Legal Research
May 20, 2013
* International Comparisons of Litigation Costs: Europe, the United States and Canada

International Comparisons of Litigation Costs: Europe, the United States and Canada by David L. McKnight and Paul J. Hinton, May 2013

  • "The purpose of this study is to compare liability costs – a phrase used here to describe the costs of claims, whether resolved through litigation or other claims resolution processes – as a fraction of GDP across Europe, the U.S. and Canada. General liability insurance sold to companies provides a basis for comparison because it covers similar types of liability costs in each country. We separate out any cost differences due to the mix of business, spending on government social programs, and private health care costs in each country. By controlling for non-litigation-related factors, we have developed internationally comparable estimates of liability costs that reveal how much more expensive the most costly countries’ legal environments are than the rest."
  • May 19, 2013
    * New on LLRX.com - Negotiating Justice: The New Constitutional Spectrum of Plea Bargaining

    Via LLRX - Negotiating Justice: The New Constitutional Spectrum of Plea Bargaining - Ken Strutin focuses on the impact of the Supreme Court's decisions in Missouri v. Frye and Lafler v. Cooper, and the upcoming appeal in Burt v. Titlow in regard to placing plea bargaining front and center on the national stage. As a result, they have divided practitioners and scholars into two camps: (1) those who consider the rulings to be a new statement in the law of plea bargaining and right to effective assistance of counsel; and (2) those who believe they are only a restatement of established principles. These cases have generated interest in the centrality and regulation of plea bargaining, the ethics and effectiveness of defense counsel as negotiator, the oversight of prosecutors regarding charging decisions, sentence recommendations and pre-trial discovery, and the scope of federal habeas corpus review and remedies. Ken's article is a comprehensive annotated guide to high court opinions, scholarship and commentary regarding the themes addressed by the Supreme Court in Lafler and Frye as well as their implications for the administration of criminal justice.

    * IEA - Tracking Clean Energy Progress 2013

    Tracking Clean Energy Progress 2013 - IEA Input to the Clean Energy Ministerial, May 2013

  • "This is the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) third comprehensive tracking of progress in clean energy technology. It is a reality check for policy makers: it reflects what is happening here and now. Stark messages emerge from our analysis: progress is not fast enough; glaring market failures are preventing adoption of clean energy solutions; considerable energy efficiency potential remains untapped; policies must better address the energy system as a whole; and energy-related research, development and demonstration all need to accelerate. In this year’s report we launch the Energy Sector Carbon Intensity Index (ESCII), which shows the carbon emitted for each unit of energy we use and provides a cumulative overview of progress in the energy sector. The picture is as clear as it is disturbing: the carbon intensity of the global energy supply has barely changed in 20 years, despite successful efforts in deploying renewable energy."
  • May 15, 2013
    * Updated Edition of Benchbook Now Available

    US Courts: "The 6th edition of the Benchbook for U.S. District Court Judges, a publication of the Federal Judicial Center, is now available online. The book, last updated in 2007, is a concise and practical guide to situations federal judges are likely to encounter on the bench. The Benchbook covers procedures that are required by statute, rule or case law, with detailed guidance from experienced trial judges. And although new judges may benefit the most from the Benchbook, even experienced judges may find useful reminders about how to deal with routine matters, suggestions for handling more complex issues, and helpful starting points in new situations. The 6th Edition includes a primer on a prosecutor's duty to disclose favorable information to defendants under Brady v. Maryland. There's a new section on civil pretrial case management focusing on the judge's role as an active case manager, and a completely revised section on sentencing, which contains an extensive colloquy for the sentencing hearing. There also are subsections on handling disruptive or dangerous defendants, and expanded jury instructions on the use of social media. Due to budgetary constraints, this edition of the Benchbook is published in electronic format only."

    May 13, 2013
    * DOJ obtained recordings of 20 AP telephone lines

    New York Times: "The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative's top executive called a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into how news organizations gather the news. The records obtained by the Justice Department listed outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and the main number for AP reporters in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP. It was not clear if the records also included incoming calls or the duration of calls. In all, the government seized the records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown but more than 100 journalists work in the offices where phone records were targeted, on a wide array of stories about government and other matters. In a letter of protest sent to Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday, AP President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt said the government sought and obtained information far beyond anything that could be justified by any specific investigation. He demanded the return of the phone records and destruction of all copies."

    May 12, 2013
    * TRAC: Southern District of Texas Leading in Record Year for Immigration Prosecutions

    Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse: "Very timely Justice Department data show that during the first six months of FY 2013, the rate of federal criminal prosecutions for immigration offenses is up 9.8 percent over the previous year, with 50,468 such prosecutions reported as of the end of March. If this pace continues, more individuals will have faced criminal immigration charges this year than at any other time in United States history. Regionally, the Southern District of Texas (Houston) now leads the nation with 17,022 immigration prosecutions so far this year. The Western District of Texas (San Antonio) is in second place with 13,379 prosecutions. Arizona, the district with the most immigration prosecutions in FY 2012, has slipped to third place with 11,476. Arizona is also recording the largest decline -- 22 percent -- of any district in the nation. For more details, including top ten district rankings and lead charges, go to the report."

    * Investigative report - chemicals from personal care products and cancer

    Did my wife's cosmetics give her breast cancer? Inside a regulatory disaster zone by John Wasik - Washington Monthly, May 6, 2013.

  • "The European Union bans nearly 1,400 chemicals from personal care products because they are carcinogenic, mutagenic, or toxic to reproduction. But in the United States, the Food and Drug Administration entrusts safety regulation of cosmetics to a private entity that is housed and funded by the industry's trade association. To date, this entity has found only eleven chemicals to be "unsafe for use in cosmetics." The FDA has no oversight of cosmetics products before they come on the market and, unlike the EU, leaves it to the cosmetics industry to determine which ingredients should be banned."
  • See also the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics and this news release - Toxic Chemicals in Cosmetics, Shampoos, Targeted by Congress
  • May 11, 2013
    * FOIA Request to DOJ Yields Expansively Redacted Response

    ABCNews: "The Department of Justice complied with the letter of the law and responded to a Freedom of Information Act request from the ACLU seeking insight into the Obama Administration’s policy on intercepting text messages from cell phones. But -- it didn’t release any actual information. Or even any words or letters. As one Reddit comment put it, “[the document is] so transparent it’s completely invisible.” Instead, the Justice Department released 15 pages that were entirely redacted, shaded over in heavy black from top to bottom. All that was visible is the subject of the memo: “Guidance for the Minimization of Text Messages over Dual-Function Cellular Telephones” It is all part of a larger legal battle between civil rights activists and the federal law enforcement about electronic communications. The ACLU has argued that current government surveillance practices on electronic communications violate citizens’ Fourth Amendment rights, which are meant to protect Americans from unlawful searches and seizures. With the FOIA request they were trying to determine if the FBI had properly complied with a 2010 appeals court decision that concerned when email providers must turn over messages to law enforcement and whether the guidelines apply to text messages."

    May 08, 2013
    * Report from European Coalition for Digital Rights

    International privacy organisations: Don't let corporations strip citizens of their right to privacy

  • "This report features new analysis by privacy experts of proposed amendments to the draft Data Protection Regulation. It reveals how many of these amendments threaten to critically undermine the privacy of EU consumers and citizens. Together, the amendments are an effort to strip EU citizens 'naked' by making it almost impossible for them to control who sees their personal information and even how it is used...We have grouped the amendments into five themes, outlining exactly why they would be so damaging for EU citizens' privacy rights. The proposals would:
    • weaken the definition of consent, making it more likely people could unwittingly agree to their data being used.
    • make it easy for companies to profile people without their consent, resulting in possible discrimination particularly of the most vulnerable.
    • allow businesses more readily to decide their interests outweigh people's privacy rights.
    • assume that so-called “pseudonymisation of data” is an effective means of avoiding privacy harms.
  • May 07, 2013
    * EPIC - Senate Confirms Chairman of Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board

    EPIC: "Today the Senate voted to confirm David Medine as the Chairman of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), an agency established to review executive branch actions and to protect privacy and civil liberties after 9/11. EPIC urged the creation of an independent privacy agency after 9/11. At the first meeting of the agency in 2012, EPIC set out several priorities for PCLOB, including (1) suspension of the fusion center program, (2) limitations on CCTV surveillance, (3) removal of airport body scanners, (4) establishing privacy regulation for drones, (5) updating data disclosure standards, and (6) ensuring Privacy Act adherence. For more information, see EPIC: The 9/11 Commission Report and EPIC: The Sui Generis Privacy Agency."

    May 06, 2013
    * TRAC - Removal Orders Running 18 Percent Behind Last Year's Pace

    Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse: "Immigration Judges are issuing removal orders at a slower pace than last year, according to the latest (April 2013) data obtained and analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). Only 49,462 such orders have been issued during the first seven months of fiscal year 2013. At this rate, by the end of this fiscal year removal orders will have fallen by 18 percent from last year and by 35 percent from two years ago. More than one out of every five removal orders were issued by Immigration Courts in Texas. Courts in the states of California and Georgia accounted for the second and third largest number of removal orders, respectively. For national highlights and the ten states with the greatest volume of such orders, see this link."

    May 05, 2013
    * ABA Journal - Are digitization and budget cuts compromising history?

    Hollee Schwartz Temple: "When people say everything's online," says Jerry Dupont of the Law Library Microform Consortium, "they're woefully uninformed." Dupont, founder of the LLMC, a nonprofit law library cooperative, estimates that of the 2 million unique volumes contained in America’s law libraries, only about 15 percent are available in digital form. That figure includes access via proprietary, commercial services like Westlaw and LexisNexis. Across the country, law libraries are trying to adapt to the digital revolution and preserve historic and precedential documents. But budget cuts have hit hard at academic law libraries, which historically have hosted some of the most robust legal collections. And the pressures are creating concerns that the public will lose access to essential legal documents."

    * NYT - Corporations Find a Friend in the Supreme Court

    Adam Liptak: "While the current court’s decisions, over all, are only slightly more conservative than those from the courts led by Chief Justices Warren E. Burger and William H. Rehnquist, according to political scientists who study the court, its business rulings are another matter. They have been, a new study finds, far friendlier to business than those of any court since at least World War II. In the eight years since Chief Justice Roberts joined the court, it has allowed corporations to spend freely in elections in the Citizens United case, has shielded them from class actions and human rights suits, and has made arbitration the favored way to resolve many disputes. Business groups say the Roberts court’s decisions have helped combat frivolous lawsuits, while plaintiffs’ lawyers say the rulings have destroyed legitimate claims for harm from faulty products, discriminatory practices and fraud. Whether the Roberts court is unusually friendly to business has been the subject of repeated discussion, much of it based on anecdotes and studies based on small slices of empirical evidence. The new study, by contrast, takes a careful and comprehensive look at some 2,000 decisions from 1946 to 2011."

  • See also, NYT - The Most Active ‘Friends of the Court’ - "Groups who favor business interests file the most friend-of-the-court briefs encouraging the Supreme Court to review a case, according to an analysis of briefs filed over a recent three-year period. The United States Chamber of Commerce filed the most briefs, with a success rate of 32 percent of petitions granted. The court grants about 1 percent of all petitions filed."

  • * Secret surveillance of American citizens - "no digital communication is secure"

    Are all telephone calls recorded and accessible to the US government? A former FBI counterterrorism agent claims on CNN that this is the case, by Glenn Greenwald

  • "The real capabilities and behavior of the US surveillance state are almost entirely unknown to the American public because, like most things of significance done by the US government, it operates behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy. But a seemingly spontaneous admission this week by a former FBI counterterrorism agent provides a rather startling acknowledgment of just how vast and invasive these surveillance activities are."
  • May 04, 2013
    * Pew - The World's Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society

    The World's Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society, April 30, 2013

  • "A new Pew Research Center survey of Muslims around the globe finds that most adherents of the world’s second-largest religion are deeply committed to their faith and want its teachings to shape not only their personal lives but also their societies and politics. In all but a handful of the 39 countries surveyed, a majority of Muslims say that Islam is the one true faith leading to eternal life in heaven and that belief in G-d is necessary to be a moral person. Many also think that their religious leaders should have at least some influence over political matters. And many express a desire for sharia – traditional Islamic law – to be recognized as the official law of their country."

  • * How lawyers are mining the information mother lode for pricing, practice tips and predictions

    How lawyers are mining the information mother lode for pricing, practice tips and predictions, by Joe Dysart. ABA Journal, May 1, 2013.

  • "Law firms are using big data to identify which cases will be easy slam dunks and those that are air balls. They’re relying on the technology to get a read on what other law firms are charging, so they can adjust their rates accordingly. And big data is also popping up in law firm human resources departments, where tech-savvy department heads are crunching data on potential new hires in the hopes of coming up with recruits who are truly a good fit."
  • * Law review article - Democratizing the Delivery of Legal Services

    Renee Newman Knake, Democratizing the Delivery of Legal Services, 73 Ohio St. L.J. 1 (2012).

    May 02, 2013
    * Paper - Internet Content Governance & Human Rights

    Lucchi, Nicola, Internet Content Governance & Human Rights (May 1, 2013). Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law Vol. 16, No. 3 (2013). Available at SSRN

  • "The paper examines how Internet content governance is posing regulatory issues directly related to the growing importance of an equitable access to digital information. In particular, it looks at conflicts arising within the systems of rights and obligations attached to communication (and especially content provision) over the Internet. It seeks to identify emerging tensions and to draw out the implications for the nature and definitions of rights (e.g. of communication and access, but also of IP ownership) and for regulations and actions taken to protect, promote or qualify those rights. These points are illustrated by a series of recent examples."
  • April 29, 2013
    * CRS - Terrorism, Miranda, and Related Matters

    Terrorism, Miranda, and Related Matters. Charles Doyle, Senior Specialist in American Public Law. April 24, 2013

  • "The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides in part that “No person ... shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” In Miranda v. Arizona, the Supreme Court declared that statements of an accused, given during a custodial interrogation, could not be introduced in evidence in criminal proceedings against him, unless he were first advised of his rights and waived them. In Dickerson v. United States, the Court held that the Miranda exclusionary rule was constitutionally grounded and could not be replaced by a statutory provision making all voluntary confessions admissible. In
    New York v. Quarles, the Court recognized a “limited” “public safety” exception to Miranda, but has not defined the exception further. The lower federal courts have construed the exception narrowly in cases involving unwarned statements concerning the location of a weapon possibly at hand at the time of an arrest."
  • * Article - The Dangers of Surveillance

    The Dangers of Surveillance, Neil M. Richards, Washington University in Saint Louis - School of Law. March 25, 2013, Harvard Law Review, 2013 [Via SSRN]

  • "From the Fourth Amendment to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, our culture is full of warnings about state scrutiny of our lives. These warnings are commonplace, but they are rarely very specific. Other than the vague threat of an Orwellian dystopia, as a society we don’t really know why surveillance is bad, and why we should be wary of it. To the extent the answer has something to do with “privacy,” we lack an understanding of what “privacy” means in this context, and why it matters. Developments in government and corporate practices have made this problem more urgent. Although we have laws that protect us against government surveillance, secret government programs cannot be challenged until they are discovered. And even when they are, courts frequently dismiss challenges to such programs for lack of standing, under the theory that mere surveillance creates no tangible harms, as the Supreme Court did recently in the case of Clapper v. Amnesty International. We need a better account of the dangers of surveillance."
  • * PLUS Registry - Find and contact artists, rights-holders, licensors, licensees and archives

    "The PLUS Registry is an online resource developed and operated cooperatively by a global Coalition of all communities engaged in creating, using, distributing and preserving images. Search the Registry to find rights and descriptive information (“metadata”) for any image, and to find current contact information for related creators, rights holders and institutions. Register for a free listing to allow anyone in the world to easily find and contact you. Register your images and image licenses to allow authorized users to find rights and descriptive metadata using a PLUS ID or image recognition.

    • Find. Search the Registry to find rights and descriptive information (“metadata”) for any image, and to find current contact information for related creators, rights holders and institutions.
    • Be Found. Register for a free listing to allow anyone in the world to easily find and contact you. Register your images and image licenses to allow authorized users to find rights and descriptive metadata using a PLUS ID or image recognition."

    * New Bipartisan Legislation Targets "Too Big to Fail"

    News release: "U.S. Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and David Vitter (R-LA) announced a new plan that would prevent any one financial institution from becoming so large and over leveraged that it could put our economy on the brink of collapse or trigger the need for a federal bailout...Despite receiving assistance from taxpayers in 2008, today, the nation’s four largest banks—JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo—are nearly $2 trillion larger today than they were before the crisis. Their growth has been aided by an implicit guarantee—funded by taxpayers and awarded by virtue of their size—as the market knows that these institutions have been deemed “too big to fail.” This allows the nation’s largest megabanks to borrow at a lower rate than regional banks, community banks, and credit unions. This funding advantage, which has been confirmed by three independent studies in the last year, is estimated to be as high as $83 billion per year.Despite receiving assistance from taxpayers in 2008, today, the nation’s four largest banks—JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo—are nearly $2 trillion larger today than they were before the crisis. Their growth has been aided by an implicit guarantee—funded by taxpayers and awarded by virtue of their size—as the market knows that these institutions have been deemed “too big to fail.” This allows the nation’s largest megabanks to borrow at a lower rate than regional banks, community banks, and credit unions. This funding advantage, which has been confirmed by three independent studies in the last year, is estimated to be as high as $83 billion per year. Together, Brown and Vitter have successfully pressed the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to conduct a study of the economic benefits that the “too-big-to-fail” megabanks receive as a result of actual or perceived taxpayer funded support."

  • Full Bill; Bill Summary; Section-by-Section Guidance; Statements of Brown-Vitter
  • April 28, 2013
    * New on LLRX - Copyrights, Fundamental Rights, and the Constitution

    Via LLRX.com - Copyrights, Fundamental Rights, and the Constitution - The recent Supreme Court decision, Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, addresses fair use and the “first sale” doctrine, upon whose protection libraries, used-book dealers, technology companies, consumer-goods retailers, and museums have long relied. Professor Annmarie Bridy's commentary focuses on the position that intellectual property rights in general and copyrights in particular are important, and when their scope is circumscribed to ensure the existence of a robust public domain, they benefit society. However important IP rights are, though – and reasonable people disagree pretty vigorously about that – they are not fundamental in the Constitutional sense.

    * Total NICS Background Checks: 1998-2013

    "The National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS, is all about saving lives and protecting people from harm—by not letting guns and explosives fall into the wrong hands. It also ensures the timely transfer of firearms to eligible gun buyers. Mandated by the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993 and launched by the FBI on November 30, 1998, NICS is used by Federal Firearms Licensees (FFLs) to instantly determine whether a prospective buyer is eligible to buy firearms or explosives. Before ringing up the sale, cashiers call in a check to the FBI or to other designated agencies to ensure that each customer does not have a criminal record or isn’t otherwise ineligible to make a purchase. More than 100 million such checks have been made in the last decade, leading to more than 700,000 denials.

  • Total NICS Background Checks - November 30, 1998 - March 31, 2013: "These statistics represent the number of firearm background checks initiated through the NICS. They do not represent the number of firearms sold. Based on varying state laws and purchase scenarios, a one-to-one correlation cannot be made between a firearm background check and a firearm sale."
  • April 27, 2013
    * A comparison of Google Scholar, Fastcase, Casemaker, LexisNexis, WestlawNext, and Bloomberg

    Are All Caselaw Citators Created Equal? A comparison of Google Scholar, Fastcase, Casemaker, LexisNexis, WestlawNext, and Bloomberg, by Carole A. Levitt and Mark Rosch.

  • "During our live continuing legal education seminars we discuss how to use the information found in social media profiles for evidence and how to get profiles admitted into evidence. If a profile owner assumes a pseudonym, authenticating the owner of the profile has proven to be a challenge. Some courts admit the profile into evidence and some do not. For that reason, we’ve been following Tienda v. State, an unpublished Texas Appellate Court case, where a murderer appealed his conviction, arguing that the trial court erred in admitting evidence from his Myspace profile because there was no proof he had created and maintained that profile. As we prepare for more in-person MCLE seminars around the country, we wanted to see how prevalent this line of thinking was. We also thought that our experiences updating this unpublished case would be a good opportunity to compare three of the most popular free and low-cost case law databases (Google Scholar, Fastcase, Casemaker) and their citator services, with the more expensive databases (LexisNexis, WestlawNext, and Bloomberg) and their citator services.Our white paper "Are all Citator Services Created Equal?" details the results of that comparison."
  • April 25, 2013
    * TRAC - Foreclosure Suits Rising Again

    TRAC: "The latest available data from the federal courts show that during March 2013 the government reported 592 new lawsuits filed under the category of Real Property - Foreclosures, according to the case-by-case information analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). This increase of 17.9 percent over the previous month reverses a sharp decline seen since the historic highs reached last summer. To read the full report, including a list of those districts in which lawsuits of this kind were filed with the greatest rates relative to population, click here."

  • Related postings on financial system
  • * Survey of Federal Whistleblower and Anti-Retaliation Laws

    Survey of Federal Whistleblower and Anti-Retaliation Laws, Jon O. Shimabukuro, Legislative Attorney; L. Paige Whitaker, Legislative Attorney; Emily E. Roberts, Law Librarian. April 22, 2013

  • "This report provides an overview of federal whistleblower and anti-retaliation laws. In general, these laws protect employees who report misconduct by their employers or who engage in various protected activities, such as participating in an investigation or filing a complaint. In recent years, Congress has expanded employee protections for a variety of private-sector workers. Eleven of the forty laws reviewed in this report were enacted after 1999. Among these laws are the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act."
  • April 24, 2013
    * TRAC - Domestic Terror Cases Outnumbering International Two-to-One in FY 2013

    "During February 2013, there were 16 new federal criminal prosecutions for terrorism and national internal security offenses, according to the latest available data from the Justice Department. So far during fiscal year 2013 (which began October 2012), a total of 83 such cases have been filed. These criminal prosecutions have been brought in a surprisingly large number of federal districts from all regions of the country. And at this point, domestic terrorism cases outnumber international terrorism by a factor of two-to-one. For more details, including district rankings, see the report here."

    * EPIC FOIA Request Reveals Details About Government Cybersecurity Program

    EPIC: "New documents obtained by EPIC in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit reveal that the Department of Defense advised private industry on how to best circumvent federal wiretap law. The documents concern a collaboration between the Defense Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and private companies to allow government monitoring of private Internet networks. Though the program initially only applied to defense contractors, an Executive Order issued by the Obama administration earlier this year expanded it to include other "critical infrastructure" industries. The documents obtained by EPIC also cited NSPD 54 as one source of authority for the program. NSPD 54 is a presidential directive issued under President Bush that EPIC is pursuing in separate FOIA litigation. For more information, see EPIC: EPIC v. DHS (Defense Contractor Monitoring), and EPIC: EPIC v. NSA - Cybersecurity Authority."

    * 2013 Data Breach Investigations Report

    "Verizon’s 2013 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) provides truly global insights into the nature of data breaches that can help organizations of all sizes to better understand the threat and take the necessary steps to protect themselves. The breadth and depth of data represented in this year’s DBIR is unprecedented. It combines the efforts of 19 global organizations: law enforcement agencies, national incident-reporting entities, research institutions, and a number of private security firms — all working to study and combat data breaches. Over the years the number of contributors has grown. Since we started publishing the DBIR in 2008, our partners have contributed data information on more than 2,500 confirmed data breaches — totaling more than a billion compromised records."

    April 23, 2013
    * CRS - U.S.-EU Cooperation Against Terrorism

    U.S.-EU Cooperation Against Terrorism, Kristin Archick, Specialist in European Affairs. April 22, 2013

  • "The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States and the subsequent revelation of Al Qaeda cells in Europe gave new momentum to European Union (EU) initiatives to combat terrorism and improve police, judicial, and intelligence cooperation among its member states. Other deadly incidents in Europe, such as the Madrid and London bombings in 2004 and 2005 respectively, injected further urgency into strengthening EU counterterrorism capabilities and reducing barriers among national law enforcement authorities so that information could be meaningfully shared and suspects apprehended expeditiously. Among other steps, the EU has established a common definition of terrorism and a common list of terrorist groups, an EU arrest warrant, enhanced tools to stem terrorist financing, and new measures to strengthen external EU border controls and improve aviation security."
  • * Investigative Journalists Report - Secret Files Expose Offshore’s Global Impact

    "Dozens of journalists sifted through millions of leaked records and thousands of names to produce ICIJ’s investigation into offshore secrecy. "A cache of 2.5 million files has cracked open the secrets of more than 120,000 offshore companies and trusts, exposing hidden dealings of politicians, con men and the mega-rich the world over. The secret records obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists lay bare the names behind covert companies and private trusts in the British Virgin Islands, the Cook Islands and other offshore hideaways. They include American doctors and dentists and middle-class Greek villagers as well as families and associates of long-time despots, Wall Street swindlers, Eastern European and Indonesian billionaires, Russian corporate executives, international arms dealers and a sham-director-fronted company that the European Union has labeled as a cog in Iran’s nuclear-development program. The leaked files provide facts and figures — cash transfers, incorporation dates, links between companies and individuals — that illustrate how offshore financial secrecy has spread aggressively around the globe, allowing the wealthy and the well-connected to dodge taxes and fueling corruption and economic woes in rich and poor nations alike. The records detail the offshore holdings of people and companies in more than 170 countries and territories."

    April 22, 2013
    * Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Criminal Complaint Filed in Federal Court

    (FindLaw's Courtside) - "A criminal complaint against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings, has been filed in federal court. The White House announced that in charging Tsarnaev with using a “weapon of mass destruction” would not be tried before a military tribunal as an “enemy combatant.”

  • United States of America v. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, filed April 21, 2013
  • April 18, 2013
    * CRS - Cybersecurity: Selected Legal Issues

    Cybersecurity: Selected Legal Issues, April 17, 2013.

  • "The federal government’s role in protecting U.S. citizens and critical infrastructure from cyber attacks has been the subject of recent congressional interest. Critical infrastructure commonly refers to those entities that are so vital that their incapacitation or destruction would have a debilitating impact on national security, economic security, or the public health and safety. This report discusses selected legal issues that frequently arise in the context of recent legislation to address vulnerabilities of critical infrastructure to cyber threats, efforts to protect government networks from cyber threats, and proposals to facilitate and encourage sharing of cyber threat information among private sector and government entities. This report also discusses the degree to which federal law may preempt state law. It has been argued that, in order to ensure the continuity of critical infrastructure and the larger economy, a regulatory framework for selected critical infrastructure should be created to require a minimum level of security from cyber threats. On the other hand, others have argued that such regulatory schemes would not improve cybersecurity while increasing the costs to businesses, expose businesses to additional liability if they fail to meet the imposed cybersecurity standards, and increase the risk that proprietary or confidential business information may be inappropriately
    disclosed."
  • April 14, 2013
    * ACLU - Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics

    "On May 12, 2009, the ACLU and the Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT) filed a lawsuit charging that patents on two human genes associated with breast and ovarian cancer, BRCA1 and BRCA2, are unconstitutional and invalid. On November 30, 2012, the Supreme Court agreed to hear argument on the patentability of human genes [via SCOTUSblog]. The Court will hear these arguments on April 15, 2013. On behalf of researchers, genetic counselors, women patients, cancer survivors, breast cancer and women's health groups, and scientific associations representing 150,000 geneticists, pathologists, and laboratory professionals, we have argued that human genes cannot be patented because they are classic products of nature. The suit charges that the gene patents violate the First Amendment and stifle diagnostic testing and research that could lead to cures and that they limit women's options regarding their medical care. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) has granted thousands of patents on human genes – in fact, about 20 percent of our genes are patented. A gene patent holder has the right to prevent anyone from studying, testing or even looking at a gene. As a result, scientific research and genetic testing has been delayed, limited or even shut down due to concerns about gene patents...The lawsuit was filed on behalf of researchers, genetic counselors, women patients, cancer survivors, breast cancer and women's health groups, and scientific associations representing 150,000 geneticists, pathologists, and laboratory professionals. The lawsuit charges that patents on human genes violate the First Amendment and patent law because genes are "products of nature" and therefore can't be patented."

  • See also Edifying Thoughts of a Patent Watcher: The Nature of DNA, Dan L. Burk. 60 UCLA L. Rev. Disc. 92 (2013). "In the pending case Myriad Genetics v. Association for Molecular Pathology , the U.S. Supreme Court will consider the patentability of human genes under the “product of nature” doctrine. Patentable subject matter is generally held to encompass materials and artifacts created by humans, and not that which exists independently in nature. However, it is not clear that this is a meaningful or helpful distinction. Given on one hand that the concept of a gene is a human construct, and on the other hand that all human creations are drawn from the material environment, the question of gene patenting is better addressed as a matter of innovation policy than of imponderable labeling."
  • April 11, 2013
    * Georgetown Law Library Equal Justice Film Festival Presents Gideon’s Army

    Gideon’s Army Produced and directed by Georgetown Law graduate Dawn Porter: "A 2013 Sundance award winning documentary, Gideon's Army follows the personal stories of three young public defenders in the Deep South challenging the assumptions that drive a criminal justice system strained to the breaking point. As of this spring, it has been 50 years since the landmark Supreme Court ruling Gideon v. Wainwright that established the right to counsel. This film is a window into the reality of the work of public defenders. It asks the question, can these courageous lawyers and their colleagues revolutionize the way America thinks about indigent defense and make “justice for all” a reality? The event is free and open to the public. Georgetown University Law Center - McDonough Hall, Hart Auditorium, Map & Directions. Stay for a discussion of the film and the ideas it presents, led by:* Jo-Ann Wallace, President and CEO, National Legal Aid & Defender Association * Abbe Smith - Director, Criminal Defense & Prisoner Advocacy Clinic; Co-Director, E. Barrett Prettyman Fellowship Program; Professor of Law. Screening co-sponsored by: National Equal Justice Library; The Friends of the Georgetown Law Library, Georgetown Law Innocence Project; Georgetown Criminal Law Association, The Georgetown chapter of the National Lawyers’ Guild, Outlaw, and Law Docs." [Hannah Miller]

    * EU - General Secretariat of the Council Central Library: Think Tank Review

    "Welcome to issue 1 of the Review of Think Tank publications on EU affairs, compiled by the Central Library of the General Secretariat of the Council. The review provides abstracts and links to papers published in the previous month by think tanks in Brussels and elsewhere. It will be issued monthly and will be available on paper at the Central Library and online on our Intranet and Internet. It can be disseminated freely - the usual disclaimers apply. Think tank publications in the first section deal with EU institutions and politics, with a focus on the crisis and its impact on European societies, and with perspectives from Brussels, Barcelona, Kiel, London, Davos, Prague and Rome. The UK relationship with the EU also attracted a lot of attention from the think tank community in January. Some see a connection between the UK-EU relationship and the role of Ireland, which recently took over the 6-month Presidency of the EU Council." [Via Helene LeBlanc and kudos to the Central Library!]

    April 10, 2013
    * The President's Budget for Fiscal Year 2014

    "The President’s Fiscal Year 2014 Budget demonstrates that we can make critical investments to strengthen the middle class, create jobs, and grow the economy while continuing to cut the deficit in a balanced way. The President believes we must invest in the true engine of America’s economic growth – a rising and thriving middle class. He is focused on addressing three fundamental questions: How do we attract more jobs to our shores? How do we equip our people with the skills needed to do the jobs of the 21st Century? How do we make sure hard work leads to a decent living? The Budget presents the President’s plan to address each of these questions. To make America once again a magnet for jobs, the Budget invests in high-tech manufacturing and innovation, clean energy, and infrastructure, while cutting red tape to help businesses grow. To give workers the skills they need to compete in the global economy, it invests in education from pre-school to job training. To ensure hard work is rewarded, it raises the minimum wage to $9 an hour so a hard day’s work pays more."

  • "Issued by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the Budget of the United States Government is a collection of documents that contains the budget message of the President, information about the President's budget proposals for a given fiscal year, and other budgetary publications that have been issued throughout the fiscal year. Other related and supporting budget publications are included, which may vary from year to year. GPO has signed and certified the PDF files to assure users that the online documents are official and authentic."
  • * New Website for State Online Legal Information

    Via Emily Feltren, AALL: "The Digital Access to Legal Information Committee (DALIC) has created a new website to host information about the status of online legal materials in every state with respect to authentication, official status, preservation, permanent public access, copyright, and universal citation. The new website brings together information from AALL’s National Inventory of Legal Materials and updates AALL’s Preliminary Analysis of AALL’s State Legal Inventories, 2007 State-by-State Report on Authentication of Online Legal Resources, and 2009-2010 State Summary Updates. State pages will be updated as information changes. DALIC members will monitor the site and periodically check in with AALL’s state working groups to ensure the accuracy of the information."

    April 09, 2013
    * The Recess Appointment Power After Noel Canning v. NLRB

    The Recess Appointment Power After Noel Canning v. NLRB: Constitutional Implications. Todd Garvey, Legislative Attorney, David H. Carpenter, Legislative Attorney - March 27, 2013

  • "Under the Appointments Clause, the President is empowered to nominate and appoint principal officers of the United States, but only with the advice and consent of the Senate. In addition to this general appointment authority, the Recess Appointments Clause permits the President to make temporary appointments, without Senate approval, during periods in which the Senate is not in session. On January 4, 2012, while the Senate was holding periodic “pro forma” sessions, President Obama invoked his recess appointment power and unilaterally appointed Richard
    Cordray as Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and Terrence F. Flynn, Sharon Block, and Richard F. Griffin Jr. as Members of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)."
  • April 08, 2013
    * New - Central Library of the General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union and of the European Council

    Carlo Marzocchi - Head of Sector, Library & Information Service: "The Council of the European Union is the European Union institution where the Member States' ministers responsible for specific areas (e.g. finance, health, education) meet to discuss issues of common concern within their countries. The European Council consists of the Heads of State, or Government, of the Member States, together with the President of the Council and the President of the Commission. The European Council provides the Union with the necessary impetus for its development and defines its general political directions and priorities. It does not exercise legislative functions. The administrative support to both institutions is ensured by the General Secretariat of the Council or GSC. The Central Library identifies and makes available to GSC staff a variety of information resources relevant to GSC core activities, in all 23 working languages of the European Union. Besides paper-based collections available in the reading room or through loans, the Central Library, together with the GSC's Legal Library and Language Library, selects and delivers a variety of online resources that can be accessed by all GSC staff, generally from within GSC premises. The Central Library holds over 100,000 monographs and EU publications. Newspapers and periodicals from EU Member States are available in the reading room. The Official Journal of the European Communities is available on paper, on microfiche (until 1997), on CD-ROM (from 1998 on) and via internet." [via Helene LeBlanc]

    April 07, 2013
    * IRS Releases the Dirty Dozen Tax Scams for 2013

    News release: "The Internal Revenue Service...issued its annual “Dirty Dozen” list of tax scams, reminding taxpayers to use caution during tax season to protect themselves against a wide range of schemes ranging from identity theft to return preparer fraud. The Dirty Dozen listing, compiled by the IRS each year, lists a variety of common scams taxpayers can encounter at any point during the year. But many of these schemes peak during filing season as people prepare their tax returns. "This tax season, the IRS has stepped up its efforts to protect taxpayers from a wide range of schemes, including moving aggressively to combat identity theft and refund fraud," said IRS Acting Commissioner Steven T. Miller. "The Dirty Dozen list shows that scams come in many forms during filing season. Don't let a scam artist steal from you or talk you into doing something you will regret later." Illegal scams can lead to significant penalties and interest and possible criminal prosecution. IRS Criminal Investigation works closely with the Department of Justice (DOJ) to shutdown scams and prosecute the criminals behind them."

    April 03, 2013
    * EPIC: EU Takes Action Against Google for Privacy Policy Meltdown

    EPIC: "Data protection agencies in six European countries have announced enforcement actions against Google. The agencies acted after Google ignored recommendations to comply with European data protection law. "It is now up to each national data protection authority to carry out further investigations according to the provisions of its national law transposing European legislation," the French data protection authority said. The enforcement action follows from Google's March 2012 decision to combine user data across 60 Internet services to create detailed profiles on Internet users. Last year, EPIC sued the Federal Trade Commission to force the FTC to enforce the terms of a settlement with Google that would have prohibited Google's changes in business practices. Google's revised privacy policies also prompted objections from state attorneys general, members of Congress, and IT managers in the government and private sectors. For more information, see EPIC: Google Buzz and EPIC: Enforcement of Google Consent Order."

    * Federal Reserve Board approves final rule establishing requirements for determining when a company is "predominantly engaged in financial activities"

    News release: "The Federal Reserve Board on Wednesday announced approval of a final rule that establishes the requirements for determining when a company is "predominantly engaged in financial activities." The requirements will be used by the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) when it considers the potential designation of a nonbank financial company for consolidated supervision by the Federal Reserve. Under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, a nonbank financial company can be designated by the FSOC for supervision by the Federal Reserve only if it is "predominantly engaged in financial activities." A company is considered to be predominantly engaged in financial activities if 85 percent or more of the company's revenues or assets are related to activities that are defined as financial in nature under the Bank Holding Company Act. Additionally, the FSOC may issue recommendations for primary financial regulatory agencies to apply new or heightened standards to a financial activity or practice conducted by companies that are predominantly engaged in financial activities."

  • Related postings on the financial system
  • * FTC Warns Data Brokers That Provide Tenant Rental Histories They May Be Subject to Fair Credit Reporting Act

    News release: "The Federal Trade Commission has warned the operators of six websites that share information about consumers’ rental histories with landlords that they may be subject to the requirements of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). The letters inform the recipients that if they meet certain criteria, namely collecting information on tenants and their rental history and providing that information to landlords so they can make judgments about renting to those tenants, they are considered credit reporting agencies and are subject to certain legal requirements."

    April 02, 2013
    * Petition - Require free online permanent public access to ALL federal government information and publications

    James R. Jacobs - Government Information Librarian - Stanford University: "...[we have created] a petition on the White House's "We the People" petition site. If you believe in free permanent public access to authentic government information, we hope you'll sign the petition. And if every one of the @2500 govdoc-l subscribers signs, posts to their Facebook accounts and sends to 10 friends who sign, we'll reach our goal of 100,000 signatures by April 11, 2013! If we get enough signatures, the White House will respond and the FDLP community will move forward by leaps and bounds." See the Petition and the Context.
    WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO:
    Require free online permanent public access to ALL federal government information and publications.
    1. Assure that GPO has the funds to continue to maintain and develop the Federal Digital System (FDsys).
    2. Raise ALL Congressional, Executive & Judicial branch information, publications & data to the level of federally funded scientific information & publish ALL government information as "Open Access."
    3. Mandate the free permanent public access to other Federal information currently maintained in fee-based databases - including the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER), the National Technical Reports Library (NTRL), & USA Trade Online.
    4. Establish an interagency, govt-wide strategy to manage the entire lifecycle of digital government information w/ FDLP Libraries - publication, access, usability, bulk download, long-term preservation, standards & metadata.

    * SEC Says Social Media OK for Company Announcements if Investors Are Alerted

    "The Securities and Exchange Commission today issued a report that makes clear that companies can use social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter to announce key information in compliance with Regulation Fair Disclosure (Regulation FD) so long as investors have been alerted about which social media will be used to disseminate such information. The SEC’s report of investigation confirms that Regulation FD applies to social media and other emerging means of communication used by public companies the same way it applies to company websites. The SEC issued guidance in 2008 clarifying that websites can serve as an effective means for disseminating information to investors if they’ve been made aware that’s where to look for it. Today’s report clarifies that company communications made through social media channels could constitute selective disclosures and, therefore, require careful Regulation FD analysis."

    * Federal Judge Rules Against Reseller of preowned digital music

    FindLaw - Adam Ramiriz: "A federal judge has declared a unique website enabling the online sale of pre-owned digital music files unlawful. "The first sale defense is limited to material items, like records, that the copyright owner put into the stream of commerce," ruled U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan. This is bad news for ReDigi, which launched in October, 2011 with a bold idea: If the "first sale" doctrine in copyright law permits the re-selling of acquired copyrighted material, let's create an online market for "used" digital music. Judge Sullivan's ruling has, for now, dampened the idea of reselling of digital goods. If it holds up, the ruling could mean digital sales venues would have to get the permission of right holders. Stay tuned for updates on this evolving area of the law."

    April 01, 2013
    * Toward an International Law of the Internet

    Toward an International Law of the Internet, Molly Land, New York Law School, November 19, 2012, Harvard International Law Journal, Vol. 54, 2013 (Forthcoming) via SSRN.

  • "This Article presents the first and only analysis of Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as it applies to new technologies and uses this analysis to develop the foundation for an “international law of the Internet.” Although Article 19 does not guarantee a right to the “Internet” per se, it explicitly protects the technologies of connection and access to information, and it limits states’ ability to burden content originating abroad. The principles derived from Article 19 provide an important normative reorientation on individual rights for both domestic and international Internet governance debates. Article 19’s guarantee of a right to the technologies of connection also fills a critical gap in human rights law. Protecting technology allows advocates to intervene in discussions about technological design that affect, but do not themselves violate, international human rights law. Failure to attend to these choices — to weigh in, ahead of time, on the human rights implications of software code, architecture design, and technological standards — can have significant consequences for human rights that may not be easily undone after the fact."

  • * Court Rules for EPIC, Denies FBI Request for Delay in StingRay Case

    "A federal judge in Washington, DC today issued an Opinion denying the FBI's motion to delay the release of records sought under the Freedom of Information Act. The decision follows from a lawsuit filed by EPIC against the FBI for records about the agency's use of cell-site simulator technology, commonly referred to as "StingRay." These devices track cell phones and collect a vast amount of data from telephone customers. The Court found that the FBI was not facing the "exceptional circumstances" necessary to justify its proposed two-year delay. The Court ordered the agency to produce all records, except those subject to classification review, by August 1, 2013. For more information, see EPIC v. FBI - StingRay."

    * Law review article - The Dangers of Surveillance

    The Dangers of Surveillance, Neil M. Richards. Washington University in Saint Louis - School of Law, March 25, 2013. Harvard Law Review, 2013. Via SSRN

  • "From the Fourth Amendment to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, our law and literature are full of warnings about state scrutiny of our lives. These warnings are commonplace, but they are rarely very specific. Other than the vague threat of an Orwellian dystopia, as a society we don’t really know why surveillance is bad, and why we should be wary of it. To the extent the answer has something to do with “privacy,” we lack an understanding of what “privacy” means in this context, and why it matters. Developments in government and corporate practices, however, have made this problem more urgent. Although we have laws that protect us against government surveillance, secret government programs cannot be challenged until they are discovered. And even when they are, courts frequently dismiss challenges to such programs for lack of standing, under the theory that mere surveillance creates no tangible harms, as the Supreme Court did recently in the case of Clapper v. Amnesty International. We need a better account of the dangers of surveillance. This article offers such an account. Drawing on law, history, literature, and the work of scholars in the emerging interdisciplinary field of “surveillance studies,” I explain what those harms are and why they matter. At the level of theory, I explain when surveillance is particularly dangerous, and when it is not. Surveillance is harmful because it can chill the exercise of our civil liberties, especially our intellectual privacy. It is also gives the watcher power over the watched, creating the the risk of a variety of other harms, such as discrimination, coercion, and the threat of selective enforcement, where critics of the government can be prosecuted or blackmailed for wrongdoing unrelated to the purpose of the surveillance."
  • March 31, 2013
    * Commentary - We Need a Better, Simpler Narrative of US Privacy Laws

    Peter Fleischer, Global Privacy Counsel for Google: "On the global stage, Europe is convincing many countries around the world to implement privacy laws that follow the European model. The facts speak for themselves: in the last year alone, a dozen countries in Latin America and Asia have adopted euro-style privacy laws. Not a single country, anywhere, has followed the US-model. Indeed, what is the US model? People in the privacy profession know that the US has a dense "patchwork" model of privacy laws: every individual US State has numerous privacy laws, the Federal government has numerous sectoral laws, and numerous other "non-privacy" laws, like consumer protection laws, are regularly invoked in privacy matters. Regulators in many corners of government, ranging from State attorneys general, to the Federal Trade Commission, and armies of class action lawyers inspect every privacy issue for possible actions..."

    March 28, 2013
    * Supreme Court Oral Argument - Audio and Transcript - United States v. Windsor

    "United States v. Windsor challenges a key section of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) - The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) (Pub.L. 104–199, 110 Stat. 2419, enacted September 21, 1996, 1 U.S.C. § 7 and 28 U.S.C. § 1738C)"

    March 26, 2013
    * TRAC - Drop in Employment Civil Rights Lawsuits

    "The latest available data from the federal courts show that during February 2013 the government reported 950 new lawsuits filed under the category of Employment Civil Rights, according to the case-by-case information analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). This number is down 7.9 percent from the previous month and is 13.2 percent lower than the same period one year ago. Such lawsuits are mainly filed for employment-related civil rights discrimination on the basis of race, gender, national origin, disability, age and religion. Read the full report, including a list of those districts in which lawsuits of this kind were filed with the greatest rates relative to population."

    * Proposed new EU General Data Protection Regulation

    Proposed new EU General Data Protection Regulation: Article-by-article analysis paper, V1.0
    12 February 2013. UK Information Commission Office (ICO).

  • "We originally produced this document for two main audiences –
    the ICO’s own staff and the Ministry of Justice, to help to inform the UK’s negotiations in Europe. However, it has become clear that the information contained in this paper could be of use more widely, as a resource for all those with an interest in the data protection reform process and the ICO’s views . Therefore we have decided to publish it."
  • March 25, 2013
    * Cloud Computing: Constitutional and Statutory Privacy Protections

    CRS - Cloud Computing: Constitutional and Statutory Privacy Protections, Richard M. Thompson II, Legislative Attorney. March 22, 2013

  • "...cloud computing is a web-based service that allows users to access anything from e-mail to social media on a third-party computer. For instance, Gmail and Yahoo are cloud-based email services that allow users to access and store emails that are saved on each respective service’s computer, rather than on the individual’s computer. As more communications are facilitated through these cloud-based programs, it is no surprise that government and law enforcement would seek to access this stored information to conduct criminal investigations, prevent cyber threats, and thwart terrorist attacks, among other purposes. This prompts the following questions: (1) What legal protections are in place for information shared and stored in the cloud? (2) What legal process must the government follow to obtain this information? and (3) How do these rules differ from those applied in the physical world?"
  • * An Empirical Study of Use of Legal Scholarship in Supreme Court Trademark Jurisprudence

    Simpson, Derek A. and Petherbridge, Lee, An Empirical Study of the Use of Legal Scholarship in Supreme Court Trademark Jurisprudence (March 23, 2013). Cardozo Law Review, Vol. 35. Available at SSRN

  • "Although the usefulness of law review and law journal articles to the decisional lawmaking process is a topic that has captured the imagination of jurists, reporters, and legal academics like few others, very little is actually known about how and why courts use such legal scholarship. This Article addresses that lack of knowledge. It reports an empirical study of the Supreme Court’s use of legal scholarship in its trademark jurisprudence that spans the years 1949-2011. Among its contributions are: (1) the identification of Supreme Court trademark cases using and not using legal scholarship, including the identification of the pieces of legal scholarship used in each case; (2) a quantitative description of the use of legal scholarship in Supreme Court trademark jurisprudence, including a comparison to other areas of the Court’s jurisprudence; and (3) an analysis and discussion of the Court’s qualitative use of legal scholarship in trademark opinions. In connection with this last contribution, the Article offers a preliminary taxonomy useful for descriptively categorizing the various sorts of uses of legal scholarship observed, and further, argues that much of the Court’s use of legal scholarship is of the low quality, perfunctory variety. It also discusses the significance of these and other observations to current debates about legal scholarship. This Article should thus be of interest to researchers curious about how and why courts use legal scholarship, to legal scholars who have aspirations of being cited in Supreme Court opinions, to practitioners who are curious about the role of legal scholarship in advocacy, and of course to those legal scholars interested in the High Court’s intellectual property, and particularly trademark, jurisprudence."
  • March 24, 2013
    * The Dispositif of Risk Management: Reconstructing Risk Management after the Financial Crisis

    Huber, Christian and Scheytt, Tobias, The Dispositif of Risk Management: Reconstructing Risk Management after the Financial Crisis (March 23, 2013). Management Accounting Research, Forthcoming. Available at SSRN

  • "Despite its dubious role during the global financial crisis of 2008, risk management has continued its expansion. This paper addresses the question why risk management, in the face of its evident failure to manage risks during the crisis, has retained its importance even today. We build on the existing critical literature on risk management (Power, 2007) and advance it by introducing a more rigorous consideration of power. We refer to the notion of the “permanent state of exception” as conceptualized by the Italian social theorist Giorgio Agamben (1998, 2005) in order to argue that risk is a powerful social category as it reflects a potential exception, challenging norms as well as normalizing forms of control. We conclude that a dispositif of risk management, an assemblage of institutions, regulations and models, lies at the heart of risk management. This dispositif provides elites engaged in risk management with an argument that allows them – in exceptional situations – to take extraordinary measures which cannot be rescinded after the initial state of exception has ended. The logic of the state of exception can be used as a discursive resource and adds to, but also gradually replaces, other forms of management control. Our study contributes to management control theory by focusing on post-disciplinary forms of control and provides a novel focus on how elites use management control systems for their own interests."
  • Related postings on the financial system
  • * Paper - Ham Sandwich Nation: Due Process When Everything is a Crime

    Ham Sandwich Nation: Due Process When Everything is a Crime, Glenn Harlan Reynolds, University of Tennessee College of Law. January 20, 2013, via SSRN

  • "Though extensive due process protections apply to the investigation of crimes, and to criminal trials, perhaps the most important part of the criminal process -- the decision whether to charge a defendant, and with what -- is almost entirely discretionary. Given the plethora of criminal laws and regulations in today's society, this due process gap allows prosecutors to charge almost anyone they take a deep interest in. This Essay discusses the problem in the context of recent prosecutorial controversies involving the cases of Aaron Swartz and David Gregory, and offers some suggested remedies, along with a call for further discussion."
  • March 21, 2013
    * Publishing Scientific Papers with Potential Security Risks: Issues for Congress

    CRS - Publishing Scientific Papers with Potential Security Risks: Issues for Congress, Frank Gottron. March 18, 2013

  • "The federal government generally supports the publication of federally funded research results because wide dissemination may drive innovation, job creation, technology development, and the advance of science. However, some research results could also be used for malicious purposes. Congress, the Administration, and other stakeholders are considering whether current policies concerning publishing such research results sufficiently balances the potential benefits with the potential harms. The current issues under debate cut across traditional policy areas, involving simultaneous consideration of security, science, health, export, and international policy. Because of the complexity of these issues, analysis according to one set of policy priorities may adversely affect other policy priorities. For example, maximizing security may lead to detriments in public health and scientific advancement, while maximizing scientific advancement may lead to security risks. Accounting for such trade-offs may allow policymakers to establish regulatory frameworks that more effectively maximize the benefits from such “dual-use,” i.e., potentially beneficial and also potentially harmful, research while mitigating its potential risks."
  • * Supporting Criminal Justice System Reform in Mexico: The U.S. Role

    CRS - Supporting Criminal Justice System Reform in Mexico: The U.S. Role, Clare Ribando Seelke, Specialist in Latin American Affairs. March 18, 2013

  • "Fostering security, stability, and democracy in neighboring Mexico is seen by analysts to be in the U.S. national security and economic interest. Reforming Mexico’s often corrupt and inefficient criminal justice system is widely regarded as crucial for combating criminality, strengthening the rule of law, and better protecting citizen security and human rights in the country. Congress has provided significant support to help Mexico reform its justice system in order to make current anticrime efforts more effective and to strengthen the system over the long term. U.S. and Mexican officials assert that fully implementing judicial reforms enacted through constitutional changes in June 2008 is a key goal. Under the reforms, Mexico has until 2016 to replace its trial procedures at the federal and state level, moving from a closed-door process based on written arguments presented to a judge to an adversarial public trial system with oral arguments and the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. These changes are expected to help make the system less prone to corruption and more transparent and impartial. In addition to oral trials, judicial systems are expected to adopt means of alternative dispute resolution, which should help them be more flexible and efficient, thereby ensuring that cases that go to trial involve serious crimes."
  • March 20, 2013
    * Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare

    "The Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare, written at the invitation of the Centre by an independent ‘International Group of Experts’, is the result of a three-year effort to examine how extant international law norms apply to this ‘new’ form of warfare. The Tallinn Manual pays particular attention to the jus ad bellum, the international law governing the resort to force by States as an instrument of their national policy, and the jus in bello, the international law regulating the conduct of armed conflict (also labelled the law of war, the law of armed conflict, or international humanitarian law). Related bodies of international law, such as the law of State responsibility and the law of the sea, are dealt within the context of these topics. The Tallinn Manual is not an official document, but instead an expression of opinions of a group of independent experts acting solely in their personal capacity. It does not represent the views of the Centre, our Sponsoring Nations, or NATO. It is also not meant to reflect NATO doctrine. Nor does it reflect the position of any organization or State represented by observers."

