Voter ID Laws

* District Judge Henry Wingate suspends Mississippi’s death penalty. The full written decision is expected later this week. [BuzzFeed]

* Wondering why Roger Goodell is taking a hardline over Deflategate? He’s just acting like any good dictator and securing his power. [Washington Post]

* Trying to get bail set in a massive insider trading case? It helps if you’ve got God as a character reference. [Dealbreaker]

* Of all the dumb, stupid, obvious, %^$*#, frustrating AF horse hockey. Alabama is in the process of closing 45 out of 49 DMVs around the state. For the uninitiated: Alabama passed a strict voter ID law in 2011 and now there’s this new barrier to getting the proper identification. I guess it isn’t a stretch to pencil in Alabama as red in 2016. [Daily Kos]

* In less depressing news, read contemporary coverage of the passage of the 19th Amendment. [The Nation]

* … And right back to the depressing: a commenter places the blame for a lack of women lead counsel squarely with clients. Oh good, I was afraid for a minute that the legal industry might actually have to do something about gender issues. [What About Paris?]

* Rest in peace, Amelia Boynton Robinson. The civil rights activist died today at age 104. Best known for her fight for voting rights in the 1965 “Bloody Sunday” march, she was portrayed by Lorraine Toussaint in the movie Selma. [WTOP]

* The season finale of Veep offered a fun lesson in constitutional law. [PrawfsBlawg]

* When the Supreme Court hands down Obergefell, will it punt the case by acknowledging a new layer of scrutiny? [Slate]

* Kash Hill on Hulk Hogan’s suit against Gawker. Is a sex tape newsworthy if the guy’s bragging about his sex life on Howard Stern? [Fusion]

* Florida and Florida State football players routinely circumvent the criminal justice system. Which… everyone kind of knew already. [ESPN]

* Why “free IDs” are anything but. [Election Law Blog]

* Did it hurt? When you fell from heaven? [Legal Juice]

* Take this survey to put the time-worn law firm mantra of “collegial and collaborative” to the test. [Adam Smith, Esq.]

* Bruce MacEwen of the aforementioned Adam Smith, Esq. breaks down the Am Law 200. [Big Law Business / Bloomberg BNA]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDI7okOMlYs

* The Supreme Court is allowing Texas to enforce its strict voter identification law during the upcoming election, but Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, hero to the masses, wrote a rather scathing dissent in opposition. [New York Times]

* Michael Millikin, GM’s beleaguered GC, will be stepping down from his position while the Justice Department continues its probe into the company’s fatal ignition switch failures. A replacement has not yet been named. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Baltimore Law and Maryland’s HBCUs hooked up to assist underrepresented minorities get into law school. Full scholarships come with GPAs of at least 3.5 and LSAT scores of at least 152. [USA Today]

* Kent Easter, the lawyer who was convicted for planting drugs in a school volunteer’s car, was sentenced to serve six months in jail. His law license will likely be suspended (just like his wife’s was). [OC Weekly]

* Accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev isn’t doing well in court, and his trial hasn’t even started yet. Motions to dismiss his case and to suppress evidence were denied. [National Law Journal]

* The Fifth Circuit is allowing the Texas voter ID law to be enforced during the upcoming election, even though it was recently struck down by a federal judge. After all, “preserving the status quo” is very important down south. [Bloomberg]

* We suppose that’s why the Supreme Court stepped in to make sure that abortion clinics in Texas were allowed to reopen following their shut down. Take that, Fifth Circuit. [New York Times]

* AG Eric Holder is showing off some fancy legal footwork before he walks out the door. Federal prosecutors can no longer ask defendants to waive their IAC claims when pleading guilty. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Davis Polk & Wardwell is a Biglaw firm where hotties roam, and it looks like this top Justice Department prosecutor who started his career there is returning home there to roost. [DealBook / New York Times]

* It’s the debt: With headlines like “Law school applications plummet – at U of L too,” the University of Louisville School of Law can’t even convince alums from its undergrad school to attend. [Courier-Journal]

* Amal Alamuddin changed her name to Amal Clooney on her firm’s website. It’s as if she wants to rub the fact that she’s a human rights lawyer who just got married in everyone’s face. [New York Daily News]

What types of election crimes do voter ID laws prevent, and what burdens and harms do they cause?

