Conspiracy

>* The DOJ helping to keep lower-wage conspiracies at bay? Yeah, that sounds good. [NYT]

* Kentucky just attacked Roe in a big way. [Reuters]

* Colorado makes cycling a little safer by allowing bikers to make rolling stops. They were probably doing that before the law but progress is progress. [9 News]

* Remember the suit about Elon not announcing his acquisition of Twitter shares earlier? Well, he wants it all now. [BBC]

* Looks like not everyone is the biggest fan of Scalia’s writing style. [Reddit]

* SCOTUS blocked Biden’s vaccine and testing requirement for large businesses. May liberty and funeral home owners rejoice. [CNN]

* A Wisconsin judge recently ruled that absentee ballot drop boxes are not allowed under the state’s law. As you make it to the polls, remember — six feet! [NPR]

* …So a few doctors, a paralegal, and some cops get paid $100m to walk into a bar. Oh my bad, I meant a jail cell. I get them mixed up sometimes. [NY Post]

* Officers tried to jail a professor for showing other people what police misconduct looked like. Maybe they just wanted to be part of the video? [Reuters]

* NJ governor Phil Murphy just signed a bill protecting abortion access. Woop Woop! [6ABC]

* Two Nazis handed a 9-year sentence for trying to pop off race war. Happy Friday! [Forbes]

* Amazon faces discrimination lawsuit because it doesn’t cater enough to white straight men. Somebody clue the beginning to this Eminem song I guess. [Law360]

* Iowa’s Pro Bono Society shows love to 56 students who empowered their communities. THANK YOU! [UIowa]

* SCOTUS will be hearing oral argument on SB8’s enforcement mechanism on November 1st. It has to have a chilling effect on something, at least. [KHN]

* $13 Million marijuana conspiracy involving cops is the talk of Franklin County, Maine. I wonder if the business involved infused butter for lobsta rolls. [WGME]

* To those about to rock, we’ll arrest you! Woman arrested in jewel heist conspiracy swapped stones for diamonds. [CNN]

* Trump reportedly called officers… a thing he grabs, for doing their job during the failed insurrection. [Business Insider]

* Internal CDC document compares spreadability of Delta COVID variant to chickenpox. Can we stop treating medicine like a Federalism issue? [Reuters]

* Three teachers awarded $185M from Monsanto suit over chemical exposure. Go Torts! [The Guardian]

* Reclaiming the sacred: Red Road to D.C. activists push for Native American inclusion in lawmaking. [The Hill]

* A lawsuit alleging that a company conspired to fix the price of pork has settled. Guess their actions didn’t sound kosher and they were allegedly acting piggish… [Meat+Poultry]

* Check out this profile of a retired lawyer who found a new calling as a writer. [Post and Courier]

* Bigelow Aerospace is suing NASA for around a million dollars for purportedly not paying for work. That number doesn’t seem out of this world… [CBS News]

* Representatives of Dominion Voting Systems have not ruled out suing President Trump over remarks he made over alleged fraud in the 2020 election. [Independent]

* Since Above the Law has not had a “lawyerly lairs” segment in a while, wanted to relate that a well-known Chicago attorney is selling his posh mansion. [Crain’s Chicago Business]

* Thanks to the not-so-orphaned Kennedy clerks, this Term could see a record number of clerks at the Supreme Court, as Tony Mauro reports. [National Law Journal]

* Speaking of clerks, I talk quite a bit about them and their role in this interview with Kaley Pillinger about my writing career (from Underneath Their Robes to Above the Law to Supreme Ambitions (affiliate link)). [The Politic]

* Speaking of SCOTUS, and more specifically of Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the high court, Ed Whelan responds to the arguments of Senate Democrats against — yes, against — the prompt provision of records from Kavanaugh’s years as White House counsel. [Bench Memos / National Review]

* If Judge Kavanaugh becomes Justice Kavanaugh, how will that affect the Court’s business jurisprudence? Adam Feldman has this analysis. [Empirical SCOTUS]

* The failure of Ryan Bounds’s Ninth Circuit nomination could be a “teachable moment” for Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.), according to Will Folks. [FITSNews]

* Speaking of disappointing failures to confirm, Paul Mirengoff shares my frustration over the inexcusable delays in Department of Justice confirmations. [Power Line]

* It’s unfair to dismiss Seinfeld as “a show about nothing”; episodes offer insight into numerous legal issues — for example, the law of conspiracy. [Seinfeld Law]

* Kal Raustiala and Christopher Jon Sprigman offer interesting reflections on how data-driven authorship might affect the way we think about creativity and copyright. [Volokh Conspiracy / Reason]

* If you’re interested in litigation finance, there’s a conference coming up next month here in New York that you might want to check out. [LF Dealmakers Forum]

* Sitting en banc, the Seventh Circuit reinstated the conviction of Making a Murderer’s Brendan Dassey in a split decision. If you recall, Dassey’s conviction was overturned by a federal magistrate in June 2016, and that ruling was later affirmed by a three-judge panel of the Seventh Circuit this June. [ABA Journal]

* Dean Blake Morant says GW Law enrolled a smaller incoming class this fall in order to stop its downward slide in the U.S. News rankings. Because of the smaller class, some programs are being cut and there’s a freeze on staff hiring. Yikes. [GW Hatchet]

* What is special counsel Robert Mueller’s legal endgame in this Russia probe? Some think that this could turn into an obstruction of justice case, while others think this could turn into a conspiracy case. What’ll it be? This investigation has no end in sight, so we’ll have to wait a bit longer to find out. [NPR]

* Kevin McIntyre, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s new chairman, has given us a little $1.8 million peek into the Jones Day black box in his financial disclosure. [National Law Journal]

* The legal profession had something to be thankful for this November: according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the legal sector grew by 600 jobs. [American Lawyer]

Without treason, collusion, conspiracy, or federal election law violations, the Democrats are left with... nothing.

Trump's Justice Department could be a frightening thing given our federal judiciary.

This Friday, May 15 NACDL is having a one-day conference on conspiracy law.

The Supreme Court likes stacking the deck.

Federal conspiracy laws make pretty much everything a crime. Good luck out there.

A jury is most likely to find people guilty the more they’re doing something that the jurors themselves think of as not funny and, in fact, really quite repugnant.

A former federal prosecutor gets convicted of murder, racketeering, and a whole host of other crimes.

Don't read this story if you're eating at your desk right now.

A state supreme court justice just got convicted of multiple felonies. What did she do?

Today at the Supreme Court, the justices made a spirited journey to the very heart of our nation’s federal conspiracy law.