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The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come,...

On April 10, 2006, David Hackbart was attempting to parallel park his car on a street in Pittsburgh when a car pulled up behind him, blocking his path. Hackbart responded by giving the driver behind him "the middle finger," and promptly heard another voice outside his car tell him, “Don’t flip him off.” Hackbart, of course, then gave the finger to the interloper who was instructing him what not to do, a person who he would soon learn was Sgt. Brian Elledge of the Pittsburgh Police Department, who was seated in his patrol car at the time. After being flipped off, Sgt. Elledge turned on his patrol lights and conducted a vehicle stop of Hackbart's car, shouting, “You don’t flip me off!” Sgt. Elledge issued Hackbart a citation charging him with violating Pennsylvania’s disorderly conduct statute based on Hackbart's giving the middle finger to Sgt. Elledge and the other driver. Hackbart challenged the citation but at his preliminary hearing, a district justice found him guilty of violating...

The Queen announced on Wednesday that her government would deliver Internet piracy legislation; today it arrived in the form of the massive Digital Economy bill meant to modernize the UK's approach to everything from copyrights to broadband to video game ratings to domain names. The bill contains no sanctions against suspected P2P file-swappers, but it introduces a "reserve power" that can be deployed whenever the Secretary of State feels that it's time to bust out the switch and administer some beatings. The bill implements the Digital Britain report, which was completed earlier this year and attempted to chart a course forward for Britain in a high-tech world. It initially imposes two obligations on ISPs: they must forward warning letters from copyright holders to their subscribers, and they must maintain an anonymized list of the number of such warnings received by each subscriber. If a copyright holder asks, they must be shown the list, at which point the rightsholder can go to...

I taught legal process in the context of mediating litigated cases yesterday at the American Institute of Mediation. I volunteered my time for the singular opportunity to be a co-presenter for with the brilliant Doug Noll (buy and read everything he's written; follow him on Twitter; subscribe to the RSS feed of his blog; and, listen to his podcasts and radio show) and the equally brilliant and most successful "non-lawyer" litigated case mediator in the English-speaking world, Lee Jay Berman of the American Institute of Mediation (follow him; take his Institute's courses; and, listen to whatever he has to say because your negotiation and mediation practice will improve 100% immediately). Because Doug, Lee Jay and I spent the entire day yesterday talking about legal rights and remedies as well as legal procedure in the context of negotiating the resolution of litigation, I was once again engaged in the soul-searching that always accompanies my loyalty to the adversarial/rights-remedies...

A lawyer, selected as the jury forewoman in the McKesson criminal trial, had harsh words for some of the attorneys following the trial, which wrapped up on Thursday.

One hundred and eighty years ago, on August 15,1829, as the New England summer faded and a school year dawned, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story spoke to a muster of colleagues and students in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They came to...

And here I thought my days of reporting on Joe Francis were over… It turns out that the Girls Gone Wild founder hasn’t quite put his tax woes behind him. After taking a deal to plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of filing false tax returns – and escaping additional jail time in the process [...]

Ann Bartow’s post about Paul Zukofsky, son of Louis and Celia Zukofsky, and his attempt to exert extreme control over his parents’ work reveals that heirs are problem for copyright. Mr. Zukofsky asserts some untenable points about his power over the material and the need for academics to seek his approval. The full letter is on his site. Here are some choice quotes: Despite what you may have been told, you may not use LZ’s words as you see fit, as if you owned them, while you hide behind the rubric of “fair use”. “Fair use” is a very-broadly defined doctrine, of which I take a very narrow interpretation, and I expect my views to be respected. We can therefore either more or less amicably work [...]