* For the third year in a row, Skadden has topped the list of the Biglaw firms GCs love to pay, the firms with the best brands. Kirkland & Ellis and Latham & Watkins rounded out the top three. Congratulations! [PRWeb]

* A federal judge struck down Wisconsin’s voter identification law yesterday, noting that it “only tenuously serve[d] the state’s interest in preventing voter fraud.” Ouch. Sorry about that, Scott Walker. [Bloomberg]

* Hot on the heels of the release of the second annual ATL Law School Rankings, we’ve got a list of the law schools where graduates reportedly have the least amount of debt. We’ll have more on this news later today. [The Short List / U.S. News & World Report]

* It was kind of like the night of the living dead in Oklahoma last night, where an execution was botched so badly the defendant attempted to rise up off the table. That must have been horrific. [New York Times]

* Here’s an eligible bachelor alert: After being suspended from practice for six months for filming “upskirt” videos of women in public, this in-house lawyer has been reinstated. [Legal Intelligencer (reg. req.)]

* Poor Justice Lori Douglas. Not only are her kinky S&M pictures floating around somewhere online, but the man who took them — her husband, Jack King — just died. RIP, good sir. [CTV Winnipeg News]

* NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, a former Cravath lawyer, fouled L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling out of the league, but people are questioning whether his punishment was legal. [WSJ Law Blog (sub. req.)]

* If you thought the Redskins were offensive, I bring you the Coachella Valley High Arabs. Complete with video of their mascot! [Yahoo! Sports] * With states increasingly losing access to tried and true execution drugs, the wardens are now experimenting on their own. This sounds (a) incredibly cruel and unusual, and (b) likely to result in creating a supervillian. [Vocativ] * Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott fought hard for a voter ID law. And on Tuesday, he failed to meet the standards of the law he championed. Derp. [Opposing Views] * We frequently link to the fun poetic stylings of Poetic Justice. Now you can enter a contest to win a free copy of the book! [Poetic Justice] * In a horrific turn, a father called the cops to teach his son a lesson. Then the cops killed the son. [Gawker] * Fear Roatti the White Tiger, Esq. Fear him mightily. [Deadspin] * This is perhaps the weirdest law firm video ever. Video embedded after the jump… [Legal Cheek]

After kicking off a firestorm by suggesting he was wrong about Voter ID laws, Judge Posner is backtracking.

* Even the election law controversies are bigger in Texas. The Department of Justice is currently planning to intervene in one lawsuit and file another against the Lone Star state over its voter identification law and redistricting plans. [National Law Journal]

* Here’s an especially helpful ruling for people who have been living their lives without landlines (so, basically everyone). You can gratefully thank the Third Circuit for allowing you to block those annoying robocalls on your cellphones. [Legal Intelligencer]

* Well, that was quick — a Biglaw pump and dump, if you will. After only a year, David M. Bernick, former general counsel of Philip Morris, is leaving Boies Schiller and will likely be taking a position at Dechert. [DealBook / New York Times]

* “[L]ife got in the way.” Who really needs loyalty in Biglaw these days? More than half of the nearly 500 associates and counsel who made partner in 2013 started their careers at different firms. [Am Law Daily]

* Another one bites the dust. John McGahren, the New Jersey managing partner of Patton Boggs, just resigned from an office he opened himself after some major attorney downsizing. [New Jersey Law Journal]

* “In a community of 98,000 people and 640,000 partners, it isn’t possible to say there will never be wrongdoing.” Comforting. Microsoft is under the microscope of a federal bribery probe. [Corporate Counsel]

* Ronald Motley, a “charismatic master of the courtroom” who founded Motley Rice, RIP. [WSJ Law Blog]

* No, silly, Ruth Bader Ginsburg isn’t “too old” to be a Supreme Court justice. So what if she uses the SOTU address as her personal naptime? She’s brilliant, and everyone loves her. [Los Angeles Times]

* “Justice delayed due to overworked judges can … mean justice denied,” and Obama’s got a lot of work ahead of him due to a “uniquely high” amount of judicial vacancies on his watch. [National Law Journal]

* After the SCOTUS ruling on the Voting Rights Act, Southern states have rushed to push out voter ID laws. But isn’t that discriminatory? “Not true, not true,” as Justice Alito would say. [New York Times]

* It turns out the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’s redefinition of the word “relevant” is what has allowed the NSA to collect anything and everything. Say au revoir to privacy! [Wall Street Journal (sub. req.)]

