backstory behind Supreme Ambitions (affiliate link).
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Non-Sequiturs
Non-Sequiturs: 12.11.14
* A registered sex offender wins the lottery. $3 million buys a lot of windowless vans. [Orlando Sentinel]
* Judge to federal prosecutor: “You’re branded as a liar and you’ll remain a liar for the rest of your life.” [New York Observer]
* A New York lawyer has been arrested and charged with running down 5 people in Herald Square. Alcohol and crack pipes are involved. And topless selfies. Look, you’re going to see more on this from Staci in the morning, so just sit tight. [Inquisitr]
* If you want to live in a mansion, all you need to do is forge a few documents. [Gawker]
* The Supreme Court of Canada says cops can search your phone when they arrest you. But only to check the Habs score. [Ars Technica]
* Another installment of Posner on Posner. This time focusing on the First Amendment. [Concurring Opinions]
* This week we learned there’s a thing called “rectal feeding.” Professor Michael Dorf on why it’s totally a war crime. [Dorf on Law]
* How many law schools will close by 2020? [TaxProf Blog]
* Want to be on the LSAC Board of Trustees? It’s not like they have any glaring problems that require a leadership change. [LSAC]
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Politics, Technology
Is It Torture Now? ISIS Apparently A Fan Of CIA's Waterboarding Techniques
To argue that the CIA's prolific use of torture and waterboarding has had no impact on how groups treat captured Americans seems like a stretch. -
Blogging, Books, Canada, Continuing Legal Education / CLE, Law Professors, Law Schools, Non-Sequiturs, Richard Posner, Sports, Videos, Wall Street
Non-Sequiturs: 02.04.13
* Dear professors, please try to understand that most people who experience normal, human emotions are more concerned with the future of American law students than they are with whether or not American law schools can survive by bilking the hell out of foreigners. [PrawfsBlawg] * In Canada, they raided somebody’s Super Bowl party to bust up an illegal gambling ring. They never would have done this during the Grey Cup. [CTV News] * Apparently some kind of law something happened on Downton Abbey last night? I missed it, because staring at a dark stadium is literally more interesting than that freaking show. [Law and More] * Thomson Reuters is getting out of the academic book publishing business. If only law professors would do the same thing. [TaxProf Blog] * Is Washington & Lee’s “experiential” curriculum working? [The Volokh Conspiracy] * Just to be clear, torturing people only works in the movies and television. [Politics USA] * Cleary might become an ATL feeder firm. [Legal Cheek] * Here’s an excerpt from a fun interview with David Lat, in which he talks about asking Richard Posner out on a date. [California Lawyer] And there’s video, which you can watch for CLE credit, after the jump…. Lat participated in Legally Speaking, a series of in-depth interviews with prominent lawyers, judges, and academics, co-produced by California Lawyer and UC Hastings College of the Law. You can watch Lat’s interview with Professor Evan Lee via the embed below. You can check out earlier interviews — with luminaries like Justice Stephen Breyer, Professor Alan Dershowitz, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Professor Harold Koh, Professor Larry Lessig, and novelist Scott Turow — over here. California CLE credit is available for watching each video.
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Asians, China, Civil Rights, Crime, New York Times, Quote of the Day, Torture, Violence
Quote of the Day: The Law Is Serious Business (Seriously)
Famed Chinese civil rights activist Chen Guangcheng has come to America to study law… -
4th Circuit, ACLU, Akin Gump, Biglaw, Career Alternatives, Crowell & Moring, Drugs, Elena Kagan, Health Care / Medicine, Morning Docket, SCOTUS, Solo Practitioners, Supreme Court, Torture, Wall Street
Morning Docket: 01.24.12
* First the Jones verdict, then the Fourth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of Jose Padilla’s torture lawsuit. It’s enough to make ACLUers develop bipolar disorder. [Washington Post] * Release the Kagan! The Supreme Court rejected Freedom Watch’s motion for time to argue that Justice Elena Kagan should recuse herself from the Obamacare case. [CNN] * […]
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Department of Justice, John Yoo, Politics, Quote of the Day, Torture, War on Terror
Quotes of the Day: Did 'Torture' Contribute to the Finding of Osama Bin Laden?
Imagine what would have happened if the Obama administration had been running things immediately following 9/11. After their “arrest,” we would have read [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] and [Abu Faraj al-Libi] their Miranda rights, provided them legal counsel, sent them to the U.S. for detention, and granted them all the rights provided a U.S. citizen in […] -
9th Circuit, Department of Justice, House Judiciary Committee, Jay Bybee, Office of Legal Counsel, Torture
Quote of the Day: And I ordered the Code Red on Santiago, too!
We took a muscular view of presidential authority. We were offering a bottom line to a client who wanted to know what he could do and what he couldn’t do. I wasn’t running a debating society, and I wasn’t running a law school. — Ninth Circuit Judge Jay S. Bybee, testifying to the House Judiciary […] -
Correspondence, Crime, Kumari Fulbright, Law Schools, Social Networking Websites
An ATL Exclusive: Kumari Fulbright Gets Saucy With Us!
What's going on with everyone's favorite beauty queen turned law student turned alleged kidnapper, Kumari Fulbright? -
Crime, Guns / Firearms, Hotties, Kumari Fulbright, Law Schools, Romance and Dating, Social Networking Websites, Torture, Violence
ATL Beauty Tip: Don't Kidnap and Torture Your Ex-Boyfriend (Especially If You Are a Former Beauty Queen)
What is it about law students cum models who like to pose, in bikinis, with firearms? -
2nd Circuit, Pro Bono, Screw-Ups, Torture, War on Terror
Arar v. Ashcroft: An ATL Interview with Josh Sohn of DLA Piper
Last Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit heard oral argument in Arar v. Ashcroft, a high-profile lawsuit arising out of the U.S. government’s rendition of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen, to Syria. We interviewed DLA Piper partner Joshua Sohn (at right), co-counsel to Mr. Arar along with the Center for Constitutional […]