  • See also Michael N. Schmitt, International Law in Cyberspace: The Koh Speech and Tallinn Manual Juxtaposed, 54 Harv. Int'l L.J. Online 13 (2012).
  • March 17, 2013
    * EFF - National Security Letters Are Unconstitutional, Federal Judge Rules

    "A federal district court judge in San Francisco has ruled that National Security Letter (NSL) provisions in federal law violate the Constitution. The decision came in a lawsuit challenging a NSL on behalf of an unnamed telecommunications company represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). In the ruling publicly released [March 15, 2013], Judge Susan Illston ordered that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) stop issuing NSLs and cease enforcing the gag provision in this or any other case. The landmark ruling is stayed for 90 days to allow the government to appeal."

  • Links to the full order and more on this case - both via EFF.
  • * Paper - The Implausibility of Secrecy

    The Implausibility of Secrecy, by Mark Fenster. University of Florida - Fredric G. Levin College of Law. February 18, 2013

  • "Government secrecy frequently fails. Despite the executive branch’s obsessive hoarding of certain kinds of documents and its constitutional authority to do so, recent high-profile events — among them the WikiLeaks episode, the Obama administration’s celebrated leak prosecutions, and the widespread disclosure by high-level officials of flattering confidential information to sympathetic reporters — undercut the image of a state that can classify and control its information. The effort to control government information requires human, bureaucratic, technological, and textual mechanisms that regularly founder or collapse in an administrative state, sometimes immediately and sometimes after an interval. Leaks, mistakes, open sources — each of these constitutes a path out of the government’s informational clutches. As a result, permanent, long-lasting secrecy of any sort and to any degree is costly and difficult to accomplish. This article argues that information control is an implausible goal. It critiques some of the foundational assumptions of constitutional and statutory laws that seek to regulate information flows, in the process countering and complicating the extensive literature on secrecy, transparency, and leaks that rest on those assumptions. By focusing on the functional issues relating to government information and broadening its study beyond the much-examined phenomenon of leaks, the article catalogs and then illustrates in a series of case studies the formal and informal means by which information flows out of the state."
  • * POGO - Shining a Light on FOIA Practices

    "In celebration of Sunshine Week, a number of organizations released Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) reviews. These reviews, conducted by National Security Archives, the Center for Effective Government, Cause of Action, Associated Press, and OpenTheGovernment.org, indicate how agencies measure up when it comes to providing the public with information. Although the studies indicate that agencies on the whole increased their responses to FOIA requests in 2012, disparities remain between agencies on things like response time, compliance with the 2007 Open Government Act and 2009 Guidance from the White House, cost of responding, fee waivers, and backlog reductions. A majority of responses to FOIA requests in 2012 were only partial responses, and use of exemptions to withhold or redact information increased. The following snapshots contain some of the highlights of each review."

    March 15, 2013
    * Aaron Swartz to be honored with freedom of information award

    Follow up to previous postings on Aaron Swartz, news that Aaron is to be honored with freedom of information award by the American Library Association - "A champion of open access rights to documents on the Internet, the 26-year-old activist under prosecution committed suicide earlier this year."

  • See also Aaron Swartz’s Lawyers Accuse Prosecutors of Misconduct: "The complaint, filed by Aaron’s lawyers in late January, also notes that the attempts to coerce Aaron into accepting plea bargain were improper, and beyond the bounds of the guidelines for prosecutors. It also “makes additional charges that cannot be revealed because the government fought for a protective order that keeps case information secret,” according to Huffington Post. Aaron’s lawyers are in the process of trying to lift the protective order."
  • * Much Ado about Mosaics: How Original Principles Apply to Evolving Technology in United States v. Jones

    Much Ado about Mosaics: How Original Principles Apply to Evolving Technology in United States v. Jones, by Priscilla J. Smith. Yale University - Information Society Project. March 14, 2013. North Carolina Journal of Law and Technology, Vol. 14, 2013. Yale Law School, Public Law Working Paper

  • "This paper argues that supporters and detractors of the concurring opinions in United States v. Jones have overemphasized the role of the “mosaic” or “aggregation” theory in the concurrences. This has led to a misreading of those opinions, an overly narrow view of the Justices’ privacy concerns, and has obscured two limiting principles that are vital to their analysis. This paper provides a path forward by revealing the analysis of reasonable expectation of privacy concerns that is common to both concurrences. The endpoint is a rule both more limited and broader than a simple application of a “mosaic theory.” It is more limited in the sense that the rule applies only to surveillance using technology that operates outside of individual human control and is thus susceptible to overuse and abuse. It is broader in the sense that it finds surveillance intrusive not just where the technology will collect a mosaic of information that reveals more than each one tile of information itself, but where the technology will chill expression of constitutionally protected behavior, behavior that can take place “in public,” with other people, but is shared with a limited group."
  • March 14, 2013
    * JPMorgan Chase Whale Trades: A Case History of Derivatives Risks and Abuses

    JPMorgan Chase Whale Trades: A Case History of Derivatives Risks and Abuses. Majority and Minority Staff Report, Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, March 15, 2013.

  • "JPMorgan Chase & Company is the largest financial holding company in the United States, with $2.4 trillion in assets. It is also the largest derivatives dealer in the world and the largest single participant in world credit derivatives markets. Its principal bank subsidiary, JPMorgan Chase Bank, is the largest U.S. bank. JPMorgan Chase has consistently portrayed itself as an expert in risk management with a “fortress balance sheet” that ensures taxpayers have nothing to fear from its banking activities, including its extensive dealing in derivatives. But in early 2012, the bank’s Chief Investment Office (CIO), which is charged with managing $350 billion in excess deposits, placed a massive bet on a complex set of synthetic credit derivatives that, in 2012, lost at least $6.2 billion."
  • Related postings on the financial system
  • * CFPB - Defining Larger Participants of the Student Loan Servicing Market

    "The Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (Bureau or CFPB) proposes to amend the regulation defining larger participants of certain consumer financial product and service markets by adding a new section to define larger participants of a market for student loan servicing. The Bureau proposes this rule pursuant to its authority, under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, to supervise certain nonbank covered persons for compliance with Federal consumer financial law and for other purposes. The Bureau has the authority to supervise nonbank covered persons of all sizes in the residential mortgage, private education lending, and payday lending markets. In addition, the Bureau has the authority to supervise nonbank “larger participant[s]” of markets for other consumer financial products or services, as the Bureau defines by rule. The proposal (Proposed Rule) would identify a market for student loan servicing and define “larger participants” of this market that would be subject to the Bureau’s supervisory authority."

    March 13, 2013
    * TRAC- Immigration Court Backlog Reaches New High

    "The number of cases awaiting resolution before the Immigration Courts has risen along with the average time these pending cases have been waiting. As of the end of February 2013, the backlog has reached a new all-time high of 325,296. According to the very latest data obtained and analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), that total rose by 1,571 just during February. The court backlog is now 9.3 percent higher than it was at the end of FY 2011 when ICE Director John Morton announced a review of cases designed to reduce both the backlog and wait times. Instead, the backlog has increased, and the average time cases have been waiting to be heard has jumped to 553 days, compared with 489 days at the end of FY 2011 when the review began. To see the latest backlog data, now updated through February 2013, go to this Link."

    * The Leaky Leviathan: Why the Government Condemns and Condones Unlawful Disclosures of Information

    The Leaky Leviathan: Why the Government Condemns and Condones Unlawful Disclosures of Information, David Pozen, Columbia Law School. March 2013, Harvard Law Review, Forthcoming

  • "The United States government leaks like a sieve. Presidents denounce the constant flow of classified information to the media from unauthorized, anonymous sources. National security professionals decry the consequences. And yet the laws against leaking are almost never enforced. Throughout U.S. history, fewer than a dozen criminal cases have been brought against suspected leakers. There is a dramatic disconnect between the way our laws and our leaders condemn leaking in the abstract and the way they condone it in practice. This article challenges the standard account of this disconnect, which emphasizes the difficulties of apprehending and prosecuting offenders, and advances an alternative theory of leaking. The executive branch's "leakiness" is often taken to be a sign of institutional failure. The article argues it is better understood as an adaptive response to external liabilities (such as the mistrust generated by presidential secret-keeping and media manipulation) and internal pathologies (such as overclassification and bureaucratic fragmentation) of the modern administrative state. The leak laws are so rarely enforced not only because it is hard to punish violators, but also because key institutional actors share overlapping interests in maintaining a permissive culture of classified information disclosures. Permissiveness does not entail anarchy, however, as a nuanced system of informal social controls has come to supplement, and all but supplant, the formal disciplinary scheme. In detailing these claims, the article maps the rich sociology of governmental leak regulation and explores a range of implications for executive power, national security, democracy, and the rule of law."
  • March 12, 2013
    * EPIC - States Fine Google for Street View Privacy Violations

    "Attorneys general for 38 states and the District of Columbia today reached a "$7 Million Settlement" with Google over consumer protection and privacy claims. The company engaged in the unauthorized collection of data from wireless networks, including private WiFi networks of residential Internet users. A detailed Assurance of Voluntary Compliance, setting out the terms of the settlement, is now available. In 2010, EPIC urged the Federal Communication Commission to investigate the Google Street View program after it became clear that Google had intercepted the private communications of millions of users of wi-fi networks in the United States. EPIC subsequently pursued FOIA requests regarding the FCC and the Department of Justice investigations. Federal wiretap claims concerning Street View are still pending in federal court. For more information, see EPIC: Investigations of Google Street View and EPIC: Joffe v. Google."

  • See also EFF commentary - Google's Wi-Fi Snooping Settlement is Really, Really Awful
  • * CRS - U.S. Immigration Policy: Chart Book of Key Trends

    U.S. Immigration Policy: Chart Book of Key Trends, Ruth Ellen Wasem, Specialist in Immigration Policy, March 7, 2013

  • "This report is a chart book of selected immigration trends that touch on the main elements of comprehensive immigration reform (CIR). Most policymakers agree that the main issues in CIR include increased border security and immigration enforcement, improved employment eligibility verification, revision of legal immigration, and options to address the millions of unauthorized aliens residing in the country. The report offers snapshots of time series data, using the most complete and consistent time series currently available for each statistic. The key findings and elements germane to the data depicted are summarized with the figures. The summary offers the highlights of key immigration trends."
  • * Commentary - Why We Miss the First Sale Doctrine in Digital Libraries

    John Palfrey: "Publishers, ebook vendors, and libraries are engaged in a “tug of war” over the lending of electronic books, according to Library Journal’s recent ebook survey. This clash inhibits most libraries from fulfilling their important institutional missions to provide access to knowledge and preserve our cultural heritage. In the best case, this tug of war will be a temporary struggle. The best outcome is not a winner who holds all the rope and another lying on the ground with rope-burned hands. If there must be a winner of any kind, it ought to be the reading public."

    March 11, 2013
    * Essay - Broadening Denial Criteria for the Purchase and Possession of Firearms

    Wintemute, Garen J. Broadening Denial Criteria for the Purchase and Possession of Firearms. In: Webster W, Vernick J (eds). Reducing Gun Violence in America. The Johns Hopkins University Press; 2013. pp77-93.

  • "This essay presents the findings of research relating to criminal activity among legal purchasers of firearms—those who have passed their background checks—and the evidence that extending the denial criteria to additional high risk populations is feasible and effective. Its primary subject is persons convicted of violent misdemeanor crimes, a group sometimes referred to as not-so-law-abiding gun owners. It will briefly consider persons who abuse alcohol, which is discussed more fully in the essay by Katherine A. Vittes (in this volume)."

  • * EU - Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed - RASFF Portal – online searchable database

    "RASFF notifications shown in the RASFF portal are so-called "original notifications", representing a new case reported on a health risk detected in one or more consignments of a food or feed. On these cases, control authorities transmit follow-up notifications on measures taken and outcome of investigations. These follow-up notifications do not appear in the RASFF portal database."

  • RASFF legal basis
  • March 10, 2013
    * Innocence Project - New Report on Indigent Defense Examines Philadelphia Homicide Verdicts

    Via The Innocence Project Blog: "A new report funded by the National Institute of Justice titled, Measuring the Effect of Defense Counsel on Homicide Case Outcomes, examines the difference that a lawyer makes to the outcome of serious criminal cases in Philadelphia. Since April 1993, every fifth murder case in Philadelphia is sequentially assigned at the preliminary arraignment to the city’s Defender Association and the other four cases are assigned to appointed counsel. The study showed that compared to private appointed counsel, public defenders make an enormous difference in the outcome of cases by reducing the murder conviction rate by 19%, the probability that their clients receive a life sentence by 62% and overall expected time served in prison by 24%."

    * BJS - Pretrial Detention and Misconduct in Federal District Courts, 1995-2010

    Pretrial Detention and Misconduct in Federal District Courts, 1995-2010. Thomas H. Cohen, Ph.D. February 21, 2013. NCJ 239673

  • "Presents findings on general trends in pretrial detention and misconduct in the federal district courts between fiscal years 1995 and 2010. The report highlights trends in the number of defendants released and detained pretrial and examines the changing composition of defendants with federal pretrial dispositions, including the increase in defendants charged with immigration violations and the growth of defendants with serious criminal backgrounds. It examines the relationships between pretrial detention and the type of charge and the criminal history of the defendant. In addition, the report includes trends on the rates of pretrial misconduct, including technical violations, missed court appearances, and re-arrests for new offenses between 1995 and 2010."
  • * Law School Transparency - "reforming the traditional law school model"

    "Law School Transparency is a nonprofit legal education policy organization dedicated to improving consumer information and to reforming the traditional law school mode...The Transparency Index reflects Law School Transparency’s review of law school websites, through which we analyze the employment information that law schools use to market their programs. We measure not only whether law schools meet voluntary transparency standards, but also whether they meet the requirements from ABA Standard 509."

  • "The future of legal education is uncertain. High prices, poor job prospects, and dwindling salaries will force legal education to undergo significant change. A variety of stakeholders, many of whom are invested in the traditional law school model, will shape the substance of and timeline for reform. LST will contribute to the reform by holding other stakeholders accountable, by making relevant data and information easy to consume, and by pursuing policies that aim to make legal education better and more affordable. Reform starts with transparency and will end with a total reimagination of the modern law school."
  • * EPIC Prevails in Two FOIA Cases, Obtains Further Details on Body Scanners

    Follow up to related postings on TSA body scanners, via EPIC: "A federal judge has granted EPIC victories in two Freedom of Information Act cases involving the controversial airport body scanners. Judge Royce Lamberth in Washington, DC held that the Department of Homeland Security must turn over two safety reports detailing radiation output by the scanners and a set of power point slides containing details on automated target recognition software. The agency previously claimed it was not required to release the documents to EPIC. EPIC has pursued several related Freedom of Information Act cases as a challenge to the deployment of the devices. In 2011, the DC Circuit of Appeals ruled in EPIC v. DHS that the agency must receive public comments on the decision to deploy body scanners for primary screening. For more information see: EPIC: Whole Body Imaging Technology and EPIC v. DHS (Suspension of Body Scanner Program)"

    * Human Rights Considerations in International Investment Arbitration

    Via SSRN: Human Rights Considerations in International Investment Arbitration, Eric De Brabandere, Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies, March 8, 2013

  • "Despite the apparent opposition between the two concepts, human rights protection and international investment law in fact share many common features, the most important being the weak or vulnerable position of both individuals and foreign investors in relation to the state, which can take decisions affecting their rights and obligations without their participation. This reality has been one of the main justifications behind the grant of rights and protection to both individuals and foreign investors. The protection of foreign investment is a relatively old concept in international law and relations but has in the past decades evolved and developed rapidly. Globalisation of the world economy and the weakening of the barriers traditionally faced by investors in broadening their field of activity in foreign states has resulted in an expansion of foreign commercial activity in states. At the same time, states have privatised many areas of the public sector, such as such water, sewage, gas and the management of (hazardous) waste sites. This privatization has often been done by relying on foreign investors, and has thus led to the involvement of non-state entities in functions usually exercised by state organs or entities. Privatisation is of course not problematic in se, since it can improve public health and human rights generally, but it can also result in a decreased respect for human rights."
  • March 08, 2013
    * From Dirty to Green: Increasing Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy in Environmental Justice Communities

    From Dirty to Green: Increasing Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy in Environmental Justice Communities, Deborah Behles, Golden Gate University School of Law, 2013. Villanova Law Review, Vol. 58, No. 1, 2013. Available at SSRN

  • "The stifling summer heat that raged across the nation was difficult for everyone, but one group had a more difficult time than others — those who could not afford to cool their homes. Disparities like these will likely only get worse. Low-income communities of color that are already vulnerable and disproportionately impacted by pollution will shoulder a larger burden of climate change impacts. These neighborhoods, often called environmental justice communities, have fewer resources to adapt to the effects of climate change. More measures should be taken to increase the development of renewable energy and energy efficiency in environmental justice communities before the gap becomes worse."
  • March 07, 2013
    * CRS Report - Gun Control Proposals in the 113th Congress

    Gun Control Proposals in the 113th Congress: Universal Background Checks, Gun Trafficking, and Military Style Firearms, William J. Krouse. Specialist in Domestic Security and Crime Policy, March 1, 2013

  • "Congress has debated the efficacy and constitutionality of federal regulation of firearms and ammunition, with strong advocates arguing for and against greater gun control. The mass shooting in Newtown, CT, along with other mass shootings in Aurora, CO, and Tucson, AZ, has restarted the national gun control debate. Members of the 113th Congress could consider a range of legislative proposals, including several that President Barack Obama has announced his support for as part of his national gun violence reduction plan. The most salient of the President’s legislative proposals would (1) require background checks for intrastate firearms transfers between unlicensed persons at gun shows and nearly any other venue, otherwise known as the “universal background checks” proposal; (2) increase penalties for gun trafficking; and (3) reinstate and strengthen an expired federal ban on detachable ammunition magazines of over 10-round capacity and certain “military style” firearms commonly described as “semiautomatic assault weapons,” which are designed to accept such magazines. This report examines these proposals and provides an overview of federal firearms law."
  • March 06, 2013
    * Firearm Legislation and Firearm-Related Fatalities in the United States

    Firearm Legislation and Firearm-Related Fatalities in the United States. Eric W. Fleegler, MD, MPH; Lois K. Lee, MD, MPH; Michael C. Monuteaux, ScD; David Hemenway, PhD; Rebekah Mannix, MD, MPH

    • "Results: Over the 4-year study period, there were 121 084 firearm fatalities. The average state-based firearm fatality rates varied from a high of 17.9 (Louisiana) to a low of 2.9 (Hawaii) per 100 000 individuals per year. Annual firearm legislative strength scores ranged from 0 (Utah) to 24 (Massachusetts) of 28 possible points. States in the highest quartile of legislative strength (scores of ≥9) had a lower overall firearm fatality rate than those in the lowest quartile (scores of ≤2) (absolute rate difference, 6.64 deaths/100 000/y; age-adjusted incident rate ratio [IRR], 0.58; 95% CI, 0.37-0.92). Compared with the quartile of states with the fewest laws, the quartile with the most laws had a lower firearm suicide rate (absolute rate difference, 6.25 deaths/100 000/y; IRR, 0.63; 95% CI, 0.48-0.83) and a lower firearm homicide rate (absolute rate difference, 0.40 deaths/100 000/y; IRR, 0.60; 95% CI, 0.38-0.95).
    • Conclusions and Relevance: A higher number of firearm laws in a state are associated with a lower rate of firearm fatalities in the state, overall and for suicides and homicides individually. As our study could not determine cause-and-effect relationships, further studies are necessary to define the nature of this association."

    * White House - It's Time to Legalize Cell Phone Unlocking

    R. David Edelman: "Thank you for sharing your views on cell phone unlocking with us through your petition on our We the People platform. Last week the White House brought together experts from across government who work on telecommunications, technology, and copyright policy, and we're pleased to offer our response. The White House agrees with the 114,000+ of you who believe that consumers should be able to unlock their cell phones without risking criminal or other penalties. In fact, we believe the same principle should also apply to tablets, which are increasingly similar to smart phones. And if you have paid for your mobile device, and aren't bound by a service agreement or other obligation, you should be able to use it on another network. It's common sense, crucial for protecting consumer choice, and important for ensuring we continue to have the vibrant, competitive wireless market that delivers innovative products and solid service to meet consumers' needs."

    March 05, 2013
    * TRAC - Weapons Prosecutions Slip from FY 2012 Pace

    Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse: "During January 2013, there were 493 new federal criminal prosecutions in the weapons category, according to the latest available data from the Justice Department. This represents a drop of 4 percent from the previous month and a decrease of about 12 percent from what it was a year ago. For more details, including district rankings, see the report here. With only four months of data in FY 2013, it is too soon to tell whether this downturn is temporary or represents a change from the upward trend seen for FY 2012. For more information on trends in weapons prosecutions since 1986, see TRAC's previous report here."

    March 04, 2013
    * EPIC Prevails in Social Media Monitoring FOIA Suit

    "EPIC has obtained a court order and an opinion in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security, requiring the agency to turn over more documents about the monitoring of social media and Internet media organizations. EPIC had previously obtained several hundred pages of documents, revealing that the agency monitors the internet for reports that “reflect adversely” on the agency or the federal government. EPIC also obtained a list of very broad search terms used by the agency to monitor social media. As a result of EPIC’s findings, Congress held a hearing on "DHS Monitoring of Social Networking and Media: Enhancing Intelligence Gathering and Ensuring Privacy." For more information see: EPIC: EPIC v. Department of Homeland Security: Media Monitoring."

    February 28, 2013
    * EPIC Testifies Before Maryland Legislature on Location Privacy

    "EPIC Appellate Advocacy Counsel Alan Butler testified before the Maryland House Judiciary Committee on H.B. 887, a location privacy bill that will establish a search warrant requirement for the collection of private location information. Mr. Butler discussed the current state of location tracking and privacy under the state and federal constitutions. The Maryland bill will require a warrant for location tracking and an annual report on electronic surveillance reports, similar to the federal wiretap reports. EPIC recently submitted amicus briefs in State v. Earls and In re US regarding location privacy. For more information, see EPIC: Locational Privacy and EPIC: State v. Earls."

    February 27, 2013
    * Trafficking in Persons: U.S. Policy and Issues for Congress

    Trafficking in Persons: U.S. Policy and Issues for Congress, Alison Siskin, Specialist in Immigration Policy - Liana Sun Wyler, Analyst in International Crime and Narcotics - February 19, 2013

  • "Trafficking in persons (TIP) for the purposes of exploitation is believed to be one of the most prolific areas of contemporary international criminal activity and is of significant interest to the United States and the international community as a serious human rights concern. TIP is both an international and a domestic crime that involves violations of labor, public health, and human rights standards, and criminal law. In general, the trafficking business feeds on conditions of vulnerability, such as youth, gender, poverty, ignorance, social exclusion, political instability, and ongoing demand. Actors engaged in human trafficking range from amateur family-run organizations to sophisticated transnational organized crime syndicates. Trafficking victims are often subjected to mental and physical abuse in order to control them, including debt bondage, social isolation, removal of identification cards and travel documents, violence, and fear of reprisals against them or their families. According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), some 20.9 million individuals today are estimated to be victims of forced labor, including TIP. As many as 17,500 people are believed to be trafficked into the United States each year, and some have estimated that 100,000 U.S. citizen children are victims of trafficking within the United States."
  • * CRS - Insourcing Functions Performed by Federal Contractors: Legal Issues

    Insourcing Functions Performed by Federal Contractors: Legal Issues, Kate M. Manuel, Legislative Attorney - Jack Maskell, Legislative Attorney. February 22, 2013

  • "Recent Congresses and the Obama Administration have taken numerous actions to promote “insourcing,” or the use of government personnel to perform functions that contractors have performed on behalf of federal agencies. Among other things, the 109th through the 111th Congresses enacted statutes requiring the development of policies and guidelines to ensure that agencies “consider” using government employees to perform functions previously performed by contractors, as well as any new functions. The Obama Administration has similarly promoted insourcing, with officials calling for consideration of insourcing in various workforce management initiatives."
  • February 26, 2013
    * A look behind the scenes at the Google news retrieval algorithm

    Frederic Filloux, guardian.co.uk: "Its official blog merely mentions "6 billion visits per month" sent to news sites and Google News claims to connect "1 billion unique users a week to news content" [see The press, Google, its algorithm, their scale]...But how exactly does Google News work? What kind of media does its algorithm favour most? Last week, the search giant updated its patent filing with a new document detailing the 13 metrics it uses to retrieve and rank articles and sources for its news service. (Computerworld unearthed the filing, it's here)."

    February 25, 2013
    * FindLaw - 10th Circuit rules that permits allowing people to carry concealed weapons are not protected by Second Amendment

    Findlaw: "The Second Amendment and gun control remain controversial issues in the U.S. A federal district court judge tossed out Gray Peterson’s 2011 lawsuit filed against Denver and Colorado’s Department of Public Safety. Peterson had claimed that being denied a concealed-weapons permit because he was not a Colorado resident violated his Second Amendment right to bear firearms. The 10th Circuit on Friday ruled that carrying concealed firearms is not protected by the Second Amendment or the Privileges and Immunities Clause, nor is the right of people to keep and bear arms infringed upon by laws prohibiting the carrying of concealed weapons. The Court held: “Given that the concealed carrying of firearms has not been recognized as a right, and the fact that concealed carry was prohibited for resident and non-resident alike for much of our history, we cannot declare this activity sufficiently basic to the livelihood of the Nation.”

    February 24, 2013
    * New on LLRX - Another NY court on discovery of social media evidence

    Via LLRX.com - Another NY court on discovery of social media evidence - Attorney Nicole Black brings context to the impact of the proliferation of social media accounts among the majority of adults in the United States. The information from these accounts has become a prime source for lawyers to mine for evidence to support their clients' cases.

    * New on LLRX - LegalTech 2013: Old habits die hard, but die they do

    Via LLRX.com - LegalTech 2013: Old habits die hard, but die they do - Attorney Nicole Black's article on the LegalTech 2013 conference, sponsored every year by American Lawyer Media, updates all of us who could not attend on the latest legal technologies and innovations.

    February 23, 2013
    * Administration Strategy on Mitigating the Theft of U.S. Trade Secrets

    Administration Strategy on Mitigating the Theft of U.S. Trade Secrets, February 2013: "The Administration will utilize trade policy tools to increase international enforcement against trade secret theft to minimize unfair competition against U.S. companies. The U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) will make additional efforts to promote adequate and effective protection and enforcement of trade secrets. These Administration efforts will include:

    • Deeper cooperation with trading partners that share U.S. interests with the objective of promoting enhanced trade secret and other intellectual property protection in ways that are consistent with U.S. approaches and helpful in curbing trade in goods and services containing stolen trade secrets;
    • Targeting weaknesses in trade secret protection through enhanced use of the annual Special 301 process, including the Special 301 Report, action plans and related tools to gather and,
      where appropriate, act upon information about the adequacy and effectiveness of trade secret protection by U.S. trading partners;
    • Seeking, through USTR-led trade negotiations such as the Trans Pacific Partnership, new provisions on trade secret protections requiring parties to make available remedies similar to those provided for in U.S. law; and
    • Continuing to raise trade secret protections as a priority issue in all appropriate bilateral, regional, and multilateral trade discussions and appropriate trade and IP-related forums, including the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Council and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, informed by interagency and stakeholder input regarding partners and issues of concern."

    * GAO's 2013 High Risk List

    High Risk List: "Every two years at the start of a new Congress, GAO calls attention to agencies and program areas that are high risk due to their vulnerabilities to fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement, or are most in need of transformation. This site presents GAO's current High Risk List [comprising 30 areas], explains what has changed since the last update, and provides background information and related multimedia.

  • View the 2013 Report: "The federal government is the world’s largest and most complex entity, with about $3.5 trillion in outlays in fiscal year 2012 funding a broad array of programs and operations. GAO maintains a program to focus attention on government operations that it identifies as high risk due to their greater vulnerabilities to fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement or the need for transformation to address economy, efficiency, or effectiveness challenges. Since 1990, more than one-third of the areas previously designated as high risk have been removed from the list because sufficient progress was made to address the problems identified. This biennial update describes the status of high-risk areas listed in 2011 and identifies any new high-risk area needing attention by Congress and the executive branch. Solutions to high-risk problems offer the potential to save billions of dollars, improve service to the public, and strengthen the performance and accountability of the U.S. government."
  • * Accounting for Political Feasibility in Climate Instrument Choice

    Gilligan, Jonathan M. and Vandenbergh, Michael P., Accounting for Political Feasibility in Climate Instrument Choice (February 18, 2013). Vanderbilt Public Law Research Paper No. 13-7; Vanderbilt Law and Economics Research Paper No. 13-4. Available at SSRN

  • This Essay argues for consideration of political opportunity costs in the criteria used to evaluate climate policy instruments. Law and policy debates typically evaluate policy instruments by their expected performance after adoption, tacitly excluding consideration of the timing of adoption. Under this standard, a comprehensive carbon pricing instrument, either in the form of a cap and trade program or a carbon tax, has emerged as the preferred approach. Yet by excluding the political process from consideration, this standard obscures the effects of political feasibility on the timing of adoption. For many problems, the advantages of an optimal policy outweigh the advantages of a sub-optimal one that will require less time and effort to adopt. The climate problem is different: the irreversibility of climate change, the possibility of tipping points in the climate system, and lag times in infrastructure investments combine to impose large costs on delay. Excluding political opportunity costs from instrument evaluation leads to a preference for slow, comprehensive remedies. The casualties in this process are incremental instruments that could buy time, facilitate the adoption of additional instruments, and complement those instruments after they are adopted. This Essay proposes explicit consideration of political opportunity costs in evaluating climate policy instruments and applies this approach to several leading climate policies."
  • February 20, 2013
    * How to Guide - Communicating Professionally Using Outlook

    How White & Case tamed its information overload, By Oz Benamram. See also Communicating Professionally Using Outlook, by Oz Benamram, last updated: October 2012.

    February 19, 2013
    * EPIC - Europe Prepares Action Against Google

    EPIC: "The French Data Protection Commissioner, acting on behalf of the European Union, announced it will take action against Google after the company failed to reply to questions about its handling of user information. In October 2012, officials representing 24 countries in Europe sent a letter requiring Google to comply with European data protection laws, and give users greater control over their personal information. The action followed an investigation triggered by the collapse of the Google privacy policy in March 2012, which allowed the company to combine user data across 60 Internet services. Last year, EPIC sued the Federal Trade Commission to force the FTC to enforce the terms of a settlement with Google. Google’s policy consolidation also prompted objections from state attorneys general, members of Congress, and IT managers in the government and private sectors. For more information, see EPIC: Google Buzz and EPIC: Enforcement of Google Consent Order."

    * TRAC: Three-Year Rise in Patent Lawsuits

    "The latest available data from the federal courts show that during January 2013 the government reported 530 new patent civil filings, according to the case-by-case information analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). This number is up 46 percent over the same period one year ago, and is nearly two and a half times the level reported in January 2010 (up 147 percent). Such lawsuits are primarily brought to enforce provisions of the patent laws under Title 35 of the U.S. Code, along with other statutes related to intellectual property protection. Read the full report, including a list of those districts in which lawsuits of this kind were filed with the greatest rates relative to population, here."

    February 18, 2013
    * New on LLRX - Post-Conviction Representation, Pro Se Practice and Access to the Courts

    Via LLRX.com - Post-Conviction Representation, Pro Se Practice and Access to the Courts

  • "After the first criminal appeal, there is no constitutional right to counsel. Thus, the convicted and imprisoned pursuing discretionary appeals and habeas corpus relief must research, investigate and litigate as their own attorney. Law librarian, criminal defense attorney, and well-known writer and speaker Ken Strutin's guide documents a body of law that has developed defining the spectrum between full-blown post-conviction representation and the impact of the conditions of confinement on pro se litigants.
  • * Research - Public Reporting of Hospital Infection Rates

    Amini, Ava, Birnbaum, David W., Black, Bernard S. and Hyman, David A., Public Reporting of Hospital Infection Rates: Ranking the States on Report and Website Content, Credibility, and Usability (February 18, 2013). Proceedings of 2013 Conference on Information Technology and Communications in Health, Forthcoming; Northwestern Law & Econ Research Paper No. 12-21

  • "Health-care associated infections (“HAIs”) kill about 100,000 people annually; most are preventable, but many hospitals have not aggressively addressed the problem. In response, twenty-five states and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services require public reporting of hospital infection rates for at least some types of infections, and other states and private entities are implementing such reporting. The websites and related reports vary widely in ease of access, ease of use, usefulness of information, timeliness of updates, and credibility. We report on work in progress, in which we assess the quality and suitability of different state websites and reports for different target audiences (ordinary consumers; physicians, and infection control professionals) and the extent to which they meet best practices for online communication, including Stanford’s “Fogg” Guidelines for Web Credibility and user-friendliness metrics developed by other researchers. We find wide variation in quality, and substantial correlation between measures of website credibility and user-friendliness. We identify ways to improve usability, usefulness, and tailoring for information to different target audiences. Our analysis suggests that the “one website (and report format) fits all users” model may not work well in delivering complex, technical information to users with widely varying needs and sophistication."
  • * The Case of Aaron Swartz: Justice in the Cyber Age

    The Case of Aaron Swartz: Justice in the Cyber Age
    February 20, 2013 - 7:00pm to 8:30pm
    Fordham Law School, New York City

  • "On February 20th, EFF's Trevor Timm—along with Scott Horton, Christopher Soghoian, and Wesley Yang—will discuss the Aaron Swartz case at Fordham Law School at 7 pm. They will be looking at the various implications of the Swartz tragedy: How can the law catch up with technology and innovation? Was the prosecution ethical and proper - or overreaching? Does the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act warrant reconsideration? Where does the issue of freedom of information fit into this—and other—cases? Should there be limits to freedom of information and how should we as a society assess those limits? This event is free and open to the public, and will be held at Fordham Lowenstein Building, 12th Floor 113 West 60th Street in New York City. Please RSVP with Fordham Law School's Center on National Security. More information can be found here."
  • Related postings on Aaron Swartz
  • * UN - Report of the independent international commission of inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic

    UN General Assembly - Report of the independent international commission of inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, 5 February 2013

  • "The depth of the Syrian tragedy is poignantly reflected in the accounts of its victims. Their harrowing experiences of survival detail grave human rights violations, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The destructive dynamics of the civil war not only have an impact on the civilian population but are also tearing apart the country’s complex social fabric, jeopardizing future generations and undermining peace and security in the entire region. The situation of human rights in the Syrian Arab Republic has continued to deteriorate. Since 15 July 2012, there has been an escalation in the armed conflict between Government forces and anti-Government armed groups. The conflict has become increasingly sectarian, with the conduct of the parties becoming significantly more radicalized and militarized...Both Government-affiliated militia and anti-Government armed groups were found
    to have violated the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, to which the Syrian Arab Republic is a party. Government-affiliated militia used children under the age of 18 in direct hostilities. Children under the age of 15 actively participated in hostilities as part of anti-Government armed groups, conduct that constitutes the war crime of using, conscripting and enlisting children."

  • * Security Engineering -The Book, 2nd Ed. Free Online

    Security Engineering by Ross Anderson — The Book: "All chapters from the second edition now available free online."

    February 16, 2013
    * Secrecy News - Army's use of unmanned aerial systems within the United States

    Secrecy News, February 14, 2012: "Legal restrictions on the use of unmanned aircraft systems in domestic operations are numerous," the manual states. The question arises particularly in the context of Defense Support of Civil Authorities (DSCA), refering to military assistance to government agencies in disaster response and other domestic emergencies. "Use of DOD intelligence capabilities for DSCA missions--such as incident awareness and assessment, damage assessment, and search and rescue--requires prior Secretary of Defense approval, together with approval of both the mission and use of the exact DOD intelligence community capabilities. Certain missions require not only approval of the Secretary of Defense, but also coordination, certification, and possibly, prior approval by the Attorney General of the United States...[...from 2003 to 2010, small, unmanned aircraft systems flew approximately 250,000 hours]"

    February 14, 2013
    * Distance Learning in Legal Education: A Summary of Delivery Models, Regulatory Issues, and Recommended Practices

    "The Working Group for Distance Learning in Legal Education is pleased to have the opportunity to present this Blue Paper - Distance Learning in Legal Education: A Summary of Delivery Models, Regulatory Issues, and Recommended Practices - A Summary of Delivery Models,
    Regulatory Issues, and Recommended Practices. This Blue Paper is intended to provide law schools and interested parties a summation of distance learning opportunities, tools, and considerations. Unlike other sectors in higher education, law schools have little experience with distance learning or online education. Recent technological advances, as well as economic exigencies, have lead several law schools to contemplate launching one or more online programs. To date, a handful of schools have distance learning LLM programs and a few offer non-JD masters programs. As the American Bar Association considers loosening distance learning restrictions, and traditional law schools consider diversifying beyond their JD program, distance learning becomes one intriguing option. This Blue Paper attempts to guide those schools beginning to explore distance learning opportunities. We recognize three fundamental questions, and attempt to provide a discussion—if not answers—to each." [April M. Barton]

    February 13, 2013
    * New on LLRX - When judges, jurors and the Internet collide

    Via LLRX.com - When judges, jurors and the Internet collide: In the past, attorney Nicole L. Black has described misguided attempts by judges to excessively penalize jurors for using social media or the Internet during the pendency of trials. In fact, over the last year, judges have gone so far as to fine or jail jurors who have used social media during trial, and legislators have proposed laws that would criminalize such conduct. This despite the fact that jurors have been violating judges' orders not to research or discuss pending cases since the dawn of jury trials.

    * TRAC Report - Federal Weapons Enforcement: A Moving Target

    TRAC: "The number of federal prosecutions for weapons violations in FY 2012 was almost exactly the same as it was a decade earlier. But within the FY 2002 - FY 2012 period there were several dramatic enforcement shifts, both up and down, as documented in a new report released by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). The report also makes available recent prosecution numbers under each of 75 individual federal weapons statutes. These and many other insights about the federal enforcement of the gun laws have emerged from an analysis of hundreds of thousands of government records as President Obama, the National Rifle Association, Congress and the American people debate whether and how to change the federal role in gun enforcement. The dispute intensified in December after the killing of 20 children and six adults in an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut."

    February 12, 2013
    * EPIC Obtains New Documents About FBI Cellphone Tracking Technology

    EPIC - "In the fifth interim release of documents in EPIC v. FBI, a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the agency has turned over nearly 300 pages about the surveillance technique directed toward users of mobile phones. The documents obtained by EPIC reveal that agents have been using "cell site simulator" technologies, also known as "StingRay," "Triggerfish," or "Digital Analyzers" to monitor cell phones since 1995. Internal FBI e-mails, also obtained by EPIC, reveal that agents went through extensive training on these devices in 2007. In addition, a presentation from the agency's Wireless Intercept and Tracking Team argues that cell site simulators qualify for a low legal standard as a "pen register device," an interpretation that was recently rejected by a federal court in Texas. For more information, see EPIC v. FBI (StingRay)."

    February 10, 2013
    * NYT - A Call for Drastic Changes in Educating New Lawyers

    Ethan Bronner: "Faced with profound and seemingly irreversible shifts, the legal profession is contemplating radical changes to its educational system, including cutting the curriculum, requiring far more on-the-ground training and licensing technicians who are not full lawyers."

    * Open Wireless vs. Licensed Spectrum: Evidence from Market Adoption

    Open Wireless vs. Licensed Spectrum: Evidence from Market Adoption - 26(1) Harvard Journal of Law and Technology (Fall 2012) by Yochai Benkler.

  • "The paper reviews evidence from eight wireless markets: mobile broadband; wireless healthcare; smart grid communications; inventory management; access control; mobile payments; fleet management; and secondary markets in spectrum. I find that markets are adopting unlicensed wireless strategies in mission-critical applications, in many cases more so than they are building on licensed strategies. If the 1990s saw what was called "the Negroponte Switch" of video from air to wire, and telephony from wire to air, the present and near future are seeing an even more fundamental switch. Where a decade ago most of our wireless capacity was delivered over exclusive control approaches-both command and control and auctioned exclusivity--complemented by special-purpose shared spectrum use, today we are moving to a wireless infrastructure whose core relies on shared, open wireless approaches, complemented by exclusive control approaches for special, latency-intolerant, high-speed mobile applications. The scope of the latter will contract further if regulation catches up to technological reality, and opens up more bands to open wireless innovation, with greater operational flexibility and an emphasis on interoperability This final version of the paper uses more updated market data than the 2011 working paper, adds case study analysis of failures or anemic cases of open wireless allocations, the U-PCS, WMTS, ITS, and 3.65GHz bands (suggesting valuable lessons for future design of open wireless allocations), and adds an extensive literature review and rebuttal to some of the major academic critiques of open wireless approaches."

  • February 09, 2013
    * CRS - Evaluating the "Past Performance" of Federal Contractors: Legal Requirements and Issues

    Evaluating the “Past Performance” of Federal Contractors: Legal Requirements and Issues. Kate M. Manuel, Legislative Attorney, February 4, 2013

  • "Poor performance under a federal contract can have immediate consequences for contractors, who could be denied award or incentive fees, required to pay liquidated damages, or terminated for default. In addition, it could affect their ability to obtain future contracts because various provisions of federal law require agencies to evaluate contractors’ “past performance” and consider past performance information when making source selection decisions in negotiated procurements and when determining whether prospective contractors are “responsible.” “Past performance” refers to contractors’ performance on “active and physically completed contracts.” Currently, federal law requires agencies to evaluate and document contractor performance on all contracts whose value exceeds $150,000. The evaluation must address the contractor’s performance vis-à-vis any required subcontracting plan and may address its conformity to contract requirements, adherence to contract schedules, and related factors. The evaluation and any contractor response comprise the past performance information that is stored in government databases (e.g., Past Performance Information Retrieval System (PPIRS), Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System (FAPIIS)) and may be used in future source selection decisions.
  • February 08, 2013
    * TRAC - Federal Prosecution Data for October 2012

    TRAC: "Federal criminal prosecutions totaled 13,764 for the month of October, according to the most recent data released by the Department of Justice. This was an increase of 4.5 percent from the previous month. Most prosecutions were referred by DHS, which accounted for 59 percent. Other agencies with substantial numbers of referrals were the FBI (9 percent), DEA (8 percent), ATF (7 percent) and DoD (3 percent). Among program categories, the largest number of prosecutions was seen in immigration, which accounted for 52 percent of the filings. Drug and drug trafficking related crimes contributed 11.8 percent of the total, and weapons offenses made up 4.5 percent."

    February 05, 2013
    * DOJ Memo released by MSNBC: U.S. Can Kill Americans Overseas if they Pose 'Imminent Threat'

    By Michael Isikoff National Investigative Correspondent, NBC News

  • "A confidential Justice Department memo concludes that the U.S. government can order the killing of American citizens if they are believed to be “senior operational leaders” of al-Qaida or “an associated force” -- even if there is no intelligence indicating they are engaged in an active plot to attack the U.S. The 16-page memo, a copy of which was obtained by NBC News, provides new details about the legal reasoning behind one of the Obama administration’s most secretive and controversial polices: its dramatically increased use of drone strikes against al-Qaida suspects abroad, including those aimed at American citizens, such as the September 2011 strike in Yemen that killed alleged al-Qaida operatives Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan. Both were U.S. citizens who had never been indicted by the U.S. government nor charged with any crimes.
  • * Paper - Open Wireless vs. Licensed Spectrum: Evidence from Market Adoption

    "The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University is pleased to announce the publication of Open Wireless vs. Licensed Spectrum: Evidence from Market Adoption, authored by Yochai Benkler, and published in the latest issue of the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology [download here]. The paper reviews evidence from eight wireless markets: mobile broadband; wireless healthcare; smart grid communications; inventory management; access control; mobile payments; fleet management; and secondary markets in spectrum. Benkler finds that markets are adopting unlicensed wireless strategies in mission-critical applications, in many cases more so than they are building on licensed strategies. If the 1990s saw what was called "the Negroponte Switch" of video from air to wire, and telephony from wire to air, the present and near future are seeing an even more fundamental switch. Where a decade ago most of our wireless capacity was delivered over exclusive control approaches-both command and control and auctioned exclusivity--complemented by special-purpose shared spectrum use, today we are moving to a wireless infrastructure whose core relies on shared, open wireless approaches, complemented by exclusive control approaches for special, latency-intolerant, high-speed mobile applications. The scope of the latter will contract further if regulation catches up to technological reality, and opens up more bands to open wireless innovation, with greater operational flexibility and an emphasis on interoperability."

    * DOJ Sues Standard & Poor’s for Fraud in Rating Mortgage-Backed Securities in the Years Leading Up to the Financial Crisis

    DOJ news release: "Attorney General Eric Holder announced today that the Department of Justice has filed a civil lawsuit against the credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services alleging that S&P engaged in a scheme to defraud investors in structured financial products known as Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities (RMBS) and Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs). The lawsuit alleges that investors, many of them federally insured financial institutions, lost billions of dollars on CDOs for which S&P issued inflated ratings that misrepresented the securities’ true credit risks. The complaint also alleges that S&P falsely represented that its ratings were objective, independent, and uninfluenced by S&P’s relationships with investment banks when, in actuality, S&P’s desire for increased revenue and market share led it to favor the interests of these banks over investors...Today’s action was filed in the Central District of California, home to the now defunct Western Federal Corporate Credit Union (WesCorp), which was the largest corporate credit union in the country. Following the 2008 financial crisis, WesCorp collapsed after suffering massive losses on RMBS and CDOs rated by S&P...The complaint, which names McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. and its subsidiary, Standard & Poor’s Financial Services LLC (collectively S&P) as defendants, seeks civil penalties under the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989 (FIRREA) based on three forms of alleged fraud by S&P: (1) mail fraud affecting federally insured financial institutions in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1341; (2) wire fraud affecting federally insured financial institutions in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1343; and (3) financial institution fraud in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1344. FIRREA authorizes the Attorney General to seek civil penalties up to the amount of the losses suffered as a result of the alleged violations. To date, the government has identified more than $5 billion in losses suffered by federally insured financial institutions in connection with the failure of CDOs rated by S&P from March to October 2007."

