Welcome to Blawg Review #31, the weekly guide to the best posts in the legal blog world. This week, Blawg Review will fall in love, geek out, go online, get some useful advice and maybe even engage in some light treason.
Previously on Blawg Review…
…Howell-o-ween!
…Blawg Review went Underground
…Blawg Review fought the man!
…Blawg Review sold out!
…and now, stay tuned for this week’s exciting all-new episode of Blawg Review!
Act I: The Alito Nomination
The big story around the blawgs this week was obviously the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito to replace Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court. For an example of how useful legal blogs can be, look no further than these posts.
First Amendment, Copyright and Internet Law
Laura Quilter looks at Alito’s record on copyright, the First Amendment and Cyberlaw, finding that “while Alito appears to be careful and thoughtful about copyright, the picture that emerges from looking broadly at his consumer rights and interests decisions is not a good one. Alito appears to be quite concerned with enforcing the letter of contracts and working through the nuances of textual interpretation.”
Ronald K.L. Collins and David L. Hudson Jr., from the First Amendment Center, look at Alito’s record on the First Amendment (surprise, surprise) and find Judge Alito fairly strong on free expression.They find Alito “(1) quite protective of several categories of expression, including religious and commercial expression; (2) far less protective of First Amendment claims raised by prisoners; (3) guardedly protective of First Amendment rights in defamation cases, and (4) generally concerned about prior restraints on expression.”
At New World Man, Matt Barr looks at Alito’s First Amendment jurisprudence in two posts: one on free exercise/establishment of religion and the other on free speech “These opinions were written by someone not appearing to be disposed to defer to government when it encroaches on the free speech rights of its constituents.”
William Patry looked at Alito’s decisions in Southco, Inc. v. Kanebridge Corp.Judge Alito and Copyright, calling them “thoughtful looks at basic questions of originality.”
Business Law
At Concurring Opinions, Dave Hoffman wonders if Alito would be a
Business Friendly Justice?and delves further into
Judge Alito’s record on Securities Law.
Larry E. Ribstein of Ideoblog asks Is Alito Pro-Business? Alito has displayed a marked tendency to enforce contracts as written, specifically including choice of law/forum and arbitration provisions that are intended to mitigate litigation costs. He’s also obviously aware of the problems that can be caused by lax proof standards and open-ended liability.
ACS Blog offers a quick look into Alito on Business
Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure
Douglas A. Berman from Sentencing Law and Policy discusses Alito and the death penalty
The White Collar Crime blog looks at (shockingly) Judge Alito and White Collar Crime.
TalkLeft thinks that Alito: The Career Prosecutor would be “a disaster appointment for those who care about the constitutional rights of the accused.”
Crime and Federalism looks at Alito and Police.
Daniel Solove asks Is Alito Strongly Pro-Privacy?.
International Law
Opinio Juris examines Alito’s record in lnternational law cases in a series of posts: Judge Alito and Internationalism, Judge Alito and Forced Abortions Alito and Deference to Foreign Courts, Judge Alito and the Case of the “Stateless” Marijuana
Other Important Issues and Miscellany
At BlackLawProf, Sherrilyn Ifill looks at Alito on Civil Rights and continues with More on Alito on Civil Rights, “mounting set of troubling decisions in civil rights cases”
Yale Law Journal’s Pocket Part posted Samuel A. Alito’s Student Note, “The Released Time Cases Revisited: A Study of Group Decisionmaking by the Supreme Court.”
Jack Balkin ruminates on What the Alito Nomination Means for Constitutional Law: “If successful, Alito’s nomination will make Anthony Kennedy the median or swing Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.”
ProfessorBainbridge.com® looks at the politics of nominating a conservative and the likelihood of a filibuster through the lens of game theory: Game theory, the Gang of 14, and the Alito nomination
Dave Hoffman argues that Congress Shouldn’t Subpoena Judge Alito’s Clerks..
