Guantanamo Bay

The effort to pass laws to bar alleged terrorists from the U.S. court system so they're forever locked up on extra-judicial island is pretty much a failure.

* A judge has approved a $25 million settlement for claims surrounding Trump University. [NPR]

* If Neil Gorsuch becomes the next Supreme Court justice, is that proof bullying works? [Guile is Good]

* Tips for surviving work when you’re exhausted. [Corporette]

* A look at the charges against the pro-life activists who secretly recorded Planned Parenthood sessions. [Slate]

* Arkansas is racing to beat the clock… in order to execute people. [The Slot]

* You’re getting more of a TV show you probably don’t watch anyway. [Law and More]

* An appeals court ruled not to release Guantanamo Bay forced-feeding videos. [AP]

* When you ask for the death penalty, you shouldn’t be surprised when that’s what you get. [Texas Lawyer]

* Remember how Ted Cruz dared journalists to write about Jeff Sessions’s KKK prosecution? Yeah, how’d that pay off? [The Atlantic]

* Mitch McConnell’s playing a dangerous game — and the stakes are the Supreme Court. [Guile is Good]

* Jeff Sessions’s heart is besides the goddamn point. [Slate]

* There’s more than one way to be mindful. [Law and More]

* Trump wants to fill Gitmo, and that’s a problem. [Huffington Post]

Years after the fact, the Obama administration may be making good on its Gitmo campaign promise.

* The Thomas M. Cooley Law School is planning to sell one of its academic buildings for an asking price of $8.15 million. Dear Lord, the school will lose some of its library square footage. NOOOOOOOOO! [Lansing State Journal]

* Contrary to his client’s hit anthem, Pharrell’s lawyer isn’t happy. He says YouTube has been “blithely” ignoring his requests to take down music for which it lacks performance rights, and it may result in a $1B lawsuit. [Hollywood Reporter]

* Clifford Sloan, the State Department’s special envoy on Guantánamo Bay, appointed in 2013 to help shut down the detention center, is returning to the loving arms of Skadden’s partnership on January 1, 2015. Gitmo is still open. Oops. [Am Law Daily]

* After 30 years, the Food and Drug Administration decided to lift its lifetime ban on blood donation for gay men. Now gay men just have to abstain from doing gay things for a year — like having sex with other men — to donate blood. Yay? [WSJ Law Blog]

* If you’ve been wondering what the most ridiculous lawsuits of 2014 are, we’ve got you covered. These are the top 10 most absurd cases filed over the course of the past year. You may remember some of these from our coverage. [Faces of Lawsuit Abuse]

* TSA vs. the Nobel Prize. [Lowering the Bar] * A judge accidentally leaked the name of a juvenile in a juvenile sex case. But more to the point, this case is about a boy having a three-way with two of his English teachers on one of the teacher’s birthdays. I mean… South Park. [The Times-Picayune] * Teaching torts rots your brain. Maybe. [PrawfsBlawg] * Houston officials are backing away from their subpoena of sermons delivered by anti-gay pastors trying to get their congregation to sign petitions — even if the signatures were potentially fraudulent. [The Blaze] * Stand Your Ground laws find new ways to be dumb. More cases of abused women trying to evoke Stand Your Ground laws and being told that states really only meant for those to protect white dudes shooting black kids. [Slate] * A funny and insightful look at exactly how hearings go down at Gitmo. [New Jurist] * A federal judge has recused the entire Eastern District of California from a case on the basis of allegations that federal prosecutors systematically defrauded the court. Prosecutors misbehaving? That’s unpossible! [New York Observer]

Is forced feeding a form of torture? What does President Obama think?

* A guy sued the Washington Metro for injuries incurred by slipping in a banana peel. Security camera footage unraveled his story when it revealed he wasn’t a Looney Tunes character. [Washington Post] * A sports law practice sprung up in Qatar in advance of the 2022 World Cup. Have fun in 2023, folks! [Forbes] * Courts are starting to employ link shortening for URLs. That should free up some space under the page limits. [The Volokh Conspiracy] * The feds have a sophisticated spy system at Gitmo that may be used to eavesdrop on defense lawyers, which is a shock to pretty much nobody. [Vocativ] * Kash Hill joins the discussion on delivery drones. [Forbes] * Walking out on the law firm life is a bold move. This is pretty much how it goes down for everyone who does it. [Big Law Rebel] * Cops in Rochester arrested three black kids for waiting at their bus stop. [Gawker] * As we noted on Friday, the Jackie Chiles Law Society held a mock trial and convicted Harry Potter. “Who told you to put the Butter Beer Balm on!?” Video after the jump (note that the clip plays automatically, so don your headphones if necessary).

* Dewey know which Biglaw firms and ex-partners were sued by the failed firm’s bankruptcy estate? Sadly, they must all be asking, “Howrey going to survive now that Allan Diamond is on the case?” [Am Law Daily]

* You’d probably love to work as an associate on a 9-5 schedule with billable requirements so low you’d get canned anywhere else. There’s just one catch: You’d have a “proportionately lower salary.” [Daily Report]

* “Law professors and law deans are paid too much,” so the ABA is reducing tenure requirements for law school accreditation, which will make it easier for them to be laid off. [Wall Street Journal (sub. req.)]