  • Related postings on financial system
  • * Report - CIA Secret Detention and Extraordinary Rendition

    Open Society Foundation: "Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Central Intelligence Agency embarked on a highly classified program of secret detention and extraordinary rendition of terrorist suspects. The program was designed to place detainee interrogations beyond the reach of law. Suspected terrorists were seized and secretly flown across national borders to be interrogated by foreign governments that used torture, or by the CIA itself in clandestine “black sites” using torture techniques. Globalizing Torture is the most comprehensive account yet assembled of the human rights abuses associated with CIA secret detention and extraordinary rendition operations. It details for the first time what was done to the 136 known victims, and lists the 54 foreign governments that participated in these operations. It shows that responsibility for the abuses lies not only with the United States but with dozens of foreign governments that were complicit. More than 10 years after the 2001 attacks, Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Detention and Extraordinary Rendition makes it unequivocally clear that the time has come for the United States and its partners to definitively repudiate these illegal practices and secure accountability for the associated human rights abuses."

    * Integration of Drones into Domestic Airspace: Selected Legal Issues

    Integration of Drones into Domestic Airspace: Selected Legal Issues. Alissa M. Dolan, Legislative Attorney - Richard M. Thompson II, Legislative Attorney, January 30, 2013

  • "Under the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012, P.L. 112-95, Congress has tasked the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) with integrating unmanned aircraft systems (UASs), sometimes referred to as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones, into the national airspace system by September 2015. Although the text of this act places safety as a predominant concern, it fails to establish how the FAA should resolve significant, and up to this point, largely unanswered legal questions...With the ability to house surveillance sensors such as high-powered cameras and thermal-imaging devices, some argue that drone surveillance poses a significant threat to the privacy of American citizens. Because the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures applies only to acts by government officials, surveillance by private actors such as the paparazzi, a commercial enterprise, or one’s neighbor is instead regulated, if at all, by state and federal statutes and judicial decisions. Yet, however strong this interest in privacy may be, there are instances where the public’s First Amendment rights to gather and receive news might outweigh an individual’s interest in being let alone."
  • See also via Pew - February 6, 2013. U.S. Use of Drones, Under New Scrutiny, Has Been Widely Opposed Abroad
  • February 04, 2013
    * Paper - Is the SEC a Learning Regulator? Lessons from Proxy Access

    Is the SEC a Learning Regulator? Lessons from Proxy Access, Aviv Pichhadze, Critical Research Laboratory in Law & Society, February 3, 2013. Regulation & Governance (Forthcoming)

  • "Analysis of the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (“SEC”) treatment of the concept of ownership in the federal proxy rules, between 1934 and 2010, suggests SEC systems and procedures may not employ optimal organizational learning. Addressing this, I develop the Learning Regulator Framework, a normative model facilitating organizational learning and allowing regulatory agencies to maintain awareness of, and adaptation to, socio-economic realities in regulated environments, thereby promoting reflective, responsive, relevant, and efficient regulatory frameworks. The relevance of the model to other institutional settings is also considered."
  • * United States Courts - Access to Court Opinions Expands

    "A pilot project giving the public free, text-searchable, online-access to court opinions now is available to all federal appellate, district and bankruptcy courts. The Judicial Conference, the policy-making body of the Federal court system, approved national implementation of the project with the Government Printing Office, Federal Digital System (FDsys), which provides free access to publications from all three branches of federal government via the Internet. The pilot project pulls opinions nightly from courts’ Case Management/Electronic Case Files (CM/ECF) systems and sends them to the GPO, where they are processed and posted on the FDsys website. The functionality to transfer opinions to FDsys is included in the latest release of CM/ECF which is now available to all courts. Twenty-nine courts participated in the original pilot, and now, all courts may opt to participate in the program. Access to judicial opinions through FDsys allows the Judiciary to make its work more easily available to the public. Collections are divided into appellate, district or bankruptcy court opinions and are text-searchable across opinions and across courts. FDsys also permits embedded animation and audio. Presently, more than 600,000 opinions dating back to 2004 are available. Opinions from the pilot are already one of the most heavily used collections on FDsys, with millions of retrievals each month."

    * Ungoverned Spaces, Transnational Crime, and the Prohibition on Extraterritorial Enforcement Jurisdiction in International Law

    Ungoverned Spaces, Transnational Crime, and the Prohibition on Extraterritorial Enforcement Jurisdiction in International Law, Dan E. Stigall, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of International Affairs, February 3, 2013. Notre Dame Journal of International & Comparative Law, 2013, Forthcoming

  • "Driven by internationalization efforts such as those that accompanied the global efforts to combat the illicit drug trade, international law enforcement efforts by the United States have developed markedly over the past few decades. A notable element of this phenomenon has been the increased need by domestic law enforcement agencies to conduct extraterritorial law enforcement operations. This is especially so in "ungoverned spaces" -- areas of the world where there is no governmental counterpart willing or able to take action. The U.S. response to transnational crime has, however, frequently taken on the characteristics of military action -- a trend that has worried policy makers and senior military officials. A resort to military assets can be practical on multiple levels. But aside from the myriad practicalities which ordinarily compel national leaders to resort to the most capable organ of state power when difficult situations arise, there are also compelling international legal considerations that make the use of military force an even more tempting option when dealing with the unique challenges posed by transnational criminals operating outside the United States. In fact, as this Article demonstrates, the use of military force may frequently be the only option legally permissible under the current state of international law. This stems from a dramatic dichotomy in international law that tightly constrains the range of conduct permitted during extraterritorial civilian law enforcement operations while granting the military (in certain circumstances) wide latitude to carry out an almost unlimited range of invasive and even lethal activity."
  • February 03, 2013
    * Electronic Course Reserves Copuright Infringement Case Moves to Appeal

    Chronicle of Higher Education, Jennifer Howard: "Fair use and electronic course reserves are back in court. A keenly watched copyright case that pitted three academic publishers against Georgia State University has entered the appeals phase, with a flurry of filings and motions this week and more expected soon. One surprise motion came from the U.S. Department of Justice, which requested more time to consider filing an amicus brief either in support of the publishers or in support of neither party...he case in question is Cambridge U. Press et al. v. Mark P. Becker et al. In 2008, Cambridge, Oxford University Press, and SAGE Publishers sued Georgia State, asserting it had committed widespread copyright violations when it allowed some of their content to be used, unlicensed, in e-reserves. The Association of American Publishers and the Copyright Clearance Center, which specializes in licensing content to universities, bankrolled the legal action."

  • See also What the Georgia State Verdict Means for Libraries and the Publishing Industry
  • * Corporate Governance and Innovation: Theory and Evidence

    Sapra, Haresh, Subramanian, Ajay and Subramanian, Krishnamurthy, Corporate Governance and Innovation: Theory and Evidence (February 1, 2013). Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis (JFQA), Forthcoming. Available at SSRN

  • "We develop a theory to show how external and internal corporate governance mechanisms affect innovation. We show that there is a U-shaped relation between innovation and external takeover pressure, which arises from the interaction between expected takeover premia and private benefits of control. We show strong empirical support for the predicted relation using ex ante and ex post innovation measures. We exploit the variation in takeover pressure created by the passage of anti-takeover laws across different states. Innovation is fostered either by an unhindered market for corporate control, or by anti-takeover laws that are severe enough to effectively deter takeovers."
  • * EPO and USPTO launch Cooperative Patent Classification

    On January 2, 2013 "the European Patent Office (EPO) and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) launched the Cooperative Patent Classification scheme (CPC), a global classification system for patent documents. The system is the result of partnership between the EPO and the USPTO in their joint effort to develop a common, internationally compatible classification system for technical documents, in particular patent publications, which will be used by both offices in the patent granting process. The CPC is an ambitious harmonisation product that incorporates the best classification practices of both offices."

    February 02, 2013
    * 2012 Immigration-Related Laws and Resolutions in the States

    2012 Immigration-Related Laws and Resolutions in the States (Jan. 1–Dec. 31, 2012)

  • "After a steady climb in immigration-related bills starting in 2005, the number of bills and resolutions declined significantly in statehouses in 2012. State legislators introduced 983 bills and resolutions in 46 state legislatures, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, a decline of 39 percent compared to the 1,607 bills introduced in 2011. However, the decline in the number of enacted laws and resolutions was less marked. In 2012, 44 states and Puerto Rico enacted 156 laws and adopted 111 resolutions for a total of 267. This is down from 306 laws and resolutions in 2011, a decline of 13 percent. Twelve additional bills passed in six different state legislatures; 11 were vetoed by governors and one was pending at the close of 2012 and signed into law Jan. 7, 2013."
  • February 01, 2013
    * Congressional Redistricting and the Voting Rights Act: A Legal Overview

    Congressional Redistricting and the Voting Rights Act: A Legal Overview - L. Paige Whitaker, Legislative Attorney, January 31, 2013

  • "The Constitution requires a count of the U.S. population every 10 years. Based on the census, the number of seats in the House of Representatives is reapportioned among the states. Thus, at least every 10 years, in response to changes in the number of Representatives apportioned to it or to shifts in its population, each state is required to draw new boundaries for its congressional districts. Although each state has its own process for redistricting, congressional districts must conform to a number of constitutional and federal statutory standards, including the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965, as amended...In the 113th Congress, legislation has been introduced that would establish certain standards and requirements for congressional redistricting, including identical bills H.R. 223 and H.R. 278, the “John Tanner Fairness and Independence in Redistricting Act,” and H.R. 337, the “Redistricting Transparency Act of 2013.”
  • January 29, 2013
    * The Federal Prison Population Buildup: Overview, Policy Changes, Issues, and Options

    CRS - The Federal Prison Population Buildup: Overview, Policy Changes, Issues, and Options. Nathan James, Analyst in Crime Policy. January 22, 2013

  • "Since the early 1980s, there has been a historically unprecedented increase in the federal prison population. Some of the growth is attributable to changes in federal criminal justice policy during the previous three decades. An issue before Congress is whether policymakers consider the rate of growth in the federal prison population sustainable, and if not, what changes could be made to federal criminal justice policy to reduce the prison population while maintaining public safety. This report explores the issues related to the growing federal prison population. The number of inmates under the Bureau of Prisons’ (BOP) jurisdiction has increased from approximately 25,000 in FY1980 to nearly 219,000 in FY2012. Since FY1980, the federal prison population has increased, on average, by approximately 6,100 inmates each year. Data show that a growing proportion of inmates are being incarcerated for immigration- and weapons-related offenses, but the largest portion of newly admitted inmates are being incarcerated for drug offenses. Data also show that approximately 7 in 10 inmates are sentenced for five years or less."
  • January 28, 2013
    * Google’s approach to government requests for user data

    Google Official Blog: "..January 28, is Data Privacy Day, when the world recognizes the importance of preserving your online privacy and security. If it’s like most other days, Google—like many companies that provide online services to users—will receive dozens of letters, faxes and emails from government agencies and courts around the world requesting access to our users’ private account information. Typically this happens in connection with government investigations. It’s important for law enforcement agencies to pursue illegal activity and keep the public safe. We’re a law-abiding company, and we don’t want our services to be used in harmful ways. But it’s just as important that laws protect you against overly broad requests for your personal information...Today, for example, we’ve added a new section to our Transparency Report that answers many questions you might have. And last week we released data showing that government requests continue to rise, along with additional details on the U.S. legal processes—such as subpoenas, court orders and warrants—that governments use to compel us to provide this information."

    * Unlocking cell phones to switch carriers subject to Digital Millenium Copyright Act’s protections

    Tracey Samuelson, Marketplace for Monday, January 28, 2013: "If consumers want to “unlock” their cell phones in order to take their phone from one cellular network to another, they now need to ask the permission of their carrier. Starting January 26, unlocking phones without the provider’s OK is against the law. But perhaps the most surprising part of these changes is that they came from the Library of Congress, a government department better known for its archives than its regulatory abilities. But in addition to cataloging gems from the country’s past -- everything from old musical performances to little-remembered presidential speeches -- the Library of Congress also oversees copyrights."

  • See also Unlocking Cellphones Becomes Illegal Saturday and It Is Now a Crime to Unlock Your Smartphone
  • EFF - Is It Illegal To Unlock a Phone? The Situation is Better - and Worse - Than You Think
  • January 27, 2013
    * FBI Records Update: Attempted Assassination of President Ronald Reagan

    "On March 31, 1981, John W. Hinckley, Jr., shot President Ronald Reagan and several others in a failed assassination attempt. The FBI conducted an extensive investigation, named REAGAT. This FOIA release consists of an extensive “Prosecutive Report” submitted by the FBI to the Department of Justice in May 1981 as Justice lawyers considered how to prosecute Hinckley for the attacks."

    January 24, 2013
    * EFF - Google Releases Transparency Report Showing US Surveillance Requests Up 33% in the Last Year

    News release: "This morning, Google released their semi-annual transparency report, and once again, it revealed a troubling trend: Internet surveillance around the world continues to rise, with the United States leading the way in demands for user data. Google received over 21,000 requests for data on over 33,000 users in the last six months from governments around the world, a 70% increase since Google started releasing numbers in 2010. The United States accounted for almost 40% the total requests (8,438) and the number of users (14,791). The total numbers in the US for 2012 amounted to a 33% increase from 2011. And while Google only complied with two-thirds of the total requests globally, they complied with 88% of the requests in the United States."

    January 23, 2013
    * Library Adds Congressional Record, CBO Cost Estimates to Congress.gov Beta Website

    News release: "The Library of Congress today is adding the Congressional Record, published by the Government Printing Office (GPO), and cost-estimate reports from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to its Congress.gov beta website, a public site for accessing free, fact-based legislative information. The additions will supplement bills, bill summaries, Member profiles and legislative history information already available on the site. Launched in September 2012, Congress.gov features platform mobility, comprehensive information retrieval and user-friendly presentation. Congress.gov eventually will replace the public THOMAS system and the congressional Legislative Information System (LIS)...All bills from 2001 through the present that have a CBO Cost Estimate will now include a "CBO Cost Estimate" link to the right of the Overview section on the legislative detail page. This will open a pop-up that displays a list of associated CBO Cost Estimates, with a link to the CBO page displaying that report."

    * Positivism, Legal Validity, and the Separation of Law and Morals

    Pino, Giorgio, Positivism, Legal Validity, and the Separation of Law and Morals (december 2012). Ratio Juris, 2013. Available at SSRN

  • "The essay discusses the import of the separability thesis both for legal positivism and for contemporary legal practice. First, the place of the separability thesis in legal positivism will be explored, distinguishing between “standard positivism” and “post-Hartian positivism”. Then we will consider various kinds of relations between law and morality that are worth of jurisprudential interest, and will explore, from a positivist point of view, what kind of relations between law and morality must be rejected, what kind of such relations should be taken into account, and what kind of such relations are indeed of no import at all. The upshot of this analysis consists in highlighting the distinction between two different dimensions of legal validity (formal validity and material validity respectively), and in pointing out that the positivist separability thesis can apply to formal validity only; on the contrary, when the ascertainment of material validity is at stake, some form of moral reasoning may well be involved (and, here and now, necessarily is involved). The essay concludes with some brief remarks on the persisting importance of the positivist jurisprudential project."
  • January 22, 2013
    * Prosecutorial Discretion in Immigration Enforcement: Legal Issues

    Prosecutorial Discretion in Immigration Enforcement: Legal Issues - Kate M. Manuel, Legislative Attorney; Todd Garvey, Legislative Attorney. January 17, 2013

  • "The term prosecutorial discretion is commonly used to describe the wide latitude that prosecutors have in determining when, whom, how, and even whether to prosecute apparent violations of the law. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and, later, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its components have historically described themselves as exercising prosecutorial discretion in immigration enforcement. Some commentators have recently challenged this characterization on the grounds that DHS enforces primarily civil violations, and some of its components cannot be said to engage in “law enforcement,” as that term is conventionally understood. However, even agencies that do not prosecute or engage in law enforcement have been recognized as having discretion (sometimes referred to as enforcement discretion) in determining whether to enforce particular violations."
  • * CRS - The Protection of Classified Information: The Legal Framework

    The Protection of Classified Information: The Legal Framework, Jennifer K. Elsea, Legislative Attorney, January 10, 2013

  • "This report provides an overview of the relationship between executive and legislative authority over national security information, and summarizes the current laws that form the legal
    framework protecting classified information, including current executive orders and some agency regulations pertaining to the handling of unauthorized disclosures of classified information by government officers and employees. The report also summarizes criminal laws that pertain specifically to the unauthorized disclosure of classified information, as well as civil and administrative penalties. Finally, the report describes some recent developments in executive branch security policies and relevant legislative activity."
  • * CRS - Follow-On Biologics: The Law and Intellectual Property Issues

    Follow-On Biologics: The Law and Intellectual Property Issues, Wendy H. Schacht, Specialist in Science and Technology Policy; John R. Thomas, Visiting Scholar, December 6, 2012

  • "The term “biologics” refers to a category of medical preparations derived from a living organism. These medicines have added notable therapeutic options for many diseases and impacted fields such as oncology and rheumatology. The biologics industry invests extensively in R&D and contributes to a rapidly expanding market for these treatments. Biologics are often costly, however, in part due to the sophistication of the technologies and the manufacturing techniques needed to make them. Some commentators have also observed that, in contrast to the generic drugs available in traditional pharmaceutical markets, few “follow-on” biologics compete with the original, brandname product. The lack of competition in the biologics markets is perceived to be a consequence of the complexity of biologics in comparison with small-molecule, chemical-based pharmaceuticals. As a result, previously existing accelerated marketing provisions for traditional generic drugs provided under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act do not comfortably apply to biologics."
  • January 21, 2013
    * Looking Forward and Sideways: Trajectories of New Governance Theory

    Van der Heijden, Jeroen, Looking Forward and Sideways: Trajectories of New Governance Theory (January 21, 2013). General Subserie Research Paper No. 2013-01. Available at SSRN

  • "New governance has emerged as a novel paradigm to public problem solving, with scholars in the fields of politics, public administration and law analysing and debating it for over two decades. This article assesses the three major branches of this new governance literature and theorizing — normative, evaluative, and institutional. It questions how new governance as a theory has crystallized over the last 20 years, and recognizes some of the limitations in the literature that may direct future studies."
  • January 19, 2013
    * EFF Amicus Brief Argues for Protection of Transformative Uses to Protect News Tracking Services

    EFF: "In Associated Press v. Meltwater, AP claims its copyrights are infringed when Meltwater, an electronic news clipping service, includes excerpts of AP stories in search results for its clients seeking reports of news coverage based on particular keywords. In its argument, AP asks the court to accept an extraordinarily narrow view of fair use – the doctrine that allows for the use of copyrighted material for purposes of commentary, criticism, or other transformative uses – by claiming that Meltwater's use of copyrighted excerpts cannot be "transformative" fair use unless they are also "expressive." In an amicus brief filed [January 18, 2013], EFF argues that AP's theory would restrict the use and development of services that allow users to find, organize, and share public information."

    * EPIC - TSA to remove body scanners without privacy software by June 2013

    Follow up to previous postings on airport use of full body scanners, news from EPIC: "the US Transportation Security Administration will end the contract for backscatter x-ray devices. As a consequence, all devices that produce a detailed naked image of air travelers will be removed from US airports. Beginning in 2005, EPIC and then a coalition of privacy advocates, scientists, legal experts and lawmakers urged the TSA not to deploy the devices. The groups petitioned DHS Secretary Napolitano to suspend the program pending a thorough review. The agency went forward and EPIC sued. In EPIC v. DHS, the DC Circuit held that the devices could be used as long as passengers were able to opt-out. The federal appeals court also ordered the agency to "promptly" begin a public rulemaking. That process will likely begin in March 2013. For more information, see EPIC: EPIC v. DHS and EPIC: Body Scanners."

    January 16, 2013
    * President Obama Unveils Proposals for Toughening Laws on Guns

    Via New York Times: "At a White House event at noon (January 16, 2013), Mr. Obama announced plans to introduce legislation by next week that includes a ban on new assault weapons, limits on high-capacity magazines, expanded background checks for gun purchases and tougher gun trafficking laws to crack down on the spread of weapons across the country. Without waiting for Congress, the president also acted on his own authority, signing nearly two-dozen executive actions designed to increase the enforcement of existing gun laws and improve the flow of information among federal agencies in order to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and others who shouldn’t have them."

  • WSJ graphic - Gun Laws by State
  • * Article - Can Lawyers Stay in the Driver's Seat?

    Can Lawyers Stay in the Driver's Seat? - Daniel G. Currell, Corporate Executive Board; M. Todd Henderson, University of Chicago - Law School. University of Chicago Institute for Law & Economics Olin Research Paper No. 629. January 16, 2013

  • "The law firm business is thriving, despite significant pain in the legal sector as changes take place. The continuing success of Big Law is in part because of its ability to adjust quickly to changes in demand by hiring and firing staff. But as Larry Ribstein saw, big changes nevertheless loom on the horizon. These changes will likely be driven by a series of specialized service providers who compete with law firms from a lower price point as Benjamin Barton points out in his article in this volume. If history is a guide, cheaper alternatives will evolve into higher-quality alternatives, at which point the law firms most invested in the status quo are likely to suffer greatly. While the significance of this disruption is often viewed in terms of how it will affect lawyers, in fact it should be assessed mainly from the perspective of consumers and society: does the quality of legal services rise or fall at any given price point?"
  • January 15, 2013
    * TRAC - FY 2012, A Record Year for Asylum Cases

    Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse - "The odds of an asylum claim being denied reached an historic low in FY 2012, with only 44.5 percent being turned down. Ten years ago, almost two out of three (62.6%) individuals seeking asylum lost their cases in similar actions. Asylum applicants also made up more than a quarter (29.4%) of all cases closed under the prosecutorial discretion (PD) initiative during FY 2012. When those who won their cases are combined with PD closures as well as other administrative closures, a record high 63.7 percent of asylum applicants were allowed to remain in the U.S. in cases concluded in FY 2012. Accompanying this report are 272 separate reports covering each Immigration Judge."

    * CFPB - Assuring consumers have access to mortgages they can trust

    "[January 10, 2013], we’re issuing one of our most important rules to date, the Ability-to-Repay rule. It’s designed to assure the reliability of mortgages – making sure that lenders offer mortgages that consumers can actually afford to pay back. This is a simple, obvious principle that needs to be cemented in the housing market. In the run-up to the financial crisis, we had a housing market that was reckless about lending money. Lenders thought they could make money on a loan even if the consumer could not pay back that loan, either by banking on rising housing prices or by off-loading the mortgage into the secondary market. This encouraged broad indifference to the ability of many consumers to repay loans, which dramatically increased mortgage delinquencies and rates of foreclosures."

  • See also - Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issues rules to strengthen protections for high-cost mortgages
  • January 13, 2013
    * New on LLRX - Conclusions from the National Inventory of Legal Materials

    Via LLRX.com: Conclusions from the National Inventory of Legal Materials - Hays Butler and Emily Feltren document the process and successful implementation of dynamic, extensive project conducted over the past three years by the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) working with law librarian volunteers around the country to build the first-ever National Inventory of Legal Materials, an inventory of print and electronic legal materials at all levels of government. More than 350 volunteers have added nearly 8,000 legal titles to the inventory so far."

    * New on LLRX - FOIA Facts - What I’ve Learned

    Via LLRX: FOIA Facts - What I’ve Learned - Scott A. Hodes' New Year's commentary is both an overview and a roadmap to the FOIA process. Scott's experience has taught him that requesters do not realize that their biggest obstacle to having their requests processed in a timely manner is not usually FOIA offices. The biggest obstacles tend to be the program offices that have equity in the records sought and the agency executives who see FOIA offices as an expense they don’t want to fund.

    * Wayback Machine: Now with 240,000,000,000 URLs

    Internet Archives Blog: "Today we updated the Wayback Machine with much more data and some code improvements. Now we cover from late 1996 to December 9, 2012 so you can surf the web as it was up until a month ago. Also, we have gone from having 150,000,000,000 URLs to having 240,000,000,000 URLs, a total of about 5 petabytes of data. (Want a humorous description of a petabyte? start at 28:55) This database is queried over 1,000 times a second by over 500,000 people a day helping make archive.org the 250th most popular website."

    * Privacy on the Go - Recommendations for the Mobile Ecosystem

    Privacy on the Go - Recommendations for the Mobile Ecosystem, Kamala D. Harris, Attorney General, California Department of Justice. January 2013

  • "Today, 85 percent of American adults own a cell phone and over half of them use their phones to access the Internet. The mobile app marketplace is also booming with more than 1,600 new mobile apps being introduced every day. These apps allow us to do everything from streaming movies to hailing a cab to viewing our own X-ray and ultrasound images. Along with the many wonderful capabilities these apps offer, we remain mindful that the mobile environment also poses uncharted privacy challenges, such as the difficulty of providing consumers with meaningful information about privacy choices on small screens and the many players who may have access to sensitive user information...Recognizing that the legally required general privacy policy is not always the most effective way to get consumers’ attention, Privacy on the Go recommends a “surprise minimization” approach. This approach means supplementing the general privacy policy with enhanced measures to alert users and give them control over data practices that are not related to an app’s basic functionality or that involve sensitive information."

  • January 09, 2013
    * Tax Provisions in the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012

    Tax Provisions in the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 (ATRA), Jim Nunns and Jeff Rohaly. January 9, 2013

  • "The fiscal cliff debate culminated in the passage of the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 (ATRA). ATRA makes permanent most of the tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003, permanently patches the alternative minimum tax, extends for five years the enhancements to individual income tax credits originally enacted in the 2009 stimulus legislation, and temporarily extends certain other tax provisions. This paper provides a detailed description of the individual, corporate, and estate tax provisions in ATRA."
  • January 08, 2013
    * New CCH Tax Briefing Examines American Taxpayer Relief Act

    "With the tax side of the fiscal cliff narrowly averted, CCH has issued a new Tax Briefing: American Taxpayer Relief Act, covering provisions of the new legislation. The American Taxpayer Relief Act allows the Bush-era tax rates to sunset after 2012 for individuals with incomes over $400,000 and families with incomes over $450,000; permanently “patches” the alternative minimum tax (AMT); revives many now-expired tax extenders, including the research tax credit and the American Opportunity Tax Credit; and provides for a maximum estate tax of 40 percent with a $5 million exclusion. The Act also delays the mandatory across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration."

    January 07, 2013
    * FTC Issues 2012 Update of Horizontal Merger Investigation Data Report

    News release: "To promote transparency in merger enforcement, the Federal Trade Commission released an updated staff report on the agency’s major investigations of horizontal mergers. The update adds four more years of data to the agency’s previous report, which was issued in 2008. Horizontal mergers involve two firms that are competitors or have overlapping lines of business. The new data provide information on the levels of market concentration involved in the FTC’s investigation of 264 mergers, covering 1,372 markets over a 16-year period. The data tabulations use two statistics from the agency’s Horizontal Merger Guidelines to measure market concentration: 1) the post-merger Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI), and 2) the change in the HHI, which reflects changes in market concentration before and after a particular merger. They also track the number of “significant competitors” in the markets in these cases. Data on HHIs are available for 1,359 markets and data on significant competitors are presented for 1,143 markets. The HHI reflects the overall composition of the market and the distribution of market shares of the competing firms."

    * Immigration Enforcement in the United States: The Rise of a Formidable Machinery

    Immigration Enforcement in the United States: The Rise of a Formidable Machinery, By Doris Meissner, Donald M. Kerwin, Muzaffar Chishti, and Claire Bergeron. Migration Policy Institute, January 2013.

  • "The US government spends more on federal immigration enforcement than on all other principal federal criminal law enforcement agencies combined, and has allocated nearly $187 billion for immigration enforcement since 1986. Deportations have reached record highs, border apprehensions 40-year lows, and more noncitizens than ever before are in immigration detention. The report traces the evolution of the immigration enforcement system, particularly in the post-9/11 era, in terms of budgets, personnel, enforcement actions, and technology – analyzing how individual programs and policies have resulted in a complex, interconnected, cross-agency system."
  • * Emergency Preparedness and Public Health: The Lessons of Hurricane Sandy

    Powell, Tia, Hanfling, Dan and Gostin, Lawrence O., Emergency Preparedness and Public Health: The Lessons of Hurricane Sandy (November 16, 2012). JAMA Online, 2012; Georgetown Public Law Research Paper No. 12-189. Available at SSRN

  • "When Hurricane Sandy hit downtown Manhattan, three neighboring hospitals each made different decisions about when to evacuate. Across the metro region, more than five hospitals and over 20 nursing and assisted living facilities were evacuated, making this the central public health challenge of this calamitous event. It is a familiar story — a super storm comes ashore, infrastructure is overwhelmed, and healthcare facilities evacuate patients, with major delays in returning to normal functioning. Afterwards, policy makers evaluate lessons learned for the next disaster, but similar missteps are often repeated. Although not identical, it is instructive to compare Hurricane Katrina with the still unfolding events of Sandy. Unlike in Katrina, New York hospitals had more detailed emergency plans. What seemed to be missing, however, were clear and consistent criteria to guide evacuation decisions. Evacuation decisions are complex — a decision to evacuate prematurely places patients at risk, while waiting too long can have devastating consequences. Public officials, in collaboration with facilities, should decide whether to shelter in place or risk transfer of fragile patients. Governors should consider early emergency declarations, including request for a formal “public health emergency declaration”, to reduce legal concerns and regulatory constraints. Federal, state, and municipal authorities can better prepare for the next disaster and have a duty to do so."
  • January 06, 2013
    * New on LLRX - 2012: The year of the mobile lawyer?

    Via LLRX.com - 2012: The year of the mobile lawyer? - Attorney Nicole Black discusses the rise in the number of lawyers using mobile devices, the growing number of apps developed specifically for lawyers, and how these apps increasingly support lawyers at every stage of the litigation process.

    * New on LLRX - Legal ethics and retention of electronic data

    Via LLRX.com - Legal ethics and retention of electronic data: Lawyers are increasingly shifting their day to day operations to applications and operations that leverage the convenience and affordability offered by the concept of a paperless office. Attorney Nicole Black talks about how doing so can raise an assortment of ethical issues, since the confidentiality of client information must always be maintained, regardless of the format in which it is stored or distributed.

    * Paper - Much Ado About Preemption

    Wareluk, Ewa Justyna, The Analysis of Insider Trading on Credit Derivatives Market by Means of the Event Study Methodology (January 6, 2013). Available at SSRN

  • "Preemption has emerged as the leading contender for conceptual grounding of the patentable subject matter doctrine’s exclusion of abstract ideas and natural phenomena from patentability. Despite the Supreme Court’s frequent use of preemption rhetoric, however, the concept cannot provide a satisfactory explanation of the Court’s patentable subject matter jurisprudence or a sound theoretical basis for the doctrine. Patentable subject matter jurisprudence has two distinct threads, one concerned with overly broad impact on downstream innovation and the other based on per se exclusion of abstract ideas and natural phenomena from patentability. Most of the Court’s patentable subject matter decisions apply a per se exclusion analysis. While preemption is conceptually related to the downstream impact thread, the term is misleading even in that context. When preemption rhetoric is employed in the majority of cases, which are based on per se exclusion, it leads to confusion and incoherence. This Article disentangles the preemption rhetoric from the per se exclusion analysis in the Supreme Court’s cases."
  • January 03, 2013
    * Transocean Agrees to Plead Guilty to Environmental Crime and Enter Civil Settlement to Resolve U.S. Clean Water Act Penalty Claims from Deepwater Horizon Incident

    News release: "Transocean Deepwater Inc. has agreed to plead guilty to violating the Clean Water Act (CWA) and to pay a total of $1.4 billion in civil and criminal fines and penalties, for its conduct in relation to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the Department of Justice announced today. The criminal information and a proposed partial civil consent decree to resolve the U.S. government’s civil penalty claims against Transocean Deepwater Inc. and related entities were filed today in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Louisiana." Related Material:

    * Google Agrees to Change Its Business Practices to Resolve FTC Competition Concerns

    News release: "Google Inc. has agreed to change some of its business practices to resolve Federal Trade Commission concerns that those practices could stifle competition in the markets for popular devices such as smart phones, tablets and gaming consoles, as well as the market for online search advertising. Under a settlement reached with the FTC, Google will meet its prior commitments to allow competitors access – on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms – to patents on critical standardized technologies needed to make popular devices such as smart phones, laptop and tablet computers, and gaming consoles. In a separate letter of commitment to the Commission, Google has agreed to give online advertisers more flexibility to simultaneously manage ad campaigns on Google’s AdWords platform and on rival ad platforms; and to refrain from misappropriating online content from so-called “vertical” websites that focus on specific categories such as shopping or travel for use in its own vertical offerings."

    * U.S. Periods of War and Dates of Current Conflicts

    U.S. Periods of War and Dates of Current Conflicts, Barbara Salazar Torreon, Information Research Specialist, December 28, 2012

  • "Many wars or conflicts in U.S. history have federally designated “periods of war,” dates marking their beginning and ending. These dates are important for qualification for certain veterans’ pension or disability benefits. Confusion can occur because beginning and ending dates for “periods of war” in many nonofficial sources are often different from those given in treaties and other official sources of information, and armistice dates can be confused with termination dates. This report lists the beginning and ending dates for “periods of war” found in Title 38 of the Code of Federal Regulations, dealing with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). It also lists and differentiates other beginning dates given in declarations of war, as well as termination of hostilities dates and armistice and ending dates given in proclamations, laws, or treaties. The dates for the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are included along with the official end date for Operation New Dawn on December 15, 2011.
  • January 02, 2013
    * New Report on Single-Parent Families in the United States

    Worst Off – Single-Parent Families in the United States, A Cross-National Comparison of Single Parenthood in the U.S. and Sixteen Other High-Income Countries by Timothy Casey and Laurie Maldonado. December 2012 - "is an exhaustive, critical analysis of data and information drawn from a broad range of sources including government agencies, social scientists, and academic researchers worldwide. The scope of the report, with its impressive compilation of data and statistics, is a significant addition to the literature on social policies and an incisive analysis of the current circumstances and needs of single parents in the U.S. – the overwhelming majority of whom are single mothers." [via Women's Legal Defense and Education Fund]

    January 01, 2013
    * Chief Justice's Year-End Reports on the Federal Judiciary 2012

    Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has issued his 2012 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary, focusing on efforts by the federal courts to contain costs.

  • "As part of the Judiciary’s national data and communications system, the courts are now implementing a national “voice-over-IP” telephone system to achieve additional savings by providing data, voice, and video services on a single network. They are also increasingly relying on computer-assisted legal research to reduce the costs of purchasing law books and maintaining brick-and-mortar libraries."
  • * CRS - The Protection of Classified Information

    The Protection of Classified Information: The Legal Framework. Jennifer K. Elsea, Legislative Attorney. December 17, 2012

  • "This report provides an overview of the relationship between executive and legislative authority over national security information, and summarizes the current laws that form the legal framework protecting classified information, including current executive orders and some agency regulations pertaining to the handling of unauthorized disclosures of classified information by government officers and employees. The report also summarizes criminal laws that pertain specifically to the unauthorized disclosure of classified information, as well as civil and administrative penalties. Finally, the report describes some recent developments in executive branch security policies and legislation currently before Congress (S. 3454)."
  • * FBI Releases 2011 Hate Crime Statistics

    News release: "According to statistics released today by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, 6,222 criminal incidents involving 7,254 offenses were reported in 2011 as a result of bias toward a particular race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity/national origin, or physical or mental disability. The statistics, published by the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program in Hate Crime Statistics, 2011, provide data about the offenses, victims, offenders, and locations of the bias-motivated incidents reported by law enforcement agencies throughout the nation. Due to the unique nature of hate crime, however, the UCR program does not estimate offenses for the jurisdictions of agencies that do not submit reports."

    December 31, 2012
    * Nuclear Regulatory Commission 10 C.F.R. 37, A New Rule to Protect Radioactive Material

    Nuclear Regulatory Commission 10 C.F.R. 37, A New Rule to Protect Radioactive Material: Background, Summary, Views from the Field, December 14, 2012.

  • "This report analyzes 10 C.F.R. 37, a forthcoming rule promulgated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), “Physical Protection of Byproduct Material.” “Byproduct material” includes specified types of radioactive material other than uranium or plutonium. The rule regulates byproduct material of types and in quantities that could be used to make a “dirty bomb.” Congress may find this analysis of interest for several reasons: Congress attaches great importance to protecting the United States against terrorist threats; the rule will affect the many industrial, research, and medical activities nationwide that use radioactive materials, thereby affecting many constituents and raising cost-benefit issues; and there is wide concern about regulation and radiation more generally."
  • December 29, 2012
    * CALM Act Regulates Volume of TV Commercials

    "The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) established new rules for the volume of television commercials that started on December 13, 2012. The new regulation, known as the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act, requires commercials to have the same average volume as the programs they accompany. The CALM Act requires TV stations, cable operators or other multichannel video program distributors to apply specific FCC practices to commercials they transmit. If you hear a commercial louder than the TV show it accompanies, you can file a complaint with the FCC by providing detailed information about the commercial. Learn more about the CALM Act."

    December 27, 2012
    * FTC Issues Dodd-Frank Report to Congress, Focused on Debit Card Transactions

    News release: "The Federal Trade Commission issued a report to Congress explaining steps the agency has taken in connection with new rules on debit card transactions that were put in place last year by the Federal Reserve Board as required by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The FTC shares authority to investigate and enforce the new Dodd-Frank requirements with other financial regulators. The Commission’s enforcement work generally focuses on the conduct of payment card networks and certain other non-bank entities. Regulations related to payment card network exclusivity and routing became fully effective in April 2012."

  • Federal Trade Commission Report on Activities Related to Section 1075 of the Dodd-Frank Act, December 24, 2012
  • December 26, 2012
    * Canadian Firearms Program

    Royal Canadian Mounted Police: "There are almost 1.9 million firearms licence holders in Canada. While the vast majority of firearm owners are responsible and comply with the law, over 22,000 firearms licences have been refused or revoked by the CFP for public safety reasons. Most revocations are due to court orders following a conviction.

  • The CFP is the source of firearms information for front-line police. If a police officer gets a call that may involve firearms, the CFP is there to help. The Canadian Firearms Registry Online (CFRO) contains information on all firearms licence holders as well as registered firearms. CFRO is a check that officers can use prior to attending a call, and is currently being accessed more than 14,000 times a day."
  • December 25, 2012
    * BJS - Violent Crime Against Youth, 1994-2010

    Violent Crime Against Youth, 1994-2010. Janet L. Lauritsen, Ph.D., Nicole White, Ph.D., University of Missouri. December 20, 2012. "Serious violent crime against youth dropped 77 percent from 1994 TO 2010."

  • "Presents patterns and trends in violent crime against youth ages 12 to 17 from 1994 to 2010. The report explores overall trends in violent crime against youth and examines patterns in serious violent crime and simple assault by the demographic characteristics of the victim, the location and time of the incident, weapon involvement and injury, the victim-offender relationship, and whether police were notified. Data are from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which collects information on nonfatal crimes, reported and not reported to the police, against persons age 12 or older from a nationally representative sample of U.S. households."
  • December 24, 2012
    * Report - Worst Off – Single-Parent Families in the United States

    Worst Off – Single-Parent Families in the United States, A Cross-National Comparison of Single Parenthood in the U.S. and Sixteen Other High-Income Countries, by Timothy Casey, Laurie Maldonado. The Women's Legal Defense and Education Fund, December 2012.

  • This report "is an exhaustive, critical analysis of data and information drawn from a broad range of sources including government agencies, social scientists, and academic researchers worldwide. The scope of the report, with its impressive compilation of data and statistics, is a significant addition to the literature on social policies and an incisive analysis of the current circumstances and needs of single parents in the U.S. – the overwhelming majority of whom are single mothers."

  • December 23, 2012
    * UK - Interim guidelines on prosecuting cases involving communications sent via social media

    Interim guidelines on prosecuting cases involving communications sent via social media, Issued by the Director of Public Prosecutions on December 19, 2012

  • "These guidelines set out the approach that prosecutors should take when making decisions in relation to cases where it is alleged that criminal offences have been committed by the sending of a communication via social media. The guidelines are designed to give clear advice to prosecutors who have been asked either for a charging decision or for early advice to the police, as well as in reviewing those cases which have been charged by the police. Adherence to these guidelines will ensure that there is a consistency of approach across the CPS."
  • December 21, 2012
    * TRAC - Deportation Orders Historically Low

    "The latest available data from the Immigration Courts show a continued decline in requests for deportation orders made by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials. According to case-by-case records analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), there were 14,296 new ICE filings for deportation orders during November 2012, down 5.7 percent from the previous month, and down over 25 percent from the monthly average for FY 2012. Moreover, the proportion of individuals ordered to leave the country has fallen precipitously since TRAC's systematic tracking began in 1998. During the first two months of FY 2013 only 56.3 percent of Immigration Court closures resulted in a removal or voluntary departure order. By contrast, 74.3 percent of all court closures resulted in deportation orders in FY 1998, and just two years ago (FY 2011) the rate was 70.2 percent. TRAC's monthly bulletin on the latest Immigration Court numbers offers very timely statistics compiled from case-by-case Immigration Court records we receive shortly after the end of each month. For more details, with numbers current as of November 30, 2012, see the latest bulletin."

    * The Protection of Classified Information: The Legal Framework

    The Protection of Classified Information: The Legal Framework, Jennifer K. Elsea, Legislative Attorney. December 17, 2012

  • "The publication of secret information by WikiLeaks and multiple media outlets, followed by news coverage of leaks involving high-profile national security operations, has heightened interest in the legal framework that governs security classification and declassification, access to classified information, agency procedures for preventing and responding to unauthorized disclosures, and penalties for improper disclosure. Classification authority generally rests with the executive branch, although Congress has enacted legislation regarding the protection of certain sensitive information. While the Supreme Court has stated that the President has inherent constitutional authority to control access to sensitive information relating to the national defense or to foreign affairs, no court has found that Congress is without authority to legislate in this area. This report provides an overview of the relationship between executive and legislative authority over national security information, and summarizes the current laws that form the legal framework protecting classified information, including current executive orders and some agency regulations pertaining to the handling of unauthorized disclosures of classified information by government officers and employees. The report also summarizes criminal laws that pertain specifically to the unauthorized disclosure of classified information, as well as civil and administrative penalties. Finally, the report describes some recent developments in executive branch security policies and legislation currently before Congress (S. 3454)."
  • December 20, 2012
    * TRAC - FOIA Lawsuits Increase During Obama Administration

    "A new study by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) has found that there were more court complaints asking federal judges to force the government to abide by the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) during the first term of the Obama Administration than there were in the last term of President Bush. While the administration-to-administration increase -- documented in court records for the entire FY 2005 to FY 2012 period -- was relatively small at 6 percent, a comparison of the FOIA filings in the last two years of Mr. Bush's second term and the last two years of Mr. Obama's first term showed a far more pronounced jump of 28 percent -- from 562 to 720. For more detailed information about the growing number of FOIA suits in the last two years, including which federal departments had the worst and best records, view the latest report from the FOIA Project."

    December 19, 2012
    * FTC Strengthens Kids’ Privacy By Amending Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule

    New release: "The Federal Trade Commission adopted final amendments to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule that strengthen kids' privacy protections and give parents greater control over the personal information that websites and online services may collect from children under 13. The FTC initiated a review in 2010 to ensure that the COPPA Rule keeps up with evolving technology and changes in the way children use and access the Internet, including the increased use of mobile devices and social networking. The updates to the COPPA Rule reflect careful consideration of the entire record of the rulemaking, which included a public roundtable and several rounds of public comments sought by the agency."

    * Guides to Mass Shootings in America

    Mark Follman, Gavin Aronsen, and Deanna Pan: "On December 14, a mass shooter killed 27 people at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. Among the fatalities were 20 children, six adults, and the shooter, who also killed his mother at her home. More details here. This guide and map have been updated with data from the Newtown massacre. It's perhaps too easy to forget how many times this has happened. The horrific mass murder at a movie theater in Colorado on July 20, another at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin on August 5, another at a manufacturer in Minneapolis on September 27—and now the unthinkable nightmare at a Connecticut elementary school on December 14—are the latest in an epidemic of such gun violence over the last three decades. Since 1982, there have been at least 62 mass murders* carried out with firearms across the country, with the killings unfolding in 30 states from Massachusetts to Hawaii. We've mapped them below, including details on the shooters' identities, the types of weapons they used, and the number of victims they injured and killed." See also

    December 17, 2012
    * Finding Illinois Law: A Librarian's Guide for Non-Lawyers

    Lyonette Louis-Jacques: "The Chicago Association of Law Libraries (CALL) Government Relations Committee recently published the following free guide to researching Illinois law - Finding Illinois Law: A Librarian's Guide for Non-Lawyers (December 2012)."

    * CRS - Intelligence Identities Protection Act

    Intelligence Identities Protection Act, Jennifer K. Elsea, Legislative Attorney/ December 13, 2012

  • "Concern that government documents obtained by WikiLeaks and disclosed to several newspapers could reveal the identities of United States intelligence agents or informants focused attention on whether the disclosure or publication of such information could give rise to criminal liability. This report summarizes the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA; P.L. 97-200), enacted by Congress in 1982 to address the unauthorized disclosure of information that exposes covert U.S. intelligence agents. The act, as amended, is codified at 50 U.S.C. §§421-426, and provides criminal penalties in certain circumstances for intentional, unauthorized disclosure of information identifying a covert agent, where those making such a disclosure know that the information disclosed identifies the covert agent as such and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal the covert agent’s foreign intelligence relationship to the United States. The act prescribes punishments for disclosing the identities of covert agents with increasing severity according to the level of access to classified information the offender exploited. Offenders without authorized access to classified information are subject to punishment only if they participated in a pattern of activity designed to discover and reveal the identities of covert agents and have reason to believe that such disclosure will harm U.S. intelligence operations."
  • * Judicial Activity Concerning Enemy Combatant Detainees: Major Court Rulings

    CRS - Judicial Activity Concerning Enemy Combatant Detainees: Major Court Rulings. December 11, 2012

  • "This report discusses major judicial opinions concerning suspected enemy belligerents detained in the conflict with Al Qaeda and the Taliban. The report addresses all Supreme Court decisions concerning enemy combatants. It also discusses notable circuit court opinions addressing issues of ongoing relevance. In particular, it summarizes notable decisions which have (1) addressed whether the Executive may lawfully detain only persons who are “part of” Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and affiliated groups, or also those who provide support to such entities in their hostilities against the United States and its allies; (2) adopted a functional approach for assessing whether a person is “part of” Al Qaeda; (3) decided that a preponderance of evidence standard is appropriate for detainee habeas cases, but suggested that a lower standard might be constitutionally permissible, and instructed courts to assess the cumulative weight of evidence rather than each piece of evidence in isolation; (4) determined that Guantanamo detainees have a limited right to challenge their proposed transfer to foreign custody, but denied courts the authority to order detainees released into the United States; and (5) held that the constitutional writ of habeas does not presently extend to noncitizen detainees held at U.S.-operated facilities in Afghanistan. Finally, the report discusses a few criminal cases involving persons who were either involved in the 9/11 attacks (Zacarias Moussaoui) or were captured abroad by U.S. forces or allies during operations against Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated entities (John Walker Lindh and Ahmed Ghailani)."
  • December 15, 2012
    * FTC and Google Settlement Reporting in the Works

    POLITICO: "Federal regulators may end a two-year antitrust probe of Google’s search business by letting the company make voluntary changes, such as limiting use of restaurant and travel reviews from other websites and letting search ad campaigns be easily ported to rival search services, two sources with knowledge of the case told POLITICO. The FTC is also preparing to enter into a settlement with Google on a related case over how the company uses its acquired stockpile of patents against competitors, as POLITICO reported last week. Under the patent agreement, Google will curtail using key patents it picked up when it purchased Motorola Mobility to block competitors infringing those patents from getting their products to the market, although there are exceptions, sources said."

    * FindLaw - Data Stored on Cell Phones Not Protected, Fed. Court Rules

    FindLaw - "Data stored on personal cell phones is not protected by the Stored Communications Act (SCA), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has ruled. As mobile technology changes rapidly, legal questions remain about the extent of digital privacy protection. The Fifth Circuit determined that the act does not protect information stored on personal devices such as cell phones, laptops and personal computers. The lawsuit was brought by a former police dispatcher who was dismissed after photos and text messages on her cell phone revealed that she was violating police department rules. The plaintiff's cell phone was removed from her locker and searched without her permission. The SCA only protects "facilit[ies] through which an electronic communication service is provided" and not the device that is used to access those communication services, the court explained."

