Sen. Dick Durbin's Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing on #SCOTUS and ethics. Since Clarence Thomas won't show up up there for all his alleged ethics violations, Take Back the Court and Stand Up America just launched a special website detailing his 2 decade long history of reported corruption
Judge Seeger: "I called you in today because I wanted to speak with you directly and candidly face to face about some of my concerns that I had about some of your filings."
"And while experts in trauma and sexual assault, such as the psychologist James Hopper, have repeatedly shown that not screaming or crying out — freezing, essentially — is a common brain response to danger, the screaming myth endures."
"During the cross-examination last week,[E. Jean Carroll]: “I don’t need an excuse for not screaming.”
JFC - Texas has prohibited teachers from having assignments that require students to write their Congress members or visit local elected officials because - you know petitioning the government as provided in the First Amendment - is woke civics. (Article from The Guardian)
"The documents show how Scalia Law has offered the justices a safe space in a polarized Washington — an academic cocoon filled with friends and former clerks, where their legal views are celebrated, they are given top pay and treated to teaching trips abroad, and their personal needs are anticipated, from lunch orders to, in Justice Gorsuch’s case, house hunting."
Dismaying but not surprising--George Mason Law (renamed Antonin Scalia Law) built connections to Justices that gave litigants. School provided Justices with luxury vacations "with a little teaching thrown in," urged them to take vacations at the ranches of litigants & allowed professors to file amicus briefs to SCOTUS as Justices were co-teaching with them. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/30/us/supreme-court-scalia-law-school.html#LawFedi#GeorgeMason#SCOTUS#LegalEthics
Off now to work on an upcoming keynote address to #Ontario Bar Association, tentatively titled: Judicial Tyranny: The U.S. Supreme Court.
I will be delivering remarks in Toronto, this coming Thursday, for the OBA Cross Border conference. #LawFedi#USLaw#CanadaLaw
It's telling that this was nowhere near front page news.
"Senate Republicans on Thursday blocked a measure that would have allowed the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to be added to the Constitution.
Senators voted 51 to 47 to invoke cloture on a motion to proceed, falling short of the 60 votes needed.
Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Susan Collins (Maine) were the lone Republicans to vote with every Democrat. “
@andrew I think this issue is not simple. The ERA wasn't ratified within the time stated in the text of the amendment itself as it was proposed to the states. It's not clear to me why Congress should have the power to alter the text of the proposed amendment now, so many decades later. The article in the Hill also suggests that a motive for the push on ERA now is to push back on Dobbs. If we want to constitutionalize a right to abortion, wouldn't a new amendment reasonably be needed? #lawfedi
In the same vein, if you're on a general-purpose #Mastodon#instance and you are a legal professional with any interest in joining a topic-driven alternative, I humbly suggest https://esq.social
I'm the admin there too. I have help with mod stuff, @jacobschumer is probably busy with Jedi Survivor at the moment but he’ll emerge at some point and be there to shoot down trolls and such as well.
What is even more infuriating about Justice Alito's complaints about criticism of the Court is that he and other conservative Justices questioned whether our society had become "too sensitive" when considering whether the First Amendment is a defense to cyber-stalking.
jfc this just came down in a court order "The Court adopts and incorporates by reference Defendants’ analysis of applicable law as if fully set forth herein."
We've all seen judicial handwaving but this is next level. #lawfedi
This is a bug when you're already listed. Since you're on an instance its aware of (or listed on #lawfedi list) you are in the directory (public info only). So its only about claiming the profile:
But somewhat seriously, @law#Law#lawfedi folks--is there any realistic argument that Florida could void these agreements without breaching Contracts Clause, assuming the agreements are valid?
So far it looks like the Florida's argument probably is less that there's some exception to CC and more that the contracts weren't validly enacted, but I'm wondering if they have a way to wiggle out of the CC issue regardless.
"NY's Independent Budget Office puts the total #tax expenditure in the form of the property tax exemption at more than $875 million, annual cost is $43 million.
To put that in perspective, taxing #MSG … would fund all the city’s #EV charging station initiatives in about four years. If EVs aren’t your thing, one year’s property tax revenue would fully fund the city’s program to improve discovery to ensure criminal cases are processed quickly and effectively.”
Love when I can find a way to talk about NY sports but also collapsing these kinds of taxpayer-bilking schemes.
"Let’s revoke MSG’s property tax exemption. But at the same time, we should get Newark to promise they won’t offer MSG with a better deal in the Garden State. New York and New Jersey have a history of interstate compacts and can lead the way for the rest of the country.”