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"Can the House vote to amend something that isn't the law, as the Senate bill will not be law before the president's signature?"

Posted about 3 hours ago via Althouse

"The Rules Committee meeting turned into mass confusion": Democratic Rep. Sander Levin [said] "We're going to be amending the law"... [Democratic Rep. Henry] Waxman added, "We change current law, and the current law will be the Senate bill on…

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$9M alienation of affection award in NC

Posted about 6 hours ago via Overlawyered

The defendant wasn’t at trial and didn’t have a lawyer, and plans to appeal; the judgment might as well be for $73 gazillion, as the ex-husband is already in contempt of court for failure to pay spousal support. (Greensboro News-R…

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Michael McConnell states the constitutional problem with the "deem and pass" more clearly and concisely than anyone can explain what the "deem and pass" is.

Posted about 7 hours ago via Althouse

Is that a clue that something really devious is going on? Article I, Section 7 clearly states that bills cannot be presented to the president for signature unless they have been approved by both houses of Congress in the same form. If the Hous…

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TWiL 52 Video — Mrs. Whifflebottom's Pants

Posted about 8 hours ago via Bag and Baggage

Video archives for TWiL are available at blip.tv and ODTV. Also, TWiL is on Twitter and Facebook, if you're so inclined. This WEEK in LAW on Facebook

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More on Shaming Corporate Criminals: It's Complicated

Posted about 9 hours ago via Business Law Prof Blog

Over at Simple Justice, criminal defense lawyer Scott Greenfield points out some problems with my fine/jail alternative to shaming corporate defendants: Fines don't cut the mustard ... the people who run corporations aren't the people who have…

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Claim: Goldman Sachs should have insisted he give them his money

Posted about 10 hours ago via Overlawyered

Business Insider and the NYLJ have details. Tags: Bernard Madoff Related posts Unpersuasive claims of victimhood dept. (0) Names in the news (0) Mel Weiss invested with Madoff (2) Markopolos’s case against Madoff (2) March 2 r…

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Interview Strategies: Taking the Show on the Road

Posted about 17 hours ago via Law.com - Career Center

Whether you're interviewing for an out-of-town job, or interviewing with a law firm or company with several offices, you may have to combine interview stress with the added stress of travel. Consultants Valerie Fontaine and Roberta Kass have s…

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Low-Key U.S. Attorney Lands High-Profile Cases

Posted about 17 hours ago via Law.com - Career Center

Under interim U.S. Attorney Benton J. Campbell, the Eastern District of New York has landed a wide range of major, high-profile cases, but Campbell still maintains a lower profile than many other top prosecutors. "I prefer to toil in anonymity…

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Braun Prize in Western Legal History

Posted about 17 hours ago via Legal History Blog

The Ninth Judicial Circuit Historical Society announces the 2010 Jerome I. Braun Prize in Western Legal History. The prize, named in honor of a NJCHS past president, will be awarded for the best unpublished article-length manuscript on the leg…

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Brophy on Empiricism, the Rule of Law and the Antebellum Judiciary

Posted about 17 hours ago via Legal History Blog

Quantitative Legal HistoryEmpirics and the Rule of Law in the Antebellum Judiciary, by Alfred L. Brophy, University of North Carolina Law School, is up on The Legal Workshop website of the Duke Law Journal. It commences:This symposium asks ho…

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Menashi on Sunstein on a Living Constitution

Posted about 18 hours ago via Legal Theory Blog

Steven Menashi (Georgetown University Law Center) has posted The Undead Constitution (Policy Review, No. 157, pp. 76-82, October & November 2009) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: A review of Cass R. Sunstein, A Constitution of Many Minds: Why the...

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John Fabian Witt Named Duffy Professor

Posted about 18 hours ago via Legal History Blog

A press release heralds the appointment of the legal historian John Fabian Witt as the Allen H. Duffy Class of 1960 Professor of Law at the Yale Law School, here.