* The ABA also decided to cut law schools some slack in terms of graduates’ employment data, and it’s likely due to the U.S. News rankings reckoning. Say hello to the 10-months-after graduation jobs statistic. [National Law Journal]

* Following the Windsor ruling, the Social Security Administration is paying claims for married gay couples living in states where same-sex marriage is recognized. As for the rest, better luck next time. [BuzzFeed]

* Would-be senator Cory Booker has taken annual payouts from his former firm, Trenk DiPasquale, since he left. You may remember that firm’s name from the C&D letter seen around the world. [New York Post]

* Author John Grisham was so pissed his books were banned at Guantánamo Bay that he took up the cause of prisoners wrongfully accused, detained for years, and released without apology. [New York Times]

* Almost as if to add insult to injury, Bernie Madoff was allegedly involved in a love triangle with one of his employees who’s about to go to trial. Apparently having dirty money is a desirable trait in a man. [Reuters]

* Amanda Bynes is still in the psych ward on a 5150, and her mother was granted a temporary conservatorship over her cray cray kid’s financial affairs. Way to follow in Britney Spears’s footsteps. [CNN]

* Just like he said in 2008, President Barack Obama says that he’s going to close Guantanamo Bay, and this time, he means it. No, really, he appointed a Skadden partner to handle it, so we know he means business now. [Blog of Legal Times]

* The Supreme Court just invalidated Arizona’s proof-of-citizenship voter registration law, so of course Ted Cruz wants to add an amendment to the Senate immigration reform bill to require citizenship to vote because, well… duh. [Politico]

* According to a Pew Research survey, a majority of Americans think Edward Snowden should be prosecuted for his NSA leaks. It’s also likely that same majority don’t even know what Edward Snowden leaked. [USA Today]

* It looks like Jon Leibowitz, the FTC’s ex-chairman, got some great birthday presents this week. Davis Polk partnership and a SCOTUS victory aren’t too shabby. [DealBook / New York Times]

* They don’t give a damn ’bout their bad reputation: malpractice claims filed against attorneys and firms were up in 2012, and some say mergers and laterals are to blame. [WSJ Law Blog (sub. req.)]

* If you’re worried about your low GPA when applying to law school, you haven’t been reading the news. You’ll get in everywhere you apply. [Law Admissions Lowdown / U.S. News & World Report]

* ¡Ay dios mío! The Hispanic National Bar Association is hoping that a week spent in law school will inspire minority high school students to become lawyers in the distant future. [National Law Journal]

One retired admiral thinks so, and a new book by a Wall Street Journal reporter provides supporting evidence.

* Gun nuts want to prevent THE PENTAGON from buying too many bullets. [Talking Points Memo]

* Subway employees can be held liable for not helping police officers. I’m a legal genius. [New York Law Journal]

* Employment lawyers get catty on their way out of the door. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]

* Do top firms even have compliance departments? [Corporate Counsel]

* Colleges are cracking down on Adderall abuse. So… it only took administrators about a decade to figure out that was going on. [New York Times]

* Okay, now Obama is going to close Guantanamo. And by “close,” I think he means “finds other excuses to leave it open.” [SCOTUSblog]

* Two guys, one gun, three wounded. Definitely what the Founders intended. [KENS 5] * Here’s the affirmance of the dismissal of Greg Berry’s $77 million lawsuit against Kasowitz Benson. Fun times. [Appellate Division, First Department] * Ex-girlfriends are uniting to go after a revenge porn site. If this stupid site ruins Section 230 for everybody, I’m going to be pissed. [Jezebel] * Not that anybody should need the help, but here is another reason to hate lawyers. [She Negotiates / Forbes] * Honestly, I kind of forgot Gitmo was still open. What with all the talk of having a progressive president, I kind of assumed that this would have been a promise he kept and stuff. [How Appealing] * Speaking of things I’ve forgotten about, say hello to the 27th Amendment. [The Volokh Conspiracy] * It looks like the world has forgotten about Atari. [Bloomberg Law]

* In trying to resolve the Texas redistricting problem, the Supreme Court has come to a realization: everything really is bigger in that state, including its congressional delegation. [Los Angeles Times] * The Center for Constitutional Rights is suing to get video of the would-be 20th hijacker’s interrogations made public. Too bad no one really […]

* Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer tapped the brakes on the Insane Train yesterday, vetoing one measure that would allow guns at schools and another that would require presidential candidates to prove they weren’t Kenyan immigrants hellbent on the destruction of Lee Greenwood. [TucsonSentinel.com] * Microsoft went before the Supreme Court yesterday to argue that patents […]

* Did Malcolm Gladwell’s endorsement lead to an increase in Colorado Law applicants? Malcolm Gladwell, a man whose book Blink was described by Richard Posner as “written like a book intended for people who do not read books.” [Law Week Colorado] * A litany of legal challenges faces the Obama administration now that they’ve backtracked […]

* Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be tried by a military commission at Guantanamo, but John Yoo is still not satisfied. He wants to capture people and hold them indefinitely without trial proof that the Obama Administration can conduct terror trials successfully. Obviously, the elegant solution is to make KSM live in Yoo’s basement until one […]

* Obama has created an indefinite detention system for prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay. Because he’s too soft on terrorism to make it definite. [Washington Post] * Utah’s new immigration laws will create a legal storm. El Niño! Spanish for The… Niño! [USA Today] * Lilo finally starred in another movie, and former wet poodle […]

* A possible upside to jury duty: getting to watch porn in court? [The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times] * Things just got hard in the Big Easy for six New Orleans police officers, who are now accused by the feds of shooting unarmed citizens and/or conspiring to cover it up. [New Orleans Times […]

* SCOTUS will look at the separation of church and state when they decide whether “a cross to honor fallen soldiers can stand in a national preserve in California.” [The Los Angeles Times] * Lawyers say Madoff must have had help with his Ponzi scheme. [Bloomberg] * Attorney General Eric Holder visited Guantanamo yesterday to […]