From TechCrunch.com: Ever since last summer, Twitter’s growth in the U.S. has been stalling. But in October, the number of people who visited Twitter.com from the U.S. actually declined for the first time by 8 percent month-over-month. Estimates released today by comScore put Twitter’s domestic unique visitors at 19.2 million, down from 20.9 million in September. On an annual basis, Twitter is still going gangbusters with 1,271 percent growth from 1.4 million visitors in October, 2008. And on a global basis, it still seems to be chugging away with 58.4 million visitors in September. But a hypergrowth company like Twitter cannot afford to slow down in its home market. CEO Evan Williams recently acknowledged the slowdown in the U.S., and hopes that a slew of new features will help revive growth to the site. Many of these features are already rolling out, including the new Retweet button, Lists, and Geolocation features. Twitter is obviously committed to making its service better on its...

When Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the United States would not abandon the rule of law as to several key Guantanamo detainees, he undoubtedly did so knowing that some observers would be, shall we say, skeptical. Some critics of the administration's plan to prosecute international terror suspects in domestic courts are "obsessed with the prospect of allowing these terrorists to have an opportunity to mount a so-called 'circus trial,'" writes Dahlia Lithwick. "They must be awfully afraid of the other side's message to believe that allowing the defendants to utter even a word in their own defense is to risk recruiting millions of new adherents worldwide." Perhaps the most colorable argument for fear of prosecuting terrorists in domestic courts is, as Sen. John Cornyn claims, that an acquittal may result. But, explains the Center for American Progress's Ken Gude, "Under the .000001 chance that [suspected terrorists] are acquitted, [the executive branch] will have ......

The Nova Scotia Court of Appeal has surprised the golfing world by ruling that drunkenness is not among golfing's "natural risks." The ruling came in Bezanson v. Hayter which arose after an impaired defendant took an unexpected shot that hit the plaintiff who was walking on the fairway. The court concluded that as the risk that golfers were drunk was not a natural one, it was also not a risk to which the plaintiff could have consented. Query how many members of the panel play golf, and if so, where do they play? Must be a very rarefied club. However that may be, they clearly have not read my current work-in-progress: Judges and Reality: Narrowing the Gap. Julius Melnitzer

Michael Fricklas is Viacom's general counsel, and it's his job to oversee the company's legal efforts, including its $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube. When people talk about Big Content, they're talking about people like Fricklas. So it might be surprising to watch him tell a class of Yale law students this month that suing end users for online copyright infringement is "expensive, and it's painful, and it feels like bullying." While the recording industry was big on this approach for a while, Fricklas certainly understands the way it came across to the public when some college student went up against "very expensive lawyers and unlimited resources and it felt like terrorism."

1. If you’re looking for The Promised Land, you’re in the wrong place. This is the Wild West, Pilgrim. 2. There are clients online—sophisticated, moneyed clients—but they don’t find lawyers the way you think they do. That is, they don’t find lawyers the way the marketers want you to think they do. Clients—sophisticated clients, clients with [...]

Story here.

First it was the GAO. Then the Bureau of Economic Research. The Cincinnati Enquirer. The Texas Observer. What are we talking about? Clear evidence by any credible benchmark that there is no link between state “tort reform” laws and where...

Documents obtained in lawsuits by insurers and consumers against the “world’s biggest drug maker” Pfizer have given rise to a report to be published today in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), indicating the company “altered or omitted unfavorable...

Intel and AMD on Thursday announced a huge antitrust settlement in which AMD will drop its suits, the companies will exchange a cross-license, and Intel will pay AMD $1.25 billion.

Amongst the many emails received daily with news, videos, stories and promotions that are floating around out there (most of which I can't possibly post about, much to the consternation of readers and publicists), came this installment from the Ann Arbor Chronicle, Washtenaw Jail Diary: Chapter 3. Largely because the sender made no effort to hype the content, I took a chance and read the article. It was worth my time, and I hope worth yours. This articulate and introspective view by an anonymous detainee, that started as twits and developed into a narrative, with the anticipation that it might be published as a book, reflects one person's understanding of law and life inside. Some of his ideas will offend lawyers, particularly public defenders who take their responsibility seriously and will bristle at being called "public pretenders." or snake oil salesmen. Bear in mind that this isn't about you, but about the author and his understanding of a very strange and foreign world. Some...