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Tanker Competition Enters the Realm of the Absurd

Posted about 19 hours ago via Lawyers, Guns & Money

Thank you, Russia: Russian state-owned aerospace group United Aircraft Corp. plans to bid for a U.S. Air Force tanker contract, teaming up with a U.S. partner, a lawyer representing UAC said March 19. “They’re going to announce Mon…

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DA says Rockland Selectmen Violated Open Meeting Law

Posted about 20 hours ago via Media Law

The Plymouth County district attorney's office has found that selectmen in Rockland, Mass., violated the open meeting law in the process of hiring a full-time accountant, The Patriot Ledger reports. A town accountant search committee also viol…

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Maricopa Blowin' in the Wind

Posted about 21 hours ago via Gamso - For the Defense

How many times must a County Supervisor be arrested before he decides he should sue?Exhibit A: Don Stapley. Yvonne Wingett gives the history in today's Arizona Republic.In November 2008, a grand jury indicted Stapley on 118 counts related to …

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Bust the Bracket with a Killer Legal Marketing Strategy

Posted about 21 hours ago via The Rainmaker Blog

March Madness is upon us. Office productivity has taken its seasonal dip as employees call in sick and spend work time scanning the internet to keep up with the progress of their NCAA basketball tournament brackets. This is a good time to as…

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Michael McConnell and the metaphysics of bills

Posted about 22 hours ago via Balkinization

Professor and (former Judge) Michael McConnell writes a sequel to his previous op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, reiterating his argument that use of a self-executing rule in the House of Representatives is unconstitutional. As McConnell note…

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Drug Court Ladies Day Features Oprah-Like Judge

Posted about 22 hours ago via ABA Journal Top Stories

One day a week, the drug court in Pinellas County, Florida, focuses exclusively on women. Funded by a $900,000 federal grant, the "Ladies Day" program encourages women, who officials say are more open to talking about themselves and accepting …

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Goodman & Chen on Media Policy Reform

Posted about 23 hours ago via Legal Theory Blog

Ellen P. Goodman & Anne Chen (Rutgers University - Law School, University of Pennsylvania and Yale University - Information Society Project) have posted Modeling Policy for New Public Media Networks on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Dramatic tran…

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9th Cir.: Anna Nicole Smith Gets Zip, Zero, Zilch of Texas Billionaires Estate

Posted 1 day ago via ABA Journal Top Stories

A hard-fought 15-year court battle by the late celebrity model Anna Nicole Smith and her heirs over the estate of the Texas oil billionaire she married when she was 26 and he was 89 may have finally ended in complete defeat of her claims. The …

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Above the Law Steps into the Current Decade

Posted 2 days ago via Above the Law

It's time for Above the Law to start living in the now. We've been growing and growing, building on a platform that is so 2006. It's time for us to embrace the brave new world of 2010. We're making two changes that we hope will make reading a…

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Round 2: Lawyer Madness Vote for your School!

Posted 1 day ago via Avvo Blog

We’ve moved onto Round 2 of Avvo’s Lawyer Madness!! See who has advanced – and especially check out the schools in all capital letters – they received the most votes in Round 1 to be brought into the c…

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Squire Sanders Adds to Public Advocacy Group

Posted 1 day ago via JD Journal

Squire Sanders Public Advocacy, the lobbying affiliate of Squire, Sanders & Dempsey, has added Brian P. Woolfolk as a principal with SSPA and as of counsel of the firm. Woolfolk is the co-founder of boutique lobbying shop Mattox Woolfolk. He a…

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Rule of Completeness is Broader than FRE 106

Posted 1 day ago via White Collar Defense and Compliance

A useful lesson drawn from a recent Tenth Circuit case: don’t hesitate to use the common law “rule of completeness” in an effort to admit verbal statements, such as those memorialized in transcripts of plea allocutions or gra…

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Whats Happening with Immigration Reform?