* Layoffs: they aren’t just for Biglaw firms anymore! McGeorge Law School is downsizing its staff and student ranks due to an “unprecedented drop” in applications. Another one bites the dust; which law school will be next? [Sacramento Bee]

* Client 9, aka Eliot Spitzer, announced his candidacy for NYC comptroller. He’ll run against Kristen Davis, the woman who once set him up with escorts. That’ll be an awkward debate. [New York Times]

* As the prosecution rests its case and the defense’s acquittal motion is denied, a nation is left wondering whose voice it was on that 911 recording — Trayvon Martin’s or George Zimmerman’s? [CNN]

Voting might not be the easiest thing in the world, but let's not act like it's particularly hard...

* Everyone’s happy about the Dewey & LeBoeuf settlement except the Ad Hoc Committee and its LeBoeuf retirees, who called Judge Martin Glenn’s attempt to slap them down an “insult to injury.” [WSJ Law Blog]

* While South Carolina’s voter ID law wasn’t found to be inherently discriminatory, its enforcement was still blocked because people will be unable to get their sh*t together in time for the election. [Bloomberg]

* VP debate moderator Martha Raddatz’s 1991 wedding guest list has come under fire because Barack Obama was invited. Clearly there’s a conflict of interest worth arguing about here. [Washington Post]

* This man is nobody’s “butt boy”: Tom Keefe, the interim dean over at Saint Louis Law School, will be footing a $14,212 bill for his students in the form of ABA Law Student Division memberships. [National Law Journal]

* Strippers in California, Florida, Idaho, Kentucky, Texas, and Nevada will be making it rain, because they just scored a $12.9M class action settlement. That’s a whole lot of “college tuition”! [Courthouse News Service]

* Will the members of the Supreme Court announce which gay marriage issues they’ll be hearing this term any time soon? With Proppsition 8 appeal and several DOMA appeals on hand, there’s certainly a lot for them to choose from. [CNN]

* It’s beginning to look a lot like Biglaw, everywhere you go: lawyers are miserable, clients are unhappy, and apparently profits per partner are all to blame. Gee, thanks for those rankings, Am Law, they were really helpful. [DealBook / New York Times]

* Instead of arguing over font size, the Department of Justice argued law yesterday during closing arguments in its attempts to convince a three-judge panel to strike down South Carolina’s voter ID statute. [National Law Journal]

* Unlike Elizabeth Warren, he’s no “Fauxcahontas”: Kevin Washburn, the dean of the University of New Mexico Law School, has been confirmed by the Senate to oversee the Bureau of Indian Affairs. [Washington Post]

* If you’re going to allegedly slash someone’s face in an attempt to defend your honor, at least do it with class like this Columbia Law grad, and use a broken champagne flute as your weapon of choice. [New York Post]

* You can kiss your dreams of seeing Prop 8 being taken up by the Supreme Court goodbye if the justices decide to proceed with “more cautious DOMA challenges.” [Slate] * Well, at least one person is getting annoyed by the endless back and forth between Posner and Scalia. But that’s just one person. We’ll continue to beat that horse until it’s extra dead. [Althouse] * Is this like the new WebMD, but for law? With prompts like, “Can that crazy neighbor buy a gun?,” it looks like a suitable place for legal hypochondriacs to call home. [myRight] * Oh yay, I don’t like to get into election law and politics, so it’s a good thing that The Simpsons did all my work for me on this one: “Stopping all Americans from voting is for the protection of all Americans.” [PrawfsBlawg] * Kat over at Corporette wants to know what your top five tailoring alterations are — because after all, it’s pretty hard to dress for success in Biglaw if your pants are dragging on the floor. [Corporette] * You’d have to be super-dee-duper high to think that disguising your pot plants as Christmas trees in the middle of the desert to throw the police off your tracks would actually work. [Legally Weird / FindLaw]

Pennsylvania's controversial voter ID isn't a done deal yet...

