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27 Oct 09

Shameful Illinois prosecutors go after student investigators | Salon

What happens when those in power get mad.

www.salon.com/...index.html - Preview

J-school journalism students law

  • the subpoena demands "the grades, grading criteria, class syllabus, expense reports and e-mail messages of the journalism students themselves."
  • The prosecutors are uncomfortable with the idea of shielding journalists who investigate and publicize "inadequacies" in the criminal justice system. But having an additional "check" on the government is one of the strongest justifications for vigorously protecting the work of journalists.
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25 Apr 09

Op-Ed Columnist - Reclaiming America’s Soul - NYTimes.com

  • never before have our leaders so utterly betrayed everything our nation stands for. “This government does not torture people,” declared former President Bush, but it did, and all the world knows it.
  • the only way we can regain our moral compass, not just for the sake of our position in the world, but for the sake of our own national conscience, is to investigate how that happened, and, if necessary, to prosecute those responsible.
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18 Mar 09

Mistrial by iPhone - Jurors’ Web Forays Are Upending Trials - NYTimes.com

  • It might be called a Google mistrial. The use of BlackBerrys and iPhones by jurors gathering and sending out information about cases is wreaking havoc on trials around the country, upending deliberations and infuriating judges.
  • Jurors are not supposed to seek information outside of the courtroom. They are required to reach a verdict based only on the facts that the judge has decided are admissible, and they are not supposed to see evidence that has been excluded as prejudicial. But now, using their cellphones, they can look up the name of a defendant on the Web, or examine an intersection using Google Maps, violating the legal system’s complex rules of evidence. They can also tell their friends what is happening in the jury room, though they are supposed to keep their opinions and deliberations secret.
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26 Jan 09

Rivkin and Brown: 'Libel Tourism' Threatens Free Speech - WSJ.com

  • A proper federal libel tourism bill would punish conduct that takes place overseas -- in this case, the commencement of sham libel actions in foreign courts -- by utilizing the well-recognized congressional authority to apply U.S. laws extraterritorially when compelling interests demand it. The Alien Tort Statute, for example, gives U.S. courts subject matter jurisdiction over brutal acts that violate the "law of nations" wherever they may occur. More recently, Congress has created civil remedies to enable victims of international terrorism and human trafficking to sue in our courts for money damages.
  • Under such a law, U.S. courts would be asked to evaluate, at the beginning stages of a foreign lawsuit, whether the plaintiffs are seeking to punish speech protected under the First Amendment. This type of early intervention by judges has worked very well in the 26 states that have passed laws to discourage frivolous libel suits here in the U.S.
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28 Nov 08

Op-Ed Columnist - ROGER COHEN - A Command of the Law - NYTimes.com

  • President Bush had one overriding criterion in choosing his inner circle: loyalty. The result was nobody would pull the plug on stupidity.
  • But back to the law, which is what defines the United States, for it is a nation of laws. Or was until Bush, in the aftermath of 9/11, unfurled what the late historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. called “the most dramatic, sustained and radical challenge to the rule of law in American history.”
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