Posted 1 day ago via ACS Blog

By Maurice Belanger, Director of Public Information, National Immigration Forum This weekend, tens of thousands of activists will be in Washington demanding that Congress fix an immigration system that is dysfunctional. What's this about? …

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Anna Nicole estate loses

Posted 1 day ago via SCOTUSblog

Ruling in a case sent back to it by the Supreme Court nearly four years ago, the Ninth Circuit Court decided Friday that the estate of the late topless dancer and model, Anna Nicole Smith, is not entitled to any of her claim for tens of millio…

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Casemaker Upsets LoisLaw in Low-Cost Provider State Case Law Tourney

Posted 1 day ago via Legal Blog Watch

At 3 Geeks and a Law Blog, Greg Lambert has crowned Casemaker king of the second tier when it comes to state case law content. Lambert's competition started with a field of four: Casemaker, Fastcase, Google Scholar and LoisLaw. (He excludes th…

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Juvenile Judge Orders 4 Sex-Assault Victims to Take Polygraph Test

Posted 1 day ago via ABA Journal Top Stories

Baffling prosecutors and upsetting victims, an Ohio judge has ordered four teenage victims of sexual assaults to take polygraph tests—after their alleged attackers have already been found delinquent, reports the Cleveland Plain Dealer. C…

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Decisions due; new calendar out

Posted 1 day ago via SCOTUSblog

The Supreme Court is expected to have decisions on pending cases on Tuesday of next week, but probably not on Wednesday. Orders will be issued on Monday. In the meantime, the Court has changed the hour of the two arguments that were scheduled …

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Prosecutors Investigating Racist Walmart Announcement

Posted 1 day ago via Legal Blog Watch

Sunday night, some yahoo got on the PA at a Walmart store in Washington Township, N.J., and made the following announcement: "Attention, Walmart customers: All black people, leave the store now." It is still unclear whether the gentleman was a…

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An Extraordinary Exoneration, Seven Years Later

Posted 1 day ago via Innocence Blog

Seven years ago this week, Julius Earl Ruffin was officially exonerated after spending more than two decades in prison for a rape he did not commit. Ruffin's case illustrates not just the dangers of mistaken eyewitness identification, but the …

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FEMA's Revised Flood Maps to Affect Development, Availability of Flood Insurance in Western Washington

Posted 1 day ago via Northwest Real Estate Law Blog

Authored by: Craig Gannett and Clayton P. Graham Landowners and developers across Western Washington will be affected by floodplain map revisions that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) plans to carry out in the coming months. The…

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Yglesias Interview: Senate Delays Effect on the Judiciary

Posted 1 day ago via ACS Blog

Matthew Yglesias, a fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, and a blogger at the organization's ThinkProgress, chatted with ACSblog about increased use of the filibuster and other delaying tactics to scuttle the president's jud…

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Olson on Copyright Misuse & the First Amendment

Posted 1 day ago via Legal Theory Blog

David S. Olson (Boston College Law School) has posted First Amendment Based Copyright Misuse on SSRN. Here is the abstract: We are at a crossroads with respect to the under-developed equitable defense of copyright misuse. The defense may go the...

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9th Circuit Affirms Dismissal of Case About Autistic Child Locked in Closet

Posted 1 day ago via Legal Blog Watch

We're all lawyers here, and understand that sometimes you have to jump through a hoop or two to get things accomplished, even if you might have a legitimate beef. But sometimes, you read about a court opinion that makes you say, "Seriously?" T…

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Of Acorns and Oaks

Posted 1 day ago via That's What She Said

Litigation Value: No liability (or sales leads) per se. However, the seeds of workplace discord have been planted, leaving open the possibility that they will take root and blossom into future legal problems. Sales personnel are lording it ov…

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Name That Law Blog!