    December 14, 2012
    * TRAC - Federal Money Laundering Enforcement Efforts Lag

    Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse - "For the recently ended fiscal year 2012, there were 310 new criminal prosecutions for money laundering offenses, according to the latest available data from the Justice Department. This number is down by 4 percent from last year, and down 40 percent from a peak reached in fiscal year 2005, the first year of the second administration of President George W. Bush. Of the 310 money laundering prosecutions in FY 2012, Justice Department records showed that more than two out of three (222 of the total, or 72 percent) were non-drug-related and only 88 (or 28 percent) were drug-related. Drug-related money laundering prosecutions are down 12 percent from last year and down 60 percent from seven years ago; other money laundering prosecutions are unchanged from last year and down 24 percent from seven years ago. For more details, including a timeline back to 1995, a breakdown by investigative agency, and the top ranked judicial districts for both categories of money laundering offense, read the report."

    December 12, 2012
    * U.S. DOT Proposes Broader Use of Event Data Recorders to Help Improve Vehicle Safety

    News release and Federal Register Notice: "In August 2006, NHTSA established a regulation that sets forth requirements for data elements, data capture and format, data retrieval, and data crash survivability for event data recorders (EDRs) installed in light vehicles. The requirements apply to light vehicles that are manufactured on or after September 1, 2012, and are equipped with EDRs. However, the regulation does not mandate the installation of EDRs in those vehicles. This notice of proposed rulemaking would establish a new safety standard mandating the installation of EDRs in most light vehicles manufactured on or after September 1, 2014. The EDRs in those vehicles would be required by the new standard to meet the data elements, data capture and format, data retrieval, and data crash survivability requirements of the existing regulation. This proposal would not modify any of the requirements or specifications in the regulation for EDRs voluntarily installed between September 1, 2012 and September 1, 2014."

    * Right to Work Laws: Legislative Background and Empirical Research

    CRS - Right to Work Laws: Legislative Background and Empirical Research, Benjamin Collins, Analyst in Labor Policy. December 6, 2012

  • "The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) establishes most private-sector workers’ rights to unionize and collectively bargain over wages, benefits, and working conditions. Enacted in 1935, the NLRA also permits collective bargaining contracts between employers and labor organizations that require every individual covered by the collective bargaining contract to pay dues to the negotiating labor organization. These contract provisions are known as union security agreements. Since the NLRA was amended by the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947, individual states have been permitted to supersede the union security provisions of the NLRA by enacting laws that prohibit union security agreements. These state laws are known as right to work (RTW) laws. Currently, 23 states have RTW laws. Of these, 12 states passed RTW laws prior to 1950 and another six passed them prior to 1960. The two most recent states to adopt RTW laws are Oklahoma (2001) and Indiana (2012). Several other state legislatures are debating RTW laws. Recent legislative proposals, with substantial numbers of cosponsors, would expand RTW policies nationwide. Advocates of national RTW laws claim that they would enhance personal freedom and employer flexibility. Opponents argue that such laws would weaken workers’ abilities to collectively bargain for more favorable compensation and working conditions. Proposals aiming to expand RTW policies typically strike the provisions of the NLRA that permit union security agreements."
  • December 11, 2012
    * CRS Reports - Iran’s Ballistic Missile and Space Launch Programs, Syria's Chemical Weapons, Egypt, Right to Work Laws

    The following reports are via FAS:

    * Drunk Driving Laws

    Drunk Driving Laws, December 2012. Governors Highway Safety Association

    • All states define driving with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) at or above 0.08 percent as a crime, although specific laws and penalties can vary substantially from state to state. Administrative license suspensions allow law enforcement to confiscate a driver's license when he or she fails a chemical test. Several states grant limited driving privileges – such as driving to and from work – to drivers whose license has been suspended if the driver is able to demonstrate special hardship. All states have some type of ignition interlock law, in which judges require all or a portion of convicted drunk drivers to install interlocks in their cars. These devices analyze a driver's breath and disable the engine if alcohol is detected. Federal programs transfer surface transportation funding to the Section 402 highway safety grant program for states that fail to adopt open container and repeat offender laws.

    * Cell Phone and Texting Laws - Governors Highway Safety Administration

    "This chart outlines state distracted driving laws. Some localities have additional regulations. Enforcement type is shown in parenthesis.

    • Handheld Cell Phone Use: 10 states, D.C., Guam and the Virgin Islands prohibit all drivers from using handheld cell phones while driving. Except for Maryland and West Virginia (until July 2013), all laws are primary enforcement—an officer may cite a driver for using a handheld cell phone without any other traffic offense taking place.
    • All Cell Phone Use: No state bans all cell phone use for all drivers, but many prohibit use by certain subsets: 32 states and D.C. ban all cell phone use by novice drivers. School bus drivers in 19 states and D.C. may not use a cell phone when passengers are present.
    • Text Messaging: 39 states, D.C., Guam and the Virgin Islands ban text messaging for all drivers. All but 4 have primary enforcement. An additional 5 states prohibit text messaging by novice drivers. 3 states restrict school bus drivers from texting.
    • Some states such as Maine, N.H. and Utah treat cell phone use as part of a broader distracted driving issue. In Utah, cellphone use is an offense only if a driver also commits another moving violation (other than speeding)."

    * Trafficking in Persons: U.S. Policy and Issues for Congress

    CRS - Trafficking in Persons: U.S. Policy and Issues for Congress, Alison Siskin, Specialist in Immigration Policy; Liana Sun Wyler, Analyst in International Crime and Narcotics. December 7, 2012

  • "Trafficking in persons (TIP) for the purposes of exploitation is believed to be one of the most prolific areas of international criminal activity and is of significant concern to the United States and the international community. According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), some 20.9 million individuals today are estimated to be victims of forced labor and related TIP. As many as 17,500 people are believed to be trafficked into the United States each year, and some have estimated that 100,000 U.S. citizen children are victims of trafficking within the United States."
  • December 10, 2012
    * EPO and SIPO launch Chinese-English machine translation for patents

    News release: "Breaking new ground in providing access to the most comprehensive technological information, the European Patent Office (EPO) and the State Intellectual Property Office of the People's Republic of China (SIPO) today launched the Chinese-English component of the EPO's free automatic translation service Patent Translate. As a result, the collections of the two largest languages in patents are now united as full-text documents on the same website through the EPO's global patent database, Espacenet, and linguistically accessible for innovators from both regions using a single tool, Patent Translate. Under the new arrangement with SIPO, Espacenet has grown by 4 million Chinese language documents, adding to the 75 million documents already available."

    December 07, 2012
    * FTC Submits Testimony to U.S. Civil Rights Commission on Fair Credit Reporting Act

    "The Federal Trade Commission submitted written testimony to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights regarding the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and the use of consumer reports in employment. The Fair Credit Reporting Act promotes the accuracy, fairness, and privacy of information in the files of consumer reporting agencies (CRAs). The FTC testimony describes some of the legal rights and obligations prescribed by the FCRA when consumer reports are used for employment purposes, including the following:

    • CRAs must have reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy of reports;
    • CRAs must notify employers of their obligations under the FCRA;
    • Employers have to obtain the written consent of applicants and employees before using consumer reports for employment purposes;
    • Employers must provide notice to applicants and employees along with a summary of their rights under the FCRA before taking an adverse action against them based on a consumer report; and
    • Consumers have the right to obtain a copy of their consumer report and dispute erroneous or incomplete information with the CRA.

    * EFF's Guide to CDA 230: The Most Important Law Protecting Online Speech

    News release: "In 1996, while debating the intricacies of a bill that would massively overhaul the telecommunications laws of the United States, two astute Congressmen introduced an amendment that would allow the Internet to flourish. The amendment - which would become Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA 230) - stated that "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." In other words, online intermediaries that host or republish speech - blogs, review sites, social networks, and more - are protected against a range of laws that might otherwise be used to hold them legally responsible for what others say and do. CDA 230 is crucial to the free flow of expression online. While the rest of the Communications Decency Act, an attempt by the government to regulate indecent content online, was found unconstitutional by the courts, Section 230 survived. As Judge Wilkinson put it in the seminal CDA 230 case, Zeran v. America Online, "Section 230 was enacted, in part, to maintain the robust nature of Internet communication, and accordingly, to keep government interference in the medium to a minimum." Websites could edit, filter, and screen content if they wanted without being held liable for the content itself...To better inform everyone on the Internet of the importance of this law, we have created an extensive guide to CDA 230.."

    December 02, 2012
    * European Case Law Identifier (ECLI)

    Via the European e-Justice Portal - "The European Case Law Identifier (ECLI) has been developed to facilitate the correct and unequivocal citation of judgments from European and national courts related to EU law. A set of uniform metadata will help to improve search facilities for case law. Before ECLI, it was difficult and time-consuming to find relevant case law. Take, for example, a case where a ruling of the Supreme Court of Member State A was known to be of interest for a specific legal debate. The case was registered in various national and cross-border case law databases, but in each database the ruling had a different identifier. All these identifiers – if known at all – had to be cited to enable readers of the citation to find the case in the database of their preference. Different citation rules and styles complicated the search. Moreover, users had to go to all the databases to find out whether this Supreme Court case was available – summarized, translated or annotated. With the ECLI system one search via one search interface using just one identifier will suffice to find all occurrences of the ruling in all participating national and cross-border databases. Easy access to judicial decisions of other Member States is of growing importance in reinforcing the role of the national judge in applying and upholding EU law. Searching for, and citation of judgments from other Member States is seriously hampered by differences in national case law identification systems, citation rules and technical fields describing the characteristics of a judgment. To overcome these differences and to facilitate easy access to - and citation of - national, foreign and European case law, the Council of the European Union invited Member States and EU institutions to introduce the European Case Law Identifier (ECLI) and a minimum set of uniform metadata for case law."

    * National Archives Posts Unsealed Materials from U.S. v. Liddy

    "On May 1, 2009, Professor Luke Nichter of Texas A&M University-Central Texas petitioned Chief Judge Royce Lamberth of the District Court for the District of Columbia to release records sealed in the case of U.S. v. Liddy, the Watergate break-in case. The sealed proceedings include evidentiary discussions held outside the jury's hearing, pretrial discussions between defendants' lawyers and the Court, and post-trial sentencing information. On November 2, 2012, the District Court for the District of Columbia ordered most of these records to be unsealed, given the passage of time, completion of the criminal proceedings, and non-invasive nature of the content. Consistent with the recommendation of the Department of Justice, the court ordered that the following categories of records remain sealed, pending further review by the court: Personal documents regarding living individuals; Documents regarding the content of illegally obtained wiretaps; and Grand Jury information. Accordingly, the court directed the National Archives to release the uncontested records within 30 days from the date of the Order. The National Archives is therefore releasing the previously sealed records from U.S. v. Liddy, with the three categories of contested materials removed and marked "Court Sealed." If/when the Court later unseals additional materials, the National Archives will make them available. NARA is releasing 36 folders of documents totaling approximately 950 pages."

    November 27, 2012
    * Introduction to Basic Legal Citation

    Introduction to Basic Legal Citation, Peter W. Martin

  • "This work first appeared in 1993. It was most recently revised in the fall of 2012 to take account of changes in the citation rules of a small number of U.S. jurisdictions and the format of currency information furnished for statutes by LexisNexis and Westlaw. As was true of the editions released in 2010 and 2011 it is indexed to the fourth edition of the ALWD Citation Manual and the nineteenth edition of The Bluebook, both published in 2010. The eBook versions are based off of the 2012 online edition of Introduction to Basic Legal Citation by Peter W. Martin. Professor Martin requests that you donate to the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law if you would like to show your support for this free work."
  • November 26, 2012
    * TRAC Launches New Judge Info Center

    TRAC has now created a new Judge Info Center which features links to four special reports on the working of the federal courts. Also available is a detailed description of the data on which these reports are based, a video tutorial, and information on gaining access to interactive reports about any district court judge who has sentenced at least 50 individuals since FY 2007."

    * TRAC - Sentencing Deviations Within Many Courthouses

    "According to a new report by the Transactional Access Records Clearinghouse (TRAC)...tables identifying the 25 courthouses that had the widest sentencing differences among the judges that served in them, and the 28 courthouses that had the narrowest. The five at the top of the list were: Baltimore, Columbia (South Carolina), Philadelphia, Macon (Middle District of Georgia) and Norfolk (Eastern District of Virginia)."

    November 25, 2012
    * Comparative Study of Constitutions of OIC Countries, 2012 Update

    "USCIRF’s [United States Commission on International Religious Freedom] 2012 report, The Religion-State Relationship & the Right to Freedom of Religion or Belief: A Comparative Textual Analysis of the Constitutions of Majority Muslim Countries and Other OIC Members, analyzes how constitutions of countries belonging to the OIC treat issues of human rights and religious freedom. This study, which updates a study USCIRF undertook in 2005, focuses on 56 countries. The study finds that these countries, stretching from Europe to Africa through the Middle East and into Asia, encompass a variety of constitutional arrangements addressing the role of Islam and the scope of religious freedom and other related human rights. A constitution’s text is important as both a statement of fundamental law and national aspirations, and a tool for those seeking to enforce its promises."

    * The State of Human Trafficking in California 2012

    The State of Human Trafficking in California 2012

  • "Human trafficking is an estimated $32 billion-a-year global industry. After drug trafficking, human trafficking is the world’s second most profitable criminal enterprise, a status it shares with illegal arms trafficking. Like drug and arms trafficking, the United States is one of the top destination countries for trafficking in persons. California – a populous border state with
    a significant immigrant population and the world’s ninth largest economy – is one of the nation’s top four destination states for trafficking human beings...72% of human trafficking victims whose country of origin was identified by California’s task forces are American. The public perception is that human trafficking victims are from other countries, but data from California’s task forces indicate that the vast majority are Americans."
  • * KPMG General Counsel Survey 2012

    "Companies around the world are threatened by a growing tide of regulation, according to a new report by KPMG which charts the views of 320 in-house General Counsel, but finds those using their legal skills to help make commercial decisions are the ones that will best thrive in the new environment. The report, Beyond the Law KPMG’s global study of how General Counsel are turning risk to advantage, conducted by global research agency Meridien West, interviewed General Counsel from 32 countries who gave their views on a wide range of issues, from relationships with the Board to the risk and regulatory challenges ahead and managing future disputes. Although only 38 percent sit of respondents sit on the main Board of their organizations, 70 percent agreed that giving commercial advice to the board is now just as important as giving legal advice. Kathryn Britten, Global Head of KPMG’s Legal Services Sector, said: “Companies are facing a cloud of regulation that is adding a layer of complexity to almost every commercial decision that they need to take and risks casting a further shadow at a time of low economic growth in mature economies. General Counsel are increasingly being required to act as the barometer for their organizations, gauging the pressure and helping to scan the horizon for future threats. It is clear that involving general counsel in commercial decision making is now the norm for those companies that are successfully navigating today’s risk landscape."

    * Human Rights Indicators - Indicators to promote and monitor the implementation of human rights

    "The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has published Human Rights Indicators: A Guide to Measurement and Implementation. The publication aims to assist in developing quantitative and qualitative indicators to measure progress in the implementation of international human rights norms and principles. The Guide describes the conceptual and methodological framework for human rights indicators recommended by international and national human rights mechanisms and used by a growing number of governmental and non-governmental actors. It provides concrete examples of indicators identified for a number of human rights—all originating from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—and other practical tools and illustrations, to support the realization of human rights at all levels. The Guide will be of interest to human rights advocates as well as policymakers, development practitioners, statisticians and others who are working to make human rights a reality for all."

    November 24, 2012
    * Pacer federal court record fees exceed system costs

    Shane Shifflett and Jennifer Gollan: "The federal government has collected millions from the online Public Access to Court Electronic Records system, or PACER – nearly five times what it cost to run the system. Between fiscal years 2006 and 2010, the government collected an average of $77 million a year from PACER fees, according to the most recent federal figures available."

    * Report: At America's Expense: The Mass Incarceration of the Elderly

    "At America’s Expense compiles extensive data detailing epidemic of aging prisoners in the United States. It provides a comprehensive 50-state and federal analysis of the unnecessary incarceration of aging prisoners and provides a fiscal analysis showing the actual amount states would save, on average, by releasing aging prisoners: over $66,000 per year per released prisoner. The report also includes new data showing that the elderly population is growing because of harsh sentencing laws and not because of new crimes, as well as data highlighting the low public safety risks posed by elderly prisoners. At America’s Expense supplies detailed and practical legislative solutions that states and the federal government can implement to address the dramatic and costly growth in the number of elderly prisoners without putting communities at risk."

    November 22, 2012
    * Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s 2013 Corporate Equality Index

    "Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s 2013 Corporate Equality Index is the national benchmarking tool on corporate policies and practices related to LGBT employees. This year, the CEI saw the largest growth in the survey’s history -- with 54 new businesses opting in -- proving that Corporate America is committed to LGBT equality. In addition, a record number of businesses, spanning nearly every industry and major geographic area of the U.S., ranked as top scorers on this year's CEI. The CEI report, released each fall, provides an in-depth analysis and rating of large U.S. employers and their policies and practices pertinent to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees. Businesses rated 100 percent are recognized in our "Best Places to Work" list, and are invited to apply for the HRC Award for Workplace Equality Innovation. All consumer-oriented businesses are included in our "Buying for Equality" guide."

    November 20, 2012
    * Statement by FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection Director On Judge’s Approval of Google Safari Settlement

    News release: "Federal Trade Commission Bureau of Consumer Protection Director David Vladeck issued the following statement regarding a federal judge’s approval of the FTC proposed order and $22.5 million civil penalty settling charges that Google misrepresented privacy assurances to users of Apple’s Safari Internet browser in violation of a previous FTC settlement Order: “The court’s approval of the Commission’s record setting $22.5 million fine against Google is a clear victory for consumers and privacy. As this case and many others demonstrate, the Commission will continue to ensure that its orders are obeyed, and that consumers’ privacy is protected.”

    November 19, 2012
    * FTC Warns Mortgage Advertisers that Their Ads May Violate Federal Law

    News release: "After reviewing hundreds of mortgage advertisements, the Federal Trade Commission staff has sent letters to 20 companies, warning them that their ads may be deceptive. The FTC sent its warning letters to real estate agents, home builders, and lead generators, urging them to review their advertisements for compliance with the Mortgage Acts and Practices Advertising Rule and the FTC Act. The FTC sent the letters in coordination with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which issued warning letters to approximately a dozen other companies. The CFPB sent its warning letters to mortgage brokers and lenders. Both agencies have opened nonpublic law enforcement investigations of other advertisers that may have violated federal law."

    November 18, 2012
    * List of State Anti-Price Gouging Laws

    List of State Anti-Price Gouging Laws by Michael Giberson

  • "Here is Michael Giberson's current list of states with anti-price gouging laws, noting the date of the initial price gouging law, reference, and occasionally a link to the law or an added note. At the end of the table is a list of resources I’ve used to compile this list (which have been supplemented by some good old-fashioned Google searching)."
  • * Writing an escalation contract using the Consumer Price Index

    Writing an escalation contract using the Consumer Price Index, by Malik Crawford and Kenneth J. Stewart, Consumer Price Index program

  • "Each year thousands of people write contracts with escalation clauses that are tied to the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Escalation contracts call for an increase in some type of payment in the event of an increase in prices. These contracts are used in a wide variety of ways, from adjusting rent prices to adding cost-of-living adjustments to alimony payments and wage contracts. Unfortunately, many escalation contracts tied to the CPI are vague. For example, a contract may stipulate that “the Consumer Price Index (CPI)” be used to escalate an apartment rent, but the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) publishes thousands of CPIs each month, so a more carefully worded contract could minimize ambiguity and the likelihood of future disputes. This issue of Beyond the Numbers can help those who use the CPI to write escalation clauses to create a more comprehensive contract."
  • * New surveys indicate sea change in legal research billing costs to clients

    Rachel M. Zahorsky, ABA Journal: "More and more billing partners are knocking research costs off invoices before they’re even submitted to clients, legal consultant Rob Mattern of Mattern & Associates recently told me...This trend is apparent at firms that negotiate deals with research providers but historically haven’t passed along discounts they received to their clients, sometimes as a means to collect on other, nonbillable items, Mattern added. Mattern's firm’s 2012 Cost Recovery survey reported an influx of firms with clients who either balked at or outright refused to pay for legal research. While some firms have adopted policies to charge clients only the hard costs billed to them, others are adding legal research charges to the cost of doing business. In fact, 43 percent of law firm respondents said they absorb more of their legal research costs today than in 2010, according to a recent Bloomberg Law survey of 97 law firms, ranging from 50 to more than 400 attorneys. And transactional matters are less likely to recover legal research costs than litigation."

    * Federal Laws Relating to Cybersecurity: Discussion of Proposed Revisions

    CRS - Federal Laws Relating to Cybersecurity: Discussion of Proposed Revisions. Eric A. Fischer, Senior Specialist in Science and Technology, November 9, 2012

  • "For more than a decade, various experts have expressed increasing concerns about cybersecurity, in light of the growing frequency, impact, and sophistication of attacks on information systems in the United States and abroad. Consensus has also been building that the current legislative framework for cybersecurity might need to be revised. The complex federal role in cybersecurity involves both securing federal systems and assisting in protecting nonfederal systems. Under current law, all federal agencies have cybersecurity responsibilities relating to their own systems, and many have sector-specific responsibilities for critical infrastructure. More than 50 statutes address various aspects of cybersecurity either directly or indirectly, but there is no overarching framework legislation in place. While revisions to most of those laws have been proposed over the past few years, no major cybersecurity legislation has been enacted since 2002."
  • November 17, 2012
    * Google presses on with claim that book scanning is fair use

    Jeff John Roberts: "Google asked an appeals court to throw out a ruling that let the Authors Guild sue on behalf of all writers whose books were scanned without permission. Google argues most authors support the scanning and that the case should be decided on a book-by-book basis."

    November 15, 2012
    * BP Pleads Guilty to Felony Manslaughter, Environmental Crimes and Obstruction of Congress Surrounding Deepwater Horizon Incident

    News release: "BP Exploration and Production Inc. (BP) has agreed to plead guilty to felony manslaughter, environmental crimes and obstruction of Congress and pay a record $4 billion in criminal fines and penalties for its conduct leading to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster that killed 11 people and caused the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history, Attorney General Eric Holder announced today. The 14-count information, filed today in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Louisiana, charges BP with 11 counts of felony manslaughter, one count of felony obstruction of Congress, and violations of the Clean Water and Migratory Bird Treaty Acts. BP has signed a guilty plea agreement with the government, also filed today, admitting to its criminal conduct. As part of its guilty plea, BP has agreed, subject to the Court’s approval, to pay $4 billion in criminal fines and penalties – the largest criminal resolution in United States history."

  • Bloomberg: Why $4.5 Billion Doesn’t Get BP off the Hook
  • * Privacy: An Overview of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act

    Privacy: An Overview of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, Charles Doyle - Senior Specialist in American Public Law - October 9, 2012

  • "This report provides an overview of federal law governing wiretapping and electronic eavesdropping under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). It also appends citations to state law in the area and the text of ECPA. It is a federal crime to wiretap or to use a machine to capture the communications of others without court approval, unless one of the parties has given his prior consent. It is likewise a federal crime to use or disclose any information acquired by illegal wiretapping or electronic eavesdropping. Violations can result in imprisonment for not more than five years; fines up to $250,000 (up to $500,000 for organizations); civil liability for damages, attorneys’ fees and possibly punitive damages; disciplinary action against any attorneys involved; and suppression of any derivative evidence. Congress has created separate, but comparable, protective schemes for electronic communications (e.g., email) and against the surreptitious use of telephone call monitoring practices such as pen registers and trap and trace devices. Each of these protective schemes comes with a procedural mechanism to afford limited law enforcement access to private communications and communications records under conditions consistent with the dictates of the Fourth Amendment. The government has been given narrowly confined authority to engage in electronic surveillance, conduct physical searches, and install and use pen registers and trap and trace devices for law enforcement purposes under ECPA and for purposes of foreign intelligence gathering under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act."
  • * 51st issue of The Global Employer - The Social Media Issue

    The Global Employer™ - The Social Media Issue, Paul Brown, Carlos A. Felce, Guenther H. Heckelmann, Cynthia L. Jackson. Baker & McKenzie

  • "Social media presents particular implications for managing employment relations within organizations. The use and abuse of social media can touch on all aspects of the employment relationship: from employers digging social media data as a recruitment tool, to the control of employees’ social media use, to monitoring and the private vs. public debate, to questions over the ownership of data, to disciplinary and termination issues and what an employer can lawfully do when it believes an employee has overstepped the social media mark, to post-termination competition issues. These are all issues that we are talking about with our clients on an increasingly frequent basis. So we thought that the time was ripe to address these questions within this publication. We are delighted to present a country by country guide to social media in the workplace with contributions from 17 of our offices across Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America and North America. Each office has addressed the same set of questions covering employment issues from recruitment through to termination, through to post-termination competition, through to the use of social media in legal proceedings.
  • November 13, 2012
    * EPIC - Supreme Court Limits Remedies for Credit Card Privacy Violations

    EPIC: In U.S. v. Bormes, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the government could not be sued for violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act under an 1887 law that waived governmental immunity for certain claims "premised on other sources of law." The case arose after an attorney paid a federal-court filing fee with his credit card and noticed that the receipt included personal information in violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act. He then sued the government under the Little Tucker Act, which waives sovereign immunity "for claims premised on other sources of law." Justice Scalia, writing for a unanimous Court, held that the attorney could not sue the government under the Little Tucker Act because the Fair Credit Reporting Act has its own detailed damages provision, and "[w]here...a statute contains its own self-executing remedial scheme, we look only to that statute to determine whether Congress intended to subject the United States to dam¬ages liability." The Court sent the case back to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals to determine whether the government may be sued under the Fair Credit Reporting Act itself. For more information, see EPIC: Fair Credit Reporting Act."

    November 12, 2012
    * National Inventory of the Collateral Consequences of Conviction

    "The collateral consequences of a criminal conviction — legal sanctions and restrictions imposed upon people because of their criminal record — are hard to find and harder to understand. Now it will be easier to do both. Congress directed the National Institute of Justice to collect and study collateral consequences in all U.S. jurisdictions, and NIJ selected the ABA Criminal Justice Section to perform the necessary research and analysis. The results are now being made available through this interactive tool."

    * New on LLRX - Arson and the Science of Fire

    Via LLRX.com - Arson and the Science of Fire: Ken Strutin's expert commentary focuses on the duality of fire as both a science and a set of actions and behaviors initiated by individuals and groups. Strutin documents how these factors relate to the complexities of criminal prosecutions in this arena, and how assumptions about the former have led to misjudgments about the latter. Further, he examines how progress in the understanding of how fires begin and spread has called into question the integrity of arson convictions. His guide is a collection of selected research publications, web resources and case studies as well as scholarly legal articles and scientific reports on arson investigation and fire science.

    * EU Commission launches consultation on transnational company agreements

    "A European Commission consultation document has highlighted the fact that transnational company agreements (TCAs) began to be concluded in significant numbers from 2000. By the start of 2012, about 144 companies had concluded at least one European Framework Agreement (EFA) or International Framework Agreement (IFA), covering a total of 10 million employees. In 2008, the Commission published a staff working document on the role of TCAs, suggesting the creation of a voluntary European framework developing clear rules for such issues as negotiation procedures and legal certainty. A group of experts came together to examine this issue further. The group had met six times by 2011, and produced a report that was published at the beginning of 2012. In addition, a conference on restructuring was organised in Lyon in 2008 under the French Council Presidency, and two studies were produced. The first study clarified to what extent TCAs were governed by rules of private international law and how such rules would apply to these agreements. The second study focused on the legal implications of these agreements. The Commission also set up in 2011 a database on transnational company agreements. In its communication Towards a job-rich recovery, published in April 2012, the Commission said it intended to ‘develop further action to disseminate good practice and promote debate with respect to TCAs’, stressing its view that their role needed to be better recognised and supported."

    November 11, 2012
    * New on LLRX - Litigation, trial and pre-trail iPad apps for lawyers

    Via LLRX - Litigation, trial and pre-trail iPad apps for lawyers: One of the most popular and rapidly growing categories of apps for lawyers are those developed for litigation, during trials and during the pretrial discovery phase. In this article, attorney, legal blogger and legal tech expert Nicole Black recommends more than a dozen affordable, flexible and innovative iPad apps to assist attorneys in their work to develop, streamline, simplify and track critical litigation processes.

    * UNESCO launches Global Survey on Internet Privacy and Freedom of Expression

    "How do the “digital footprints” of Internet and cellphone users affect privacy, and what impact does this have on freedom of expression? These questions lie at the heart of a new study released by UNESCO this week...This publication seeks to identify the relationship between freedom of expression and Internet privacy, assessing where they support or compete with each other in different circumstances. The book maps out the issues in the current regulatory landscape of Internet privacy from the viewpoint of freedom of expression. It provides an overview of legal protection, self-regulatory guidelines, normative challenges, and case studies relating to the topic.

  • Global survey on Internet privacy and freedom of expression
  • * Only 43% of Countries Disclose Public Officials’ Financial Assets, Says World Bank

    News release: "Financial disclosure laws requiring public officials to file a statement of their assets, liabilities and interests can make corruption easier to detect. However, a new World Bank database finds that although 78 percent of countries covered by the database have financial disclosure systems, only 36 percent systematically check public servants’ disclosures for irregularities and inconsistencies. To support countries in their fight against corruption, the World Bank is launching the Financial Disclosure Law Library to help policymakers and practitioners establish strong financial disclosure systems. The Library compiles over 1,000 laws and regulations on financial disclosure and restrictions on public officials’ activities from 176 countries."

    November 10, 2012
    * Kaiser - After The Election: A Consumer's Guide To The Health Law

    Mary Agnes Carey and Jenny Gold: "Now that President Barack Obama has won a second term, the Affordable Care Act is back on a fast track. Some analysts argue that there could be modifications to reduce federal spending as part of a broader deficit deal; for now, this is just speculation. What is clear is that the law will have sweeping ramifications for consumers, state officials, employers and health care providers, including hospitals and doctors. While some of the key features don't kick in until 2014, the law has already altered the health care industry and established a number of consumer benefits. Here's a primer on parts of the law already up and running, what's to come and ways that provisions could still be altered."

    November 08, 2012
    * Teen Use of Social Networking Sites and Perceptions of Legal Risk

    De Zwart, Melissa , Lindsay, David F., Henderson, Michael and Phillips, Michael, Randoms vs Weirdos: Teen Use of Social Networking Sites and Perceptions of Legal Risk (2011). (2011) 36(3) Alternative Law Journal 153.; Monash University Faculty of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 44. Available at SSRN

  • This article reports on research to identify the risks relevant to teens when using these services and provide them with practical guidance regarding how to miminise and avoid such risks. The authors, drawn from the education and law disciplines, undertook to ascertain the actual scale and nature of use of SNS among teenagers in years 7 to 10, the perceptions of risk associated with such use and the actual legal risks. The project produced both a report detailing the outcomes of the research and an educational resource to be distributed to all Victorian schools that may be used to assist students, teachers and parents to discuss and critically consider the risks and legal implications of using SNS. This article discusses some key outcomes of the study related to use of SNS and perceptions of legal risks."
  • * October 2012 ends 16-month stretch of above-average nationwide temps

    "According to the latest statistics from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, October 2012 ended the 16-month streak of above-average monthly temperatures for the contiguous Unites States, with an average temperature of 53.9° Fahrenheit, 0.3° Fahrenheit below the long-term average. The maps show where October 2012 (top) and year-to-date (bottom) temperatures were different from the 1981–2010 average across the contiguous United States. Shades of red indicate temperatures up to 5° Fahrenheit warmer than average, and shades of blue indicate temperatures up to 5° Fahrenheit cooler than average - the darker the color, the larger the difference from average temperature."

    * Bankruptcy Filings Down in Fiscal Year 2012

    News release: "Bankruptcy cases filed in federal courts for fiscal year 2012, the 12-month period ending September 30, 2012, totaled 1,261,140, down 14 percent from the 1,467,221 bankruptcy cases filed in FY 2011, according to statistics released by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. Additional statistics released today include business and non-business bankruptcy filings for the 12-month period ending September 30, 2012; a comparison of September 2011 and 2012 filings, 4th quarter filings; monthly filings for the 12-month period ending September 30, 2012, and per capita filings."

  • "For more on bankruptcy and its chapters, visit the Judiciary's website or go to Federal Judicial Center's website. Local bankruptcy court rules can be found on uscourts.gov. Historic data on bankruptcy filings is available on the Judiciary's website under Bankruptcy Statistics. Additional bankruptcy statistics, including bankruptcies by county, can be found on the Judiciary's PACER system.

  • November 07, 2012
    * Foreign Direct Investment in the United States: An Economic Analysis

    CRS - Foreign Direct Investment in the United States: An Economic Analysis. James K. Jackson, Specialist in International Trade and Finance, October 26, 2012

  • "Foreign direct investment in the United States has rebounded slowly after falling from the $310 billion recorded in 2008, a record surpassed only by the $320 billion invested in 2000 in U.S. businesses and real estate. (Note: The United States defines foreign direct investment as the ownership or control, directly or indirectly, by one foreign person [individual, branch, partnership, association, government, etc.] of 10% or more of the voting securities of an incorporated U.S. business enterprise or an equivalent interest in an unincorporated U.S. business enterprise (15 CFR §806.15 [a][1]). In 2011, according to U.S. Department of Commerce data, foreigners invested $234 billion in U.S. businesses and real estate. Foreign direct investments are highly sought after by many state and local governments that are struggling to create additional jobs in their localities. While some in Congress encourage such investment to offset the perceived negative economic effects of U.S. firms investing abroad, others are concerned about foreign acquisitions of U.S. firms that are considered essential to U.S. national and economic security."
  • * The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act: Title VII, Derivatives

    CRS - The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act: Title VII, Derivatives,November 6, 2012

  • "The Dodd-Frank Act (P.L. 111-203) sought to remake the OTC market in the image of the regulated futures exchanges. Crucial reforms include a requirement that swap contracts be cleared through a central counterparty regulated by one or more federal agencies. Clearinghouses require traders to put down cash (called initial margin) at the time they open a contract to cover potential losses, and require subsequent deposits (called maintenance margin) to cover actual losses to the position. The intended effect of margin requirements is to eliminate the possibility that any firm can build up an uncapitalized exposure so large that default would have systemic consequences (again, the AIG situation). The size of a cleared position is limited by the firm’s ability to post capital to cover its losses. That capital protects its trading partners and the system as a whole. Swap dealers and major swap participants - firms with substantial derivatives positions - will be subject to margin and capital requirements above and beyond what the clearinghouses mandate.
    Swaps that are cleared will also be subject to trading on an exchange, or an exchange-like “swap execution facility,” regulated by either the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) or the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), in the case of security-based swaps. All trades will be reported to data repositories, so that regulators will have complete information about all derivatives positions. Data on swap prices and trading volumes will be made public. The Dodd-Frank Act provides exceptions to the clearing and trading requirements for commercial end-users, or firms that use derivatives to hedge the risks of their nonfinancial business operations. Regulators may also provide exemptions for smaller financial institutions. Even trades that are exempt from the clearing and exchange-trading requirements, however, will have to be reported to data repositories or directly to regulators. This report describes some of the requirements placed on the derivatives market by the Dodd- Frank Act. It will be updated as events warrant.
  • * UK - Justice Committee publishes report on the Committee's opinion on EU Data Protection framework proposals

    "According to the Justice Committee, the European Union Data Protection proposals "need to go back to the drawing board".

    * Experiential Learning: Context and Connections for Legal Research – A Case Study

    Experiential Learning: Context and Connections for Legal Research – A Case Study, Cindy Guyer, USC Gould School of Law. November 1, 2012. Via SSRN.

  • "The ABA requires that all law students receive “substantial instruction” in legal research. This article discusses a unique legal research program that meets this requirement by focusing on experiential learning. Two components of experiential learning, context and connections, are explained pedagogically and specifically as to legal research curriculum."
  • November 06, 2012
    * TRAC: Consumer Credit Civil Lawsuits Starting to Fall

    Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse: "The latest available data from the federal courts show that during September 2012 the government reported 723 new consumer credit civil filings, according to the case-by-case information analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). This number is down 8.8 percent over the previous month, when the number of civil filings of this type totaled 793. This year marks a drop in the volume of consumer credit suits after a period of steady increase since the start of the financial crisis. Consumer credit suits, which had averaged 268 per month during FY 2007, tripled to 819 during FY 2011. But for FY 2012, these filings are down 5.6 percent from the level seen in FY 2011. The full report, including a list of those districts in which lawsuits of this kind were filed with the greatest rates relative to population."

    * BJS - Arrest in the United States, 1990-2010

    Arrest in the United States, 1990-2010, Howard N. Snyder, Ph.D - October 31, 2012. NCJ 239423
    "Presents annual estimates of arrests in the United States covering the period between 1990 and 2010. Based on data collected by the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program, this report expands the FBI's set of published arrest estimates to include offense-specific arrest estimates grouped by age, sex, and race. These breakdowns of arrests and arrest trends provide a detailed description of the flow of individuals into the criminal justice system over a long period. The national estimates represent arrests by state and local law enforcement agencies, and control for variations in sample coverage from year to year. Highlights include the following:

    • The number of murder arrests in the U.S. fell by half between 1990 and 2010. The adult and juvenile arrest rates dropped substantially in the 1990s, while both continued to fall about 20% between 2000 and 2010, reaching their lowest levels since at least 1990.
    • There were 80% more arrests for drug possession or use in 2010 than in 1990. Even though the rate declined between 2006 and 2010, the arrest rate for drug possession or use in 2010 was still 46% above its 1990 level and was at levels similar to those seen between 1997 and 2002.
    • The male arrest rate for larceny-theft in 2010 was about half of the rate in 1990. In comparison, the female arrest rate in 2010 was just 8% below its 1990 level. The female rate fell 25% between 1990 and 2000, remained constant for several years, then grew between 2005 and 2010 to erase most of the decline experienced in the 1990s."

    November 05, 2012
    * Field Notes from the Super-Storm Sandy Catastrophe

    Via SSRN: Field Notes from the Super-Storm Sandy Catastrophe, Elizabeth Burleson, Pace Law School, November 4, 2012

  • Sandy struck a strategically important city in a strategically important country within days of a strategically important election. Climate justice has many synergistic and sometimes competing dimensions. Irrespective of the degree to which climate change contributes to any given weather event, climate change has an aggregate effect of increasing the need for effective disaster response. This essay argues that prioritizing human rights and environment in the context of energy-climate-water decision-making offers a best practice model for climate mitigation and adaptive resilience."
  • November 04, 2012
    * Climate Change and Existing Law: A Survey of Legal Issues Past, Present, and Future

    CRS - Climate Change and Existing Law: A Survey of Legal Issues Past, Present, and Future, Robert Meltz, Legislative Attorney, October 25, 2012

    • This report surveys existing law for legal issues that have arisen, or may arise in the future, on account of climate change and government responses thereto. At the threshold of many climate-change-related lawsuits are two barriers — whether the plaintiff has standing to sue and whether the claim being made presents a political question. Both barriers have forced courts to apply amorphous standards in a new and complex context. Efforts to mitigate climate change—that is, reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions — have spawned a host of legal issues. The Supreme Court resolved a big one in 2007 — the Clean Air Act (CAA), it said, does authorize EPA to regulate GHG emissions. Quite recently, a host of issues raised by EPA’s efforts to carry out that authority were resolved in the agency’s favor by the D.C. Circuit. Another issue is whether EPA’s “endangerment finding” for GHG emissions from new motor vehicles will compel EPA to move against GHG emissions under other CAA authorities. Still other mitigation issues are (1) the role of the Endangered Species Act in addressing climate change; (2) how climate change must be considered under the National Environmental Policy Act; (3) liability and other questions raised by carbon capture and sequestration; (4) constitutional constraints on land use regulation and state actions against climate change; and (5) whether the public trust doctrine applies to the atmosphere."
    November 03, 2012
    * Pronouncing Dictionary of the Supreme Court of the United States

    Pronouncing Dictionary of the Supreme Court of the United States: "Although the United States is famously a nation of immigrants, Americans often struggle with the pronunciation of foreign words and names. Mispronunciation of even common foreign words is ubiquitous (Eye-rack and Eye-ran spring to mind). Foreign names in legal matters present a particular challenge for legal professionals. The purpose of the Pronouncing Dictionary of United States Supreme Court cases, compiled by YLS students Usha Chilukuri, Megan Corrarino, Brigid Davis, Kate Hadley, Daniel Jang, Sally Pei, and Yale University Linguistics Department students Diallo Spears and Jason Zentz, working with Florence Rogatz Visiting Lecturer in Law Eugene Fidell, is to help conscientious lawyers, judges, teachers, students, and journalists correctly pronounce often-perplexing case names. Drawing on textbooks, recordings, accounts by litigants or counsel, pronunciation guides, journalism, and surveys, we identified those Supreme Court cases that are most susceptible of mispronunciation and determined the proper pronunciation. To be sure, several factors—including the passage of time, idiosyncratic pronunciation, and Anglicization—make this an inexact process. Where possible, we have ascertained and followed the litigant’s preferred pronunciation. Failing this information, we employed two methods. Where possible, we discerned the etymology of the name, consulted a native speaker of the pertinent language, and Anglicized the pronunciation during the process of transcribing the name. Otherwise, we surveyed five individuals with the surname in question and, where at least four used the same pronunciation, that pronunciation was controlling. The Dictionary is, inevitably, incomplete, but we hope it will be a useful tool for those seeking accuracy and authenticity. Special thanks go to Jason Eiseman of the Lillian Goldman Law Library for technical assistance and advice."

    November 02, 2012
    * TRAC - DOJ Inspector General Overly Critical of EOIR Statistics

    Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC): "The Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the Justice Department has just released a report criticizing the statistics of the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR). Lost in the news coverage of the OIG's report are several important points:

    • First, in criticizing the EOIR numbers, the OIG's report doesn't acknowledge that there is already a source for the very statistics it recommends EOIR develop: TRAC's public website. TRAC compiles these statistics each month using EOIR's official case-by-case records.
    • Second, the OIG does not credit EOIR for the very important role the agency has played in the development of these TRAC statistics. We would be remiss if we did not acknowledge the cooperation we have received from EOIR, which has been truly exceptional in expediting the release of its case-by-case data to TRAC each month under the Freedom of Information Act. Other federal agencies would do well to emulate EOIR's commitment to providing greater public transparency.
    • Third, the OIG report doesn't acknowledge that the approach taken by EOIR in reporting its workload statistics isn't at all unusual. The same approach criticized by the OIG is used by the federal courts in their annual statistical reports, and by other Justice Department components including the Executive Office for United States Attorneys. When cases are transferred from one court to another, or one U.S. Attorney's office to another, the case is counted as a closing in one, and a new filing or receipt in the other. And while the widespread use of this method by other well-respected bodies does not mean that the OIG's criticism is without merit, it does place the issue into a broader context. When measuring "workload" there are equally valid reasons to support the approach used by EOIR and other organizations. Though TRAC long ago adopted the method OIG now recommends, there simply isn't just one "best" method."

    October 31, 2012
    * Paper - U.S. Regulation of Greenhouse Gas Emissions

    U.S. Regulation of Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Philip A.Wallach. October 26, 2012. Governance Studies at Brookings.

  • "Significant congressional efforts to address climate change have failed, and the issue has received almost no attention on the 2012 campaign trail. In spite of these facts, federal regulations designed to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and mitigate climate change are real and growing in importance. Without the benefit of new legislation, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has finalized rules under the Clean Air Act affecting motor vehicle fuel efficiency and emissions from power plants. After surviving a number of legal challenges, these rules will remain in place and grow in importance in coming years. In this research note, Philip Wallach surveys the development of U.S. climate change policy and assesses where GHG regulation can and should go from here."
  • October 30, 2012
    * Coalition launches Open Wireless Movement

    Via EFF: "What is the Open Wireless Movement? Imagine a future with ubiquitous open Internet. We envision a world where, in any urban environment:

    • Dozens of open networks are available at your fingertips.
    • The societal expectation is one of sharing, and, as a result, wireless Internet is more efficient.
    • The false notion that an IP address could be used as a sole identifier is finally a thing of the past, creating a privacy-enhancing norm of shared networks.
    • There are no more restrictive Terms of Service from ISPs requiring closed networks.
    • We're working with a coalition of volunteer engineers to build technologies that will let users open their wireless networks without compromising their security or sacrificing bandwidth. And we're working with advocates to help change the way people and businesses think about Internet service."

    October 29, 2012
    * House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Report on Fast and Furious Operation, Part 2

    Follow up to related postings on ATF's Operation Fast and Furious program, see Fast and Furious: The Anatomy of a Failed Operation Part 2 of 3 - October 29, 2012

  • Chairman Darrell Issa: "The report discloses widespread management failures within the hierarchy of the Justice Department. The Justice Department has yet to evaluate these management issues and implement structural changes to prevent another disaster like Operation Fast and Furious from occurring. Furthermore, the Justice Department has taken limited action against these negligent managers.” Senator Chuck Grassley: “Officials in the Justice Department saw any number of warnings and some even had the gunwalking information right in front of them, yet nothing was done to stop it. Countless people may be murdered with these weapons, yet the Attorney General appears to be letting his employees slide by with little to no accountability. The Attorney General needs to make changes to ensure that department leadership provides oversight of the agencies they are tasked with supervising, instead of pointing fingers at somebody else."
  • Fast and Furious: The Anatomy of a Failed Operation (Part II of III) Appendix I: Exhibits
  • * FDA Meningitis Investigation Continues

    "FDA is advising medical professionals not to use products from a New England company being investigated in connection with a multistate meningitis outbreak."

  • "[October 26, 2012] the U.S. Food and Drug Administration released a copy of the FDA Form 483 issued to the New England Compounding Center (NECC). The FDA observed and has since confirmed contaminated products and listed a number of observations regarding conditions in the clean room at NECC’s Framingham, Mass. facility. The investigators also observed problems with NECC’s ability to maintain its clean room, which is the enclosed space that is designed and maintained to have a controlled environment with low levels of airborne particles and surface contamination. Production of sterile drug products in a properly functioning and maintained clean room reduces the risk of the introduction of microbial contamination into the drug during processing, including filling into its final container. The FDA issues a 483 at the end of an inspection when the investigators believe that they observed conditions or practices that, in their judgment, may indicate violations of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, or related regulations. The 483 does not constitute a final FDA determination that any observation listed on the 483 is a violation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act or any related regulations."
  • October 27, 2012
    * Librarians are educating voters on issues and referendums in Washington state

    Christina Ortiz: "After watching the U.S. Presidential debates, it's clear the country could really use a non-combative way to discuss issues and disseminate information. Sites like Procon.org do this for national issues, ranging from legalizing marijuana to illegal immigration, but sometimes the most heated political discussions happen on the local scene. Instead of relying on fact-checking websites, the University of Washington started the Living Voters Guide, a site dedicated educating voters on issues and referendums in Washington state."

    October 24, 2012
    * Planning in the Digital Age

    Planning in the Digital Age, Gerry W. Beyer - Texas Tech University School of Law, October 22, 2012

  • "Recently, a new subdivision of property has emerged that many people label as “digital assets” such as accounts used for e-mail, professional and personal data backups, banking, investment, and shopping, domain names and web-hosting accounts, social networking accounts, and avatars for online games. While estate planners have perfected techniques to transfer traditional types of property, many estate planners do not address digital assets when preparing their clients’ estates. This article aims to educate estate planning professionals on the importance of planning for the disposition of digital assets, provides those planning techniques, and discusses how to administer an estate containing digital assets. The appendix contains a sample form which may be used to organize digital assets."
  • October 23, 2012
    * TRAC Challenges ICE Claim That Data Are Off-Limits to the Public

    for TRAC - Jeff Lamicela: "On October 22, 2012 the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) filed suit in D.C. District Court under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) challenging a ruling by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that its master repository of investigations and operations information is off-limits to the public...The material sought by TRAC is stored in the ICE-operated Enforcement Integrated Database (EID), which records and maintains information related to the investigations and operations of ICE as well as Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and that agency's Office of Field Operations. Despite this, ICE has stated that its office "does not have the means to extract the data or any other aspect of [TRAC's] request. For more on this matter, link to the complaint document and legal exhibits

    October 21, 2012
    * New on LLRX - Reference apps for the mobile lawyer

    Via LLRX.com - Reference apps for the mobile lawyer - For mobile lawyers, tech savvy attorney Nicole Black recommends a range of topical, go-to reference apps that will save you time and effort while providing reliable, high quality information. Most of the apps are free or very low cost, and include Wolfram Alpha Lawyer’s Professional Assistant, iThesaurus, Recalls app, and the Wikipanion app.

    * New on LLRX - Internet research tips and tricks for lawyers

    Via LLRX.com - Internet research tips and tricks for lawyers - This is attorney Nicole Black's review of The Cybersleuth’s Guide to the Internet, 12th edition, a book that helps lawyers learn how to use the Internet to conduct effective and free investigative and legal research.