Article III Groupie (A3G) posted some thoughts from Alito’s Clerks. A3G is the source for information about Alito, with posts about Judge Alito’s Sense of Humor, Rosemary Alito (the Official Sister of Judge Alito and New Jersey’s leading labor law litigatrix), and Alito’s Kids
When he was U.S. Attorney, Sam Alito hired Eric Muller into the Appeals Division of the US Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey. Muller didn’t work with Alito for too long (before Alito was appointed to the Third Circuit), but did have enough time to form an impression: Sam Alito, As I Knew Him.
The Alito hearings are set to begin on Jan. 9
Act II: The Judiciary and Procedure
Meanwhile, in other courts…
SCOTUSblog’s Lyle Denniston reports about Chief Justice Roberts’ service on the D.C. Circuit: Roberts: a judge on two courts. Michael Froomkin and Steve Vladeck discuss Circuit Justice Roberts’s Eleven-and-a-Half-Day-Gap: “Did Chief Justice Roberts accidentally create grounds for reopening (and even rearguing) Banner v. United States?”
Chris Cohen reports the interesting case of a Mormon Utah Judge Married to 3 Sisters: “A 14 month investigation of Judge Walter K. Steed of Hilldale, Utah has determined that Steed violated the Utah law against bigamy by marrying three sisters.”
Act III: Internet and IP
Since these subjects are the usual focus of this blog, here are a few links that won’t cannibalize the rest of my source material for the week.
Raymond Nimmer looks at Google Print: Google lawsuit begins; fair use.
William Patry Two Fair Use Cases: “The first involved Jeff Koons appropriating yet again another photographer’s work. The second involved use of very small excerpts from a classical musical performance by a nonprofit satellite program about the arts. The results in the cases are the opposite of what one would expect from this introduction.”
Eric Goldman discusses a Search Engine Indexing Case–Newborn v. Yahoo: “We got a new case on search engine liability for indexing content. The importance of the topic makes the case blog-worthy, even though this particular case gives very little insight into the legal propriety of search engine indexing.”
Laura Quilter is ruminating on … rumination? information? tinkering? imagination?: “For some time (years, literally) I’ve been pondering the perfect phrase to capture ‘information rights’ — the natural right people have to create, invent, tinker, think, imagine, ponder, access information, etc. The First Amendment conceptual toolkit doesn’t really measure up: we have First Amendment concepts for speaking and the corollary, listening. But these concepts don’t fully capture the rights which are restricted by intellectual property laws, government Secrets Acts, and the like.”
The Patent Prospector: Coffee Beer: “Nestec, a subsidiary of Swiss-based Nestlé, has filed patents (WIPO application) in every major market worldwide for ‘coffee beer.'”
Here are two reports from last week’s P2P Litigation Summit in Chicago: Derek Slater podcasted his reactions: First Thoughts and Take Two. Ray Beckerman posted a text report on the p2p litigation summit.
Cardozo Law Prof and first-rate blogger Susan Crawford was nominated to the ICANN board and should be a positive impact on internet governance.
At Legislating IP, I discussed new proposed bills to authorize the FCC to implement the Broadcast Flag and plug the Analog Hole.
Act IV: Useful Advice and Practice Tips
The vast majority of posts suggested by the smart Blawg Review contributors could be grouped very generally under this heading.
Interviews and First Impressions
Douglas Sorocco at rethink(ip) notes how the actions and attitude of individual lawyers are the as important of a part of a firm’s branding as the firm’s work product: You Are the Brand
LawDawg had what may have been the worst. interview. evar. And Now, a Lesson In: Don’t Ask the Question If You Don’t Want the Answer.: “This has to be the very first interview where I got CAT CALLED both BEFORE and AFTER the interview.”
Litigation and Trials
At The Illinois Trial Practice Weblog Evan Schaeffer offers tips on Presenting an Expert Economist at Trial
The Wired GC has an interesting series of posts about Bet-the-Company Litigation. In this first post, he suggests two keys to successful litigation. In the second post, he offers some tips on avoiding BTC litigation in the first place. In the two final posts in the series, he offers two case studies: Bet-the-Company Litigation: China Style and Bet-the-Company Litigation: Part 3, a look at the demise of the Arthur Andersen firm.
The Wired GC also launches the first in-house podcast: The Wired GC Unplugged #1.