And how much do rape, pornography and prostitution contribute to the spread of AIDS? Wish there was some data on that, but not holding my breath. From the HuffPo: In its first study of women’s health around the globe, the World Health Organization said Monday that the AIDS virus is the leading cause of death and [...]

Talk show host and one-man media empire Glenn Beck has lost his bid to shut down the glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com domain name. We've covered the strange circumstances of the case before: a Gilbert Gottfried comedy routine (NSFW) about Bob Saget raping and murdering a teenaged girl made its way to the Fark forums, where commenters quickly adapted it for use with Glenn Beck. The idea is to force someone to explain away completely baseless charges made by insinuation alone; since Beck already has a reputation for doing this, the joke was supposed to give Beck a taste of his own medicine.

The title of this post is the headline of this little piece today in the Chicago Tribune. These basics about President Obama's poor clemency track record to date should be familiar to regular readers of this blog: A lot of...

A Healthy Debate: The Constitutionality of an Individual Mandate Health care reform has been and continues to be one of the highest priorities in the Obama Administration’s domestic agenda. The proposals for reform played a major role in the debates leading up to President Obama’s election and dominate the Administration’s, and Congress’s, current domestic activities. While most policymakers seemingly agree that reform is necessary, there is much disagreement about the particulars of the appropriate reform. One of the more contested features is the so-called individual mandate—a federal requirement that every American possess a certain level of health insurance. In A Healthy Debate, David Rivkin and Lee Casey debate Professor Jack Balkin over the constitutionality of such a mandate. In their Opening Statement, Rivkin and Casey argue that [...]

A participant at my recent seminar in Ottawa reminded me of something I’d never paid much attention to—the idea that one should draft without punctuation. It’s a hoary old notion that still lingers in Commonwealth jurisdictions. Here’s what an Australian text has to say on the subject: Traditional legal drafting uses punctuation sparingly. This has been [...]

Houston DWI lawyer Tyler Flood on DWI cases, from the Houston Press article (yes, it’s like crack): “Listen, most of the people we get off are intoxicated. But that’s the justice system,” he says. “I’ve always thought people would be very concerned if they knew what we were doing.” Tyler: You know that you’re talking to a [...]

Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) has been a longtime advocate of televising sessions of the U.S. Supreme Court, a quest that has repeatedly fallen on deaf ears across First Street NE. But Specter noted today that the justices haven't exactly been...

Keith Bardwell, a Louisiana justice of the peace who refused to perform mixed-race marraiges, resigned Tuesday after weeks of calls for his ouster from civil rights groups and several public officials, including Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal.

Entertainment law news this morning: Did James Cameron take his idea for "Avatar" from a 1957 novella? A number of websites have started remarking about the film's plot similarities to Poul Anderson's "Call Me Joe." (1, 2, 3, etc.) One...

(Editor’s Note: This post is based on a Sullivan & Cromwell LLP client memorandum.) On October 22, 2009, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (the “Federal Reserve”) issued a comprehensive proposal (the “Proposal”) on incentive compensation policies that is intended to ensure that these policies do not undermine the safety and soundness of [...]

When I started this blog, I swore I would never do a post apologizing for not posting nor would I ever do a post making any sort of excuse for not posting. We are all busy and I hate excuses and unless one thinks this post violates that pledge, I am proud to say I have stuck by it. In fact, instead of not posting when I get crazy busy, I just tend to get more biting and ornery so if any apology is necessary, I apologize in advance for that. I also must dedicate this title to my Canadian international trade lawyer friend, Cyndee Todgham Cherniak, with whom I shared a podium at the just completed American Bar Association International Law Section Meeting in Miami. Cyndee commented to the crowd on how "shocking" my titles sometimes are and I thought of her when I penned this one. My ire today stems from perfectly fine domestic US lawyers who, for some unknown reason, deem themselves able to practice international law. They are not. Last week, I got an email from an unnamed company that...