    * JAG - The Operational Law Handbook

    "The Operational Law Handbook is a “how to” guide for Judge Advocates practicing operational law. It provides references and describes tactics and techniques for the practice of operational law. The Operational Law Handbook is not a substitute for official references. Like operational law itself, the Handbook is a focused collection of diverse legal and practical information. The handbook is not intended to provide “the school solution” to a particular problem, but to help Judge Advocates recognize, analyze, and resolve problems they will encounter in the operational context. Similarly, the Handbook is not intended to represent official U.S. policy regarding the binding application of varied sources of law, though it may reference source documents which themselves do so. The Handbook was designed and written for Judge Advocates practicing operational law. The size and contents of the Handbook are controlled by this focus. Frequently, the authors were forced to strike a balance between the temptation to include more information and the need to retain the Handbook in its current size and configuration. Simply put, the Handbook is made for the Soldiers, Marines, Sailors, Airmen, and Coast Guardsmen of the military Judge Advocate General’s Corps, who serve alongside their clients in the operational context. Accordingly, the Operational Law Handbook is compatible with current joint and combined doctrine."

    October 18, 2012
    * Report - Ninety seven percent of online pharmacies don't follow U.S. pharmacy laws

    Internet Drug Outlet Identification Program Progress Report for State and Federal Regulators: July 2012

  • "Unfortunately but undeniably, prescription medication counterfeiting has taken hold in the global marketplace, threatening public health worldwide. The illicit trade is perpetuated through a labyrinth of international transactions by multiple parties at various points along the medication supply chain, often ending with the rogue Internet drug outlets that sell the fake drugs to unwary consumers. As a result of this tangled supply chain, accountability for the safety and efficacy of medicines purchased from unknown Web sites is, in many cases, virtually nil. When counterfeit medicines emerge, as they have repeatedly in the last year, it is difficult to trace their origin, the point in the supply chain at which they were introduced, who perpetuated the illegal transaction, and which parties knew about it and enabled it in any way. Because Internet commerce transcends geographical and jurisdictional borders, protecting the public health requires the coordinated efforts of multiple, international public and private entities to diminish the threat that counterfeiters and rogue sellers pose."
  • October 17, 2012
    * Statutes of Limitation in Federal Criminal Cases: An Overview

    Statutes of Limitation in Federal Criminal Cases: An Overview. Charles Doyle, Senior Specialist in American Public Law, October 1, 2012

  • "A statute of limitations dictates the time period within which a legal proceeding must begin. The purpose of a statute of limitations in a criminal case is to ensure the prompt prosecution of criminal charges and thereby spare the accused of the burden of having to defend against stale charges after memories may have faded or evidence is lost. There is no statute of limitations for federal crimes punishable by death, nor for certain federal crimes of terrorism, nor, since passage of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act (2006) (P.L. 109-248), for certain federal sex offenses. Prosecution for most other federal crimes must begin within five years of the commitment of the offense. There are exceptions. Some types of crimes are subject to a longer period of limitation; some circumstances suspend or extend the otherwise applicable period of limitation."
  • October 16, 2012
    * National Academies Report - Deterrence and the Death Penalty

    "Many studies during the past few decades have sought to determine whether the death penalty has any deterrent effect on homicide rates. Researchers have reached widely varying, even contradictory, conclusions. Some studies have concluded that the threat of capital punishment deters murders, saving large numbers of lives; other studies have concluded that executions actually increase homicides; still others, that executions have no effect on murder rates. Commentary among researchers, advocates, and policymakers on the scientific validity of the findings has sometimes been acrimonious. Against this backdrop, the National Research Council report Deterrence and the Death Penalty assesses whether the available evidence provides a scientific basis for answering questions of if and how the death penalty affects homicide rates. This new report from the Committee on Law and Justice concludes that research to date on the effect of capital punishment on homicide rates is not useful in determining whether the death penalty increases, decreases, or has no effect on these rates. The key question is whether capital punishment is less or more effective as a deterrent than alternative punishments, such as a life sentence without the possibility of parole. Yet none of the research that has been done accounted for the possible effect of noncapital punishments on homicide rates. The report recommends new avenues of research that may provide broader insight into any deterrent effects from both capital and noncapital punishments."

    October 15, 2012
    * ICE Requests for Deportation Orders Steady Last Month, Down Overall for Year

    TRAC Immigration: "The latest available data from the Immigration Courts show that during September 2012 the government reported 17,276 new Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) filings seeking deportation orders. According to the case-by-case information analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), this number is little changed compared to filings in the previous month. These latest figures show that the slide in ICE filings that have been taking place since 2009 continued during 2012. For example, when the latest month's ICE court filings are compared with average monthly files in prior years, the recent activity was down 12.9 percent from levels in FY 2011, and has fallen 16 percent from monthly filings during FY 2010."

  • See also Immigration Data Tools and Applications - "TRAC's Immigration Project offers a variety of tools and applications to make the data we gather available in an understandable way to the American people, Congress, immigration groups and others."
  • October 11, 2012
    * EPIC - FBI Exempts Massive Database from Privacy Act Protections

    EPIC: "The Federal Bureau of Investigation has exempted the FBI Data Warehouse System, from important Privacy Act safeguards. The database ingests troves of personally identifiable information including race, birthdate, biometric information, social security numbers, and financial information from various government agencies. The database contains information on a surprisingly broad category of individuals, including "subjects, suspects, victims, witnesses, complainants, informants, sources, bystanders, law enforcement personnel, intelligence personnel, other responders, administrative personnel, consultants, relatives, and associates who may be relevant to the investigation or intelligence operation; individuals who are identified in open source information or commercial databases, or who are associated, related, or have a nexus to the FBI’s missions; individuals whose information is collected and maintained for information system user auditing and security purposes." The Federal Bureau of Investigation has exempted these records from the notification, access, and amendment provisions of the Privacy Act. Earlier this year, EPIC opposed the Automated Targeting System, another massive government database that the Department of Homeland Security exempted from Privacy Act provisions. For more information, see EPIC: The Privacy Act of 1974 and EPIC: Automated Targeting System."

    * A State-by-State Review of Laws Affecting Unaccompanied Homeless Youth

    Alone Without a Home: A State-by-State Review of Laws Affecting Unaccompanied Homeless Youth, September 2012, National Law Center
    Each year, an estimated 1.6 million children and youth (ages 12-17) experience homelessness without a parent or guardian. These youth leave home for a variety of reasons, including severe family conflict, parental abuse or neglect, parental mental health issues, or substance abuse. Whether runaway or throwaway, once on the street, unaccompanied homeless youth face numerous legal barriers that often complicate their attempts to meet the basic necessities of life on their own and prevent them from reaching out for assistance to state agencies and service providers that could otherwise help them. Further complicating matters is that many of these laws vary considerably from state to state, creating misinterpretations by service providers and mistaken avoidance of services on the part of homeless youth who may fear being taken into state custody or assume they will be turned away. This report reviews the state of current law in 12 key issue areas that affect the lives and future prospects of unaccompanied homeless youth in all 50 U.S. states and 6 territories. The report offers an overview of the range of approaches taken by states and their relative prevalence, and reveals significant differences in many cases."

    October 10, 2012
    * World Bank Doing Business law library

    International Finance Corporation: "The Doing Business law library is the largest free online collection of business laws and regulations. We link to official government sources wherever possible. Translations are not official unless indicated otherwise. We update the collection regularly but are unable to guarantee that laws are the most recent version."

    October 09, 2012
    * eCFR Relaunched With New URL

    "The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) and the Office of the Federal Register (OFR), National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), have released an upgraded Electronic Code of Federal Regulations (e-CFR) Web site. As of today, the old e-CFR site has been shutdown and will redirect users to the new site, eCFR.gov. The new site operates on an upgraded hardware and software platform, and provides an interface that emulates other Federal Register publications on FDsys. Automatic redirects from the old e-CFR website to eCFR.gov will be in place through the end of 2012. Please reset any bookmarks to the new eCFR.gov URL."

    October 07, 2012
    * App Law within: Rights and Regulation in the Smartphone Age

    Mac Sithigh, Daithi, App Law within: Rights and Regulation in the Smartphone Age (September 2012). Edinburgh School of Law Research Paper No. 2012/22. Available at SSRN.

  • "This paper assesses the regulation of smartphone 'app stores.' At the outset, the adoption of smartphones and apps is noted, alongside the ways in which scholars and journalists have used these markets as the basis for the discussion of legal and economic issues. The importance (commercially and as a study in governance and control) of the iOS App Store (Apple) is highlighted. Part 2 deals with the relationship between Apple and app developers; three themes of Apple’s Guidelines are identified (content, development and payments), and the ways in which control can be challenged (through jailbreaking, ‘web apps’ and regulatory intervention) are scrutinised. Part 3 considers three ways in which apps are already regulated by law: the protection of consumers (particularly through the UK system for 'premium rate services'), user privacy, and (in brief) the regulation of video games and video-on-demand services in Europe. Finally, in part 4, the tension between comparatively 'open and 'closed' app stores is highlighted; the problems of applying general provisions to emerging formats are emphasised. It is concluded that the emerging status of non-carrier app stores as neither retailer nor platform means that it is not yet possible to identify the form of regulation that is in operation, but that some steps are available to legislators that could shift the balance between closed and open models."
  • October 05, 2012
    * National Archives Joins Federal Agencies to Launch New Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Online System

    News release: "The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), along with the Department of Commerce (DOC), have partnered to develop an online system aimed at expanding public access to information requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). FOIAonline, formerly known as the FOIA Module, is available as of today (October 1). It offers the public one place to submit FOIA requests, track their progress, communicate with the processing agency, search other requests, access previously released responsive documents and file appeals with participating agencies. For agencies, FOIAonline provides a secure website to receive and store requests, assign and process requests, post responses, generate metrics, manage records electronically, create management reports and electronically generate the annual report required from each agency by FOIA. EPA began looking at the feasibility of a FOIA portal in 2010 with the idea of leveraging Regulations.gov, the Federal rulemaking portal that allows people to comment on Federal regulations and other agency regulatory actions. EPA administers Regulations.gov, which launched in 2002 and now has 38 partner agencies that govern and financially support the program. By leveraging the infrastructure of Regulations.gov, FOIAonline avoided many start-up costs, resulting in a total of $1.3 million to launch and an estimated cost avoidance of $200 million over the next five years if broadly adopted."

    October 04, 2012
    * CRS - Noncitizen Eligibility for Federal Public Assistance: Policy Overview and Trends

    Noncitizen Eligibility for Federal Public Assistance: Policy Overview and Trends, by Ruth Ellen Wasem, Specialist in Immigration Policy. September 27, 2012

  • "The extent to which residents of the United States who are not U.S. citizens should be eligible for federally funded public aid has been a contentious issue for more than a decade. This issue meets at the intersection of two major policy areas: immigration policy and welfare policy. The eligibility of noncitizens for public assistance programs is based on a complex set of rules that are determined largely by the type of noncitizen in question and the nature of services being offered. Over the past 16 years, Congress has enacted significant changes in U.S. immigration policy and welfare policy. Congress has exercised oversight of revisions made by the 1996 welfare reform law (the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, P.L. 104-193)- including the rules governing noncitizen eligibility for public assistance that it established — and legislation covering programs with major restrictions on noncitizens’ eligibility (e.g., food stamps/SNAP, Medicaid)."
  • October 02, 2012
    * Green Carbon, Black Trade: Illegal Logging, Tax Fraud and Laundering in the Worlds Tropical Forests

    "This report – Green Carbon, Black Trade – by UNEP and INTERPOL focuses on illegal logging and its impacts on the lives and livelihoods of often some of the poorest people in the world set aside the environmental damage. It underlines how criminals are combining old fashioned methods such as bribes with high tech methods such as computer hacking of government web sites to obtain transportation and other permits. The report spotlights the increasingly sophisticated tactics being deployed to launder illegal logs through a web of palm oil plantations, road networks and saw mills."

    October 01, 2012
    * CFPB orders American Express to pay $85 million refund to consumers harmed by illegal credit card practices

    News release: "The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) today announced an enforcement action with orders requiring three American Express subsidiaries to refund an estimated $85 million to approximately 250,000 customers for illegal card practices. This action is the result of a multi-part federal investigation which found that at every stage of the consumer experience, from marketing to enrollment to payment to debt collection, American Express violated consumer protection laws...The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) together with the Utah Department of Financial Institutions discovered the illegal activities during a routine examination of an American Express subsidiary, the American Express Centurion Bank. The FDIC transferred portions of the investigation to the CFPB when the Bureau opened its doors last year and together the agencies pursued the matter. The CFPB later concluded that many of the same violations that occurred at American Express Centurion Bank also took place at American Express Travel Related Services Company, Inc. and American Express Bank, FSB."

    * UVic Law Student Technology Survey 2012

    Rich McCue: "In addition to the technology questions we’ve been asking UVic Law students over the past ten years, we decided for the first year to ask more detailed questions about student use of tablets and e-readers for academic use, along with questions about their usage of “cloud” services for file storage and collaboration. This survey was completed by 126 incoming and transferring law students, which is a strong 90% plus response rate." Some of the survey results summarized as follows:

    • "89% of incoming law students own “Smart Phones” that can browse the internet (up from 84% last year and 50% two years ago), with 48% of the total being iPhones, 29% Android and 11% Blackberry (Blackberry usage down from 27% last year).
    • 31% of students own tablet devices or ebook readers, up from 19% last year.
    • When it comes to reading school related documents, students report reading those documents in bound books 46% of the time, on laptops 35% of the time, on laser printed pages 16% of the time, and on tablet devices 3% of the time.
    • 99% of students own laptops. 49% of laptops are Mac’s, and 48% Windows.
    • The students’ average typing speed is 49 wpm.
    • 68% of all students bring their laptops to school most days.
    • 75% of students use laptops to take class notes, 63% use pen and paper, 6% use tablets and 3% use their cell phones.
    • 53% of students use Gmail as their primary email account, 7% use UVic email and 20% Hotmail..."

    September 30, 2012
    * A history of the U.S. Alien Tort Statute

    A history of the U.S. Alien Tort Statute, by Rebecca Hamilton - Reuters: "The 33-word Alien Tort Statute, at the center of a case before the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, was enacted by the First Congress in 1789. It reads: "The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States." It lay essentially dormant for decades. Then, in 1978, a U.S. lawyer named Peter Weiss used the statute to bring a case against former Paraguayan police inspector Americo Pena-Irala over the torture and killing of Joelito Filartiga. In a ruling two years later, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said U.S. courts had jurisdiction and Pena-Irala was ordered to pay $10.4 million in damages to Filartiga's family."

    * Pharmaceutical Industry Criminal and Civil Penalties: An Update

    Pharmaceutical Industry Criminal and Civil Penalties: An Update. September 27, 2012. Sammy Almashat, M.D., M.P.H, Sidney Wolfe, M.D. Public Citizen’s Health Research Group.

  • "A total of 74 additional settlements, totaling $10.2 billion in financial penalties, were reached between the federal and state governments and pharmaceutical manufacturers between November 2, 2010 and July 18, 2012, with the first half of 2012 alone already representing a record year for both federal ($5.0 billion) and state ($1.6 billion) financial recoveries. Since 1991, a total of 239 settlements, for $30.2 billion, have now been reached (through July 18, 2012) between federal and state governments and pharmaceutical companies...On a federal level, financial penalties still continue to pale in comparison to company profits and a parent company is only rarely excluded from participation in Medicare and Medicaid for the illegal activities, which endanger the public health and deplete already overstretched taxpayer-funded programs."
  • September 27, 2012
    * ACLU Reports on DOJ Warrantless Electronic Surveillance

    Naomi Gilens: "Justice Department documents released today by the ACLU reveal that federal law enforcement agencies are increasingly monitoring Americans’ electronic communications, and doing so without warrants, sufficient oversight, or meaningful accountability. The documents, handed over by the government only after months of litigation, are the attorney general’s 2010 and 2011 reports on the use of “pen register” and “trap and trace” surveillance powers. The reports show a dramatic increase in the use of these surveillance tools, which are used to gather information about telephone, email, and other Internet communications. The revelations underscore the importance of regulating and overseeing the government’s surveillance power. (Our original Freedom of Information Act request and our legal complaint are online.)"

    September 26, 2012
    * US: CFIUS Review

    US: CFIUS Review - Robert Schlossberg and Christine Laciak, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer US LLP

  • "The national security review process in the United States – often referred to as the Exon–Florio or CFIUS review process, after the relevant authorising statute and enforcement agency, respectively – has existed for decades. It originally focused, at least in practice, on the acquisition by foreign companies of US businesses directly or indirectly supplying the US Department of Defense, but especially after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the concept of national security – and therefore the types of transactions subject to review under the regime – was broadened by statute and in practice. Today, the national security review process can be an important part of many transactions, even though it remains voluntary. Examples of industries in which notifications have been made include computers, network security, cyber systems, energy (development and transport), semiconductors, aerospace, telecommunications, optics, robotics, mining and natural resources, plastics and rubber, automotive, financial services, coatings and adhesives, chemicals, and steel."
  • September 25, 2012
    * FTC Action Halts Computer Spying by Illinois Companies

    News release: "Seven rent-to-own companies and a software design firm have agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that they spied on consumers using computers that consumers rented from them, capturing screenshots of confidential and personal information, logging their computer keystrokes, and in some cases taking webcam pictures of people in their homes, all without notice to, or consent from, the consumers. The software design firm collected the data that enabled rent-to-own stores to track the location of rented computers without consumers’ knowledge according to the FTC complaint. The settlements bar the companies from any further illegal spying, from activating location-tracking software without the consent of computer renters and notice to computer users, and from deceptively collecting and disclosing information about consumers."

    * Freedom House - Freedom on the Net 2012

    Freedom on the Net 2012: "This report is the third in a series of comprehensive studies of internet freedom around the globe and covers developments in 47 countries that occurred between January 2011 and May 2012. Over 50 researchers, nearly all based in the countries they analyzed, contributed to the project by researching laws and practices relevant to the internet, testing the accessibility of select websites, and interviewing a wide range of sources."

    September 23, 2012
    * ABA's National Inventory of Collateral Consequences of Conviction

    "Through the National Inventory of Collateral Consequences of Conviction, each jurisdiction’s collateral consequences will be made accessible to the public through a website that can be searched and sorted by categories and keywords. The website will make it possible for criminal and civil lawyers to determine which collateral consequences are triggered by particular categories of offenses, for affected individuals to understand the limits on their rights and opportunities, and for lawmakers and policy advocates to understand the full measure of a jurisdiction’s sanctions and disqualifications. It will also be possible through the website to perform inter-jurisdictional comparisons and national analyses."

    September 19, 2012
    * New GAO Reports - Military Disability System, Medicare, DHS, Worker and Family Assistance, Suspension and Debarment
    • Military Disability System - Improved Monitoring Needed to Better Track and Manage Performance, GAO-12-676, Aug 28, 2012
    • Medicare Special Needs Plans - CMS Should Improve Information Available about Dual-Eligible Plans' Performance, GAO-12-864, Sep 13, 2012
    • Homeland Security - DHS Requires More Disciplined Investment Management to Help Meet Mission Needs, GAO-12-833, Sep 18, 2012
    • Next Generation Enterprise Network - Navy Implementing Revised Approach, but Improvement Needed in Mitigating Risks, GAO-12-956, Sep 19, 2012
    • Human Capital - Complete Information and More Analyses Needed to Enhance DOD's Civilian Senior Leader Strategic Workforce Plan, GAO-12-990R, Sep 19, 2012
    • Worker and Family Assistance - Waivers Related to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Block Grant, GAO-12-1028R, Sep 19, 2012
    • Suspension and Debarment - DOD Has Active Referral Processes, but Action Needed to Promote Transparency, GAO-12-932, Sep 19, 2012
    • Human Capital Management - Effectively Implementing Reforms and Closing Critical Skills Gaps Are Key to Addressing Federal, Workforce Challenges, GAO-12-1023T, Sep 19, 2012
    * A Review of ATF's Operation Fast and Furious and Related Matters

    A Review of ATF’s Operation Fast and Furious and Related Matters. (REDACTED), Office of the Inspector General, Oversight and Review Division, September 2012

  • "In Chapter Seven, we summarize our overall assessment of the conduct of Operations Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious and the Department’s statements to Congress concerning these investigations. We also include in this chapter a description of specific remedial measures that ATF and the Department have implemented to address many of the problems that surfaced following Operation Fast and Furious, and provide our recommendations for additional remedial measures. In addition, we set forth our findings concerning individual performance in connection with the activities described in this report."
  • * Congress.gov: The New Home for Legislative Information

    "Congress.gov makes federal United States legislative information freely available to the public. Launched Sept. 19, 2012, this version of the site is an initial beta release of Congress.gov, created as a successor to THOMAS.gov, the current public site for legislative information. The Congress.gov beta site contains legislation from the 107th Congress (2001) to the present, member of Congress profiles from the 93rd Congress (1973) to the present, and selected member profiles from the 80th through the 92nd Congresses (1947 to 1972). Over the next two years, Congress.gov will be adding information and features, eventually incorporating all of the information currently available on THOMAS.gov. (To compare the scope of legislative information available on THOMAS.gov and the scope of legislative information on the beta site, see Coverage Dates for Legislative Information.)"

    * New Database on Federal Criminal Case Processing

    "The Bureau of Justice Statistics, through its Federal Justice Statistics Resource Center (FJSRC), compiles comprehensive information describing suspects and defendants processed in the federal criminal justice system. The Federal Criminal Case Processing Statistics (FCCPS) tool is an interface that can be used to analyze federal case processing data. Users can generate various statistics in the areas of federal law enforcement, prosecution/courts and incarcerations, and based on title and section of the U.S. Criminal Code. Data are available for the years 1998-2010. Please select an analytical area of interest from the provided menu. defendants; and mean prison or probation sentence or fine. Users can select multiple years and multiple offenses."

    September 18, 2012
    * New on LLRX - Bluebook Technologies

    Via LLRX.com: Bluebook Technologies - The Bluebook is the standard citation guide for legal materials. There are now three format choices for the Bluebook: paper, online subscription (since 2008), and as of August 10, 2012 - iPad app. Law Librarian, author, research instructor and blogger Mary Whisner's guide discusses and illustrates the features and pricing of each.

    * Whistleblower Protections Under Federal Law: An Overview

    Whistleblower Protections Under Federal Law: An Overview. Jon O. Shimabukuro, Legislative Attorney and L. Paige Whitaker, Legislative Attorney, September 13, 2012

  • "Legal protections for employees who report illegal misconduct by their employers have increased dramatically since the late 1970s when such protections were first adopted for federal employees in the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. Since that time, with the enactment of the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989, Congress has expanded such protections for federal employees. Congress has also established whistleblower protections for individuals in certain private-sector employment through the adoption of whistleblower provisions in at least 18 federal statutes. Among these statutes is the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank Act)."
  • * Author's Guild - Court Approves Justice Department's E-Book Proposal

    News release: "Judge Denise Cote approved the Justice Department's controversial settlement with three major publishers -- Hachette, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster -- in a 45-page decision filed [September 6, 2012]. The settlement requires the publishers to allow e-book retailers to sell their books at any price, even below cost, so long as the retailer does not lose money over a publisher's entire e-book list over a 12-month period. The Justice Department had sued five publishers (the others are Penguin and Macmillan) and Apple this spring alleging that they had colluded to introduce "agency pricing" for e-books in 2010 with the launch of the iPad. The Authors Guild opposed approval of the settlement, believing that the DOJ could address the alleged collusion without requiring three publishers to allow Amazon to resume predatory pricing. Amazon's predatory pricing -- selling bestselling frontlist e-book titles at a loss -- had helped the online retailer gain a 90% share of the e-book market by January 2010."

    September 16, 2012
    * NATO sponsored manual on the international law applicable to cyber warfare

    News release: "From NATO Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence: The Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare, written at the invitation of the Centre by an independent ‘International Group of Experts’, is the result of a three-year effort to examine how extant international law norms apply to this ‘new’ form of warfare. The Tallinn Manual pays particular attention to the jus ad bellum, the international law governing the resort to force by States as an instrument of their national policy, and the jus in bello, the international law regulating the conduct of armed conflict (also labelled the law of war, the law of armed conflict, or international humanitarian law). Related bodies of international law, such as the law of State responsibility and the law of the sea, are dealt within the context of these topics."

    * Paper - A Global Law Perspective of the WTO

    Delimatsis, Panagiotis, A Global Law Perspective of the WTO (July 27, 2012). Tilburg Law Review, Forthcoming. Available at SSRN

  • "This note attempts to map the relevance of the emerging global law advocacy for the WTO. In this regard, it understands global law as an attempt to describe a growing decrease of the regulatory State and an ensuing increase of private rule-making. Global law intends to generate new thinking about global governance and its patterns of influence and power. Few instances of creeping global law in the WTO are identified, whereas the note concludes with some thoughts on much-needed future research on a range of topics ranging from the role of NGOs to the struggle against intrinsic inequalities of the multilateral trading system."
  • * Pensions and Retirement State Legislation Database

    Pensions and Retirement State Legislation Database - "Current legislation on pensions and retirement is available in a searchable database. You can search 2012 pensions and retirement bills by topic, primary author, state, bill number, status or keyword. The database is updated every two weeks." [Via Pew and the National Conference of State Legislatures]

    September 11, 2012
    * FTC Finalizes Privacy Settlement with Myspace

    News release: "Following a public comment period, the Federal Trade Commission has approved a final order settling FTC charges that Myspace misrepresented its protection of users’ personal information. The settlement bars Myspace from future misrepresentations about its privacy practices, requires the company to implement a comprehensive privacy program, and calls for regular, independent privacy assessments for the next 20 years."

    September 10, 2012
    * CRS - The National Labor Relations Act: Background and Selected Topics

    The National Labor Relations Act: Background and Selected Topics, Jon O. Shimabukuro, Legislative Attorney, September 7, 2012

  • "The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA or “the Act”) recognizes the right of employees to engage in collective bargaining through representatives of their own choosing. By “encouraging the practice and procedure of collective bargaining,” the Act attempts to mitigate and eliminate labor-related obstructions to the free flow of commerce. Although union membership has declined dramatically since the 1950s, congressional interest in the NLRA remains significant. In the 112th Congress, over 30 bills have been introduced to amend the NLRA. Some of these bills address the timing of union representation elections, while others are concerned with varying aspects of the NLRA, such as the activities of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which implements and administers the Act."
  • * Drones in Domestic Surveillance Operations: Fourth Amendment Implications and

    CRS - Drones in Domestic Surveillance Operations: Fourth Amendment Implications and Legislative Responses. Richard M. Thompson II, Legislative Attorney, September 6, 2012

  • "The prospect of drone use inside the United States raises far-reaching issues concerning the extent of government surveillance authority, the value of privacy in the digital age, and the role of Congress in reconciling these issues. Drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), are aircraft that can fly without an on-board human operator. An unmanned aircraft system (UAS) is the entire system, including the aircraft, digital network, and personnel on the ground. Drones can fly either by remote control or on a predetermined flight path; can be as small as an insect and as large as a traditional jet; can be produced more cheaply than traditional aircraft; and can keep operators out of harm’s way. These unmanned aircraft are most commonly known for their operations overseas in tracking down and killing suspected members of Al Qaeda and related organizations. In addition to these missions abroad, drones are being considered for use in domestic surveillance operations, which might include in furtherance of homeland security, crime fighting, disaster relief, immigration control, and environmental monitoring."
  • September 09, 2012
    * Paper - The Perils of Learning and Sharing Everything' from a Criminal Information Sharing Perspective

    Sliter, John R., 'Techno-Risk - the Perils of Learning and Sharing Everything' from a Criminal Information Sharing Perspective (September 9, 2012). 30th Symposium on Economic Crime in Cambridge, England on September 5th, 2012. Available at SSRN.

  • "The author has extensive law enforcement experience and the paper is intended to provoke thought on the use of technology as it pertains to information sharing between the police and the private sector. As the world edges closer and closer to the convergence of man and machine, the human capacity to retrieve information is increasing by leaps and bounds. We are on the verge of knowing everything and anything there is to know...and this means that police will have the capacity to learn everything about everyone with the only restriction being privacy legislation. But it also means that those involved in immoral, unlawful or illegal activity will have that same capacity and with no such restriction...The global community requires a secure and credible system to retrieve and assess all of the information ‘generally available to the public.' A system that will strive to keep ‘Big Brother’ in check and ‘Bad Brother’ out, all the while providing a means of alerting citizens to genuine risks or to dangerous people. Such as system would help diffuse the systemic inaccurate and harmful profiling that is often based on rumours and innuendo. There is an identified public-private partnership opportunity. A chance to work with privacy advocate groups and background checking private companies to define, design and deliver on something that will be of immense benefit to citizens around the globe."
  • September 07, 2012
    * NFIB v. Sebelius: Constitutionality of the Individual Mandate

    CRS - NFIB v. Sebelius: Constitutionality of the Individual Mandate. Erika K. Lunder, Legislative Attorney. Jennifer Staman, Legislative Attorney, September 3, 2012

  • In one of the most highly anticipated decisions in recent years, the Supreme Court released its ruling regarding the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in June 2012. In NFIB v. Sebelius, the Court largely affirmed the constitutionality of ACA, including its individual mandate provision. In a move that was unexpected to many, the Court upheld the mandate as a valid exercise of Congress’s taxing power, but not its Commerce Clause power. First, Chief Justice Roberts, in a controlling opinion, found that the Commerce Clause does not provide Congress with the authority to enact the individual mandate. While the Chief Justice acknowledged that Congress’s authority to regulate interstate commerce is quite broad, he also pointed out that Congress had never attempted to use this power to make individuals buy an undesired product. The Chief Justice further noted that the language of the Clause (i.e., the power to regulate interstate commerce) reflects the idea that there must be something to regulate in the first place (i.e., some type of “activity”). The problem with the individual mandate, as indicated by the Chief Justice, is that it “does not regulate existing commercial activity. It instead compels individuals to become active in commerce by purchasing a product on the ground that their failure to do so affects interstate commerce.” The Chief Justice also noted that if the mandate were permissible under the Commerce Clause, a mandatory purchase could be permitted to solve almost any problem, thus agreeing with those who had raised concerns about a lack of a limiting principle—the idea that if Congress could require the purchase of health insurance, it could require Americans to purchase anything. While no other Justice joined the opinion of Chief Justice Roberts with respect to the Commerce Clause analysis, four Justices issued a dissenting opinion that reached the same conclusion based on somewhat similar reasoning."
  • September 06, 2012
    * Advocacy Groups Request Court to Rehear GPS Cell Phone Case

    "[On September 4, 2012, CDT] joined the ACLU, EFF and EPIC in calling on the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to rehear U.S. v. Skinner, the GPS cell phone location tracking case. A panel of the 6th Circuit ruled that tracking a cell phone's location by repeatedly "pinging" the phone over a three-day period did not require a warrant. The amicus brief we filed yesterday asked the full Sixth Circuit to consider this issue in light of the concurring opinions filed by five justices in the U.S. v. Jones U.S. Supreme Court case which came down earlier this year. We also pointed out that the panel's legal conclusion was based on a material misunderstanding: that cell phones normally "give off" GPS location information. Instead, mobile providers have to take a special step - sending a signal to the phone to direct it to produce the GPS data. Unless they take that step, there is no location data at the provider for the government to seize. As a result, the court should not have analyzed the case under the third party records doctrine, which says a person has no Fourth Amendment interest in information shared with a third party."

    September 05, 2012
    * An Introduction to the Insider Trading Research Handbook

    Bainbridge, Stephen M., An Overview of Insider Trading Law and Policy: An Introduction to the Insider Trading Research Handbook (September 4, 2012). Research Handbook on Insider Trading, Stephen Bainbridge, ed., Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., 2013; UCLA School of Law, Law-Econ Research Paper No. 12-15. Available at SSRN

  • "This essay will serve as the introduction to a collection of 23 newly commissioned articles on numerous aspects of insider trading law. The contributors cover a wide variety of topics, ranging from analyses of current issues in USA insider trading law, empirical analyses of insider trading both in the USA and around the globe, and global perspectives from China, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, Europe, and the UK. Insider trading jurisprudence is strongly skewed towards US law. This emphasis is not mere academic parochialism or chauvinism, however. The USA remains the world’s largest capital market. More important for present purposes, the USA was one of the first jurisdictions to ban insider trading and remains the jurisdiction in which the ban is most energetically enforced. To be sure, insider-trading bans are now on the books in many jurisdictions and there is growing global emphasis on fighting the practice. A number of the papers in this volume focus on these developments. Much of the volume nevertheless is appropriately devoted to US law. The long history and highly developed body of US law on the subject suggest that studying the legal doctrine and policy underpinnings of the U.S. prohibition of insider trading will reward study not only for US corporate and securities law scholars, but those of all countries. Accordingly, this introduction provides a foundation for the papers that follow by setting out the basic US legal rules and the policy debate those rules have engendered."
  • September 04, 2012
    * New on LLRX.com - Mass Incarceration and the "Degree of Civilization"

    via LLRX.com - Mass Incarceration and the "Degree of Civilization": Ken Strutin - law librarian, criminal defense attorney, and well-known writer and speaker, documents the preeminence of the United States as the world leader in incarceration. He states that incarceration is when a person loses their freedom pending trial or by serving a sentence - and mass incarceration is when millions of people are imprisoned and kept there based on a generation of tough on crime policies. The number of persons behind bars, which is higher in the United States than anywhere in the world, creates a ripple effect throughout the criminal justice system and society at large. This fact has inspired intense study of this punishment by many academic disciplines, public interest institutions and government agencies. His article focuses on selected recent and notable publications from these sources along with a list of current awareness sites.

    * TRAC - Copyright Suits Trending Upward

    Via Jeff Lamicela: "The latest available data from the federal courts show that during July 2012 the government reported 296 new copyright civil filings, according to the case-by-case information analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). This is the fourth straight month where filings have reached close to 300 or more per month -- higher than they have been since July 2008. Federal copyright lawsuits are 41.3 higher in July 2012 than they were for the same period one year ago, and have generally been rising over the last two years. Read the full report, including a list of those districts in which lawsuits of this kind were filed with the greatest rates relative to population."

    September 03, 2012
    * EU Commission publishes guidance on application of competition rules in car sector

    News release: "The European Commission has published a set of frequently asked questions (FAQs) on the application of EU antitrust rules in the motor vehicle sector. The FAQs provide stakeholders with guidance on how the Commission applies these rules, in particular in the markets for repair and maintenance services and spare parts. “The FAQs are a practical guide that should be of particular help for SMEs and consumers”, said Joaquín Almunia, Commission Vice-President in charge of competition policy. “They aim at clarifying important issues regarding the competition rules in the car sector, which affect carmakers, dealers, spare parts suppliers, independent repairers and ultimately consumers”. In May 2010, the Commission adopted a new Motor Vehicle Block Exemption Regulation and accompanying Guidelines, concerning the application of EU antitrust rules to categories of agreements between vehicle manufacturers and their authorised dealers, repairers and spare parts distributors (see IP/10/619 and MEMO/10/217). Following requests from stakeholders and national competition authorities for further practical guidance on the application of the new rules, the Commission has now published a set of frequently asked questions."

    * CRS - Researching Current Federal Legislation and Regulations

    Researching Current Federal Legislation and Regulations: A Guide to Resources for Congressional Staff. Jerry W. Mansfield, Information Research Specialist, August 31, 2012

  • "This report is designed to introduce congressional staff to selected governmental and nongovernmental sources that are useful in tracking and obtaining information federal legislation and regulations. It includes governmental sources such as the Legislative Information System (LIS), THOMAS, the Government Printing Office’s Federal Digital System (FDsys), and U.S. Senate and House websites. Nongovernmental or commercial sources include resources such as HeinOnline and the Congressional Quarterly (CQ) websites. It also highlights classes offered by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) and the Library of Congress Law Library."
  • September 02, 2012
    * UK Inquiry into disability-related harassment

    Hidden in plain sight: Inquiry into disability-related harassment

  • "For the purposes of this inquiry, the Commission defined disability-related harassment as unwanted, exploitative or abusive conduct against disabled people which has the purpose or effect of either: violating the dignity, safety, security or autonomy of the person experiencing it, or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading or offensive environment. It includes harassment of the friends and family of disabled people and of people perceived to be disabled. It should be noted that our definition of disability-related harassment goes wider than the definition currently used by the criminal justice system."
  • August 31, 2012
    * Paper - An Information Approach to Trademarks

    An Information Approach to Trademarks, Deven R. Desai. Georgetown Law Journal, Vol. 100, No. 6, (2012) via SSRN

  • "Trademark law’s current conception of information and how trademarks enable information transmission is underdeveloped. It has led to a world where trademark law hinders rather than “fosters the flow of information in markets.” Instead of promoting information exchange across and within markets, “[trademark] law’s core mission, as it is understood today, is to facilitate the transmission of accurate information to the market.” The distinction reveals deep problems within trademark law. Who can or may send a message about a trademark matters. When a mark is chosen by a mark holder, the possible messages that can and should be sent are unknown. Yet, trademark law’s view of information, source, and sender privileges the mark holder’s messages as the one and only - the pure source - for all messages about the mark and treats other communications about the mark as noise. This view reduces the ability for competitors to challenge a mark holder’s position in the marketplace and for active consumers to question or celebrate the mark holder’s goods, services, or business practices. As Professors Lemley and McKenna might put it in their article to which this paper responds, the situation reduces the possibility of substitutes. As the first step in a larger project about the system behind trademarks and other commercial symbols, I argue that an information approach to trademarks based on Claude Shannon’s information theory will clean up and sharpen trademark law’s understanding of information. This approach will allow trademark law to live up to the normative idea that trademarks ought to enhance information flow in markets. That in turn may increase the possibility for substitutes, which Lemley and McKenna argue is a way to understand trademarks as a competition doctrine."
  • August 28, 2012
    * A Guide to the Supreme Court's Decision on the ACA's Medicaid Expansion

    "On June 28, 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in the case challenging the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The Court upheld the constitutionality of the ACA's individual mandate, which requires most people to maintain a minimum level of health insurance coverage beginning in 2014. A majority of the Court also found the ACA's Medicaid expansion unconstitutionally coercive of states, while a different majority of the Court held that this issue was fully remedied by limiting the Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary's enforcement authority. The ruling left the ACA's Medicaid expansion intact in the law, but the practical effect of the Court's decision makes the Medicaid expansion optional for states. This policy brief provides background on the Medicaid program and the legal challenge to the Medicaid expansion under health reform, and summarizes the controlling and dissenting opinions of the Court regarding the Medicaid expansion."

  • See also: Implementing the ACA's Medicaid-Related Health Reform Provisions After the Supreme Court's Decision
  • * Proposed Model Jury Instructions - The Use of Electronic Technology to Conduct Research on or Communicate about a Case

    Proposed Model Jury Instructions - The Use of Electronic Technology to Conduct Research on or Communicate about a Case. Prepared by the Judicial Conference Committee on Court Administration and Case Management, June 2012

  • "I know that many of you use cell phones, Blackberries, the internet and other tools of technology. You also must not talk to anyone at any time about this case or use these tools to communicate electronically with anyone about the case. This includes your family and friends. You may not communicate with anyone about the case on your cell phone, through e-mail, Blackberry, iPhone, text messaging, or on Twitter, through any blog or website, including Facebook, Google+, My Space, LinkedIn, or YouTube. You may not use any similar technology of social media, even if I have not specifically mentioned it here. I expect you will inform me as soon as you become aware of another juror’s violation of these instructions."
  • August 26, 2012
    * Consumers Asked DISH Network to Leave Them Alone, But FTC Says Calls Kept Coming

    News release: "DISH Network, one of the nation's largest providers of satellite television service, faces a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit alleging that it illegally called millions of consumers who had previously asked telemarketers from the company or its affiliates not to call them again. The calls allegedly violated provisions of the FTC's Telemarketing Sales Rule that state that even if a consumer is not on the National Do Not Call Registry, a telemarketer may not call him or her again if the consumer specifically asks to be placed on the company's own entity-specific do-not-call list...According to the FTC's complaint, DISH Network violated the agency's Telemarketing Sales Rule while calling consumers nationwide in an attempt to sell its satellite television programming. DISH Network makes these telemarketing calls both directly to consumers and via a network of authorized dealers who make calls on its behalf. Specifically, the FTC alleges that DISH has made millions of outbound telephone calls since about September 1, 2007 to consumers who had already told them that they did not want to receive any more telemarketing calls from the company."

    * The Open Database Of The Corporate World (Beta)

    "OpenCorporates aims to do a straightforward (though big) thing: have a URL for every company in the world...We've grown from 3 territories and a few million companies to over 30 territories and 30 million companies, and are working with the open data community to add more each week."

    * FindLaw Survey - two-thirds of Americans can't name a single Supreme Court justice

    Two-Thirds of Americans Can't Name Any U.S. Supreme Court Justices, Says New FindLaw.com Survey: "Despite all the recent controversy surrounding U.S. Supreme Court decisions on health care, immigration and other issues, nearly two-thirds of Americans can't name even a single member of the Supreme Court. That's according to a new national survey by FindLaw.com, the most popular legal information Web site. The survey found that only 34 percent of Americans can name any member of the nation's highest court. Chief Justice John Roberts is the most well known of the justices, but could be named by only one in five Americans. Only one percent of Americans can correctly name all nine sitting Justices."

    August 23, 2012
    * Guide to Reporting at the 2012 Republican and Democratic National Conventions

    Citizen Media Law Project: "This page hosts our Guide to Reporting at the 2012 Republican and Democratic National Conventions, and related resources. Future updates regarding the 2012 conventions will appear on this page. More than ten thousand journalists are expected to attend the Republican and Democratic National Conventions in Tampa and Charlotte in the late summer of 2012. A complicated array of laws will be enforced at these events by federal officers, state and local law enforcement, and private security. This Guide is intended to provide detailed information about how the law will apply to those trying to gather news at the events surrounding the conventions.

    August 22, 2012
    * SEC Adopts Rule for Disclosing Use of Conflict Minerals

    News release: "he Securities and Exchange Commission today adopted a rule mandated by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act to require companies to publicly disclose their use of conflict minerals that originated in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) or an adjoining country. The regulatory reform law directed the Commission to issue rules requiring certain companies to disclose their use of conflict minerals that include tantalum, tin, gold, or tungsten if those minerals are “necessary to the functionality or production of a product” manufactured by those companies. Companies are required to provide this disclosure on a new form to be filed with the SEC called Form SD."

    * JP Morgan Trading Losses: Implications for the Volcker Rule and Other Regulation

    CRS report - JP Morgan Trading Losses: Implications for the Volcker Rule and Other Regulation, August 16, 2012

  • "On May 10, 2012, JP Morgan disclosed that it had lost more than $2 billion by trading financial derivatives. Jamie Dimon, CEO and chairman of JP Morgan, reported that the bank’s Chief Investment Office (CIO) executed the trades to hedge the firm’s overall credit exposure as part of the bank’s asset liability management program (ALM). The CIO operated within the depository subsidiary of JP Morgan, although its offices were in London. The funding for the trades came from what JP Morgan characterized as excess deposits, which are the difference between deposits held by the bank and its commercial loans."
  • Related postings on financial system
  • August 19, 2012
    * The Mobile Workforce and Telecommuter Tax Acts

    Combining the Mobile Workforce and Telecommuter Tax Acts, Edward A. Zelinsky. Yeshiva University - Cardozo Legal Studies Research Paper No. 371 State Tax Notes, Vol. 65, No. 319, August 2012 [via SSRN]

  • "Mobile Workforce State Income Tax Simplification Act of 2012 (“the Mobile Workforce Act”) and the Telecommuter Tax Fairness Act of 2012 (“the Telecommuter Act”) each respond to the pressing national need to rationalize the states’ income taxation of nonresident workers in light of modern technology and the work patterns such technology facilitates. Both Acts must be passed to create a comprehensive framework for the states’ income taxation of nonresident workers in the 21st century. The Mobile Workforce Act addresses the question today generally denoted as nexus, that is, who can tax. The Telecommuter Act addresses the question which is today denominated as apportionment, namely, how much can be taxed. Congress must answer both inquiries properly, lest multiple and excessive state tax burdens on nonresident workers unnecessarily interfere with the efficient work patterns of a modern economy."

  • August 16, 2012
    * Justice Department Requires Changes to Verizon-Cable Company Transactions to Protect Consumers

    News release: "The Department of Justice announced today that it will require Verizon and four of the nation’s largest cable companies—Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks and Cox Communications—to make changes to a series of agreements concerning both the sale of bundled wireless and wireline services, and the formation of a technology research joint venture. The department said that, if left unaltered, the agreements would have harmed competition by diminishing the companies’ incentive to compete, resulting in higher prices and lower quality for consumers. The announcement came after a closely coordinated investigation with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), with additional assistance provided by the New York State Attorney General’s Office."

    August 15, 2012
    * New GAO Reports - Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle, International Taxation
    • Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle - DOD Is Addressing Knowledge Gaps in Its New Acquisition Strategy [Reissued on August 13, 2012] GAO-12-822, Jul 26, 2012
    • International Taxation - Information on Foreign-Owned but Essentially U.S.-Based Corporate Groups Is Limited, GAO-12-794, July 16, 2012
    * CRS Report - Gun Control Legislation

    Gun Control Legislation, William J. Krouse, Specialist in Domestic Security and Crime Policy. August 3, 2012

  • Congress has debated the efficacy and constitutionality of federal regulation of firearms and ammunition, with strong advocates arguing for and against greater gun control. In the wake of the July 20, 2012, Aurora, CO, theater mass shooting, in which 12 people were shot to death and 58 wounded (7 of them critically) by a lone gunman, it is likely that there will be calls in the 112th Congress to reconsider a 1994 ban on semiautomatic assault weapons and large capacity ammunition feeding devices that expired in September 2004. There were similar calls to ban such feeding devices (see S. 436/H.R. 1781) following the January 8, 2011, Tucson, AZ, mass shooting, in which 6 people were killed and 14 wounded, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who was grievously wounded...This report also includes discussion of other salient and recurring gun control issues that have generated past or current congressional interest. Those issues include (1) screening firearms background check applicants against terrorist watch lists, (2) combating gun trafficking and straw purchases, (3) reforming the regulation of federally licensed gun dealers, (4) requiring background checks for private firearms transfers at gun shows, (5) more-strictly regulating certain firearms previously defined in statute as “semiautomatic assault weapons,” and (6) banning or
    requiring the registration of certain long-range .50 caliber rifles, which are commonly referred to as “sniper” rifles. To set these and other emerging issues in context, this report provides basic firearms-related statistics, an overview of federal firearms law, and a summary of legislative action in the 111th and 112th Congresses."
  • * Paper - A Technology-Centered Approach to Quantitative Privacy

    Gray, David C. and Citron, Danielle Keats, A Technology-Centered Approach to Quantitative Privacy (August 14, 2012). Available at SSRN

  • "Our analysis and proposal draw upon insights from information privacy law. Although information privacy law and Fourth Amendment jurisprudence share a fundamental interest in protecting privacy interests, these conversations have been treated as theoretically and practically discrete. This Article ends that isolation and the mutual exceptionalism that it implies. As information privacy scholarship suggests, technology can permit government to know us in unprecedented and totalizing ways at great cost to personal development and democratic institutions. We argue that these concerns about panoptic surveillance lie at the heart of the Fourth Amendment as well. We therefore propose a technology-centered approach to measuring and protecting Fourth Amendment interests in quantitative privacy. As opposed to proposals for case-by-case assessments of information “mosaics,” which have so far dominated the debate, we argue that government access to technologies capable of facilitating broad programs of continuous and indiscriminate monitoring should be subject to the same Fourth Amendment limitations applied to physical searches."
  • * The State of the First Amendment: 2012

    "The First Amendment Center has supported an annual national survey of American attitudes about the First Amendment since 1997. The State of the First Amendment: 2012 is the 16th survey in this series. This year’s annual survey repeats some of the questions that have been administered since 1997 and includes new questions on the role of religion in the presidential election, attitudes about government’s control of the Internet, and opinions about the use of copyrighted material on the Internet. This report summarizes the findings from the 2012 survey, and where appropriate, depicts how attitudes have changed over time. The first section of this report presents the survey methodology used to conduct the State of the First Amendment research. The second section highlights the key findings from the 2012 project. The final section presents the complete survey results including question wording and trend data."

    August 09, 2012
    * Google Will Pay $22.5 Million to Settle FTC Charges it Misrepresented Privacy Assurances

    News release: "Google Inc. has agreed to pay a record $22.5 million civil penalty to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it misrepresented to users of Apple Inc.’s Safari Internet browser that it would not place tracking “cookies” or serve targeted ads to those users, violating an earlier privacy settlement between the company and the FTC. The settlement is part of the FTC’s ongoing efforts make sure companies live up to the privacy promises they make to consumers, and is the largest penalty the agency has ever obtained for a violation of a Commission order. In addition to the civil penalty, the order also requires Google to disable all the tracking cookies it had said it would not place on consumers’ computers."

