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Dec 13

Taking Bloggers Seriously

Is a blogger a journalist? In Oregon, apparently not. On November 30, 2011, Judge Marco Hernandez of the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon ruled that Crystal Cox, “a self-proclaimed ‘investigative blogger’” was not entitled to the protection of Oregon’s journalist shield laws. This country needs to start taking investigative journalism seriously again. One way to start is by giving independent journalists, who are eager to do the work that the “mainstream media” can’t or won’t do, the same legal protections as old-timey journalists.

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Dec 9

India’s Government Draws Ire for Trying to Pull “a China” Online

India is estimated to have 121 million internet users, of which 43 million users are on Facebook, 3.6 million on Google Plus and 3.5 million on Twitter. The move to “muzzle” social content—which seems impracticable given the number of users—has generated outpourings of rage against the Minister of Communications and Information Technology, ironically enough on the same social networking sites that he seeks to stifle.

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Dec 8

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The Upcoming War in Iran Part II

The U.S. may already be in the midst of an ongoing armed conflict with Iran. Observers have warned about covert actions in Iran for years, but this week there have been reports that this covert war is heating up.

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Dec 8

Unemployment is High — But Even Higher if You Have a Record

A new report by DC’s Council for Court Excellence examines the realities formerly incarcerated individuals face in looking for work, and explores some of the reasons why the job search can be so difficult.

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Dec 8

Free Speech: Eight Questions With Geoffrey Stone

The capacity of the government to keep information from the public is effectively a means of censorship, without actually restricting speech as such. With a strong executive branch, today we find ourselves in a position where we can say what we want, but we can’t get the information we need in order to speak intelligently.

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Dec 7

11th Circuit Affirms Victory for Transgendered Georgia Employee

The Eleventh Circuit affirmed a victory for a transgendered woman who sued her former employer, the Georgia state legislature, for violating the Equal Protection Clause. The state argued that the Constitution does not protect transgendered persons, but a three-judge panel unanimously affirmed a summary judgment for the plaintiff, citing a Supreme Court case upholding an employee’s sex discrimination claim based on allegations that she was fired for failing to conform to female stereotypes. Georgia’s leaders should strongly renounce the state’s termination of this employee. The state should serve as a model for other employers. The state legislature makes laws, but this manager violated the Constitution when he fired an employee for failing to conform to gender stereotypes.

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Dec 7

Virginia Death Penalty and Appellate Defense

Experts interviewed posited many reasons for the high execution rates in Virginia, including the fact that the statute is very tightly written, requiring extensive proof to pass the bar to impose the death penalty and the fact that procedural rules limit the review of death cases by appeals courts. One issue that went unmentioned is the presence of ample criminal defense at the appellate level.

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Dec 2

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“French Fries are not a Vegetable”: Childhood Obesity Back at the Center Stage

News from Ohio of an eight-year old obese child being taken away from his mother’s custody and placed in temporary foster care has galvanized the debate over whether state social services can rightly penalize a child’s parents in this extreme fashion.  Is it fair to apportion all the culpability for morbid childhood obesity to the parents and ignore the role played by the permissive regulatory environment fostered by the government?

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Dec 2

Ninth Circuit Approves Compensation for Bone Marrow Stem Cell Donation

Yesterday, the Ninth Circuit correctly approved compensation for donors of hematopoietic stem cells if taken from peripheral blood, instead of directly from the marrow in our bones. From a legal standpoint, there is little difference between the circulating hematopoietic stem cells and any of your other blood cells–they are found in the same place, removed in the same manner, and will be quickly and easily replenished by the donor’s body. Notwithstanding the complaints of the Justice Department, the law must adapt with new scientific discoveries, and new medical technology.

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Dec 2

An ‘Honest Belief’ Defence to A Charge of Statutory Rape: Justice Rehnquist and His Unlikely Allies

In the Michael M. Case, Justice Rehnquist upheld a strict liability statute criminalizing the offence of statutory rape. In this position, he has since been joined by Baroness Hale in the United Kingdom, Justice Beverley McLachlin in Canada, and the European Court of Human Rights. This post looks at the reasoning which each of these Justices, ideologically diverse, have employed to reach similar conclusions.

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