* The Pennsylvania Supreme Court will hear arguments today over the state’s voter ID law. But at this point, who cares? Come on, Election 2012 is probably going to be decided by a court anyway. [Bloomberg]

* Sedgwick’s New York office is relocating to Two World Financial Center. This won’t be just any office; no, it’ll be an “office of the future.” They don’t need roads where they’ll be reviewing documents. [Real Estate Weekly]

* Paul Bergrin, the Baddest Lawyer in the History of Jersey, will be tried on all 26 counts in his racketeering case in one fell swoop. Not to worry, because this badass thinks he’s going to be acquitted. [The Record]

* This year’s summer associates didn’t want to be wined and dined. They wanted to be put to work, because “[m]andatory social events can be physically and mentally taxing.” Aww, boohoo, social skills sure are tough. /sadface [Am Law Daily]

* Another day, another law school lawsuit tossed out: Team Strauss/Anziska’s case against DePaul Law was dismissed because it’s pretty hard to blame a law school for the effects of a bad economy. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Anna Gristina, the alleged Millionaire Madam, vowed that she’d never spill the beans on a mystery man from her little black book. Could it be the “prominent Manhattan lawyer” mentioned earlier? [New York Daily News]

Instead of arguing the law, the DOJ is arguing over font size...

* Dewey know if Citibank is planning to sue other former D&L partners over their capital contribution loans? According to one court document filed by Luskin Stern & Eisler, the bank’s counsel, the fun has just gotten started. [Am Law Daily]

* Unlike the voter ID laws in Texas and South Carolina, the Department of Justice has approved New Hampshire’s law of the same ilk. Apparently hippies from the “Live Free or Die” state are incapable of discrimination against minorities. [CNN]

* Arizona, on the other hand, can discriminate against minorities all the live long day — for now. A federal judge ruled that the “show me your papers” provision of S.B. 1070, the state’s strict immigration law, may be enforced. [Bloomberg]

* The latest argument raised in the case over the Mongolian Tyrannosaurus Bataar skeleton is that the bones are actually a “Frankenstein model based on several creatures.” This movie is getting boring. [WSJ Law Blog]

* “[T]he state of New York doesn’t get to be a dance critic.” We’re sure that any man would gladly tell the New York Court of Appeals that lap dancing is a form of art, but should it enjoy a tax exemption? [Associated Press]

* These are some sad times in Texas, y’all. It really hasn’t been a very good week for the Lone Star state in the courts. First their redistricting plan got thrown out, and now their voter ID law has been struck down. [CNN]

* Jeh Johnson of the Defense Department may take legal action against the former Navy SEAL who wrote a book about the Osama bin Laden raid, calling it a “material breach” of duty. Must be good; go buy it! [CBS News]

* Bros will be bros: disbarment has been recommended for an attorney who failed to disclose to clients that he had been suspended for banging an underage chick who worked at his office. [National Law Journal]

* Here are 15 Northeast law schools ranked by employment rate. After getting excited that mine was on the list — albeit dead last — I realized I’m seriously a low expectation havin’ motherf**ker. [Boston Business Journal]

* George W. Huguely V, the UVA lacrosse player who beat his girlfriend to death, was sentenced to 23 years in prison. Distasteful joke alert: for his sake, we hope the prison uniforms have poppable collars. [Bloomberg]

* A Maryland lawyer with autism and Sensory Processing Disorder has created a way for people to stop getting up in your personal space while riding public transportation. Say hello to the Sensory Shield! [Huffington Post]

* Andrew Shirvell questioned himself for over an hour today in defense of himself from Chris Armstrong’s defamation lawsuit. I’m telling you, life is so much easier when you don’t care about a person’s sexual orientation. [Detroit Free Press] * It looks like Boies Schiller somehow filled the spot left by Elizabeth Wurtzel. [Thomson Reuters News and Insight] * Election Law professor Rick Hasen is disappointed with the Pennsylvania voter ID decision today. [Election Law Blog] * Grumpy baby boomer blogs angrily about law and life, a.k.a. my future. [Grumpy Baby Boomer] * How to dress like a female lawyer from a television show. Funny, I didn’t know “breast implants” were a fashion accessory now. [Levo League] * The Daily Caller dug up an article Michelle Obama wrote about critical race theory while at Harvard. She makes some pretty good points, especially considering the perspective of a young black person trying to deal with Harvard Law School in 1988. But I suspect the context of the article, the theory, the history, the university, and everything else will be missed by most of the readers of the Daily Caller. [Daily Caller] * Here’s a new social network for law students. [Indiana Lawyer] * Buy Tyler Coulson’s book (affiliate link), save a dog. You don’t want to kill puppies, do you? [PR Web] * Lat is on a proposed SXSW panel about haw law firms should (and should not) be using Twitter and other social media. I hope firms don’t listen to him, because it’ll make my job easier. [SXSW PanelPicker]