    * InfoToday - Lexis Advance Launches New Features That Expand Content and Enhance Search

    Lexis Advance Launches New Features That Expand Content and Enhance Search by Sabrina I. Pacifici

  • "On July 19, 2012, Lexis announced the latest release of its new platform, Lexis Advance, which provides users with significantly expanded access to content through expanded source selection, topics and browse features, functionality that offers easier, more flexible, customized navigation, and more transparently comprehensive and actionable search results. Marty Kilmer, vice president of product platforms at LexisNexis Legal & Professional (part of Reed Elsevier), announced that the applications suite available to users on the company’s new generation platform Lexis Advance will continue to evolve and that additional new features will be forthcoming. The three key components of this roll out focus on creating and expanding search capabilities, reviewing results, and mobile access, communicated through the press release as Search, Browse and Filter; Exclusive Visualization Solutions; and Fully Integrated Anytime, Anywhere Access."

  • August 07, 2012
    * Report - The Disparate Impact of Disciplinary Exclusion from School

    Opportunities Suspended: The Disparate Impact of Disciplinary Exclusion from School, by Daniel J. Losen and Jonathan Gillespie. August 2012. The Center for Civil Rights Remedies at The Civil Rights Project at UCLA

  • "Well over three million children, K-12, are estimated to have lost instructional “seat time” in 2009-2010 because they were suspended from school, often with no guarantee of adult supervision outside the school. That’s about the number of children it would take to fill every seat in every major league baseball park and every NFL stadium in America, combined. Besides the obvious loss of time in the classroom, suspensions matter because they are among the leading indicators of whether a child will drop out of school, and because out of- school suspension increases a child’s risk for future incarceration. Given these increased risks, what we don’t know about the use of suspensions may be putting our children’s futures (and our economy) in jeopardy. Furthermore, the high risk of getting suspended is not borne equally by all students, which raises civil rights issues and questions about fundamental fairness. This report will demonstrate that, while children from every racial group can be found to have a high risk for suspension in some school districts, African American children and children with disabilities are usually at a far greater risk than others."
  • August 04, 2012
    * Contentious Google Book Scanning Case Approaches Fall Trial Date

    Publishers Week news in following Google Book Scanning project postings: "After a round of key filings, two Authors Guild cases challenging Google’s ambitious library book-scanning program are on schedule for early fall trial dates. Final reply briefs were filed July 27 for the Authors Guild v. HathiTrust, with that case now fully briefed and all but set for a November trial in Judge Harold Baer’s courtroom. And in the Authors Guild v. Google case, motions for summary judgment were also filed July 27, with a final round of reply briefs due September 17 and oral arguments set for October 9 before Judge Denny Chin. With the summary judgment motions now in, the question before the courts this time around is refreshingly simple compared to the complex 300-plus–page settlement agreement between the authors, publishers, and Google that was rejected by Judge Denny Chin in March of 2011: digitizing millions of books for preservation and indexing is either authorized by Congress under the Copyright Act’s fair use provision, or it’s not. The Authors Guild holds that the unprecedented mass digitization programs exceed Congress’s stated intentions, while lawyers for Google and the HathiTrust (a coalition of research libraries) argue that the public benefits and transformative nature of the scanning projects easily qualify them as fair use."

    August 01, 2012
    * FTC Seeks Comments on Additional Proposed Revisions to Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule

    News release: "The Federal Trade Commission is publishing a Federal Register Notice seeking public comments on additional proposed modifications to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule. In updating the Rule to keep current with technology advances, in September 2011, the FTC issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking seeking comment on proposed changes to the Commission's COPPA Rule. The Commission received 350 comments. In response to those comments and informed by its experience in enforcing and administrating the Rule, the FTC now proposes to modify certain definitions to clarify the scope of the Rule and strengthen its protections for the online collection, use, or disclosure of children's personal information."

    July 31, 2012
    * LLRX - The Decline of DVD-by-Mail, or Further Thoughts on the Digital Death of Copyright’s First Sale Doctrine

    Via LLRX - The Decline of DVD-by-Mail, or Further Thoughts on the Digital Death of Copyright’s First Sale Doctrine - Prof. Annemarie Bridy comments on a dynamic new area of online copyright and licensing as she focuses on how Netflix is transitioning from an operating model that is clearly covered by an exception to copyright law to one that (very probably) requires permission for every content delivery.

    * TRAC Reports - ATF Prosecutions Turning Around in FY 2012

    TRAC: "The latest available data from the Justice Department show that, during the first eight months of FY 2012, the number of prosecutions for weapons and other offenses referred by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has staged a turnaround. While these prosecutions have fallen steadily after reaching a peak in FY 2005, the latest government figures show an upward trend, with 6,258 new matters filed so far during FY 2012. If this pace continues, FY 2012 will see 9,387 ATF prosecutions, an increase of 5.9 percent over FY 2011."

    * How Fair Use Can Help Solve the Orphan Works Problem

    How Fair Use Can Help Solve the Orphan Works Problem, Jennifer M. Urban - University of California, Berkeley - School of Law, June 18, 2012. Berkeley Technology Law Journal, Vol. 27, 2012. UC Berkeley Public Law Research Paper No. 2089526

  • "Many works that libraries, archives, and historical societies, among others, would like to digitize and make available online are "orphan works," that is, works for which the copyright holder either is unknown or cannot be located after a diligent search. Encountering orphan works can be stymieing because the lack of an owner means that there is no way to obtain permission to use them. While Congress nearly passed legislation to deal with the orphan works problem in 2008, its ultimate failure to enact this bill has left those who possess orphan works in limbo. Because of the risk of high statutory damages if an owner later shows up, nonprofit libraries and similar institutions have been reluctant to digitize these works and offer them to the public. The orphan status of these works thus creates a barrier to access to important cultural and historical information despite recent improvements in digitization technologies that could bring these works out of obscurity and make them much more widely useful. As such, there is international consensus that the “orphan works problem” must be addressed. This Article argues that legislation is not necessary to enable some uses of orphan works by nonprofit libraries and archives. Instead, the fair use doctrine in United States copyright law provides a partial solution. The Article addresses three basic questions: first, does fair use provide a viable basis on which libraries might digitize orphans? Second, does fair use provide a viable basis on which to make these orphans available to patrons or the public? Third, more generally, can or should fair use do any additional work in infringement analysis where the copyrighted work in question is an orphan?"
  • * Federal Pollution Control Laws: How Are They Enforced?

    Federal Pollution Control Laws: How Are They Enforced? by Robert Esworthy - Specialist in Environmental Policy. July 7, 2012

  • "As a result of enforcement actions and settlements for noncompliance with federal pollution control requirements, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported that, for FY2011, regulated entities committed to invest an estimated $19.0 billion for judicially mandated pollution controls and cleanup, and for implementing mutually agreed upon (supplemental) environmentally beneficial projects. EPA estimates that these efforts achieved commitments to reduce, treat, or eliminate 1.8 billion pounds of pollutants in the environment, primarily from air and water. EPA also assessed more than $152.0 million in civil penalties (administrative and judicial) and $35.0 million in criminal fines and restitution during FY2011. Nevertheless, noncompliance with federal pollution control laws remains a continuing concern. The overall effectiveness of the enforcement organizational framework, the balance between state autonomy and federal oversight, and the adequacy of funding are long-standing congressional concerns."
  • July 30, 2012
    * "Amazon" Laws and Taxation of Internet Sales: Constitutional Analysis

    CRS - "Amazon" Laws and Taxation of Internet Sales: Constitutional Analysis, Erika K. Lunder - Legislative Attorney; John R. Luckey - Legislative Attorney, July 26, 2012

  • "As more and more purchases are made over the Internet, states are looking for new ways to collect taxes on these sales. While there is a common misperception that states cannot tax Internet
    sales, the reality is that they may impose sales and use taxes on such transactions, even when the retailer is outside of the state. However, if the seller does not have a constitutionally sufficient connection (“nexus”) to the state, then the seller is under no enforceable obligation to collect a use tax. While the purchaser is still generally responsible for paying the use tax, the rate of compliance is low. Recent laws, often called “Amazon” laws in reference to the large Internet retailer, represent fresh attempts by the states to capture taxes on Internet sales. States enacting these laws have used two basic approaches. The first is to impose use tax collection responsibilities on retailers who compensate state residents for placing links on the state residents’ websites to the retailer’s website (i.e., online referrals or “click-throughs”). The other is to require remote sellers to provide sales and tax-related information to the state and/or the in-state customers. New York was the first state to enact click-through legislation, and Colorado was the first to pass a notification law. These laws have received significant publicity, in part due to questions about whether they impermissibly impose duties on remote sellers who do not have a sufficient nexus to the state."
  • * Modernizing the Legal Framework for Surveillance - An Integrated Surveillance Decision

    "This IMF paper proposes a draft Integrated Surveillance Decision (ISD) for adoption. As part of broader efforts to strengthen Fund surveillance, the Fund is modernizing its legal framework to better support operations. In April 2012, the Fund’s Executive Board discussed Modernizing the Legal Framework for Surveillance—Building Blocks Toward an Integrated Surveillance Decision. That paper highlighted key weaknesses in the current legal framework for surveillance and provided proposals for addressing them. Most Directors agreed that introducing a new surveillance decision covering both bilateral and multilateral surveillance would help address these weaknesses. In particular, they agreed with the general proposed approach to fill the gaps in bilateral surveillance through multilateral surveillance."

    July 27, 2012
    * TRAC - Rise Seen in Social Security SSID Benefit Lawsuits

    TRAC: "The latest available data from the federal courts show that in June of this year there were 860 new SSID Title XVI lawsuits filed, most under US Code Title 45 Section 405 which allows for judicial review when Social Security supplemental security income (SSI) benefits are denied. The number of filings for each of the last four months (March through June 2012) is higher than for any other month in the past five years. Overall, the data show these filings are up 19.4 percent from a year ago and up 62.6 percent from levels reported in June 2007. During the first nine months of fiscal year 2012, a total of 6,847 SSID Title XVI lawsuits were filed. In the Central District of California (Los Angeles), 457 such suits have been filed so far this fiscal year, more than in any other district. Relative to its population, the Western District of Arkansas (Fort Smith) led the nation in terms of the rate at which such suits were filed, with over seven times the average for the country for fiscal year 2012."

    * Disability.gov Provides Easy Access to Information on the ADA and Other Protections for People with Disabilities

    Via USA.gov: "Today marks the 22nd anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) – landmark legislation that advanced the civil rights of people with disabilities throughout the nation. However, the ADA is only one of many laws that ensure equal access for everyone. Other examples include the Assistive Technology Act, Fair Housing Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). More than 54 million people in the United States live with a disability of some kind, be it sensory, physical, intellectual, developmental, emotional or mental. Our friends at Disability.gov, the federal government website for comprehensive information on disability programs and services in communities nationwide, offer hundreds of resources on protecting your civil rights. Learn about your rights on the job, different types of discrimination, how to file a complaint and what the federal government is doing to enforce the ADA and other laws. The site also covers topics such as applying for benefits, getting health care, finding a job, and paying for housing."

  • Employment of People with Disabilities in the Federal Executive Branch Report (FY 2011). "The report is prepared in compliance with Executive Order 13548, Increasing Federal Employment of Individuals with Disabilities, and contains information on the representation of people with disabilities within the Federal Government and best practices of Federal agencies."
  • July 24, 2012
    * Australasian Colonial Legal History Library is Launched

    Via Graham Greenleaf: "AustLII will today launch the Australasian Colonial Legal History Library. This is the first version of the Library, containing over 220,000 searchable documents from before 1900, from the seven Australasian colonies (including New Zealand). It is being developed in conjunction with NZLII. Development of further databases is underway and will expand the Library's contents considerably over the next year. A paper that AustLII presented at the Australian Historical Association Conference to explain the Library, 'Digitising and Searching Australasian Colonial Legal History', is now available for download at SSRN."

    * Global Commission on HIV and the Law, Risks, Rights, & Health

    Global Commission on HIV and the Law, Risks, Rights, & Health, July 2012

  • "The Global Commission on HIV and the Law is an independent body, established at the request of the Programme Coordinating Board of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and supported by a Secretariat based at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). This report reflects the views and conclusions of the Commission, as well as its recommendations to countries, civil society actors, the private sector and the United Nations...In just three decades, over 30 million people have died of AIDS, and 34 million more have been infected with HIV. The HIV epidemic has become
    one of the greatest public health challenges of our time. It is also a crisis of law, human rights and social justice. The good news is that we now have all the evidence and tools we need to radically slow new HIV infections and stop HIV related deaths. Paradoxically, this comes at a time when bad laws and other political obstacles are
    standing in the way of success."
  • * DOJ Reports to Congress the State Secrets Privilige Report

    Via FAS, 2011 DOJ Report released this week: State Secrets Privilege Report - "The Government has invoked the state secrets privilege sparingly and appropriately. At the time of the Task Force review, the privilege had been invoked in a very small number of cases out of the thousands of cases the Department was litigating...In each pending case evaluated by the Task Force, the Government had provided reviewing courts with lengthy, well documented classified submissions setting forth the information that the litigation threatened to expose, the national security interests at stake, and other relevant information. These factual submissions uniformly provided the court with an ample basis for understanding why the evidence in question could not be made public and why the claims and defenses at issue could not be litigated without a disclosure that reasonably could be expected to cause significant harm to national security."

    * CRS - Individual Mandate and Related Information Requirements under ACA

    Individual Mandate and Related Information Requirements under ACA, Janemarie Mulvey, Specialist in Health Care Financing - Hinda Chaikind, Section Research Manager, July 2, 2012

  • "On June 28, 2012, the United States Supreme Court issued its decision in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, finding that the individual mandate in § 5000A of the Internal Revenue Code (as added by § 1501 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA)), is a constitutional exercise of Congress’’s authority to levy taxes. However, the Court held that it was not a valid exercise of Congress’’s power under the Commerce Clause or the Necessary and Proper Clause. This report describes the individual mandate under Section 1501 and Section 10106 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA, P.L. 111-148), as amended by Section 1002 of the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (P.L. 111-152). Hereinafter, ““ACA”” will refer to ACA as amended by the reconciliation act and other laws. In addition, ACA includes several reporting requirements designed, in part, to assist individuals in providing evidence of having met the mandate, as well as other related information about their health insurance. These requirements are also described in this report."
  • July 23, 2012
    * TRAC: FOIA Request Produces Lates ICE Prosecutorial Discretion Program Data

    "As of June 28, 2012 a total of 5,684 cases were closed under a special Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) program announced last August. The stated goal of the program is to reduce the backlog of pending cases by identifying those that could be dismissed or put on hold through the exercise of prosecutorial discretion (PD). The number of cases closed under this program -- up from 4,585 as of the end of May -- still amounted to only 1.9 percent of the 298,173 cases pending before the Immigration Courts as of the end of last September. The largest number of PD closures for any country was 3,060 for Mexico, representing 2.9 percent of the backlog for this country. South Korea had the highest PD closure rate of 3.9 percent, followed by Cameroon with 3.6 percent. At the other extreme, China saw only 63 of 26,579 cases closed due to PD, just 0.2 percent of the backlog for this country. India was next lowest, with a PD closure rate of 0.8 percent. TRAC's latest report is here."

    July 21, 2012
    * Top 14 Government Social Media Initiatives

    Information Week: "Law enforcement agencies across the nation are using social media to aid their investigations, according to a survey by LexisNexis Risk Solutions. The survey, of more than 1,200 law enforcement professionals with federal, state, and local agencies, found that 83% of the respondents are using social media, particularly Facebook and YouTube, to further their investigations. And of those not doing so, 74% intend to start using social media as a tool within the next year, which would raise the usage rate to about 95%. More than two-thirds (67%) of respondents believe that social media helps solve crimes more quickly. The most common uses of social media among those who do it include identifying persons of interest (85%) and their associates (75%), identifying criminal activity (76%) and its location (66%), and gathering photos or statements as corroborating evidence (61%)."

  • Top 14 Government Social Media Initiatives
  • July 19, 2012
    * TRAC - Immigration Backlog and Wait Times Reach New Highs

    "The number of cases awaiting resolution before the Immigration Courts keeps rising, along with the average time these pending cases have been waiting. At the end of June 2012 the backlog reached a new all-time high of 314,147. According to the very latest data obtained and analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), that total is up 5.6 percent this year, 20 percent higher than it was at the end of FY 2010. Average wait times jumped to 526 days, compared with 489 days at the end of fiscal year 2011 and 447 days at the end of fiscal year 2010. Despite ICE Director John Morton's announced policy of focusing on deporting serious criminals, the proportion of the Immigration Court's pending caseload made up of "criminal" cases has not increased, but instead has been steadily falling. Merely 7.9 percent of pending Immigration Court cases involved individuals charged with criminal activities, actions adverse to national security, or aiding terrorism as the basis for ICE seeking removal action."

    * Financial Services Roundtable - State of the Financial Services Industry

    State of the Financial Services Industry - July 17, 2012. Focus on fortress balance sheets; too big to fail; the cumulative weight of new rules; and economic benefits of big banks

  • "The two-year anniversary of the Dodd-Frank Act is marked by a safer and stronger financial services industry. Capital is at a record high, lending is at pre-crisis levels, and the number of “problem banks” is rapidly decreasing. The risk profiles of individual firms have been reduced and systemic risk oversight is in place for the first time in history. These dramatic improvements are the result of industry initiative and financial regulatory reform. However, financial services companies (and the economy) have yet to face some of the most expensive costs coming from the Dodd-Frank Act. Nearly 70% of the rules have yet to be finalized. Many of the expected provisions carry significant economic consequences for the industry, consumers, and the economy. At this critical time in our nation’s economic recovery, we must preserve those parts of the Dodd-Frank Act that make our system safer and stronger, while re-examining the provisions and combination of provisions that needlessly restrict economic growth, limit credit, result in higher costs and reduced access to services for consumers, and make U.S. companies less competitive."
  • Related postings on financial system
  • * Financial Stability Oversight Council Makes First Designations in Effort to Protect Against Future Financial Crises

    News release: "The Financial Stability Oversight Council (the Council) today voted unanimously to designate eight financial market utilities (FMUs) as systemically important under Title VIII of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (the Dodd-Frank Act). This action, the first designations made by the Council, represents another key step towards creating a safer, more resilient financial system. The authority to designate FMUs—often referred to as the “plumbing of the financial system” for their role in clearing and settling transactions between financial institutions—is an important component of Wall Street Reform and is one of a number of tools now available to constrain risk and help protect against future financial crises."

    * Presentation - Disappearing Phone Booths: Privacy in the Digital Age

    Disappearing Phone Booths: Privacy in the Digital Age

  • "CDT Senior Policy Analyst Erica Newland gave a version of this talk to DC Superior Court judges in May 2012. This speech, which draws on past CDT testimony and work, makes the case that in the context of a legal framework that has turned a blind-eye to the foundational benefits of privacy, changes in technology are threatening this civil liberty with obsolescence."
  • July 18, 2012
    * Senate Permanent Sub-Committee on Investigations report - U.S. Vulnerabilities to Money Laundering, Drugs, and Terrorist Financing

    U.S. Vulnerabilities to Money Laundering, Drugs, and Terrorist Financing: HSBC Case History. Majority and Minority Staff Report, Permanent Subcommittee On Investigations, Hearings, Unites States Senate, July 17, 2012

  • The Subcommittee hearing examined the issue of money laundering and terrorist financing vulnerabilities created when a global bank uses its U.S. affiliate to provide U.S. dollars, U.S. dollar services, and access to the U.S. financial system to high risk affiliates, high risk correspondent banks, and high risk clients, using HSBC as a case study." Links to Testimony
  • July 16, 2012
    * Human Rights Watch - Iraq: Cybercrimes Law Violates Free Speech

    "A new draft law on information technology crimes would restrict free speech in violation of international law and poses a severe threat to journalists, whistleblowers, and peaceful activists, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The pending law includes vague provisions that would allow Iraqi authorities to harshly punish expression they decide constitutes a threat to governmental, social, or religious interests. The Council of Representatives, the parliament, should not approve the law without revising it to remove the rights restrictions. The 16-page report, Iraq’s Information Crimes Law: Badly Written Provisions and Draconian Punishments Violate Due Process and Free Speech, is a legal analysis of the draft law."

  • The Social Security Disability Insurance Program - Infographic
  • * Federal Criminal Case Processing Statistics

    "The Bureau of Justice Statistics, through its Federal Justice Statistics Resource Center (FJSRC), compiles comprehensive information describing suspects and defendants processed in the federal criminal justice system. The Federal Criminal Case Processing Statistics (FCCPS) tool is an interface that can be used to analyze federal case processing data. Users can generate various statistics in the areas of federal law enforcement, prosecution/courts and incarcerations, and based on title and section of the U.S. Criminal Code. Data are available for the years 1998-2010."

    July 15, 2012
    * Competitive Intelligence - A Selective Resource Guide - Completely Updated

    Via LLRX.com - Competitive Intelligence - A Selective Resource Guide - Completely Updated - July 2012

  • Sabrina I. Pacifici's comprehensive current awareness guide focuses on leveraging a selected but wide range of reliable, topical, predominantly free websites and resources. The goal is to support an effective research process to search, discover, access, monitor, analyze and review current and historical data, news, reports and profiles on companies, markets, countries, people and issues, from a national and a global perspective. Sabrina's guide is a "best of the Web" resource that encompasses search engines, portals, databases, alerts, data archives, publisher specific services and applications. All of her recommendations are accompanied by links to trusted content targeted sources that are produced by top media and publishing companies, business, government, academia and NGOs.
  • * UK - Enhancing consumer confidence by clarifying consumer law

    Enhancing consumer confidence by clarifying consumer law: consultation on the supply of goods, services and digital content, July 13, 2012, UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

  • "The law covering consumer rights when they buy faulty goods and services has evolved over many years. Much of it is rooted in the common law of contract, but there is also an overlay of several statutes, some of which are over 30 years old, and a further overlay of more recent changes implementing European Union obligations. Not only is the law itself now unclear and hard for consumers to apply in several areas, but also consumers are not clear what their legal entitlements are when things go wrong. This is particularly true for digital content (e.g. music, software or games) where there is a complete lack of clarity at the moment over what rights and remedies a consumer may have. Obviously the Government cannot tolerate archaic law holding back innovation in a sector as important as this. Few consumers are willing to pursue their rights when the benefits of doing so are so hard to predict without expensive legal advice. The Government set up the Red Tape Challenge to identify areas where the law was too complex and to bring forward repeals and simplifications. The proposals outlined in this Consultation respond to that challenge."
  • July 14, 2012
    * Paper - Copyright and Innovation: The Untold Story

    Copyright and Innovation: The Untold Story by Michael A. Carrier via SSRN

  • "Copyright has an innovation problem. Judicial decisions, private enforcement, and public dialogue ignore innovation and overemphasize the harms of copyright infringement. Just to pick one example, “piracy,” “theft,” and “rogue websites” were the focus of debate in connection with the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). But such a debate ignores the effect of copyright law and enforcement on innovation. Even though innovation is the most important factor in economic growth, it is difficult to observe, especially in comparison to copyright infringement. This article addresses this problem. It presents the results of a groundbreaking study of 31 CEOs, company founders, and vice-presidents from technology companies, the recording industry, and venture capital firms. Based on in-depth interviews, the article offers original insights on the relationship between copyright law and innovation. It also analyzes the behavior of the record labels when confronted with the digital music revolution. And it traces innovators’ and investors’ reactions to the district court’s injunction in the case involving peer-to-peer (p2p) service Napster."
  • * WSJ - Visa, Mastercard to pay $6 billion to retailers over price-fixing

    WSJ: "Visa Inc., MasterCard Inc. and some large banks agreed to pay scores of retailers—from giant Publix Supermarkets Inc. to an interior-design store in Minnesota—more than $6 billion to settle a long-running lawsuit, in a pact that also permits merchants to charge more to customers who pay with credit cards. The settlement is a victory for retailers, which will get more control over how people pay, and removes a legal threat for the major card companies. It could potentially raise prices for some goods and services for consumers who prefer using cards to cash and checks."

    July 13, 2012
    * The LexisNexis 14th Annual Mortgage Fraud Report

    The LexisNexis® 14th Annual Mortgage Fraud Report, July 2012

  • "With still-high delinquency and foreclosure rates, little economic progress in depressed markets, and unscrupulous individuals taking advantage of the financially disenfranchised, 2011 was a bleak year for the mortgage industry. As industry insiders and economic analysts hope for noticeable recovery, 2011’s mortgage loan originations were at their lowest since 2001. However, the business of home buying continues, albeit slowly and with considerable caution...The highest categories for all reported 2011 investigations are Application and Appraisal fraud and misrepresentation. The highest
    categories for reported 2011 originations are Application and
    Verification of Deposit (and other bank-related documentation) fraud and misrepresentation."
  • Related postings on financial system
  • July 12, 2012
    * TRAC: Consumer Credit Lawsuits Up 194% from Five Years Ago

    Consumer Credit Civil Filings for May 2012: "The latest available data from the federal courts show that in May of this year there were 890 new consumer credit lawsuits filed, most under the Fair Debt Enforcement Act and Fair Credit Reporting Act. According to the case-by-case civil enforcement information analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), this count was 12.4 percent higher than the previous month when 792 cases of this kind were filed. The volume of such litigation is averaging 194 percent higher than what it was five years ago in May 2007."

    July 10, 2012
    * CRS - Health Care: Constitutional Rights and Legislative Powers

    Health Care: Constitutional Rights and Legislative Powers. Kathleen S. Swendiman, Legislative Attorney, July 9, 2012

  • "The health care reform debate raises many complex issues including those of coverage, accessibility, cost, accountability, and quality of health care. Underlying these policy considerations are issues regarding the status of health care as a constitutional or legal right. This report analyzes constitutional and legal issues pertaining to a right to health care, as well as the power of Congress to enact and fund health care programs. The United States Supreme Court’s decision in NFIB v. Sebelius, which upheld most of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Affordable Care Act/ACA), is also discussed. The United States Constitution does not set forth an explicit right to health care, and the Supreme Court has never interpreted the Constitution as guaranteeing a right to health care services from the government for those who cannot afford it. The Supreme Court has, however, held that the government has an obligation to provide medical care in certain limited circumstances, such as for prisoners."

  • * The Article V Convention to Propose Constitutional Amendments: Contemporary Issues for Congress

    CRS - The Article V Convention to Propose Constitutional Amendments: Contemporary Issues for Congress, Thomas H. Neale, Specialist in American National Government, July 9, 2012

  • After three decades of inactivity, various contemporary developments could contribute to a renewal of congressional interest in the Article V Convention alternative. The emergence of Internet and social media-driven public policy and issue campaigns has combined with renewed interest in specific constitutional amendments, and the Article V Convention procedure in general, as a means of bypassing perceived policy deadlock at the federal level. The Tea Party Movement, MoveOn.org, and Occupy Wall Street are cited as technology-driven issue advocacy groups that could provide a model for convention advocates. The Article V Convention concept enjoys support from several advocacy groups, and has been the subject of a recent academic conference and a range of “op-ed” articles publicizing the once-obscure alternative."
  • * The Sentencing Project - Trends U.S. Corrections

    "Trends in U.S. Corrections is a visual tool that provides a compilation of key developments in the criminal justice system over the past several decades. Among the issues featured in this collection are:

    • Rate of incarceration from 1925 to 2010
    • International comparisons of incarceration rates
    • Changes in the drug offender composition of prison populations over time
    • Racial/ethnic disparities by gender in incarceration
    • Increases in the number of people serving life sentences and life without parole since the 1980s
    • Trends in the number of juveniles held in adult prisons and jails since 1985
    • Increases in state corrections expenditures from 1985 to 2010"
    • Related postings on sentencing

    July 09, 2012
    * TRAC Releases Federal Prosecution Data for April 2012

    "Federal criminal prosecutions totaled 14,950 for the month of April, according to the most recent data released by the Department of Justice. This was an increase of just under four percent from the previous month. Among the program categories, the largest number of prosecutions was seen in immigration, accounting for 59 percent of the filings. Drug related crimes accounted for 13 percent of the total, and weapons offenses made up just over four percent."

    * Continuing Professional Development, Life Long Learning and Legal Ethics Education

    Devlin, Richard and Downie, Jocelyn, '...And the Learners Shall Inherit the Earth': Continuing Professional Development, Life Long Learning and Legal Ethics Education (2010). (2010) Canadian Legal Education Annual Review 9. Available at SSRN

  • "After many years of debate and resistance the Canadian legal profession is finally accepting that compulsory professional development is a necessity. We argue that as the legal profession begins to design and deliver these programmes it should take into consideration the insights of the educational literature on lifelong learning. By way of a concrete example we explore the ways in which lifelong learning theory can inform the design and delivery of legal ethics education."
  • July 08, 2012
    * UK Intellectual Property Office - Consultation on Modernising Copyright

    "Implementing the Hargreaves review: In May 2011 Professor Ian Hargreaves published his Independent review of IP & growth. The 10 recommendations were broadly accepted in the Government's response document issued on 3 August 2011. We will be using this page to provide updates, data, consultation information and progress reports on the work we’re doing and where we are making progress.
    Progress to date July 2012 Government Policy Statement: Consultation on modernising copyright. 2 July 2012, the Government published a policy statement on modernising copyright licensing document in light of the recent consultation. The Government also published updated impact assessments on each of the three proposals in the policy statement. The Government intends to legislate as soon as possible to:

    • allow schemes to be introduced for the commercial and non-commercial use of ‘orphan’ copyright works and voluntary extended collective licensing of copyright works, subject to a number of important safeguards, and
    • to create a backstop power to require collecting societies to adopt codes of conduct based on minimum standards..."

    July 06, 2012
    July 05, 2012
    * N.J. Supreme Court - Records related to cases at public law school clinics are not subject to Open Public Records Act

    Chronicle of Higher Education, Peter Schmidt: "The New Jersey State Supreme Court has held that the state's open-records law does not require a Rutgers University legal clinic to relinquish client files, handing a major victory to higher-education associations, which warned that an inability to maintain attorney-client privilege would badly damage the nation's public law schools. Overturning a state appeals-court decision against the public law clinic, the State Supreme Court unanimously ruled Thursday that the state's open-records act does not cover documents related to such clinics' efforts to represent clients."

    July 04, 2012
    * ACA: A Brief Overview of the Law, Implementation, and Legal Challenges

    CRS - ACA: A Brief Overview of the Law, Implementation, and Legal Challenges, July 3, 2012

  • "On June 28, 2012, the Supreme Court issued its decision in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, finding that the individual mandate is a constitutional exercise of Congress’s authority to levy taxes. However, the Court held that it was not a valid exercise of Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause or the Necessary and Proper Clause. With regard to the Medicaid expansion provision, the Court further held that the federal government cannot terminate current Medicaid program federal matching funds if a state refuses to expand its Medicaid program. If a state accepts the new ACA Medicaid expansion funds, it must abide by the new expansion coverage rules, but, based on the Court’s opinion, it appears that a state can refuse to participate in the expansion without losing any of its current federal Medicaid matching funds. All other provisions of ACA, as amended by HCERA, remain intact. This report provides a brief summary of major ACA provisions, implementation and oversight activities, and current legal challenges."

  • * USTR Introduces New Copyright Exceptions and Limitations Provision at San Diego TPP Talks

    "For the first time in any U.S. trade agreement, the United States is proposing a new provision, consistent with the internationally-recognized “3-step test," that will obligate Parties to seek to achieve an appropriate balance in their copyright systems in providing copyright exceptions and limitations for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. These principles are critical aspects of the U.S. copyright system, and appear in both our law and jurisprudence. The balance sought by the U.S. TPP proposal recognizes and promotes respect for the important interests of individuals, businesses, and institutions who rely on appropriate exceptions and limitations in the TPP region. The United States is proposing this at the current round of TPP talks in San Diego. The proposal has benefited from the input of a wide range of stakeholders, and we look forward to discussing it further and sharing more information as the TPP negotiations progress."

    July 03, 2012
    * EPIC - 2011 Report: Wiretap Authorizations Decrease

    "According to the 2011 Wiretap Report, released by the Administrative Office of the US Courts, federal and state applications for wiretap orders dropped 14 percent in 2011, compared to the number reported in 2010. The reduction in wiretaps resulted primarily from a drop in applications for intercepts in narcotics offenses. In 2011, a total of 2,732 intercept applications were authorized by federal and state courts, with 792 applications by federal authorities and 1,940 by the states. In 2011, 98 percent, or 2,674, of all authorized wiretaps were designated as portable devices. The Wiretap Report does not include interceptions pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. For more information see: EPIC: Wiretapping and Administrative Office of the US Courts: Wiretap Reports."

    * EPA Greenhouse Gas Permitting Requirements Maintain Focus on Largest Emitters

    News release: "The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today announced that it will not revise greenhouse gas (GHG) permitting thresholds under the Clean Air Act. Today’s final rule is part of EPA’s common-sense, phased-in approach to GHG permitting under the Clean Air Act, announced in 2010 and recently upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The final rule maintains a focus on the nation’s largest emitters that account for nearly 70 percent of the total GHG pollution from stationary sources, while shielding smaller emitters from permitting requirements. EPA is also finalizing a provision that allows companies to set plant-wide emissions limits for GHGs, streamlining the permitting process, increasing flexibilities and reducing permitting burdens on state and local authorities and large industrial emitters."

    * GlaxoSmithKline to Plead Guilty and Pay $3 Billion to Resolve Fraud Allegations and Failure to Report Safety Data

    News release: "Global health care giant GlaxoSmithKline LLC (GSK) agreed to plead guilty and to pay $3 billion to resolve its criminal and civil liability arising from the company’s unlawful promotion of certain prescription drugs, its failure to report certain safety data, and its civil liability for alleged false price reporting practices, the Justice Department announced today. The resolution is the largest health care fraud settlement in U.S. history and the largest payment ever by a drug company. GSK agreed to plead guilty to a three-count criminal information, including two counts of introducing misbranded drugs, Paxil and Wellbutrin, into interstate commerce and one count of failing to report safety data about the drug Avandia to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Under the terms of the plea agreement, GSK will pay a total of $1 billion, including a criminal fine of $956,814,400 and forfeiture in the amount of $43,185,600. The criminal plea agreement also includes certain non-monetary compliance commitments and certifications by GSK’s U.S. president and board of directors. GSK’s guilty plea and sentence is not final until accepted by the U.S. District Court. GSK will also pay $2 billion to resolve its civil liabilities with the federal government under the False Claims Act, as well as the states. The civil settlement resolves claims relating to Paxil, Wellbutrin and Avandia, as well as additional drugs, and also resolves pricing fraud allegations."

  • Documents and Resources from the July 2, 2012 GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) Press Conference
  • July 02, 2012
    * Managing Discovery of Electronic Information: A Pocket Guide for Judges

    Managing Discovery of Electronic Information: A Pocket Guide for Judges, Second Edition. Barbara J. Rothstein, Ronald J. Hedges, and Elizabeth C. Wiggins. Federal Judicial Center, 2012

  • "ESI currently includes e-mail messages, word processing files, web pages, and databases created and stored on computers, magnetic disks (such as computer hard drives), optical disks (such as DVDs and CDs), and flash memory (such as “thumb” or “flash” drives), and increasingly on “cloud” based servers hosted by third parties that are accessed through Internet connections. The technology changes rapidly, making a complete list impossible. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 26 and 34, which went into effect on December 1, 2006, use the broad term “electronically stored information” to identify a distinct category of information that, along with “documents” and “things,” is subject to discovery rights and obligations."
  • July 01, 2012
    * A Visual Guide to NFIB v. Sebelius

    Follow up to The Health Care Law - Government Resources, Commentary and Analysis, see A Visual Guide to NFIB v. Sebelius: Competing Commerce Clause Opinion Lines 1789-2012, Colin P. Starger, University of Baltimore School of Law, June 30, 2012 - Download via SSRN.

  • Though Chief Justice Roberts ultimately provided the fifth vote upholding the Affordable Care Act (ACA) under the Tax Power, his was also one of five votes finding the ACA exceeded Congress’ power under the Commerce Clause. The doctrinal basis for Roberts’ Commerce Clause analysis was hotly contested. While Roberts argued that the ACA’s purported exercise of Commerce power “finds no support in our precedent,” Justice Ginsburg accused the Chief Justice of failing to “evaluat[e] the constitutionality of the minimum coverage provision in the manner established by our precedents.” These diametrically opposed perspectives on “precedent” might prompt observers to ask whether Roberts and Ginsburg considered the same cases as controlling. This Visual Guide shows that though the justices agreed on relevant cases, they disagreed on which opinions within those cases properly stated the law. Both Roberts and Ginsburg implicitly adopted the reasoning of prior dissents and concurrences as well as majority opinions. The map illustrates how competing lines of Commerce Clause opinions constitute a long-running doctrinal dialectic that culminated – for now – in NFIB v. Sebelius. This Visual Guide is a single-page PDF "poster" designed to serve as quick reference to the doctrinal debate."
  • June 30, 2012
    * Forbes Investigative Report - The truth about the Fast and Furious scandal

    "A Fortune investigation reveals that the ATF never intentionally allowed guns to fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. How the world came to believe just the opposite is a tale of rivalry, murder, and political bloodlust." - by Katherine Eban

    * The Federal Judiciary Channel - Bankruptcy Basics

    "Find information about bankruptcy laws, including answers to some of the most frequently asked questions. These videos will give you basic information about the process, the relief it offers, and how to find the legal help you may need."

    June 28, 2012
    * The Health Care Law - Government Resources, Commentary and Analysis

    "The Affordable Care Act puts in place strong consumer protections, provides new coverage options and gives you the tools you need to make informed choices about your health. In this section, learn about how the law affects you.

    • Read the Full Law: Read the full text of the Affordable Care Act or browse and download the law by section.
    • Key Features of the Law: Read this section to learn more about your rights and protections, insurance choices, and insurance costs. Get information on important benefits and programs available to seniors and small businesses.
    • Timeline: What’s Changing and When: The health care law puts in place reforms that will roll out through 2014 and beyond. Use the timeline or a printable list of key features in chronological order to learn what’s changing and when.
    • Information for You: Use this section to learn how the law helps different groups of people from young adults to seniors and pregnant women to families with children. Find audience-specific resources, videos, and top things to know.
    • Implementation Resources: Find out how the health care law is being carried out across the country. Find links to regulations, authorities, grants, letters, reports, and other information related to the Affordable Care Act."
    • Official text of Supreme Court decision; text with annotations via Bloomberg Law - Natl. Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, Nos. 11-393, 11-398 and, 11-400, 2012 BL 160004 (U.S. June 28, 2012); and extensive analysis and links to a wide range of commentary and analysis, via SCOTUSBlog, and the persistent URL (PURL) via GPO.
    • The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) published a chart identifying the four issues the Court addressed in its decision on the Affordable Care Act, the legal arguments for and against each issue, and a very brief statement of the Court's respective ruling on each.

    June 27, 2012
    * EPIC Calls On FTC to Investigate Facebook Email Changes

    "EPIC has asked the Federal Trade Commission to review Facebook's decision to change the default email address of Facebook users. The company recently removed email addresses, selected by users, with a @facebook.com address assigned by Facebook. EPIC asked the FTC to review this practice as it finalizes the terms of a settlement with Facebook. "Facebook's willingness to disregard user choice...raise[s] important questions about the company's ability to comply with the terms of the proposed Consent Order," EPIC wrote. EPIC also said that the change is a deceptive business practice because Facebook did not tell users that their preferred email address could be removed by the company. And EPIC noted that the change would result in user email being sent to Facebook's servers that would otherwise have gone to the user's email service. The FTC's settlement with Facebook follows from complaints filed by EPIC and other consumer and privacy organizations in 2009 and 2010. The settlement would bar Facebook from changing privacy settings without the affirmative consent of users or misrepresenting the privacy or security of users' personal information. For more information, see EPIC: Facebook Privacy, and EPIC: FTC Facebook Settlement."

    June 25, 2012
    * Paper - 'We All Have Too Much Invested to Stop': Enforcing Chevron in Canada

    'We All Have Too Much Invested to Stop': Enforcing Chevron in Canada, Nicholas Pengelley, June 24, 2012

  • "Almost 20 years of litigation pursued by indigenous plaintiffs from the rainforests of Ecuador resulted in a judgment of $18.2 billion against oil giant Chevron. That litigation now continues in Canada, where the plaintiffs seek to enforce their judgment against Chevron subsidiaries. The case, likely headed for the Supreme Court, will canvass issues hitherto little litigated in Canada, including the concept of “reverse veil-piercing” and the matters to be considered by Canadian courts when considering allegations of fraud, bias and corruption made against foreign courts."
  • June 22, 2012
    * Law review article - Confronting Supreme Court Fact Finding

    Larsen, Alli Orr, Confronting Supreme Court Fact Finding (February 23, 2012). Virginia Law Review, Forthcoming; William & Mary Law School Research Paper No. 09-206.

  • "Supreme Court justices routinely answer factual questions about the world – such as whether violent video games have a harmful effect on child brain development or whether a partial birth abortion is ever medically necessary. The traditional view is that these findings are informed through the adversary system: by reviewing evidence on the record and briefs on appeal. Routinely, however, the justices also engage in what I call “in house” fact-finding. They independently look beyond the briefs and record to answer general questions of fact, and they rely on their discoveries as authorities. To be sure, judges have always done this, and the Federal Rules of Evidence contain no rule restricting it. But times have changed. The world has recently undergone a massive revolution in the way it receives and evaluates information. No longer do justices need to trek to the library to look up factual questions. Instead they can access virtually infinite amounts of factual information at the click of a mouse. This article discusses how that change in technology has and will affect the Court’s fact-finding practice. It collects over 100 examples of factual authorities relied on in recent decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court that were found “in house” – i.e. that cannot be found in any of the party briefs, amici briefs, or the joint record. These are not insignificant rarities: almost 60% of the most important Court opinions in the last ten years rely on in house research at least once. The article then examines the potential dangers of in house fact finding in the digital age – specifically the possibility of mistake, the systematic introduction of bias, and notice/legitimacy concerns. It concludes that these concerns require an update to our approach to Supreme Court fact finding. It then offers two independent and contrasting solutions: new procedural rules that restrict reliance on factual authorities found in house, or alterations to the adversary method to allow for more public participation."
  • June 21, 2012
    * Free Congressional Tracking Tool Launched by Sunlight Foundation

    Via Daniel Schuman, The Sunlight Foundation: "SCOUT is a new free alert service that allows you search and create email or text alerts on legislation shaping issues you care about in Congress and across all fifty states. Scout also makes it easy to search federal regulations and what is actually said by lawmakers in the Congressional Record.

    • Set up alerts and subscribe to receive updates from Congress, state legislatures and more via email or SMS text.
    • Search through every bill and regulation in the federal government.
    • Be notified when Congress plans to vote on a bill.
    • Follow and search bills in all 50 states; powered by the Open States project.
    • Import an RSS feed to complement issue alerts."

    June 20, 2012
    * CRS - Unauthorized Alien Students: Issues and “DREAM Act” Legislation

    Unauthorized Alien Students: Issues and “DREAM Act” Legislation, Andorra Bruno, Specialist in Immigration Policy, June 19, 2012

  • "Unauthorized aliens in the United States are able to receive free public education through high school. They may experience difficulty obtaining higher education, however, for several reasons. Among these reasons is a provision enacted in 1996 that prohibits states from granting unauthorized aliens certain postsecondary educational benefits on the basis of state residence, unless equal benefits are made available to all U.S. citizens. This prohibition is commonly understood to apply to the granting of “in-state” residency status for tuition purposes. Unauthorized alien students also are not eligible for federal student financial aid. More broadly, as unauthorized aliens, they are not legally allowed to work and are subject to being removed from the country. Multiple DREAM Act [Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors] bills have been introduced in recent Congresses to address the unauthorized student population. Most have proposed a two-prong approach of repealing the 1996 provision and enabling some unauthorized alien students to become U.S. legal permanent residents (LPRs) through an immigration procedure known as cancellation of removal. While there are other options for dealing with this population, this report deals exclusively with the DREAM Act approach in light of the considerable congressional interest in it."

  • June 19, 2012
    * Trafficking in Persons Report 2012 - Department of State

    2012 Trafficking in Persons Report

  • "The year 2012 will mark the 150th anniversary of the date Abraham Lincoln gave notice of the Emancipation Proclamation. That document and the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution, following three years later, represent more than policies written on paper. They represent the promise of freedom. The U.S. Congress subsequently passed laws and federal authorities prosecuted cases in the wake of the Civil War to make clear that this promise of freedom extended to all, from the Hispanic community in the Southwest, to immigrants arriving from Europe, to Chinese workers who built the western railroads, to Native Americans in the Alaska territory. A century and a half later, slavery persists in the United States and around the globe, and many victims’ stories remain sadly similar to those of the past. It is estimated that as many as 27 million men, women, and children around the world are victims of what is now often described with the umbrella term “human trafficking.” The work that remains in combating this crime is the work of fulfilling the promise of freedom—freedom from slavery for those exploited and the freedom for survivors to carry on with their lives. The promise of freedom is not unique to the United States, but has become an international promise through Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Palermo Protocol to the Transnational Organized Crime Convention. The challenge facing all who work to end modern slavery is not just that of punishing traffickers and protecting those who are victimized by this crime, but of putting safeguards in place to ensure the freedom of future generations."
  • * Report - Applications Made to FISA Court During Calendar Year 2011

    U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Legislative Affairs, Applications Made to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court During Calendar Year 2011, submitted pursuant to sections 107 and 502 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, as amended, 50 U.S.C. Sec. 1801 et seq., and section 118 of USA PATRIOT Improvement Act and Reauthorization Act of 2005, Pub. L. No. 109-177 (2006)

    June 18, 2012
    * The Role of Antitrust in Protecting Competition, Innovation, and Consumers as the Digital Revolution Matures

    The Role of Antitrust in Protecting Competition, Innovation, and Consumers as the Digital Revolution Matures: The Case against the Universal-EMI Merger and E-Book Price Fixing - Mark Cooper, Director of Research, Consumer Federation of America Fellow, Donald McGannon Communications Research Center, Fordham University - Jodie Griffin, Staff Attorney, Public Knowledge, June 2012

  • "This paper presents a detailed analysis of the proposed merger between Universal Music Group (UMG) and EMI by applying the standards and methods outlined in the recently revised Department of Justice/Federal Trade Commission Merger Guidelines. It shows that the UMG‐EMI merger is “an unfair method of competition” that constitutes “an unreasonable restraint of trade” because it will “substantially lessen competition” and is “likely to enhance market power.” Simply put, the postmerger firm will have a strong incentive and increased ability to exercise market power, particularly in undermining, delaying, or distorting new digital distribution business models, in a market that has been a tight oligopoly for over a decade. The merger creates a highly concentrated market by eliminating one of only four major record labels and results in an increase in concentration that is five times the level that the DOJ/FTC identify as a cause of concern. The recent history of anticompetitive, anti‐consumer conduct by this tight oligopoly and the role of EMI as a maverick in the digital era compound the anticompetitive effects of the merger and significantly increase the likelihood that the merger will not only result in higher prices but also undermine incipient competition."
  • June 17, 2012
    * New on LLRX.com - Clemency Clinics: A Blueprint for Justice

    Via LLRX.com - Clemency Clinics: A Blueprint for Justice - Ken Strutin's article presents a significant collection of expertly selected resources on clemency and other established post-conviction projects. It also includes general resources that can be used in the process of starting up a clemency clinic or a project in a law school, bar association, law firm, university, college or any entity interested in undertaking a role in arena of work. Ken documents how innocence projects and law clinics are good models for clemency projects because they pursue claims frequently raised in pardons. He also identifies how schools of journalism, paralegal and legal assistant programs, and private law firms, defense providers, individual attorneys and not-for-profits spearheaded by those directly affected, have embraced a mission to address injustice in their particular ways.

    * DHS - Deferred Action Process for Young People Who Are Low Enforcement Priorities

    News release: "Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano announced that effective immediately, certain young people who were brought to the United States as young children, do not present a risk to national security or public safety, and meet several key criteria will be considered for relief from removal from the country or from entering into removal proceedings. Those who demonstrate that they meet the criteria will be eligible to receive deferred action for a period of two years, subject to renewal, and will be eligible to apply for work authorization...DHS continues to focus its enforcement resources on the removal of individuals who pose a national security or public safety risk, including immigrants convicted of crimes, violent criminals, felons, and repeat immigration law offenders...Under this directive, individuals who demonstrate that they meet the following criteria will be eligible for an exercise of discretion, specifically deferred action, on a case by case basis: Came to the U.S. under the age of 16; Have continuously resided in the U.S. for a least 5 years preceding the date of this memorandum and are present in the U.S. on the date of this memorandum; Are currently in school, have graduated from high school, have obtained a general education development certificate, or are honorably discharged veterans of the Coast Guard or Armed Forces of the U.S.; Have not been convicted of a felony offense, a significant misdemeanor offense, multiple misdemeanor offenses, or otherwise pose a threat to national security or public safety; Are not above the age of 30."