Posted 1 day ago via New York Personal Injury Law Blog

A number of posts have now appeared in the legal blogosphere about moving blogs to new platforms and potentially re-naming them. Marketing folks like to call that re-branding.I'm one of those people wrestling with a move. Blogger is forcing m…

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Avoiding Malware from Search Results and Twitter Posts: Drive-By-Downloads

Posted 1 day ago via ABA Site-tation

Body: Once upon a time simple advice could be followed to avoid computer viruses such as "Don't open e-mail attachments from strangers" or "Be careful what you download from the Internet." Well, things are more complicated now: you can get v…

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"Potential Clients Will Find Your Law Blog"

Posted 1 day ago via Stark County Law Library Weblog

This post was written by Randall Ryder: "Despite my insistent advice to create a law blog, many of my law-talkin' friends refuse to do so. I have written posts onwhat you should write about, how often you should blog, and...

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"Risk Management Techniques"

Posted 1 day ago via Stark County Law Library Weblog

Podcast description from the site: "On this edition of The Landy Law Letter, host John L. Torvi, from the Herbert H. Landy Insurance Agency of Needham, Massachusetts welcomes Dan Reed, Second Vice President of Travelers Bond & Financial Produc…

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"Estate Planning for Your Digital Assets - New Article"

Posted 1 day ago via Stark County Law Library Weblog

This post was written by Dennis Kennedy: "My friend Wendy Werner recently talked me into writing an article on "succession planning" for computer systems, online materials and digital assets for the newly-released issue of the Law Practice Tod…

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Why Can't Lawyers Fix Washington D.C.?

Posted 1 day ago via Lawyer2Lawyer - Law News and Legal Topics

In every city and town in America, there has been an overwhelming reaction to the political gridlock in Washington D.C. over healthcare, economic recovery, taxes, Afghanistan (almost everything). So why cant the lawyers in Congress who special…

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Murder, Text Message and the 6th Amendment

Posted 1 day ago via CYB3RCRIM3

This post is about a recent decision from the Court of Appeals of Arizona: State v. Damper, 2010 WL 711802 (2010). Marcus Damper was convicted of second-degree murder in the death of his girlfriend, nineteen-year-old Cartina …

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Even the Prosecutors Know

Posted 1 day ago via Gamso - For the Defense

I hope they get some solace in this, but the reality is they probably wont," the prosecutor lamented. "The reality is theyll never get their loved ones back. The promise of Casonya and Esme is gone forever and thats just a horrible tragedy for…

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What Do Solo and Small Firm Lawyers Earn?

Posted 1 day ago via My Shingle

Biglaw has its annual and closely watched profits per partnership or PPP extravaganza, while Above the Law devotes an entire category to biglaw associate salaries and cuts. But where can lawyers considering solo or small firm practice get a s…

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Blawg of the Day - Jeff Krause's Practice Management Blog

Posted 1 day ago via Inter Alia

Today's blog covers one of my favorite topics - law practice management. Jeff Krause's Practice Management Blog is the self-titled blog of - you guessed it - Jeff Krause, a practice management consultant based in Wisconsin. Most of the posts…

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Wilmer Cutler

Posted 1 day ago via Temporary Attorney: The Sweatshop Edition

Just when things were quieting down in crazy document review land, this nonsense pops up. Apparently, Michael Layman (staff attorney 007) solved the espionage crime of the century over at Wilmer Cutler when he caught an international super sp…

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Under the Open Meeting Law, e-mail can be a double-edged sword

Posted 1 day ago via Media Law

On Beacon Hill and in municipal buildings across the state, government officials are getting the message that e-mail can be a double-edged sword, writes State House reporter Dan Ring in The Republican of Springfield.

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Towns prepare for substantial changes in Open Meeting Law

Posted 1 day ago via Media Law

"The state's Open Meeting Law requires that meetings of governmental boards and committees be conducted in sessions open to the public, with few exceptions which are strictly limited. The goal of the law is to eliminate as much of the secrecy …

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Start Strong--Motions

Posted 1 day ago via BLOG.LEGALWRITING.NET

Suppose you've prepared a motion, filed it, and shown up for the hearing. When you stand up, the first thing the judges asks is "What are we here on?" You might wonder why the judge hadn't read your motion beforehand. A possible answer is t…

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