The Business of the Practice of Law
Tom Collins: The Practice of Law; It is a Business: “When you talk to General Counsels they make it clear that law firms have to begin to operate like a business. Those that become more efficient are going to get business and those that continue to operate “their way”, the old way, are going to be on the losing end of the economy.”
Rethink(IP)’s Stephen M. Nipper disuccses Insourcing Quid Pro Quo.
Andrew Magwood wonders, To Contingency or Not To Contingency… (That is the question).
“The Greatest American Lawyer” is about to send out a detailed client survey and would like to hear from other firms that have conducted similar surveys.
Organizing Information
Raymond Ward offers some useful suggestions on how to Own your downloaded legal authorities.
Tara Calishain loves tagging
Jim Calloway reports that Oklahoma Courts Now Offer RSS Newsfeeds. More RSS is always good. Hi, my name is Andrew and I am an RSS addict.
The Dark Goddess of Replevin posts on Buying Your Own Data Back from Lexis.
The Ivory Tower
Prawfsblawg’s Dave Hoffman has some advice for candidates looking to get into the legal academy who are attending the AALS Hiring Conference this week.
Joseph Liu Fantasy Law School League
Brian Leiter’s Law School Rankings moves to its own site, at leiterrankings.com.
Miscellany
Ask Metafilter holds a course in Law Firm 101: Law Firm Realpolitick.
George’s Employment Blawg wonders, Do Workplace Gun Bans Help or Hinder Workplace Violence Prevention?
The Employment Law Bulletin Guns in the Workplace – Isn’t this a No-Brainer? Employers have enough to worry about in maintaining a safe working environment these days without being forced to allow employees to come to work armed and dangerous.
Ernie (The Attorney) Svenson has some advice for working in a recovering hurricane-addled city:
Please be patient while we rebuild your city
bk! suggests taking a Self-Proclaimed Holiday to brainstorm, work from home, or to simply make the other days less hectic.
Act V: Issue to Watch: National Security Letters, Torture and Executive Power
Law profs Wendy Seltzer, Daniel Solove and Orin Kerr all posted about the rising use of National Security Letters (NSLs) last week. NSLs are secret subpoenas the government can use to collect information on communications and transaction information. with no requirement of probable cause. These can be used without judicial authorization. The FBI simply issues the letter and gets the information. Oh, and there’s a gag order that prevents the institution receiving the letter from disclosing this fact.
Opinio Juris discuses Executive Deference and the CIA’s “Black Sites”: “”it is useful to keep in mind that such deference, even in issues relating to foreign affairs and national security, is not always a good thing.”
Finally, Fafblog (The World’s Only Source for Fafblog) has its own unique take on the use of torture: We Are All Torturers Now: “It’s time to combine the good old-fashioned tradition of American volunteerism with the brand new traditions of forced sleep deprivation and genital electrocution.”
Act. VI: The Next Blogger Book Deal?
One of my favorite blogs about lawyerly life, Opinionistas, gets a writeup in the Sunday Times (City Section): Blogging the Firm. One example post begins: Lottery “My department has chosen an associate sacrifice. I’ve seen it happen before, apparently the phenomenon isn’t uncommon. The ritual begins with the senior and midlevel associates furtively selecting a member of the newest batch of fledgling first years, still rosy-cheeked and ravenous for their initial paychecks. It could be anyone, from great schools, sporting a glowing transcript and resume, a fresh arrival who has absolutely no clue what it feels like to be openly despised by her peers.”
O seems to be following the Blachman method of transitioning from law to literature: 1. Write a clever anonymous blog. 2. Get publicity in the NY Times. 3. Book deal! Hey, I’d buy her book.
Credits
That’s all for this week’s edition of Blawg Review. To learn about upcoming hosts and how to submit posts, visit the Blawg Review web site.
Next week on Blawg Review…
…Blawg Review visits Jag Central, the world’s first weblog devoted to military justice and military law issues.
…Howard Bashman blogs events before they occur (cut to: Bashman leaving 3rd Circuit courthouse in a De Lorean)
…A3G has the dirt on the next (if necessary) potential Supreme Court nominee— a nominee who will skew younger. With juries and so forth.