  • See also via Pew - Up to 1.4 million Unauthorized Immigrants Could Benefit from New Deportation Policy
  • * Article - Predicting Fair Use

    Sag, Matthew, Predicting Fair Use (February 25, 2012). Ohio State Law Journal, Vol. 73:1 47-91 (2012); TRPC 2011; Loyola University Chicago School of Law Research Paper No. 2012-005. Available at SSRN

  • "Fair use is often criticized as unpredictable and doctrinally incoherent - a conclusion which necessarily implies that the copyright system is fundamentally broken. This article confronts that critique by systematically assessing the predictability of fair use outcomes in litigation. Concentrating on characteristics of the contested use that would be apparent to litigants pre-trial, this study tests a number of doctrinal assumptions, claims and intuitions that have not, until now, been subject to empirical scrutiny. This article presents new empirical evidence for the significance of transformative use in determining the outcomes of fair use cases. It also substantially undermines conceptions of the doctrine that are hostile to fair use claims by commercial entities and that would restrict limit the application of fair use as a subsidy or a redistributive tool favoring the politically and economically disadvantaged. Based on the available evidence, the fair use doctrine is more rational and consistent than is commonly assumed."
  • June 15, 2012
    * EFF - How to Turn on Do Not Track in Your Browser

    "In recent years, online tracking companies have begun to monitor our clicks, searches and reading habits as we move around the Internet. If you are concerned about pervasive online web tracking by behavioral advertisers, then you may want to enable Do Not Track on your web browser. Do Not Track is unique in that it combines both technology (a signal transmitted from a user) as well as a policy framework for how companies that receive the signal should respond. As more and more websites respect the Do Not Track signal from your browser, it becomes a more effective tool for protecting your privacy. EFF is working with privacy advocates and industry representatives through the W3C Tracking Protection Working Group to define standards for how websites that receive the Do Not Track signal ought to response in order to best respect consumer's choices. The following tutorial walks you through the enabling Do Not Track in the four most popular browsers: Safari, Internet Explorer 9, Firefox, and Chrome."

    June 13, 2012
    * Digital Library of Tobacco Documents

    University of California, San Francisco - "The Legacy Tobacco Documents Library (LTDL) contains more than 13 million documents (70+ million pages) created by major tobacco companies related to their advertising, manufacturing, marketing, sales, and scientific research activities."

    * Patent Granted to License Textbook Content Shared on Web-based Systems

    Ars Technica: "In a newly approved patent, an economics professor hopes to bring to the academic publishing world what seems to be forthcoming in the video game industry—new restrictions that would seemingly eliminate a secondary market for digital goods and prevent legal borrowing. Last week, the 2006 patent for a “Web-based system and method to capture and distribute royalties for access to copyrighted academic texts by preventing unauthorized access to discussion boards associated with copyrighted academic works” was approved by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The patent was granted to Joseph Henry Vogel, a professor at the University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras."

    * District Court, Northern District CA - Oracle America, Inc. v. Google Inc.

    Oracle America, Inc. v. Google Inc., Case3:10-cv-03561-WHA Document1202 Filed 05/31/12: "In 2007, Google Inc., announced its Android software platform for mobile devices. In 2010, Oracle Corporation acquired Sun Microsystems, Inc., and thus acquired Sun’s interest in the popular programming language known as Java, a language used in Android. Sun was renamed Oracle America, Inc. Shortly thereafter, Oracle America (hereinafter simply “Oracle”) sued defendant Google and accused its Android platform as infringing Oracle’s Java-related copyrights and patents. Both Java and Android are complex platforms. Both include “virtual machines,” development and testing kits, and application programming interfaces, also known as APIs. Oracle’s copyright claim involves 37 packages in the Java API. Copyrightability of the elements replicated is the only issue addressed by this order...This order does not hold that Java API packages are free for all to use without license. It does not hold that the structure, sequence and organization of all computer programs may be stolen. Rather, it holds on the specific facts of this case, the particular elements replicated by Google were free for all to use under the Copyright Act. Therefore, Oracle’s claim based on Google’s copying of the 37 API packages, including their structure, sequence and organization is DISMISSED. To the extent stated herein, Google’s Rule 50 motions regarding copyrightability are GRANTED (Dkt. Nos. 984, 1007). Google’s motion for a new trial on copyright infringement is DENIED AS MOOT (Dkt. No. 1105)."

    June 12, 2012
    * TRAC: Decline in Federal Criminal Immigration Prosecutions

    "The latest available data from the Justice Department show a marked decline in criminal immigration prosecutions processed in federal district courts. As of March 2012, prosecutions resulting from referrals by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) were down 12 percent compared with last year's figures, while criminal prosecutions resulting from investigations by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) fell 6 percent."

    * USPTO - Intellectual Property and the U.S. Economy

    "Patents, trademarks, and copyrights are the principal means for establishing ownership rights to inventions and ideas, and provide a legal foundation by which intangible ideas and creations generate tangible benefits to businesses and employees. Intellectual property (IP) protection affects commerce throughout the economy by: providing incentives to invent and create; protecting innovators from unauthorized copying; facilitating vertical specialization in technology markets; creating a platform for financial investments in innovation; supporting startup liquidity and growth through mergers, acquisitions, and IPOs; making licensing-based technology business models possible; and, enabling a more efficient market for technology transfer and trading in technology and ideas.

  • On April 11, 2012, the U.S. Commerce Department released a comprehensive report, entitled Intellectual Property and the U.S. Economy: Industries in Focus, which found that intellectual property (IP)-intensive industries support at least 40 million jobs and contribute more than $5 trillion dollars to, or 34.8 percent of, U.S. gross domestic product (GDP)."
  • June 08, 2012
    * DOJ Immigration Litigation Bulletin

    "The Immigration Litigation Bulletin is an internal publication covering immigration litigation matters. The publication keeps litigating attorneys within the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security informed about immigration litigation matters and increases information sharing between the field offices and the Department of Justice headquarters. The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of the Office of Immigration Litigation or of the Department of Justice."

    June 07, 2012
    * NYT - Approval Rating for Justices Hits Just 44% in New Poll

    NYT: Just 44 percent of Americans approve of the job the Supreme Court is doing and three-quarters say the justices’ decisions are sometimes influenced by their personal or political views, according to a poll conducted by The New York Times and CBS News. Those findings are a fresh indication that the court’s standing with the public has slipped significantly in the past quarter-century, according to surveys conducted by several polling organizations. Approval was as high as 66 percent in the late 1980s, and by 2000 approached 50 percent. The decline in the court’s standing may stem in part from Americans’ growing distrust in recent years of major institutions in general and the government in particular. But it also could reflect a sense that the court is more political, after the ideologically divided 5-to-4 decisions in Bush v. Gore, which determined the 2000 presidential election, and Citizens United, the 2010 decision allowing unlimited campaign spending by corporations and unions."

    * Law School Grads Face Worst Job Market Yet - Less Than Half Find Jobs in Private Practice

    News release: "According to Selected Findings from the Employment Report and Salary Survey for the Class of 2011 released today by NALP, the overall employment rate for new law school graduates is, at 85.6%, the lowest it has been since 1994, when the rate stood at 84.7%. In addition to an overall employment rate that fell two percentage points from that for the previous class, and that has dropped each year since 2008, the Class of 2011 employment figures reveal a job market with many underlying structural weaknesses. The employment profile for this class also marks a continued interruption of employment patterns for new law school graduates that had, prior to 2010, been undisturbed for decades. The NALP Employment Report and Salary Survey for the Class of 2011 measures the employment rate of graduates as of February 15, 2012, or nine months after a typical May graduation. Analyses of these data reveal an employment rate that has fallen more than six percentage points since reaching a 23-year high of 91.9% in 2007 and marks the lowest employment rate since the aftermath of the last significant recession to affect the U.S. legal economy. The Class of 1994 was the last class with an employment rate lower than that for the Class of 2011, and since 1985 there have only been three classes with an overall employment rate below 85.6%. All of those occurred in the aftermath of the 1990-1991 recession: 83.5% for 1992, 83.4% for 1993, and 84.7% for 1994. (For information on trends in graduate employment going back to 1985, see here.)

    June 06, 2012
    * Trafficking in Persons: International Dimensions and Foreign Policy Issues for Congress

    Trafficking in Persons: International Dimensions and Foreign Policy Issues for Congress, Liana Sun Wyler, Analyst in International Crime and Narcotics. April 20, 2012

  • "Trafficking in persons, or human trafficking, refers to the involuntary subjection of men, women, and children to exploitative conditions that can be tantamount to slavery. Reports suggest that human trafficking is a global phenomenon, victimizing millions of people each year and contributing to a multi-billion dollar criminal industry. It is a centuries-old problem that, despite international and U.S. efforts to eliminate it, continues to occur in virtually every country in the world. Human trafficking is also an international and cross-cutting policy problem that bears on a range of major national security, human rights, criminal justice, social, economic, migration, gender, public health, and labor issues."
  • * Acting General Counsel releases report on employer social media policies

    News release: "NLRB Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon today issued a third report on social media cases brought to the agency, this time focusing exclusively on policies governing the use of social media by employees. The Operations Management Memo details seven cases involving such policies. In six cases, the General Counsel’s office found some provisions of the employer’s social media policy to be lawful. In the seventh case, the entire policy was found to be lawful. Provisions are found to be unlawful when they interfere with the rights of employees under the National Labor Relations Act, such as the right to discuss wages and working conditions with co-workers. “I hope that this report, with its specific examples of various employer policies and rules, will provide additional guidance in this area,” Mr. Solomon said in releasing the memo. Two previous memos on social media cases, which involved discharges based on Facebook posts, issued in January 2012 and in August 2011."

    June 05, 2012
    * States Take Sizeable Steps in 2012 to End Overincarceration

    States Take Sizeable Steps in 2012 to End Overincarceration
    By Inimai Chettiar, ACLU & Alex Stamm, ACLU Center for Justice: "As states begin to realize that they can reduce their prison populations safely, the pace of reform has begun to pick up a bit this year. State legislative sessions are coming to a close, which makes it a good time to review the actions lawmakers have taken to reduce their unsustainable prison populations in 2012. Here are the some of the legislative reform highlights..."

    June 04, 2012
    * Dodd-Frank Progress Report, June 2012 /DavisPolk

    DavisPolk Regulatory Tracker, State of Play to Date, June 2012:

    • "As of June 1, 2012, a total of 221 Dodd-Frank rulemaking requirement deadlines have passed. This is 55.5% of the 398 total rulemaking requirements, and 78.9% of the 280 rulemaking requirements with specified deadlines.
    • Of these 221 passed deadlines, 148 (67.0%) have been missed and 73 (33.0%) have been met with finalized rules. Regulators have not yet released proposals for 21 of the 148 missed rules.
    • Of the 398 total rulemaking requirements, 110 (27.6%) have been met with finalized rules and rules have been proposed that would meet 144 (36.2%) more. Rules have not yet been proposed to meet 144 (36.2%) rulemaking requirements."
    • Related postings on financial system
    June 01, 2012
    * Appeals Court Set Review Period for Government Nuclear Waste Fees Collection

    Follow up to previous postings on Yucca Mountain, this decision on June 1, 2012 from the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, No. 11-1066, National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners v. United States Department of Energy, Consolidated with 11-1068 On Petitions for Review of Final Actions of the Department of Energy:

  • "Opinion for the Court filed by Senior Circuit Judge Silberman: "Petitioners, nuclear power plant owners and operators, ask us to review a November 2010 determination by the Secretary of Energy finding that there was no basis for suspending, or otherwise adjusting, annual fees collected from them totaling some $750 million a year. Those fees are intended to cover the full costs of the government’s long-term disposal of civilian nuclear waste. But the Administration has discontinued development of Yucca Mountain, which was the designated location for the disposal of the waste. According to petitioners, the Secretary’s 2010 determination, made subsequent to that decision, failed to examine (or even mention) the anticipated costs of disposal, or compare them to expected revenues from the fees (and associated interest and investment income). The Secretary’s determination is claimed, thereby, to have violated the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act (“the Act”), which obliges the Secretary to annually “evaluate whether collection of the fee will provide sufficient revenues” to offset program costs. In the absence of such evaluation, it is argued, the determination was invalid, and because no future program has replaced Yucca Mountain, petitioners contend that the Secretary is obliged to suspend the fees and report his action to Congress...It is appropriate for us simply to declare that the Secretary’s determination is legally defective and to remand. However, we are mindful that petitioners were obliged to first file suit in October 2010, in light of the Secretary’s failure to conduct any fee adequacy determination since FY 2008. It was only after initial briefing was submitted that the Secretary issued his 2010 determination, thereby rendering the initial case moot. In light of that Departmental disposition to delay, we will order the Secretary to respond to the remand within six months of the issuance of the mandate and this panel will retain jurisdiction."
  • * Judge Chin Issues Opinion in Favor of Class Action Against Google Book Search

    Follow up to previous postings on the Google Book Search project litigation, this posting via The Public Index Blog, Class Certification Granted, by James Grimmelmann [Thursday, May 31, 2012] "Today, Judge Chin issued an opinion granting class certification. The Authors Guild lawsuit will proceed as a class action on behalf of:

  • All persons residing in the United States who hold a United States copyright interest in one or more Books reproduced by Google as part of its Library Project, who are either (a) natural persons who are authors of such Books or (b) natural persons, family trusts or sole proprietorships who are heirs, successors in interest or assigns of such authors.
  • The opinion also dismissed challenges to the Authors Guild, ASMP, and other organizations’ ability to represent their members in the lawsuit."
  • May 31, 2012
    * Report - Behind Closed Doors: An Overview of DHS Restrictions on Access to Counsel

    "[May 31, 2012] the American Immigration Council’s Legal Action Center released a report and filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit on the pressing issue of noncitizens’ access to counsel. Reports from across the country indicate that the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) immigration agencies—U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and Customs and Border Protection (CBP)—often interfere with noncitizens’ access to counsel in benefits interviews, interrogations, and other types of administrative proceedings outside of immigration court. Depending on the context, immigration officers completely bar attorney participation, impose unwarranted restrictions on access to legal counsel, or strongly discourage noncitizens from seeking legal representation at their own expense. A joint report by the Legal Action Center and Penn State Law’s Center for Immigrants’ Rights, Behind Closed Doors: An Overview of DHS Restrictions on Access to Counsel, describes restrictions on access to legal representation before DHS, provides a legal landscape, and offers recommendations designed to combat these harmful practices. It also addresses recent changes to USCIS’s guidance that are intended to expand access to legal representation."

    * New report from The Sentencing Project Report - Trends in U.S. Corrections

    "Trends in U.S. Corrections is a visual tool that provides a compilation of key developments in the criminal justice system over the past several decades."

    May 30, 2012
    * Federal Reserve assembles inventory of historical materials on central banking in the United States

    "The Federal Reserve System is preparing an inventory of historical materials (PDF) to enhance transparency through improved web access to records of the Federal Reserve's past. The initiative is motivated by the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Federal Reserve Act in December 2013 and the 100th anniversary of the opening of the Federal Reserve Banks in November 2014. The inventory will serve as a resource for researchers, academics, and others interested in studying the history of the nation's central bank. The initial inventory captures the Federal Reserve's first efforts to create a single point of access to historical records, documents, and other materials such as photographs and audio and video recordings related to the Federal Reserve System and its leaders. This inventory identifies materials that are currently available from a variety of sources, including the websites of the Reserve Banks and the Board of Governors, the Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research, websites housed at universities, and other private collections. It also includes information about material that is not yet available online that will be considered for digitization and posting."

    * New GAO Reports: Budget and Spending, Indigent Defense, Securities Regulation, Tribal Law and Order Act,VA Administrative Investigations
    • Budget and Spending GAO Schedule Assessment Guide, GAO-12-120G, May 30, 2012
    • Indigent Defense - Surveys of Grant Recipients, Select Tribes, and Indigent Defense Providers, GAO-12-661SP, May 30, 2012
    • Securities Regulation - Opportunities Exist to Improve SEC's Oversight of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, GAO-12-625, May 30, 2012
    • Tribal Law and Order Act - None of the Surveyed Tribes Reported Exercising the New Sentencing Authority, and the Department of Justice Could Clarify Tribal Eligibility for Certain Grant Funds, GAO-12-658R, May 30, 2012
    • VA Administrative Investigations, Improvements Needed in Collecting and Sharing Information, GAO-12-483, April 30, 2012
    * Report - Increase in Employment Discrimination Lawsuits Under the ADA

    Via Jeff Lamicela: "The latest month-by-month data from the federal courts shows that in April of this year there were 183 new lawsuits filed claiming employment discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). According to the timely case-by-case case civil enforcement information analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), this count was 21.2% higher than the previous month when 151 cases of this kind were filed, and continues a long term rising trend: the volume of current ADA litigation is averaging 90 percent higher than five years ago.

  • Read the full report, including a list of those districts in which lawsuits of this kind were filed with the greatest and lowest rates relative to population this fiscal year."
  • May 28, 2012
    * Information Security Oversight Office's Report for Fiscal Year 2011

    Via FAS - this report by the Director, Information Security Oversight Office, National Archives, John P. Fitzpatrick "Dear Mr. President: I am pleased to submit the Information Security Oversight Office’s (ISOO) Report for Fiscal Year 2011, as required by Executive Order 13526, “Classified National Security Information” (the Order). This report provides statistics and analysis concerning key components of the system of classification and declassification, as well as coverage of ISOO’s reviews of Departments’ and Agencies’ programs. It also contains information with respect to industrial security in the private sector as required by Executive Order 12829, as amended, “National Industrial Security Program."

    * Dewey Files for Bankruptcy

    (FindLaw's Courtside) - "Dewey & LeBoeuf has filed a voluntary petition for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in New York. The firm's Chief Restructuring Officer, Jonathan Mitchell, said in a statement accompanying the petition that the firm will wind down its business and liquidate its assets. The petition lists the top 20 debts owed by the firm, but also estimates that the firm has over 5,000 creditors."

  • See also NYT DealBook: "Dewey announced Monday that the firm planned to liquidate. It said it would ask about 90 employees to remain on staff to assist in the wind-down of its business. The firm has $315 million in liabilities, of which $225 million is owed to its banks, according to the court filings. Other creditors include the firm’s landlords and former partners owed money...Dewey’s collapse has devastated its employees. Hundreds of junior lawyers and support staff are looking for work in a difficult market."
  • * U.S. Dept. of State: 2011 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices

    Fact Sheet: "On May 24, 2012, the Secretary submitted the 2011 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices (Human Rights Reports) to the United States Congress. The Human Rights Reports provide the facts underlying U.S. efforts to promote respect for human rights worldwide. They inform U.S. government policy making and serve as a reference for other governments, international institutions, non-governmental organizations, scholars, interested citizens, and journalists. The Human Rights Reports assess each country’s situation against universal human rights standards, during each calendar year, and each report stands on its own. Countries are not compared to each other or placed in any order other than alphabetically by region. This year, the Department modernized both the format of the reports and the online user interface."

    * World No Tobacco Day 2012 - March 31, 2012

    Via World Health Organization (WHO): "Tobacco industry interference is the theme of this year’s World No Tobacco Day, which takes place on 31 May 2012. The campaign will focus on the need to expose and counter the tobacco industry's brazen and increasingly aggressive attempts to undermine global tobacco control efforts."

  • See also WHO Tobacco industry monitoring database: "This database contains articles in English that is continuously populated through publicly available Internet resources, mainly news outlets, wire services and news releases. It includes articles related to the tobacco industry and groups and individuals that operate to advance goals that benefit the tobacco industry’s interests. Whenever possible, preference is given to the inclusion of articles that contain quotations from, or specific references to, tobacco industry representatives or tobacco industry representatives declining to comment. In some cases, analysis of the tobacco industry in a certain country or region is included, particularly for areas where direct quotations are not as easily found in the English-language publicly available sources."
  • * DOJ and Apple Tangle on eBook Antitrust Lawsuit

    Via FindLaw: "Apple has responded to the United States' antitrust complaint arising out of supposed collusion between Apple and book publishers to fix the price of e-books appearing on Apple's iBooks store. The tech company calls the complaint "fundamentally flawed," arguing that Apple's entry into the marketplace actually broke Amazon's de facto monopoly on e-books."

  • Via Fortune, see United States of Amerca v. Apple Inc. et al., Case 1:12-cv-02826-UA, Filed 04/11/12, USDC SD NY. and Apple's response, Case 1:12-cv-02826-DLC Document 54 Filed 05/22/12: "The Government sides with monopoly, rather than competition, in bringing this case. The Government starts from the false premise that an eBooks “market” was characterized by “robust price competition” prior to Apple’s entry. This ignores a simple and incontrovertible fact: before 2010, there was no real competition, there was only Amazon. At the time Apple entered the market, Amazon sold nearly nine out of every ten eBooks, and its power over price and product selection was nearly absolute. Apple’s entry spurred tremendous growth in eBook titles, range and variety of offerings, sales, and improved quality of the eBook reading experience. This is evidence of a dynamic, competitive market. These inconvenient facts are ignored in the Complaint. Instead, the Government focuses on increased prices for a handful of titles. The Complaint does not allege that all eBook prices, or even most eBook prices, increased after Apple entered the market. The Government alleges that Apple conspired to eliminate retail price competition. This is absurd. Nothing Apple did reduced competition or fixed prices..."
  • May 27, 2012
    * Governmental Access to Data in the Cloud - A comparative analysis of ten international jurisdictions

    A Global Reality: Governmental Access to Data in the Cloud - A comparative analysis of ten international jurisdictions Governmental access to data stored in the Cloud – including cross-border access – exists in every jurisdiction, by Winston Maxwell, Paris, France Christopher Wolf, Washington, DC; May 23, 2012. A Hogan Lovells White Paper.

  • "This White Paper examines the extent to which access to data in the Cloud by governments in various jurisdictions is possible, regardless of where a Cloud provider is located. “Governmental access,” as that term is used here, includes access by all types of law enforcement authorities and other governmental agencies, recognizing that the rules may be different for law enforcement and national security access. Governments need some degree of access to data for criminal (including cybercrime) investigations and for
    purposes of national security. But privacy and confidentiality also are important issues. This paper does not enter into the ongoing debate about the potential for excessive government access to data and insufficient procedural protections. Rather, this White Paper undertakes to compare the nature and extent of governmental access to data in the Cloud in many jurisdictions around the world."
  • See also Study: Patriot Act Gives US Government No Special Access to Cloud Data
  • May 26, 2012
    * C-SPAN Video Library - Searchable database of programs aired since 1987

    "The C-SPAN Archives records, indexes, and archives all C-SPAN programming for historical, educational, research, and archival uses. Every C-SPAN program aired since 1987, almost totaling over 191,000 hours, is contained in the C-SPAN Archives and immediately accessible through the database and electronic archival systems developed and maintained by the C-SPAN Archives. The Archives records all three C-SPAN networks seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. Programs are extensively indexed making the database of C-SPAN programming an unparalleled chronological resource. Programs are indexed by subject, speaker names, titles, affiliations, sponsors, committees, categories, formats, policy groups, keywords, and location. The congressional sessions and committee hearings are indexed by person with full-text. The video collection can be searched through the online Video Library."

    May 24, 2012
    * Disappearing Phone Booths - Privacy in the Digital Age

    Disappearing Phone Booths - Privacy in the Digital Age, by Erica Newland, May 2012

  • "I will...explain why the confluence of at least four circumstances – (1) digital ubiquity, (2) the increasing number of parties that take part in our daily transactions, (3) the commodification and monetization of data, (4) and woefully out-of-date privacy laws – creates something of a perfect storm, leaving us as a nation poorly equipped, in our present state, to preserve any measure of a right to privacy. That is to say, I will be arguing that technology and policy both play powerful roles in framing what is possible and how we live our lives, and that changes in technology must be accompanied by changes to policy."
  • May 23, 2012
    * Broken Promises of Privacy: Responding to the Surprising Failure of Anonymization

    Ohm, Paul, Broken Promises of Privacy: Responding to the Surprising Failure of Anonymization (August 13, 2009). UCLA Law Review, Vol. 57, p. 1701, 2010; U of Colorado Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 9-12. Available at SSRN

  • "Computer scientists have recently undermined our faith in the privacy-protecting power of anonymization, the name for techniques for protecting the privacy of individuals in large databases by deleting information like names and social security numbers. These scientists have demonstrated they can often 'reidentify' or 'deanonymize' individuals hidden in anonymized data with astonishing ease. By understanding this research, we will realize we have made a mistake, labored beneath a fundamental misunderstanding, which has assured us much less privacy than we have assumed. This mistake pervades nearly every information privacy law, regulation, and debate, yet regulators and legal scholars have paid it scant attention. We must respond to the surprising failure of anonymization, and this Article provides the tools to do so."
  • May 22, 2012
    * Not Coming to America: Why the US is Falling Behind in the Global Race for Talent

    Not Coming to America: Why the US is Falling Behind in the Global Race for Talent - May 22, 2012, "is a first-ever comparative study of the immigration reforms other countries employ to boost their economies and lure the high and low-skilled workers needed for continued economic growth. The report by the Partnership for a New American Economy and Partnership for New York City identifies risks facing the US economy if it does not reform its immigration laws and explores the recruitment strategies Australia, Canada, Chile, China, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Singapore and the United Kingdom use to attract the workers needed to grow their economies. The report also tells the stories of individuals recruited to other countries by immigration reforms that made it easy for them to contribute to their new country’s economy and concludes by recommending six immigration reforms the US can adopt to resume its position as the magnet for the world’s most talented and necessary workers."

    May 21, 2012
    * Government Auditing Standards, December 2011 Revision

    Government Auditing Standards, December 2011 Revision (GAO-12-331G)
    Electronic version - (241 pages, PDF): "The December 2011 Revision is the final version of the 2011 Government Auditing Standards. It supersedes the 2011 Internet Version. The December 2011 Revision contains limited changes made since the Internet Version was posted. These include: (1) clarification of references to the AICPA Codification of Statements on Auditing Standards; (2) a revision of the list of safeguard examples in paragraph 3.17; and (3) a clarification of and limited change in documentation requirements for procedures related to communication of certain internal control deficiencies, fraud, abuse, and noncompliance in paragraphs 4.26, 5.23, 5.25, 5.49, 5.59, 7.19, and 7.22. Effective dates: The effective date for financial audits and attestation engagements is for periods ending on or after December 15, 2012. The effective date for performance audits is for audits beginning on or after December 15, 2011. Early implementation is not permitted."

    * New on LLRX.com - FOIA Facts: Things Requesters Should Know

    via LLRX - FOIA Facts: Things Requesters Should Know: FOIA expert Scott A. Hodes shares his professional experience working with FOIA Analysts, and their perspective on how they make the FOIA process smoother in regard to their relationships with requesters. This however is a double edged coin – FOIA requesters can also take specific steps and make efforts to assist with the satisfactory and timely completion of a request when communicating with government FOIA personnel.

    * CRS - Legislative History Research: A Basic Guide

    Legislative History Research: A Basic Guide, Julia Taylor - Section Head - ALD Section and Information Research Specialist, June 15, 2011

  • "This report provides an overview of federal legislative history research, the legislative process, and where to find congressional documents. The report also summarizes some of the reasons researchers are interested in legislative history, briefly describes the actions a piece of legislation might undergo during the legislative process, and provides a list of easily accessible print and electronic resources."
  • May 20, 2012
    * Vermont is first state to ban fracking - will others follow?

    Follow up to previous postings on fracking, news that Vermont became the first state to ban the practice - Gov. Peter Shumlin: "This bill, [H. 464 - An act relating to hydraulic fracturing wells for natural gas and oil production], will ensure we do not inject chemicals into groundwater in a desperate pursuit for energy. It is a big moment. I hope other states will follow us. The science on fracking is uncertain at best. Let the other states be the guinea pigs. Let the Green Mountain State preserve its clean water, its lakes, its rivers and its quality of life."

    May 19, 2012
    * Dow Jones Announces Twitter Content Incorporated into Factiva

    News release: "The curated Twitter content in Factiva covers 31 industries, including energy, financial services and technology, with a focus on the most influential tweeters from around the globe. The real time content is available via Factiva Snapshot, a business search tool with news dashboards that help businesses to efficiently gather intelligence and identify trends, opportunities and risks. Factiva leverages a combination of technology and editorial staff to curate content from Twitter’s “firehose.” The selected Twitter streams complement the wide range of content in Factiva, including more than 35,000 leading media sources, of which 8,000 are top business blogs. Many of these leading sources are not available on the Web."

    May 17, 2012
    * New GAO Reports: Antidumping and Countervailing Duties, 2020 Census, Foreign Police Assistance, Grants Management, Assistance for Needy Families
    • Antidumping and Countervailing Duties - Management Enhancements Needed to Improve Efforts to Detect and Deter Duty Evasion, GAO-12-551, May 17, 2012
    • 2020 Census - Additional Steps Are Needed to Build on Early Planning, GAO-12-626, May 17, 2012
    • Foreign Police Assistance - Defined Roles and Improved Information Sharing Could Enhance Interagency Collaboration, GAO-12-534, May 9, 2012
    • Grants Management - Action Needed to Improve the Timeliness of Grant Closeouts by Federal Agencies, GAO-12-360, Apr 16, 2012
    • Temporary Assistance for Needy Families - State Maintenance of Effort Requirements and Trends, GAO-12-713T, May 17, 2012
    May 15, 2012
    * FTC Approves Final Settlement with CVS Caremark

    News release: "Following a public comment period, the FTC has accepted as final an order with CVS Caremark settling charges that it misrepresented the prices of certain Medicare Part D prescription drugs, including drugs used to treat breast cancer symptoms and epilepsy, at CVS and Walgreens pharmacies. The settlement bars deceptive claims related to Medicare Part D drug prices and requires CVS Caremark to pay $5 million to reimburse affected Medicare Part D consumers for the price discrepancy. The FTC will mail redress checks to eligible consumers when records have been fully processed. Consumers do not need to take any additional action in order to receive their check."

    May 14, 2012
    * SEC Microcap Fraud-Fighting Initiative Expels 379 Dormant Shell Companies to Protect Investors From Potential Scams

    News release: "The Securities and Exchange Commission today suspended trading in the securities of 379 dormant companies before they could be hijacked by fraudsters and used to harm investors through reverse mergers or pump-and-dump schemes. The trading suspension marks the most companies ever suspended in a single day by the agency as it ramps up its crackdown against fraud involving microcap shell companies that are dormant and delinquent in their public disclosures. Microcap companies typically have limited assets and low-priced stock that trades in low volumes. An initiative tabbed Operation Shell-Expel by the SEC's Microcap Fraud Working Group utilized various agency resources including the enhanced intelligence technology of the Enforcement Division's Office of Market Intelligence to scrutinize microcap stocks in the markets nationwide and identify clearly dormant shell companies in 32 states and six foreign countries that were ripe for potential fraud."

    May 13, 2012
    * Situated Justice: A Contextual Analysis of Fairness and Inequality in Employment Discrimination Litigation

    Situated Justice: A Contextual Analysis of Fairness and Inequality in Employment Discrimination Litigation - Ellen Berrey, Steve G. Hoffman Laura Beth Nielsen.
    Law & Society Review, Volume 46, Issue 1, Article first published online: April 12, 2012

  • "A substantial body of sociolegal scholarship suggests that the legitimacy of the law crucially depends on the public's perception that legal processes are fair. The bulk of this research relies on an underdeveloped account of the material and institutional contexts of litigants' perceptions of fairness. We introduce an analysis of situated justice to capture a contextualized conception of how litigants narrate fairness in their actual legal encounters. Our analysis draws on 100 in-depth interviews with defendant's representatives, plaintiffs, and lawyers involved in employment discrimination lawsuits, selected as part of a multimethod study of 1,788 discrimination cases filed in U.S. district courts between 1988 and 2003. This article offers two key empirical findings, the first at the level of individual perceptions and the second at the level of legal institutions. First, we find that neither defendants' representatives nor plaintiffs believe discrimination law is fair. Rather than sharing a complaint, however, each side sees unfairness only in those aspects of the process that work to their disadvantage. Second, we demonstrate that the very notion of fairness can belie structural asymmetries that, overall, profoundly benefit employers in employment discrimination lawsuits. We conclude by discussing how a situated justice analysis calls for a rethinking of empirical research on fairness. Audio recordings of respondents quoted in this article are available online."
  • May 12, 2012
    * Senator Franken Requests Data on GPS Tracking of Citizen Movements

    Via the ACLU, Letter from Senator Al Franken Chairman, Subcommittee on Privacy,
    Technology and the Law to Attorney General Holder on May 10, 2012, which reads in part: "I was very concerned to read recent reports suggesting that state and local law enforcement agencies may be working around the protections of United States v. Jones by requesting the location records of individuals directly from their wireless carriers instead of tracking the individuals through stand-alone GPS devices installed on their vehicles. I was further concerned to learn that in many cases, these agencies appear to be obtaining precise records of individuals' past and current movements from carriers without first obtaining a warrant for this information. I think that these actions may violate the spirit if not the letter of the Jones decision. I am writing to ask you about the Department of Justice's own practices in requesting location information from wireless carriers. I am eager to learn about how frequently the Department requests location information and what legal standard the Department believes it must meet to obtain it. I would also like to know how the Department may have changed these practices since the Jones decision."

  • See also Sen. Franken Wants Justice Dept. To Reveal When It Sought Cell Phone GPS Data
  • May 11, 2012
    * CRS - Same-Sex Marriages: Legal Issues

    Same-Sex Marriages: Legal Issues - Alison M. Smith, Legislative Attorney, May 9, 2012

  • "The recognition of same-sex marriages generates debate on both the federal and state levels. Either legislatively or judicially, same-sex marriage is legal in seven states. Other states allow civil unions or domestic partnerships, which grant all or part of state-level rights, benefits, and/or responsibilities of marriage. Some states have statutes or constitutional amendments limiting marriage to one man and one woman. These variations raise questions about the validity of such unions outside the contracted jurisdiction and have bearing on the distribution of federal benefits."
  • May 09, 2012
    * TRAC: Fifteen New Domestic Terrorism Prosecutions Filed in February 2012

    "The latest available data from the Justice Department show that in February 2012 the federal government filed charges against fifteen individuals in investigations involving domestic terrorism, an uptick from the previous month when only four such prosecutions were filed. The charges were filed in eleven cases, spanning eleven different federal judicial districts. To view recent trends in domestic terrorism enforcement, see this link."

    * Google - First Amendment Protection for Search Engine Results

    Google - First Amendment Protection for Search Engine Results, April 20, 2012. Eugene Volokh and Donald M. Falk [This White Paper was commissioned by Google, but the views within it should not necessarily be ascribed to Google.]

  • "...search engines produce and deliver their speech through a different technology than that traditionally used for newspapers and books. The information has become much easier for readers to access, much more customized to the user’s interests, and much easier for readers to act on. The speech is thus now even more valuable to customers than it was before. But the freedom to distribute, select, and arrange such speech remains the same."
  • * Insourcing Functions Performed by Federal Contractors: An Overview of the Legal Issues

    CRS: Insourcing Functions Performed by Federal Contractors: An Overview of the Legal Issues - Kate M. Manuel, Legislative Attorney; Jack Maskell, Legislative Attorney, May 7, 2012

  • "Recent Congresses and the Obama Administration have taken numerous actions to promote “insourcing,” or the use of government personnel to perform functions that contractors have performed on behalf of federal agencies. Among other things, the 109th through the 111th Congresses enacted several statutes requiring the development of policies and guidelines to ensure that agencies “consider” using government employees to perform functions previously performed by contractors, as well as any new functions. These statutes require that “special consideration” be given to using government personnel to perform those functions (1) recently performed by government employees, (2) closely associated with the performance of inherently governmental functions, (3) performed pursuant to a contract awarded on a non-competitive basis, or (4) performed poorly by a contractor because of excessive costs or inferior quality. The Obama Administration has similarly promoted insourcing. For example, in February 2010, the Secretary of the Army testified that the Army intended to insource 7,162 positions in FY2010 and 11,084 positions in FY2011 through FY2015. Although the Department of Defense (DOD) subsequently abandoned such insourcing initiatives because the initiatives did not result in significant savings, several contractors filed suit alleging that DOD failed to comply with the applicable guidelines when insourcing particular functions."
  • * CRS - Racial Profiling: Legal and Constitutional Issues

    Racial Profiling: Legal and Constitutional Issues, Jody Feder - Legislative Attorney, April 16, 2012

  • "Racial profiling is the practice of targeting individuals for police or security detention based on their race or ethnicity in the belief that certain minority groups are more likely to engage in unlawful behavior. Examples of racial profiling by federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies are illustrated in legal settlements and data collected by governmental agencies and private groups, suggesting that minorities are disproportionately the subject of routine traffic stops and other security-related practices. The issue has periodically attracted congressional interest, particularly with regard to existing and proposed legislative safeguards, which include the proposed End Racial Profiling Act of 2011 (H.R. 3618/S. 1670) in the 112th Congress. Several courts have considered the constitutional ramifications of the practice as an “unreasonable search and seizure” under the Fourth Amendment and, more recently, as a denial of the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection guarantee. A variety of federal and state statutes provide potential relief to individuals who claim that their rights are violated by race-based law enforcement practices and policies."
  • May 08, 2012
    * Myspace Settles FTC Charges That It Misled Millions of Users About Sharing Personal Information with Advertisers

    News release: "Social networking service Myspace has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it misrepresented its protection of users' personal information. The settlement, part of the FTC's ongoing efforts make sure companies live up to the privacy promises they make to consumers, bars Myspace from future privacy misrepresentations, requires it to implement a comprehensive privacy program, and calls for regular, independent privacy assessments for the next 20 years. The Myspace social network has millions of users who create and customize online profiles containing substantial personalized content. Myspace assigns a persistent unique identifier, called a "Friend ID," to each profile created on Myspace. A user's profile publicly discloses his or her age, gender, profile picture (if the user chooses to include one), display name, and, by default, the user's full name. User profiles also may contain additional information such as pictures, hobbies, interests, and lists of users' friends."

    * FTC Seeks Return of $52 Million Worth of Bogus Phone Bill Cramming Charges

    News release: "The Federal Trade Commission is seeking a civil contempt ruling against the nation's largest third-party billing company, alleging that it placed more than $70 million in bogus "cramming" charges on consumers' phone bills in violation of a previous court order. The FTC is asking a federal court to make the company pay more than $52.6 million, the total amount that the company billed consumers and failed to refund. The FTC alleged that Billing Services Group (BSG) placed charges on nearly 1.2 million telephone lines on behalf of a serial phone crammer. The charges were supposedly for "enhanced services," such as voicemail and streaming video, that consumers never authorized or even knew about. "BSG made it possible for con artists to steal people's hard-earned money by placing charges on phone bills for services they never ordered or used," said David Vladeck, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection. "Under previous federal court orders, BSG cannot profit from the fraud of others and then deny responsibility for the harm they made possible."

    * FTC Joins DOJ and CFPB in Filing Brief Supporting the Constitutionality of Fair Credit Reporting Act

    News release: "The Federal Trade Commission has joined the Department of Justice and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in filing a memorandum brief in support of the constitutionality of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), the 1970 law that is designed to protect the privacy of credit report information and ensure that the information supplied by consumer reporting agencies (CRAs) is as accurate as possible. In the filing, the CRAs urge a federal district court to uphold an important provision of the FCRA, which has protected consumers' privacy for more than 40 years. The brief was filed in the case of Shamara T. King vs. General Information Services, Inc. (GIS). It specifically addresses a provision of the FCRA that balances the Act's dual purposes – to protect consumers from privacy invasions caused by the disclosure of sensitive information by CRAs and to ensure a sufficient flow of information to allow the CRAs to fulfill their vital role. The provision in question bars CRAs, in most cases, from disclosing individuals' arrest records or other adverse information that is more than seven years old."

    * TRAC: ICE Charges Criminal Activity in Fewer Deportation Proceedings

    TRAC: "Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) continues to cite criminal activity as grounds for deportation less often than it used to, according to the latest Immigration Court data on new deportation proceedings. During the most recent quarter (January - March 2012), ICE sought to deport a total of 5,450 individuals on criminal grounds. While this number is preliminary and is likely to increase once late reports are in, it represents a drastic decrease compared with 10,732 individuals against whom ICE sought deportation orders just two years ago. This suggests that the announced plan to increase the deportation of serious criminals through Immigration Court proceedings has not been successful."

    * EC Database on transnational company agreements

    Database on transnational company agreements: "The database contains all transnational company agreements and texts identified and catalogued by the European Commission. It also contains sheets with details on every company and agreement. You can only download texts and agreements for which we obtained an authorization to publish by at least one signatory. There are two possible ways to search the database: a simple search form and an advanced search form, accessible by clicking on the “advanced search” link.

    May 07, 2012
    * Three tutorials for United Nations sources are available on You Tube

    Via Debbie Rabina, Ph.D, Associate Professor: "Three tutorials for United Nations sources are available on You Tube. They were made by students taking International Information Sources at Pratt Institute, School of Information and Library Science."

    May 04, 2012
    * TRAC: Recent Rise in Federal Suits to Recover Student Loans

    "The latest month-by-month data from the federal courts shows that in March of this year the government reported that it had sued 279 individuals in order to seek recovery of defaulted student loans. According to the timely case-by-case case civil enforcement information analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), this count was 25.7% higher than the previous month when 222 cases of this kind were filed. Relative to its population, the Eastern District of Michigan (Detroit) led the nation with prosecution rates ten times the average for the country. The Central District of California (Los Angeles) led the nation in the number of suits filed, accounting for 140 out of the 279 suits in March."

  • See also: "National Consumer Law Center (NCLC’s) Student Loan Borrower Assistance (SLBA) Project provides information about student loan rights and responsibilities for borrowers and advocates. We also seek to increase public understanding of student lending issues and to identify policy solutions to promote access to education, lessen student debt burdens and make loan repayment more manageable."
  • May 03, 2012
    * FAS: Counterintelligence Surveillance Under FISA Grew in 2011

    Secrecy News, Steven Aftergood: "In 2011, the US Government submitted 1,745 applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for authorization to conduct electronic surveillance or physical searches under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), according to a new annual report to Congress. Of these, 1,676 included requests for authority for perform electronic surveillance, the report said. That compares to 1,579 such applications in 2010 (including 1,511 for electronic surveillance). As is usually the case, the FIS Court did not deny any electronic surveillance applications in whole or in part last year, though it made modifications to 30 of them. The new report says that the government filed 205 applications for business records (including “tangible things”) for foreign intelligence purposes last year, compared to 96 in the previous year."

    May 02, 2012
    * CRS - United States v. Jones: GPS Monitoring, Property, and Privacy

    United States v. Jones: GPS Monitoring, Property, and Privacy, Richard M. Thompson II, Legislative Attorney, April 30, 2012

  • "In United States v. Jones, 132 S. Ct. 945 (2012), all nine Supreme Court Justices agreed that Jones was searched when the police attached a Global Positioning System (GPS) device to the undercarriage of his car and tracked his movements for four weeks. The Court, however, splintered on what constituted the search: the attachment of the device or the long-term monitoring. The majority held that the attachment of the GPS device and an attempt to obtain information was the violation; Justice Alito, concurring, argued that the monitoring was a violation of Jones’s reasonable expectation of privacy; and Justice Sotomayor, also concurring, agreed with them both, but would provide further Fourth Amendment protections. This report will examine these three decisions in an effort to find their place in the body of existing Fourth Amendment law pertaining to privacy, property, and technology."
  • May 01, 2012
    * House of Commons Report - News International and Phone-hacking

    House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee. News International and Phone-hacking. Eleventh Report of Session 2010-12, Volume I: Report, together with formal minutes - Volume II: Oral and written evidence

  • "This Report examines whether or not there is good evidence to suggest that the Committee and its predecessor Committees have been misled by any witnesses during the course of their work on the phone-hacking scandal, which continues to reverberate around News International and to have major repercussions for the British newspaper industry as a whole."
  • NYT: Panel in Hacking Case Finds Murdoch Unfit as News Titan
  • * CRS - Hydraulic Fracturing and the National Environmental Policy Act: Selected Issues

    Hydraulic Fracturing and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA): Selected Issues

  • "Hydraulic fracturing is a technique used to recover oil and natural gas from underground low permeability rock formations. This process involves pumping fluids under high pressure into the formations to crack them, releasing oil and gas into the well. The technique has been the subject of controversy due to some of its potential effects on the environment. This report provides an overview of two situations in which agencies are arguing that they do not need to conduct a comprehensive environmental review of hydraulic fracturing under NEPA. On March 21, 2012, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development agency reaffirmed its use of a categorical exclusion (CE) to exempt from further NEPA review the loans it makes for the purchase of single family homes on properties leased for drilling. The agency stated that, by itself, the existence of a drilling lease on a property is not an extraordinary circumstance that will prevent the agency from using a CE for a loan."
  • April 30, 2012
    * Briefing Paper on Embedding Creative Commons Licences into Digital Resources

    Briefing Paper on Embedding Creative Commons Licences into Digital Resources - Naomi Korn, Strategic Content Alliance IPR Consultant, March 2011

  • "Creative Commons licences (also referred to as CC licences) can facilitate the copying, reuse, distribution, and in some cases, the modification of the original owner’s creative work without needing to get permission each time from the rights holder. There are a number of different types of these licences. Across the UK’s public sector, CC licences are increasingly used to provide access to cultural heritage and teaching, learning and research outputs. Creative Commons licensed resources are also helpful for public sector bodies who wish to use third party resources which place the least restrictive licensing terms on the user. This short briefing paper accompanies further information on CC licences produced by the Strategic Content Alliance, available here demonstrates how the terms of CC licences can be embedded into a variety of resources, such as PowerPoint, images, Word docs, elearning resources, podcasts and other audio visual resources." {via Robin Good]

  • April 29, 2012
    * New on LLRX - A Technical Examination of SOPA and PIPA

    Via LLRX.com - A Technical Examination of SOPA and PIPA - The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) are the subject of this Infographic, by Spencer Belkofer, Lumin Consulting. See also his related Infographic on the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA).

    * New on LLRX - Opening Government: On the Limits of FOIA and the Metaphor of Transparency

    Via LLRX.com - Opening Government: On the Limits of FOIA and the Metaphor of Transparency - Professor Annmarie Bridy discusses the use of “transparency” as a metaphor for openness in government, the use of FOIA as a mechanism for ensuring such openness, and the ways in which proponents of greater public involvement in policy-making may disserve the cause by focusing too single-mindedly on access to information and the right to know, both of which are operationalized through FOIA.

    * BJS: Jail Inmates at Midyear 2011 - Statistical Tables

    News release: "The U.S. jail inmate population declined for a third consecutive year, the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) announced. From June 2010 to June 2011, the jail inmate population declined 1.8 percent, dropping to 735,601 from 748,728. Local jails, unlike prisons, are confinement facilities mainly operated by a local law enforcement agency. Jails typically hold inmates while they await court action or serve a sentence of one year or less. In midyear 2011, the jail incarceration rate dropped to the lowest level since 2002. Jails confined 236 inmates per 100,000 U.S. residents in June 2011, down from 238 inmates per 100,000 in June 2003. The decline in confined population in the largest jails—those with an average daily population of more than 1,000 inmates—accounted for more than half (53 percent) of the total decline of 13,127 inmates that occurred during 2011. An overall decline was also observed in the jail jurisdictions with an average daily population of fewer than 1,000 inmates. Jails were operating at 84 percent of their rated capacity at midyear 2011, the lowest percentage since 1984. The total rated capacity for all jails nationwide reached 877,302 beds at midyear 2011, up from 866,782 beds at midyear 2010, about a 1 percent increase in the number of beds."

  • The report, Jail Inmates at Midyear 2011 – Statistical Tables (NCJ 237961), was written by BJS statistician Todd D. Minton.
  • April 28, 2012
    * Redacted Version of Google Street View Investigation by FCC Released

    LA Times: "Google has released the full report of the Federal Communications Commission’s investigation into the data it collected and stored from millions of unknowing households across the nation while operating specially equipped cars for its Street View service. The search giant released the report, which had had heavily redacted passages, after wrangling with the FCC over which details could be publicly revealed. The report now blacks out only the names of individuals. It reveals new details and raises new questions about how Google captured personal information over a two-year period. Google has said that it was mapping wireless networks but that collecting personal data was "inadvertent."

    April 26, 2012
    * CRS - Requiring Individuals to Obtain Health Insurance: A Constitutional Analysis

    Requiring Individuals to Obtain Health Insurance: A Constitutional Analysis, April 6, 2012

  • "As part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), P.L. 111-148, as amended, Congress enacted a “minimum coverage provision,” which compels certain individuals to have a minimum level of health insurance (i.e., an “individual mandate”). Individuals who fail to do so may be subject to a monetary penalty, administered through the tax code. Congress has never compelled individuals to buy health insurance, and there has been significant controversy and debate over whether the requirement is within the scope of Congress’s legislative powers. Shortly after ACA was enacted, several lawsuits were filed that challenge the individual mandate on constitutional grounds. While some of these cases have been dismissed for procedural reasons, others have moved forward. These challenges have now reached the Supreme Court."
  • April 22, 2012
    * New on LLRX - Veterans in the Criminal Justice System: Defending Conditions of the Mind

    Via LLRX.com - Veterans in the Criminal Justice System: Defending Conditions of the Mind - Ken Strutin's guide includes key recent and notable cases, surveys, studies, guides, web resources and directories for legal research specific to veterans' deployed to war who subsequently developed mental health problems, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PSTD).

