Category: 3-LawSometimeCommentary

OA1060

This week Matt breaks down four very different legal actions: 

1. Donald Trump is suing the United States--yes, the same United States that he is running to be the President of--for $100 million based on the FBI’s alleged violation of the Florida common law tort of “intrusion upon seclusion” in executing a valid search warrant on Mar-A-Lago two years ago. Is Trump just spiking the legal football after his big win in front of federal judge Aileen Cannon in Jack Smith’s documents case, or is there actually something worth talking about here?

2. Is the Walt Disney Corporation actually arguing that signing up for a 30-day trial of its Disney+ streaming service protects them from the tragically fatal consequences of negligence at a restaurant in its Disney Springs shopping center? Could that really be a thing that licensed attorneys wrote down, printed, reviewed, signed, and filed with a court? We consider what might be one of the most bizarrely evil defenses ever raised in a wrongful death suit.

3. Soul singer Isaac Hayes’s family has joined the dozens of artists who have spoken out against their music being used at Trump rallies, issuing a cease-and-desist letter to the campaign alleging that it has used  Hayes’s song “Hold On! I’m Coming” at least 134 times even after being asked to stop. To what extent do artists have “moral rights” under US intellectual property law, and what alternatives are available to them when they don’t? We  riffing on a particularly interesting failure to harmonize copyright and antitrust law.

4. French authorities have announced that they will investigate claims of cyberbullying against Olympic boxing champion Imane Khelif, a ciswoman from Algeria who was harassed online by J.K. Rowling, Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and many more of the world’s finest people with completely baseless claims that she was not a biological woman. We debate the merits of this uniquely European approach to criminalizing speech and marvel at the unmatched powers of TERF ideology to rot the human brain (and soul).

• Hayes Enterprises cease and desist letter (8/11/2024)

• BMI’s “Political Entity Licensing Terms” 

• “License to Rock,” Leah Scholnick, Cardozo Law Review (4/7/2022)

• Doctor dies after eating dinner at Raglan Road Irish Pub and Restaurant at Disney Springs, lawsuit alleges | FOX 10 Phoenix (2/26/24)(includes full text of plaintiff’s complaint)

On June 28, 2024, the Supreme Court issued its 6-2 decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and its 6-3 decision in Relentless Inc. v. Department of Commerce. These decisions overturning Chevron v. NRDC (1984) may notably change the nature of the administrative state and the role of judges in reviewing agency actions moving forward.

Join us as we will discuss and break down the decision and the potential future impacts of this sea change in administrative law.

Featuring:
Prof. Ronald M. Levin, William R. Orthwein Distinguished Professor of Law, Washington University in St. Louis School of Law
John J. Vecchione, Senior Litigation Counsel, New Civil Liberties Alliance
(Moderator) Prof. Kristin E. Hickman, Distinguished McKnight University Professor and Harlan Albert Rogers Professor in Law, University of Minnesota Law School

The answer for T3BE35 is coming your way, and we launch our next Bar Prep question with Heather! 

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Court reform is in the air.  Having presented the problems with the 18 year term proposals before the House and Senate, Professor Amar’s plan deserves its own scrutiny.  We therefore present the plan in detail, explaining the problems that it attempts to solve, the principles it attempts to uphold, and the criticisms it might attract. Since it is a proposal and not yet a statute, it is subject to modification and hopefully improvement, so we invite the audience to chime in with your own critiques and suggestions.  Let’s keep the conversation going.  CLE credit is available from podcast.njsba.com.

OA1059

This week we welcome Rhode Island state senator Meghan Kallman for a conversation about the power of state lawmaking and ordinary people in elected office.

Meghan is a professor of sociology at UMass Boston whose work in both the theory and practice of how people organize led her to a parallel career in politics. As the Democratic Presidential ticket coalesces around a woman and (for the first time since 1980!) a non-lawyer, we discuss the unique challenges which women still face in US politics at every level as well as what it is like for someone with no legal training or no political experience to run for and hold elected office. 

Also: How can state and local governments make progressive change even when the federal government can't or won't act? What is it like for someone with no legal training to write laws? And why is Rhode Island the last state in the Union to take an entire day off to celebrate the US victory over Japan? 

• Meghan Kallman’s campaign website

• The Conceivable Future, Meghan Kallman and Josephine Ferorelli (2024)

• “Sousaphone vs the KKK,” Christian Science Monitor (7/23/15)

In what has become a depressing tradition, it's time for our annual look at the hell that SCOTUS unleashed with Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. To look at the landscape for reproductive rights and justice, the team is joined by Julia Kaye, senior staff attorney at the ACLU and Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center Action Fund. 

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Even before he was president, Donald Trump was known for stiffing his lawyers. But considering how the stakes changed once he took the Oval Office, not getting paid seemed like a pleasant option. During and after his presidency, lawyers who represented Trump have pleaded guilty in election fraud cases, campaign finance cases and more. So why do they keep representing him? Is this risk of jailtime worth the reward of…well, what is the reward?

In this next installment of The Law According to Trump, another lawyer speaks with us about representing Donald Trump. Danya Perry is Michael Cohen’s attorney (yes, that Michael Cohen). She offers insight into why lawyers still want to represent Trump, and what the ethical implications are - personally and professionally. 

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We take a long last look at two more end-of-term cases, where the Court made news with what it did NOT decide: Moyle v. United States (the abortion/EMTALA case), and Moody v. Net Choice (state regulation of social media). But first, a bit of debate about some prominent figures in constitutional history.

OA1058

We begin with Neil Gorsuch’s recent appearance on Fox News. How normal is it for a sitting Supreme Court justice to go on Fox News, and did Gorsuch really just threaten the Biden administration over its relatively minor court reform proposals? 

In our main story, we break down two major antitrust suits from the past week: Elon Musk’s ridiculous claim that corporations which refuse to advertise on a social media platform which has failed to regulate neo-Nazi and animal abuse content are violating Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, and District Court judge Ahmet Mehta’s extremely reasonable findings that Google’s anticompetitive practices are in violation of Section 2. Also, Matt has some nice things to say about Richard Nixon.

• White House announcement on Biden court reform proposals (7/29/24)

• About GARM (WFANet.org)

• "GARM's Harm" report from the House Judiciary Committee (7/10/2024)

• Complaint in X v. GARM et al (8/6/2024)

• “Is Google Getting Worse? A Longitudinal Investigation of SEO Spam in Search Engines” J. Bevendorff and M. Wiegmann, et al., Leipzeig University (2024)

• Judge Amit Mehta’s full ruling in US v. Google (8/5/24)

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The 2021 Biden Commission on the Court has now led - with a big “assistance” from the Court itself - to President Biden’s own plan for Court reform. It is sketchy in many ways, but is entirely consistent with Professor Amar’s long-held views on 18 year active terms for Supreme Court justices, though the President’s proposal lacks the detail of that plan. This is unsurprising in a way since Prof. Amar testified before that Commission.  There are other related plans in proposed statutes that lie in committees of the House and Senate.  We consider the features of all, the flaws we have diagnosed, and we also have some commentary on some other aspects of the President’s proposals, including a possible constitutional amendment.  Lots to consider this week!  CLE credit is available for judges and lawyers from podcast.njsba.com.