Confirmation Hearings

Morning Docket

Morning Docket: 09.07.18

* In case you missed it, Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh refused to condemn President Donald Trump's attacks on the judiciary (specifically, his insults of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg), refused to say whether he believed same-sex marriage was a constitutional right, and once again denied discussing the Mueller probe with anyone at Kasowitz Benson. What will happen today? [Washington Post] * President Donald Trump has reportedly called Attorney General Jeff Sessions "a dumb Southerner" and an "idiot" without an Ivy League law degree who "couldn’t even be a one-person country lawyer down in Alabama." This Alabama Law professor wonders what's so bad about a degree from Alabama Law. [New York Times] * Per a new study from the American Bar Association, the sky is blue and women and minorities continue to face racial and gender bias within the legal profession. But, here are some tools to fight these problems. [DealBook / New York Times] * Allen & Overy has published its 2018 gender pay gap figures, and it's the first U.K. firm to include data from its "overwhelmingly male" partners in its disclosures. A&O's median gender pay gap is 39 percent, a slight improvement. [Financial Times] * It seems that the Justice Department no longer thinks that employers should be forced to consider job applicants with criminal histories, going against Obama-era guidance that the EEOC has been following since 2012. [National Law Journal] * In an historic opinion, India's Supreme Court ruled that gay sex between adults is not a crime, casting aside an "irrational, arbitrary, and incomprehensible" colonial-era law that made the act a punishable offense within the country. [Times of India] * Fire alarms sounded at Miami Law as smoke poured through vents into a student lounge, and some students evacuated their classrooms, but others ran back in to save their laptops. Well, obviously -- they're law students, after all. [Miami Hurricane]

By Staci Zaretsky