Antonin Scalia

Non-Sequiturs

Non-Sequiturs: 08.17.15

* A look back at the impact Justice Scalia's signature snarky style has had on the high court. [Jost on Justice] * Decry "big government" all you want, but this is a great use of its power: one Wal-Mart declared a public nuisance. [Law and More] * A horse! A horse! My law license for a horse! One attorney faces sanctions for his love of racing horses. [Legal Profession Blog] * The NLRB might have dashed Northwestern's football players' unionization hopes, but they still won a lot of concessions. [Fox Sports] * More than 50 days after the landmark Obergefell case, there are still pockets of the country where same-sex couples can't get married. [BuzzFeed] * What can the RNC offer Donald Trump to GTFO of the Republican primary? [Funny or Die]

By Kathryn Rubino
Non-Sequiturs

Non-Sequiturs: 08.11.15

* The two-tiered partnership model turns out to be much more complicated than firms expected. That's why we're seeing moves like BakerHostetler's proposed elimination of non-equity partners. [Big Law Business / Bloomberg BNA] * Graffiti artist files suit claiming fashion designer violated his copyright in his work. [The Legal Artist] * On the unpaid internship front, the Olsen twins have been sued by a former intern who claims she clocked 50-hour weeks and didn't earn a penny from her multimillionaire bosses. [New York Daily News] * Before the 25th Amendment, the ill-defined line of succession could have landed one of these guys in the White House. [Constitution Daily] * Who said it: Justice Scalia or a YouTube commenter talking about Magic Mike XXL? [Suited Gladiators] * There's a big gap between law school graduates and practice-ready skills. Somewhere the ABA is scheming about how to turn this into the case for four-year law schools. [LexisNexis] * California is removing the word "Alien" from the labor code. Because symbolic gestures are still important gestures. [Associated Press via NBC]

By Joe Patrice
Morning Docket

Morning Docket: 08.05.15

* “There are no bathrooms, no air-conditioning, no good food. You don’t usually get good cellphone reception, either, and you can’t just quit and go somewhere comfortable.” Surprisingly, this Biglaw partner isn't talking about his firm's working conditions. [Miami Herald] * It's going to be difficult for U.S. authorities to prosecute Walter Palmer, the dentist who killed Zimbabwe's beloved lion, Cecil. Bringing this guy down under the Lacey Act is going to be a real task. If only this were a Pixar movie with a happy ending. :( [Reuters] * SCOTUS justices are jet-setting across the world this summer, with RBG in South Korea and Vietnam, Roberts in Japan, Scalia in Italy, Kennedy in Austria, and Breyer in England. Let's hope no one has to evacuate a plane via emergency chute. [National Law Journal] * If you're considering applying to law school and you decide to visit one this summer, aside from students huddled in dark corners of the library who are crying over their employment prospects, there are a few things you should be looking for. [U.S. News] * The mother of Sandra Bland, the woman who hanged herself in a Texas jail cell last month, has filed a wrongful-death suit, alleging that her daughter shouldn't have been arrested in the first place and was improperly supervised by guards. [New York Times]

By Staci Zaretsky
Morning Docket

Morning Docket: 08.03.15

* According to this former Supreme Court clerk, Justice Scalia's judicial zingers are just like porn in that they're "titillating, but over time they coarsen the culture of which they are a part." (Plus, for what it's worth, the jurist's audience usually never gets a money shot.) [Washington Post] * Better late than never? The ABA dropped the hammer on law schools trying to game their employment stats with a new rule that'll force them to report school-funded jobs as part-time unless certain length and salary reqs are met. [WSJ Law Blog] * The largest of D.C.'s largest law firms grew even larger over the past year, and thanks to a merger, an outsider firm -- Morgan Lewis -- managed to infiltrate the capital's Big Four. Sorry, WilmerHale, but maybe 2016 will be your comeback year. [National Law Journal] * In other ABA news, the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar rejected a plea for academic credit for paid externships, because we apparently want to keep students as indebted as possible before they begin their professional legal careers. [ABA Journal] * A judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Richard Lee, a known conspiracy theorist, who sought the release of the Seattle police department's death-scene photographs from Nirvana star Kurt Cobain's suicide. Hey! Wait! He'll file a new complaint. [Seattle Times]

By Staci Zaretsky
Morning Docket

Morning Docket: 07.10.15

* Aww man, nothing's going right for this firm: After facing mass defections that forced it to move to a smaller office, struggling law firm Gordon Silver is locked in a legal battle with its former landlord to the tune of $786,000 in rent that allegedly went unpaid. [VEGAS INC.] * Ted Cruz isn't the only person Ted Olson has a bone to pick with. Justice Scalia thinks the Obergefell decision is a “threat to American democracy," but Olson disagrees: "[W]ith respect to Justice Scalia, who I do have great respect for, he is wrong." [National Law Journal] * Brooklyn Law School is selling off buildings left and right, and one of its prime pieces of real estate could sell for up to $30 million. According to Dean Nick Allard, its sale will serve as a "better advantage for the future of the law school." [New York Daily News] * Lawyers, make sure to draft your documents carefully, or else you could wind up getting screwed by an errant comma (or the lack thereof). An Ohio woman got out of a summons because she pointed out a missing comma in a local ordinance. [Lexicon Valley / Slate] * From the sound of it, not all Uber drivers want to become Uber employees; some of them are perfectly content to be classified as independent contractors. That's probably going to screw up that whole typicality requirement for this would-be class-action suit. [Forbes]

By Staci Zaretsky
Non-Sequiturs

Non-Sequiturs: 07.02.15

Ed. note: Above the Law will have a reduced publishing schedule today and we're off on Friday, July 3, in observance of whipping those English wankers a couple centuries ago. * After the German robot ran amok and killed a worker in a VW plant, prosecutors are struggling to figure out whom to charge in this violation of Asimov's First Law. [Josh Blackman's Blog] * Dean Erwin Chemerinsky thinks Ted Cruz is right about the Supreme Court. [The New Republic] * In the wake of Obergefell, Bloomberg chats with Margaret H. Marshall, the former chief justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, who wrote the opinion making that state the first to legalize same-sex marriage. [Big Law Business / Bloomberg BNA] * California February bar exam results. A couple of schools got a 100 percent passage rate. Stanford was not one of them. [Bar Exam Stats] * Love wins. The Chamber of Commerce wins more. [Constitutional Accountability Center] * A not-entirely-partisan argument that Justice Scalia should retire. He may be slipping into William O. Douglas circa 1975 territory. [Dorf on Law] * Did you know that David Lat was supposed to play Quentin Tarantino's role in Pulp Fiction? I didn't either until I saw this video (at 0:48). [ClickHole]

By Joe Patrice