    * The Economist - Mapping the death penalty in America

    States of punishment - Mapping the death penalty in America: "From 2000 to 2011 there were, on average, five death-row exonerations a year in the United States, according to the Death Penalty Information Centre. North Carolina alone saw three exonerations in six months in 2008. The following year the state legislature passed the Racial Justice Act, which gives death-row inmates the chance to commute their sentences to life without parole if a judge rules the sentences were tainted by racial bias. (More than half of North Carolina's death-row inmates are black.) The first ruling will be issued on April 20, a decision that could set a precedent for other challenges based on race. Indeed the ripples could be felt across the country, especially in Pennsylvania and Missouri, where similar legislation is pending. Other states are reconsidering capital punishment altogether. In November voters in California, which has more people on death row than any other state, will vote on whether to repeal the death penalty. And Connecticut, where a repeal bill was recently passed, is set to become the 17th state to abolish capital punishment."

    April 20, 2012
    * International Competition Network Launches New Initiatives on the Investigative Process

    News release: "The International Competition Network (ICN) launched initiatives on the investigative process in competition cases, international enforcement cooperation, and working with the courts, the Federal Trade Commission announced today. The ICN also adopted new materials on unilateral conduct investigations, raising anti-cartel awareness, and explaining the benefits of competition, and presented four new teaching modules of a “virtual university” of competition law and practice...ICN documents are available here."

    April 19, 2012
    * TRAC - White Collar Crime Prosecutions for January 2012

    "The latest available data from the Justice Department show that in January 2012 the federal government prosecuted 546 individuals in white collar crime cases, down 13 percent from the previous month and down over 40 percent since August 2011, when there were 930 such prosecutions reported. A significant portion of this drop can be attributed to the decreased usage of 18 USC 1028A - Aggravated Identity Theft, which in August was the lead charge in 154 white collar prosecutions. In January this statute was cited as the lead charge only 25 times."

    * TRAC - ICE Prosecutorial Discretion Initiative: Latest Figures

    "A prosecutorial discretion initiative by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has resulted in the closure of a total of 2,609 Immigration Court cases, according to the latest data obtained and analyzed by TRAC, current through the end of March. This is less than one percent of the 298,173 cases pending before the Immigration Courts at the end of last September. A new report by TRAC presents detailed results from the Baltimore and Denver pilots of this program, and also includes figures from other courts around the nation.,,TRAC's findings are based on case-by-case data, obtained from the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) by TRAC under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). These data included special codes that identified closures under ICE's prosecutorial discretion initiative."

    April 18, 2012
    * UK - Human Trafficking: The Government's Strategy

    Human Trafficking: The Government’s Strategy - HM Government, April 2012

  • "Human trafficking is international organised crime, with the exploitation of human beings for profit at its heart. It is an abuse of basic rights, with organised criminals preying on vulnerable people to make money. In most cases, victims are brought to the UK from abroad, but we know that trafficking also occurs within the UK and that children in particular are increasingly vulnerable to falling victim to exploitation...The greatest numbers of adult victims come to the UK from China, South East Asia, and Eastern Europe; child victims are trafficked in the greatest numbers from Vietnam, Nigeria, China and Eastern Europe. However, this is a truly international crime, with potential victims from over 80 different countries referred to the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) since its
    inception and 47 different counties identified as sources of child trafficking to the UK by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP)."
  • * Human Rights and Technology Sales: How Corporations Can Avoid Assisting Repressive Regimes

    Human Rights and Technology Sales: How Corporations Can Avoid Assisting Repressive Regimes, By Cindy Cohn, Trevor Timm, & Jillian C. York - April 2012

  • "The Electronic Frontier Foundation believes that it's time for
    technology companies, especially those selling surveillance and filtering equipment, to step up and ensure that they aren’t assisting foreign governments in committing human rights violations against their own people...EFF proposes companies navigate these difficult issues by adopting a robust Know Your Customer program, similar to the one outlined in the current U.S. export controls or a program similar to that required by the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for other purposes. Putting the focus on user and potential (or actual) use of the technology for human rights abuses by government—rather than on the capabilities of the technology itself—presents a more direct path to stopping human rights abuses, and one with fewer collateral risks."
  • April 17, 2012
    * Twitter Introduces the Innovator's Patent Agreement

    Twitter blog: "One of the great things about Twitter is working with so many talented folks who dream up and build incredible products day in and day out. Like many companies, we apply for patents on a bunch of these inventions. However, we also think a lot about how those patents may be used in the future; we sometimes worry that they may be used to impede the innovation of others. For that reason, we are publishing a draft of the Innovator’s Patent Agreement, which we informally call the “IPA”. The IPA is a new way to do patent assignment that keeps control in the hands of engineers and designers. It is a commitment from Twitter to our employees that patents can only be used for defensive purposes. We will not use the patents from employees’ inventions in offensive litigation without their permission. What’s more, this control flows with the patents, so if we sold them to others, they could only use them as the inventor intended."

    April 16, 2012
    * EPIC: FCC Fines Google $25,000 for Failure to Cooperate with Street View Investigation

    EPIC: "The Federal Communications Commission announced that it will fine Google $25,000 for obstructing an investigation concerning Google Street View and federal wiretap law. The Commission found that Google impeded by "delaying its search for and production of responsive emails and other communications, by failing to identify employees, and by withholding verification of the completeness and accuracy of its submissions." In May 2010, EPIC wrote to the FCC and urged the agency to undertake an investigation after it became clear that Google had intercepted the private communications of millions of users of wi-fi networks in the United States. Shortly afterward, the head of the FCC Bureau of Consumer and Governmental Affairs wrote that Google's behavior "clearly infringes on consumer privacy." Many countries around the world have found Google guilty of violating national privacy laws. Surprisingly, the FCC said that Google had not violated the federal wiretap act, even though a federal court recently held otherwise. For more information, see EPIC: Investigations of Google Street View and EPIC: Ben Joffe v. Google."

    April 15, 2012
    * LLRX: SOPA’s Evil Twin Sister – CISPA

    Via LLRX.com - SOPA’s Evil Twin Sister – CISPA: Well known graphic artists Jake O'Neil and Spencer Belkofer created this infographic out of a sense of urgency to visualize the salient information with as many communities as possible. This bill, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011, has not garnered the media coverage of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), but its high impact implications target key legal issues involving privacy and intellectual property.

    April 13, 2012
    * Small Business Size Standards: A Historical Analysis of Contemporary Issues

    Small Business Size Standards: A Historical Analysis of Contemporary Issues, Robert Jay Dilger, Senior Specialist in American National Government, April 10, 2012

  • "Small business size standards are of congressional interest because the standards determine eligibility for receiving Small Business Administration (SBA) assistance as well as federal contracting and tax preferences. Although there is bipartisan agreement that the nation's small businesses play an important role in the American economy, there are differences of opinion concerning how to define them. The Small Business Act of 1953 (P.L. 83-163, as amended) authorized the SBA to establish size standards for determining eligibility for federal small business assistance. The SBA currently uses two size standards to determine program eligibility: industry-specific size standards and an alternative size standard based on the applicant’s maximum tangible net worth and average net income after federal taxes."
  • * CRS: Detention of U.S. Persons as Enemy Belligerents

    Detention of U.S. Persons as Enemy Belligerents - Jennifer K. Elsea, Legislative Attorney, April 11, 2012

  • "The detainee provisions passed as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for FY2012, P.L. 112-81, affirm that the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), P.L. 107-40, in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, authorizes the detention of persons captured in connection with hostilities. The act provides for the first time a statutory definition of covered persons whose detention is authorized pursuant to the AUMF. During debate of the provision, significant attention focused on the applicability of this detention authority to U.S. citizens and other persons within the United States. The Senate adopted an amendment to clarify that the provision was not intended to affect any existing law or authorities relating to the detention of U.S. citizens or lawful resident aliens, or any other persons captured or arrested in the United States. This report analyzes the existing law and authority to detain U.S. persons, including American citizens and resident aliens, as well as other persons within the United States who are suspected of being members, agents, or associates of Al Qaeda or possibly other terrorist organizations as “enemy combatants.”
  • April 12, 2012
    * Protecting Classified Information and the Rights of Criminal Defendants: The Classified Information Procedures Act

    Protecting Classified Information and the Rights of Criminal Defendants: The Classified Information Procedures Act, Edward C. Liu, Legislative Attorney; Todd Garvey, Legislative Attorney - April 2, 2012

  • "The Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA) provides criminal procedures that permit a trial judge to rule on the relevance or admissibility of classified information in a secure setting. It requires a defendant to notify the prosecution and the court of any classified information that the defendant may seek to discover or disclose during trial. During the discovery phase, CIPA authorizes courts to issue protective orders limiting disclosure to members of the defense team that have obtained adequate security clearances, and to permit the government to use unclassified redactions or summaries of classified information that the defendant would normally be entitled to receive. If classified information is to be introduced at trial, the court may allow substitutes of classified information to be used, so long as they provide the defendant with substantially the same ability to present a defense and do not otherwise violate his constitutional rights. Among the rights that may be implicated by the application of CIPA in a criminal prosecution are the defendant’s right to have a public trial, to be confronted with the witnesses against him, and to have the assistance of counsel. CIPA may also be implicated by the obligation of the prosecution to provide the defendant, under Brady v. Maryland, with exculpatory information in its possession, and to provide the defendant with government witnesses’ prior written statements pursuant to the Jencks Act."
  • April 11, 2012
    * DOJ Files Lawsuits Against Apple and Publishers Over E-Book Pricing

    News release: "In recent years, we have seen the rapid growth – and the many benefits – of electronic books. E-books are transforming our daily lives, and improving how information and content is shared. For the growing number of Americans who want to take advantage of this new technology, the Department of Justice is committed to ensuring that e-books are as affordable as possible. As part of this commitment, the Department has reached a settlement with three of the nation’s largest book publishers – and will continue to litigate against Apple, and two additional leading publishers – for conspiring to increase the prices that consumers pay for e-books. Earlier today, we filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, against Apple and five different book publishers – Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster. In response to our allegations, three of these publishers – Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster – agreed to a proposed settlement. If approved by the court, this settlement would resolve the Department’s antitrust concerns with these companies, and would require them to grant retailers – such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble – the freedom to reduce the prices of their e-book titles. The settlement also requires the companies to terminate their anticompetitive most-favored-nation agreements with Apple and other e-books retailers."

    * Pioneering Privacy Bill Awaits Signature by Maryland Governor

    Baltimore Sun: "Moving to the forefront of social media privacy law nationwide, the Maryland General Assembly has passed legislation prohibiting employers in the state from asking current and prospective employees for their user names and passwords to websites such as Facebook and Twitter. If Gov. Martin O'Malley signs the bill — his office said it was one of hundreds of bills it has yet to review — the bill would make Maryland the first state in the nation to set such a restriction into law. Other states are considering similar legislation, including Illinois and California. The bill, drafted in response to a state agency's scouring the personal Facebook posts of prison guard applicants, also could be a bellwether for federal action. Two U.S. senators — Chuck Schumer of New York and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, both Democrats — have asked the Department of Justice and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to investigate the issue."

    April 10, 2012
    * Ensuring Safe Foods and Medical Products Through Stronger Regulatory Systems Abroad

    "A very high portion of the seafood we eat comes from abroad, mainly from China and Southeast Asia, and most of the active ingredients in medicines we take originate in other countries. Many low and middle income countries have lower labor costs and fewer and less stringent environmental regulations than the United States, making them attractive places to produce food and chemical ingredients for export. Safe Foods and Medical Products Through Stronger Regulatory Systems Abroad explains that the diversity and scale of imports makes it impractical for U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) border inspections to be sufficient to ensure product purity and safety, and incidents such as American deaths due to adulterated heparin imported from China propelled the problem into public awareness. The Institute of Medicine Committee on Strengthening Core Elements of Regulatory Systems in Developing Countries took up the vital task of helping the FDA to cope with the reality that so much of the food, drugs, biologics, and medical products consumed in the United States originate in countries with less-robust regulatory systems. Ensuring Safe Foods and Medical Products Through Stronger Regulatory Systems Abroad describes the ways the United States can help strengthen regulatory systems in low and middle income countries and promote cross-border partnerships - including government, industry, and academia - to foster regulatory science and build a core of regulatory professionals. This report also emphasizes an array of practical approaches to ensure sound regulatory practices in today's interconnected world."

    April 09, 2012
    * Library of Congress: Translation of National Legislation into English

    The Law Library of Congress, Translation of National Legislation into English, March 2012 - Global Legal Research Center

  • Afghanistan, Argentina, Brazil, China, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Mexico, and Russia International Organizations International Courts
  • April 07, 2012
    * FTC Announces Schedule for Reviewing Regulations

    News release: "As part of the Federal Trade Commission's systematic review of all current FTC rules and guides, the agency is announcing its updated 10-year review schedule. In 2011, the FTC accelerated its regulatory review program, so that by the end of this year more than one-third of its 65 rules and industry guides will have been reviewed or will be under review. The FTC is currently reviewing 22 rules and guides, and will initiate three more reviews this year, to ensure that its rules and guides are up-to-date, effective, and not overly burdensome."

    April 06, 2012
    * Official legal portal provides multiple language access to offical French legal documents

    Via Stephane Cottin, Membre du conseil d'administration at ADIJ Association pour le developpement de l'informatique juridique - France - news on the availability of new databases that provide multiple language access to the French official legal portal Legifrance.gouv.fr - Translations of French legal texts

    April 04, 2012
    * Disclosure of Assets and Income by Public Officials Is Crucial to Curbing Corruption, Finds New StAR Study

    "Disclosure by public officials of their income, assets and interests should be mandated if the fight against corruption is to succeed, according to a study released today by the Stolen Asset Recovery (StAR) Initiative of the World Bank and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.The first global study of financial disclosure laws and practices, Public Office, Private Interests: Accountability through Income and Asset Disclosure calls for renewed commitment to income and asset disclosure to deter the use of public office for private gain and to help manage actual and apparent conflicts of interest in the public sector. The study also finds that asset disclosure systems are more effective when there is a credible threat that violations will be detected and punished."

    * OECD: Identification and Quantification of the Proceeds of Bribery

    Identification and Quantification of the Proceeds of Bribery, A joint OECD-StAR analysis, Revised edition, February 2012

  • "This study focuses on the identification and quantification of the
    proceeds of active bribery. It was undertaken as a joint effort between the OECD Working Group on Bribery in International Business Transactions (Working Group) and the World Bank-UNODC Stolen Assets Recovery Initiative (StAR) in order to support countries' efforts to confiscate the proceeds of active bribery, which is required of Parties to both the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention and UNCAC. The final text, approved following a peer review process in the context of the StAR initiative, was discussed and adopted officially by the OECD Working Group on Bribery on 23 June 2011. The study is intended to provide practitioners, legislators and policy makers with practical information on the technical issues of identification and quantification of proceeds of active bribery. It provides examples of how proceeds have been identified and quantified in different jurisdictions; we use mostly examples from cases that have actually occurred."
  • April 03, 2012
    * EPIC Urges Court to Affirm Privacy Protections for Home Wi-Fi Networks

  • "EPIC has filed an amicus brief in the Ninth Circuit urging the court to affirm legal protections for users of home Wi-Fi networks. In Joffe v. Google, the plaintiffs sued Google for the interception and capture of private communications transferred over residential Wi-Fi networks. Google argued that it should be exempt from liability under the federal Wiretap Act because Wi-Fi communications are "readily accessible to the general public." However, a lower court held that saying "that a network is unencrypted does not render that network readily accessible to the general public and serve to remove the intentional interception of electronic communications from that network from liability under the ECPA." EPIC's brief for the Court of Appeals, which contains a detailed technical discussion of Wi-Fi technology, explains that residential Wi-Fi networks are unlike traditional radio broadcasts and should be protected Electronic Communications Privacy Act. EPIC also said that consumers should not bear the burden of securing their networks against sophisticated eavesdroppers when the purpose of the ECPA is to protect communications from such interception. For more information, see EPIC: Investigation of Google Street View, EPIC: Ben Joffe v. Google."

  • * FTC Case Against Deceptive Robocallers Leads to Record $30 Million in Civil Penalties

    News release: "In response to charges by the Federal Trade Commission, a federal judge has ordered the defendants behind a deceptive robocall scheme to pay a total of $30 million in civil penalties and give up more than $1.1 million in ill-gotten gains for violations of the FTC Act and the Telemarketing Sales Rule. The court order includes a $20 million judgment against Paul Navestad, which is the largest civil penalty against a defendant in an FTC case, and a $10 million judgment against Christine Maspakorn. The $30 million in total fines is, by far, the largest penalty ever imposed for unlawful calls to consumers on the Do-Not-Call Registry."

    April 02, 2012
    * Institute for Legal Reform Study -The Plaintiffs' Bar Goes Digital

    The Plaintiffs’ Bar Goes Digital - An Analysis of the Digital Marketing Efforts of Plaintiffs’ Attorneys & Litigation Firms, January 2012

  • "The U.S. tort system cost $264.6 billion in 2010, fueled in part by the plaintiffs’ bar's constant pursuit of new clients and cases. Like any big business, the plaintiffs’ bar is committed to clever marketing, and thus it is still positioning itself as working to ensure that anyone “can get justice in the courtroom, even when taking on the most powerful interests”. The 21st century twist on this marketing is the aggressive use of digital media. The plaintiffs’ bar contributes to the commercialization of the legal profession by using a sophisticated and complex combination of paid search advertising and high organic search optimization of websites to generate site traffic – all with the goal of collecting the personal contact information of potential plaintiffs...When combined with the growing popularity of social media, the industry may be on the cusp of a new era of expansion. Social media offers new opportunities and innovative trial attorneys are taking advantage of the new tactics with varying levels of transparency, including marketing efforts disguised as non-legal websites. Additionally, some firms have been criticized by the Wikipedia community for attempting to incorporate content from law firm sponsored websites."
  • March 31, 2012
    * Attorney Guide to Using iOS 5 Devices in Litigation

    How to Use iOS 5 Devices in Litigation, by Brian Malcom

  • You have an iPad. You're an attorney and, worse yet, a litigator. Now what? The iPad is nothing new. That sentence is shocking to read, but it is true. The iPad first hit stores in April 2010. The iPad 2 followed a year later, and is widely considered a success. Meanwhile, the third-generation iPad was released at the beginning of March. What the iPad has lost in novelty, it has gained in utility. The native iOS 5 software and the App Store contain useful tools and applications to help you, the litigator, get the most out of your iPad or iPhone. The following are some iPad and iOS features, applications, and tips that litigators might find useful."
  • March 28, 2012
    * Report: Insurance Discrimination Against Women Today and the Affordable Care Act

    Turning to Fairness: Insurance Discrimination Against Women Today and the Affordable Care Act, The National Women’s Law Center, March 2012.

  • "Women continue to face unfair and discriminatory practices when obtaining health insurance in the individual market—as well as in the group health insurance market. Women are charged more for health coverage simply because they are women, and individual market health plans often exclude coverage for services that only women need, like maternity care. Furthermore, insurance companies—despite being aware of these discriminatory practices—have not voluntarily taken steps to eliminate the inequities. While some states have outlawed or limited these practices, only when the Affordable Care Act is fully implemented in 2014 will they end nationally...Based on an average of currently advertised premiums and the most recent data on the number of women in the individual health insurance market, the practice of gender rating costs women approximately $1 billion a year."
  • March 25, 2012
    * Constitutional Authority Statements in Congress

    Constitutional Authority Statements in Congress, Hanah M. Volokh, Emory University School of Law - Florida Law Review, Forthcoming

  • "At the opening of the 112th Congress in January of 2011, the House of Representatives created a new rule that requires each bill or resolution introduced in the House to include a constitutional authority statement. This statement must identify 'the power or powers granted to Congress in the Constitution to enact the bill or resolution.' This is the first time that either house of Congress has required formal statements of constitutional authority for every bill that is introduced. Constitutional authority statements are a practical example of constitutional interpretation in Congress, a subject much discussed by constitutional theorists. In this Article, I situate these statements within the debates over congressional constitutional interpretation and examine some questions about the substantive content of the statements. I argue that as the rule is currently structured, the statements are useful mainly as an internal deliberative tool for Congress, not as an interpretive guide for courts. Finally, I suggest modifications to the House rule that would strengthen the statements for use both by Congress and later interpreters."
  • March 20, 2012
    * Global Automakers Launch Fuel Economy Focused Site - DrivingFuelEconomy.com

    "DrivingFuelEconomy.com is a project of the Association of Global Automakers, a Washington D.C.-based trade association that represents international motor vehicle manufacturers, original equipment suppliers and other automotive-related groups. Our global perspective and collaborative spirit drives our approach to all issues we confront and also enables us to work with industry leaders, legislators, regulators and other stakeholders to create the kind of public policy that encourages technological innovation, economic growth and environmental responsibility. We are committed to supporting maximum feasible increases in fuel economy and reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from automobiles and light duty trucks. Through DrivingFuelEconomy.com, we highlight our members’ efforts to meet increased fuel economy/GHG emissions standards through advanced technology vehicles. We also aim to paint a realistic picture of consumer acceptance of these newly developed technologies. DrivingFuelEconomy.com offers an explanation of the rules that create fuel economy/GHG emissions standards in the U.S."

    March 16, 2012
    * Report Released on DOJ Prosecution of Sen. Ted Stevens

    Ryan J. Reilly: "An independent report [500 pages] released Thursday concluded that Justice Department prosecutors engaged in “systematic concealment” of information that would have benefited the defense of Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) and that they allowed false testimony to be introduced. The over 500-page report does not recommend prosecuting any of the lawyers for criminal contempt even though they failed to fulfill their constitutional duties."

    March 15, 2012
    * FDsys replaces GPO Access as official system of record for online government information

    "As of today, March 16, 2012, the transition from GPO Access to GPO's Federal Digital System (FDsys) is complete. FDsys now is GPO's only Web site for online official and authentic Government information from all three branches of the Federal Government. After ushering GPO into the online world 16 years ago, GPO Access has been archived and taken off line. As part of the transition process, no new content has been added to GPO Access since November 2011."

  • If you have questions or comments, please use the askGPO help service
  • * HUD OIG Audit Reports on five largest national mortgage servicers

    "As part of the Office of Inspector General’s (OIG) nationwide effort to review the foreclosure practices of the five largest Federal Housing Administration (FHA) mortgage servicers (Bank of America, Wells Fargo Bank, CitiMortgage, JP Morgan Chase, and Ally Financial, Incorporated) we reviewed [Bank of America, Wells Fargo Bank, CitiMortgage, JP Morgan Chase, and Ally Financial, Incorporated's] foreclosure and claims processes. In addition to this memorandum, OIG issued separate memorandums for each of the other four reviews. OIG performed these reviews due to reported allegations made in the fall of 2010 that national mortgage servicers were engaged in widespread questionable foreclosure practices involving the use of foreclosure “mills” and a practice known as “robosigning” of sworn documents in thousands of foreclosures throughout the United States."

  • Related postings on financial system
  • March 14, 2012
    * $25 Billion Mortgage Servicing Agreement Filed in Federal Court

    News release: "The Justice Department, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and 49 state attorneys general announced today the filing of their landmark $25 billion agreement with the nation’s five largest mortgage servicers to address mortgage loan servicing and foreclosure abuses. The federal government and state attorneys general filed in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia proposed consent judgments with Bank of America Corporation, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo & Company, Citigroup Inc. and Ally Financial Inc., to resolve violations of state and federal law. The unprecedented joint agreement is the largest federal-state civil settlement ever obtained and is the result of extensive investigations by federal agencies, including the Department of Justice, HUD and the HUD Office of the Inspector General (HUD-OIG), and state attorneys general and state banking regulators across the country."

    March 13, 2012
    * 100 Groups Ask EPA to End Wildlife Poisoning From Lead Hunting Ammunition

    News release: "One hundred organizations in 35 states today formally petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate toxic lead in hunting ammunition to protect public health and prevent the widespread poisoning of eagles, California condors and other wildlife. Up to 20 million birds die each year from lead poisoning after consuming spent lead shot and bullet fragments left in the wild from hunting."

  • "Pursuant to the Toxic Substances Control Act (“TSCA”), 15 U.S.C. § 2601 et seq., the 100 petitioning organizations herein formally petition the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) to initiate a proceeding for the issuance of a rule under Section 6 of TCSA to regulate bullets and shot containing lead used in hunting and shooting sports (such as target and skeet shooting), which have the potential to cause harmful lead exposure to wildlife and humans. The petitioners request a rulemaking which adequately protects against the unreasonable risk of injury to the environment and human health posed by toxic lead bullets and shot. Although the petitioners advocate for a rule implementing a nationwide ban on the use of bullets and shot containing lead for use in hunting and shooting sports, with explicit exceptions for military and law enforcement uses, the petitioners also request that the EPA evaluate and consider a range of alternatives that could eliminate the potential for harmful lead exposure to wildlife and humans.
  • * TRAC - Civil Rights Prosecutions Up Sharply in December 2011

    Via TRAC: "The latest available data from the Justice Department show that during December 2011 there was a sharp increase in the prosecution of civil rights crimes by the federal government. Two thirds of the 39 cases filed in that month involved crimes related to slavery or involuntary servitude."

    March 11, 2012
    * LLRX.com - FOIA Facts: FOIA as Golf

    LLRX.com - FOIA Facts: FOIA as Golf - Recent reports of both the Department of Justice and others about the administrations FOIA overall program have led FOIA expert Scott A. Hodes to imagine FOIA as golf. President Obama is currently on the fairway of the ninth hole. Voters will let him know in November if he gets to play the back nine.

  • See also AP's investigative report - Government can't keep up with information requests
  • * Virginia Coalition for Open Government

    Virginia Coalition for Open Government: "We are a nonprofit alliance formed to promote expanded access to government records, meetings and other proceedings at the state and local level. Our efforts are focused solely on local/state information access. While we do some lobbying (within limits imposed by IRS rules), our primary work is educational. The Coalition was formed in 1996, after a year-long organizing effort. Our 23-member board of directors represents the state's access activists and friends of open government, including Virginia's librarians, genealogists, broadcasters, newspapers and the public at large. Start-up funding was provided by the Virginia Press Association, the Virginia Association of Broadcasters, Media General, the Landmark Communications Foundation, America Online, all of the major in-state newspapers, public radio and television stations, a number of commercial stations and other friends of open government. Supporters also include Dominion, Appalachian Power, SunTrust, LexisNexis, Christian & Barton, Conservation Voters League, Woods Rogers, Gentry Locke."

    * LLRX.com - New Economy Resources

    via LLRX.com - New Economy Resources - Marcus P. Zillman's guide is focused on current web sites, blogs and database sources targeted to researchers whose goal is the discovery and effective use of specific, reliable resources to track the New Economy. These sources assume added importance with the expansion in U.S. government transparency, the rise in prominence of "big data" and the public release by agencies, NGOs, public interest groups and media, of diverse databases of analytics, reports, statistical releases, and customized charts.

    March 08, 2012
    * White House Launches Ethics.gov with searchable datasets

    "Ethics.Data.gov brings together datasets from across the government to help citizens easily access this information, empowering Americans to hold government accountable.

  • Enter a name and see every record of that person across the entire collection of ethics data - including campaign finance, lobbying, and White House visitor records.
  • Ethics.Data.gov brings together datasets from across the government to help citizens easily access this information, empowering Americans to hold government accountable."
  • March 07, 2012
    * New GAO Reports - Debt Management, Mobility Capabilities, Private Pensions, Madoff Liquidation Proceeding
    • Debt Management - Buybacks Can Enhance Treasury's Capacity to Manage under Changing Market Conditions, GAO-12-314, Mar 7, 2012
    • Mobility Capabilities- DOD's Mobility Study Limitations and Newly Issued Strategic Guidance Raise Questions about Air Mobility Requirements, GAO-12-510T, Mar 7, 2012
    • Private Pensions - Better Agency Coordination Could Help Small Employers Address Challenges To Plan Sponsorship, GAO-12-459T, Mar 7, 2012
    • Private Pensions - Better Agency Coordination Could Help Small Employers Address Challenges to Plan Sponsorship, GAO-12-326, Mar 5, 2012
    • Securities Investor Protection Corporation, Interim Report on the Madoff Liquidation Proceeding, GAO-12-414, Mar 7, 2012
    March 06, 2012
    * HM Treasury - Statement on Money Laundering controls in Overseas Jurisdictions

    Statement on Money Laundering controls in Overseas Jurisdictions: "This notice constitutes advice issued by HM Treasury about risks posed by unsatisfactory money laundering controls in a number of jurisdictions. The Money Laundering Regulations 2007 require firms to put in place policies, procedures or systems in order to prevent money laundering or terrorist financing. Regulated businesses are also required to apply enhanced customer due diligence and enhanced ongoing monitoring on a risk-sensitive basis in certain defined situations and in “any other situation which by its nature can present a higher risk of money laundering or terrorist financing”.

  • See also: "The Asset Freezing Unit in the Treasury is responsible for the implementation and administration of international financial sanctions in effect in the UK, for domestic designations under the Terrorist Asset-Freezing etc. Act 2010 and licensing exemptions to financial sanctions."
  • March 05, 2012
    * TRAC: Surprising Judge-to-Judge Variations Documented In Federal Sentencing

    Via Jeff Lamicela - "An analysis of all criminal cases completed in the federal courts during the last five years has discovered extensive and hard-to-explain variations in the sentencing practices of district court judges working in many different districts. This key finding is based upon the first ever review of the sentences imposed by 885 judges in more than 370,000 cases decided during the period from FY 2007 to FY 2011. These data were compiled by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University. Because the report examines differences in sentencing practices within individual districts where judges presumably receive the same general mix of cases, this finding raises questions about the extent to which sentences in some districts are influenced by the particular judge who sentenced the defendant rather than just the facts of that case. Accompanying the report are the names of each federal district court judge covered in this report, along with the number of defendants each sentenced during this period. While each judge sentenced on average 420 defendants, the judge-by-judge listing reveals that some judges -- particularly those in districts along the southwest border -- handled many more, up to 6,331 cases. See here."

    * Financial Crimes Report to the Public: Fiscal Years 2010 - 2011

    FBI - Financial Crimes Report to the Public: Fiscal Years 2010-2011

  • "Overview and Priorities: The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigates matters relating to fraud, theft, or embezzlement occurring within or against the national and international financial community. These crimes are characterized by deceit, concealment, or violation of trust and are not dependent upon the application or threat of physical force or violence. Such acts are committed by individuals and organizations to obtain personal or business advantage. The FBI focuses its financial crimes investigations on such criminal activities as corporate fraud, securities and commodities fraud, health care fraud, financial institution fraud, mortgage fraud, insurance fraud, mass marketing fraud, and money laundering. These are the identified priority crime problem areas of the Financial Crimes Section (FCS) of the FBI."
  • March 04, 2012
    * UN - Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Libya

    UN Human Rights Council Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Libya, Advance Unedited Version, March 2, 2012: "The Commission further concluded that the thuwar (anti-Qadhafi forces) committed serious violations, including war crimes and breaches of international human rights law, the latter continuing at the time of the present report. The Commission found these violations to include unlawful killing, arbitrary arrest, torture, enforced disappearance, indiscriminate attacks, and pillage. It found in particular that the thuwar are targeting the Tawergha and other communities."

    March 03, 2012
    * BP announces $7.8B settlement with Plaintiffs' Steering Committee

    Follow up to previous postings on the Deepwater Horizon Spill, this
    news release: "BP has reached a settlement with the Plaintiffs' Steering Committee (PSC), subject to final written agreement, to resolve the substantial majority of legitimate economic loss and medical claims stemming from the Deepwater Horizon accident and oil spill. The PSC acts on behalf of individual and business plaintiffs in the Multi-District Litigation proceedings pending in New Orleans (MDL 2179). BP estimates that the cost of the proposed settlement, expected to be paid from the $20 billion Trust, would be approximately $7.8 billion. This includes a BP commitment of $2.3 billion to help resolve economic loss claims related to the Gulf seafood industry."

    February 28, 2012
    * EEOC Issues Revised Publications on Employment of Veterans with Disabilities

    News release: "The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) today issued two revised publications addressing veterans with disabilities and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)...The revised guides reflect changes to the law stemming from the ADA Amendments Act of 2008, which make it easier for veterans with a wide range of impairments – including those that are often not well understood -- such as traumatic brain injuries (TBI) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), to get needed reasonable accommodations that will enable them to work successfully. [Prior to the ADA Amendments Act, the ADA’s definition of the term “disability” had been construed narrowly, significantly limiting the law’s protections.]

  • The Guide for Employers explains how protections for veterans with service-connected disabilities differ under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA), and how employers can prevent disability-based discrimination and provide reasonable accommodations.
  • The Guide for Wounded Veterans answers questions that veterans with service-related disabilities may have about the protections they are entitled to when they seek to return to their former jobs or look for civilian jobs. The publication also explains the kinds of accommodations that may be necessary to help veterans with disabilities obtain and successfully maintain employment."
  • February 26, 2012
    * Paper - Disentangling Property and Contract in the Law of Copyright Licenses

    A License is Not a 'Contract Not to Sue': Disentangling Property and Contract in the Law of Copyright Licenses - Christopher M. Newman, George Mason University School of Law, February 24, 2012, George Mason Law & Economics Research Paper No. 12-23

  • "The assertion that a “license” is simply a “contract not to sue” has become a commonplace in both copyright and patent law. I argue that this notion is conceptually flawed, and has become a straightjacket channeling juristic reasoning into unproductive channels. At root, a license is not a contract, but a form of property interest. It may be closely intertwined with a set of contractual relationships, but its nature and consequences cannot be satisfactorily explained from within the world of contract doctrine alone. In this article, I seek to explain the complementary but parallel roles played by property and contract doctrine in creation of the various forms of legal interests we refer to as “licenses.” Each doctrine has its own set of governing formalities that afford titleholders various means through which to create and protect use privileges granted to others, while still retaining residual title for themselves. I argue that clarifying the extent to which licenses are exercises of powers conferred by property rather than contract law provides a key to proper application of Section 204 of the Copyright Act of 1976, which has been (erroneously) construed as a statute of frauds governing contract formation, as opposed to one governing a specific form of property conveyance."
  • February 25, 2012
    * WaPo - Chief Justice Roberts rejects request for code of conduct

    By Robert Barnes, February 21: "Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. told a group of Democratic senators that the Supreme Court is not going to formally adopt a judicial code of conduct that governs the actions of other federal judges. Roberts told Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.) in a one-paragraph letter that he had already explained in his year-end report on the judiciary why the Code of Conduct for United States Judges was not applicable to the Supreme Court."

    * ABA Dodd-Frank Resources Portal

    "ABA is leveraging our unmatched resources and staff experts to help bankers navigate the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform & Consumer Protection Act and the biggest re-write of financial regulations in decades. Search ABA's DFA Resources. From news and policy analysis to compliance how-to's and staff training, ABA offers everything your bank will need to understand and comply with scores of new rules.

  • "American Bankers Association - Dodd-Frank and Community Banks - Your Guide to 12 Critical Issues - "ABA prepared this guide, which highlights 12 of the most important Dodd-Frank issues that will see action in 2012, to help community bankers prepare for, respond to and manage regulatory pronouncements that could have a significant impact on their institutions. Each issue page includes sections on why it matters, what to watch out for and—most important of all—how bankers can get involved to influence the outcome. A list of ABA resources that can help bankers track and analyze the issues and tackle some of the compliance challenges associated with them is also included, in addition to a listing of staff issue experts for all Dodd-Frank issues."
  • February 24, 2012
    * World Bank - Doing Business Project; Doing Business law library

  • "The Doing Business Project provides objective measures of business regulations and their enforcement across 183 economies and selected cities at the subnational and regional level. The Doing Business Project, launched in 2002, looks at domestic small and medium-size companies and measures the regulations applying to them through their life cycle. By gathering and analyzing comprehensive quantitative data to compare business regulation environments across economies and over time, Doing Business encourages countries to compete towards more efficient regulation; offers measurable benchmarks for reform; and serves as a resource for academics, journalists, private sector researchers and others interested in the business climate of each country. In addition, Doing Business offers detailed subnational reports, which exhaustively cover business regulation and reform in different cities and regions within a nation. These reports provide data on the ease of doing business, rank each location, and recommend reforms to improve performance in each of the indicator areas. Selected cities can compare their business regulations with other cities in the country or region and with the 183 economies that Doing Business has ranked."
  • "The Doing Business law library is the largest free online collection of business laws and regulations. We link to official government sources wherever possible. Translations are not official unless indicated otherwise. We update the collection regularly but are unable to guarantee that laws are the most recent version.
  • * FTC Takes Action to Stop Massive Robocalling Operations

    News release: "As part of the Federal Trade Commission's ongoing efforts to crack down on illegal, prerecorded "robocalls," the FTC is taking legal action to stop two operations that allegedly enabled telemarketers to place hundreds of millions of illegal prerecorded calls to consumers around the country, including many who had registered their phone numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry. The FTC's complaints, here and here, in both cases allege that the defendants offered "self-service" voice broadcasting – a service that makes it easy for marketers who have no telecommunications expertise to deliver tens of millions of robocalls for pennies a call. The defendants arranged for marketers to deliver prerecorded sales pitches by uploading a recorded message and list of telephone numbers through web sites owned by the defendants that would then dial each uploaded phone number and play the designated prerecorded message."

    * World Bank - Women, Business and the Law 2012

    "Women, Business and the Law presents indicators based on laws and regulations affecting women's prospects as entrepreneurs and employees, in part drawing on laws contained in the Gender Law Library. Both resources can inform research and policy discussions on how to improve women's economic opportunities and outcomes."

  • Women, Business and the Law 2012 - Removing barriers to economic inclusion
  • February 23, 2012
    * Bioethics Commission Posts Additional Documents on Public Health Service STD Studies in Guatemala

    "Today the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues posted on its website hundreds of supporting documents related to its investigation into the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) studies conducted in Guatemala in the 1940s. The documents include a spreadsheet that Commission staff painstakingly created to document the research subjects in Guatemala. In addition, the Commission has posted a Spanish translation of its report, "Ethically Impossible" STD Research in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948. As the world is now aware, the PHS research involved intentionally exposing and infecting vulnerable populations to sexually transmitted diseases without the subjects’ consent. The revelation of the research led to an apology from President Obama to the President of Guatemala. It also resulted in a request from President Obama to the Commission for a thorough fact finding investigation into the U.S. PHS studies...The Commission completed its historical investigation and sent its final report to the White House last September. The full report posted now includes hyperlinks to the supporting historical documents cited in the endnotes."

    * Lawyers Sue Westlaw and Lexis Over Publication of Briefs

    Via WSJ Law Blog: "Two lawyers are taking on legal database providers Westlaw and LexisNexis with what appears to be a novel interpretation of copyright law. Edward L. White, a Oklahoma City, Okla., lawyer, and Kenneth Elan, claim WestLaw and LexisNexis have engaged in “unabashed wholesale copying of thousands of copyright-protected works created by, and owned by, the attorneys and law firms who authored them” — namely publicly filed briefs, motions and other legal documents."

    * FTC Commissioner Warns of International Threats to Internet Freedom

    Via WSJ, this commentary by FTC Commission Robert K. McDowell: "On Feb. 27, a diplomatic process will begin in Geneva that could result in a new treaty giving the United Nations unprecedented powers over the Internet. Dozens of countries, including Russia and China, are pushing hard to reach this goal by year's end. As Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said last June, his goal and that of his allies is to establish "international control over the Internet" through the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a treaty-based organization under U.N. auspices. If successful, these new regulatory proposals would upend the Internet's flourishing regime, which has been in place since 1988. That year, delegates from 114 countries gathered in Australia to agree to a treaty that set the stage for dramatic liberalization of international telecommunications. This insulated the Internet from economic and technical regulation and quickly became the greatest deregulatory success story of all time...Russia, China and their allies within the 193 member states of the ITU want to renegotiate the 1988 treaty to expand its reach into previously unregulated areas. Reading even a partial list of proposals that could be codified into international law next December at a conference in Dubai is chilling..."

    * EPIC: State Attorneys General Cite Privacy Risks to Android Users, Demand Meeting with Google

    EPIC: "Attorneys general from 36 states and territories sent a letter to Google raising new questions about the plan to consolidate user data on March 1. "The new policy forces consumers to allow information across all of these products to be shared, without giving them the ability to opt out.," the letter says. The state AGs also say "this invasion of privacy is virtually impossible to escape for the nation's Android-powered smartphone users, who comprise nearly 50% of the national smartphone market. For these consumers, avoiding Google's privacy policy change may mean buying an entirely new phone at great personal expense." The AGs point out that Google told Android users "We will not reduce your rights under this Privacy Policy without your explicit consent." Last week, EPIC filed a lawsuit to force the Federal Trade Commission to require Google to honor its previous commitments to Google users. EPIC has alleged that the proposed changes in the company's practices violate a 2011 Consent Order. For more information, see EPIC: EPIC v. FTC (Google Consent Order)."

    February 21, 2012
    * Law Review Circulation 2011: More Change, More Same

    Law Review Circulation 2011: More Change, More Same. Ross E. Davies
    George Mason University School of Law; The Green Bag; Journal of Law, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 179-188, 2012; Journal of Legal Metrics, Vol. 1, 2012; George Mason Law & Economics Research Paper No. 12-15

  • "Every year, the tallying of law review circulation numbers presents at least one opportunity to examine the role played by puffery in the world of scholarly law publishing. Last year the result was a gentle needling of the Virginia Law Review. The year before that it was the Harvard Law Review. This year the Stanford Law Review is honored with similar treatment. But first, a few observations about historic lows in law review circulation, and the wide disparities between the experiences of individual journals."
  • February 20, 2012
    * LLRX.com: Animal Rights in the Human Legal System

    Via LLRX.com: Animal Rights in the Human Legal System - The struggle for human rights has gone on for ages, but the story of animal rights has only begun to be told. Ken Strutin's guide is a compilation of new and notable legal resources on animal rights and welfare. Its jurisprudence takes into account the various roles that society has assigned to animals, e.g., companion, servant or object, as well the implications of their participation or use in different sectors of modern life. Some of the key legal areas of confluence include: (1) animal rescue; (2) protective legislation; (3) law enforcement and forensics; (4) elder care and end of life issues; (5) abuse registries; (6) environmental hazards; (7) witness assistants; and (8) development of advanced degrees and specialization in animal law.

    * Business Use of Intellectual Property Protection Documented in NSF Survey

    Business Use of Intellectual Property Protection Documented in NSF Survey by John E. Jankowski1, February 2012

  • "In today’s global economy, much of a business’s competitive advantage lies in the ability to protect and exploit exclusive rights over investments in intellectual property (IP) — that is, creative outcomes lacking physical substance but providing long-term benefits to the company. Hence, IP protection is a persistent and recurrent concern of businesses. Under IP law, owners are granted certain exclusive rights to a variety of intangible assets, such as discoveries and inventions; musical, literary, and artistic works; and symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce. New survey findings from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.S. Census Bureau (Census) indicate that trademarks and trade secrets are identified by the largest number of businesses as important forms of IP protection, followed by copyrights, and then patents. However, the level of reliance on each of these forms of IP protection varies considerably across industry sectors."

  • February 19, 2012
    * TRAC: Drug Enforcement Administration Prosecutions Dip to Eleven-Year Low

    Jeff Lamicela: "The latest available data from the Justice Department show that during November 2011 the government reported 968 new prosecutions for these matters. Those cases were referred by the Drug Enforcement Administration. According to the case-by-case information analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), this number is down 20.6% over the previous month. The comparisons of the number of defendants charged are based on case-by-case information obtained by TRAC under the Freedom of Information Act from the Executive Office for United States Attorneys. When monthly 2011 prosecutions of this type are compared with those of the same period in the previous year, the number of filings was down (-10.5 percent). Prosecutions over the past year are still much lower than they were five years ago. Overall, the data show that prosecutions of this type are down 8.4 percent from levels reported in 2006."

    * DOJ - Moex Offshore Agrees to $90 Million Partial Settlement of Liability in Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

    Follow up to previous postings on the Deepwater Horizon Spill, this news release: "MOEX Offshore 2007 LLC has agreed to settle its liability in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in a settlement with the United States valued at $90 million, announced the Department of Justice, the U.S. Coast Guard and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today. Approximately $45 million of the $90 million settlement is going directly to the Gulf in the form of penalties or expedited environmental projects. According to the terms of the settlement, MOEX will pay $70 million in civil penalties to resolve alleged violations of the Clean Water Act resulting from the spill and agreed to spend $20 million to facilitate land acquisition projects in several Gulf states that will preserve and protect in perpetuity habitat and resources important to water quality and other environmental features of the Gulf of Mexico region. At the time of the spill, MOEX was a minority investor in the lease for the Macondo well. It no longer owns any share of the lease."

    February 17, 2012
    * FATF steps up the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing

    News release: "The Financial Action Task Force, the global standard-setter in the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing, has revised the International Standards on Combating Money Laundering and the Financing of Terrorism & Proliferation after more than two years of efforts by member countries. The Recommendations are used by more than 180 governments to combat these crimes. The revisions, made with inputs from governments, the private sector, and civil society, provide authorities with a stronger framework to act against criminals and address new threats to the international financial system. The cost of money laundering and underlying serious crime is very large, estimated between 2 and 5% of global GDP. The revision will enable national authorities to take more effective action against money laundering and terrorist financing at all levels - from the identification of bank customers opening an account through to investigation, prosecution and forfeiture of assets. At the global level, the FATF will also monitor and take action to promote implementation of the standards."

    February 16, 2012
    * FTC Report Raises Privacy Questions About Mobile Applications for Children

    News release: "The Federal Trade Commission today issued a staff report showing the results of a survey of mobile apps for children. The survey shows that neither the app stores nor the app developers provide the information parents need to determine what data is being collected from their children, how it is being shared, or who will have access to it. According to the FTC report, Mobile Apps for Kids: Current Privacy Disclosures Are Disappointing, in 2008, smartphone users could choose from about 600 available apps. Today there are more than 500,000 apps in the Apple App Store and 380,000 in the Android Market. "Consumers have downloaded these apps more than 28 billion times, and young children and teens are increasingly embracing smartphone technology for entertainment and educational purposes. The report says the survey focused on the largest stores, the Apple App Store and the Android Market, and evaluated the types of apps offered to children, the disclosures provided to users, interactive features such as connectivity with social media, and the ratings and parental controls offered for such apps."

    * Department of Transportation Proposes 'Distraction' Guidelines for Automakers

    Follow up to postings on driving distractions and texting, this news: "U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood today announced the first-ever federally proposed guidelines to encourage automobile manufacturers to limit the distraction risk for in-vehicle electronic devices. The proposed voluntary guidelines would apply to communications, entertainment, information gathering and navigation devices or functions that are not required to safely operate the vehicle. Issued by the Department’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the guidelines would establish specific recommended criteria for electronic devices installed in vehicles at the time they are manufactured that require visual or manual operation by drivers. The announcement of the guidelines comes just days after President Obama’s FY 2013 budget request, which includes $330 million over six years for distracted driving programs that increase awareness of the issue and encourage stakeholders to take action."

    February 15, 2012
    * Foreclosure in California - A Crisis of Compliance

    Foreclosure in California - A Crisis of Compliance, February 2012

  • "The City and County of San Francisco’s Office of the Assessor‐Recorder retained Aequitas Compliance Solutions, Inc. to review 382 residential mortgage loan transactions (the “subject loans”) that resulted in foreclosure sales that occurred from January 2009 through October 2011. Over this period, there were 2,405 foreclosure sales. The subject loans thus represent approximately 16% of the total. We analyzed the subject loans to determine the mortgage industry’s compliance with applicable laws. Specifically, we focused our analysis on important topics relating to six Subject Areas:
    • Assignments
    • Notice of Default
    • Substitution of Trustee
    • Notice of Trustee Sale
    • Suspicious Activities Indicative of Potential Fraud
    • Conflicts Relating to MERS"
    • Overall, we identified one or more irregularities in 99% of the subject loans. In 84% of the loans, we identified what appear to be one or more clear violations of law."
  • February 14, 2012
    * Bankruptcy Filings Slide in Calendar Year 2011

    News release: "Bankruptcy filings in the federal courts fell 11.5 percent in calendar year 2011, according to data released today by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. The number of bankruptcies filed in the twelve-month period ending December 31, 2011, totaled 1,410,653, down from 1,593,081 bankruptcies filed in CY 2010. An historic high in the number of bankruptcy filings was seen in CY 2005, when over 2 million bankruptcies were filed. Although filings dropped in CY2006, the first full 12-month period after the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (BAPCPA) took effect, they have grown steadily every year since. CY 2011 is the first calendar year to show a decrease in total filings since 2006. Statistics released today include business and non-business filings for the 12-month period ending December 31, 2011; a comparison of December 2010 and 2011 filings; 4th quarter filings; monthly filings for the 12-month period ending December 31, 2011 ; and filings per capita."

    February 12, 2012
    * BJS: Prosecutors in State Courts, 2007 - Statistical Tables

    Prosecutors in State Courts, 2007 - Statistical Tables, Duren Banks, Steven W. Perry, December 28, 2011. NCJ 234211

  • "Presents findings on felony caseloads and convictions in the 2,330 chief prosecutors' offices in the United States that handled felony cases in state courts of general jurisdiction. The report summarizes the annual office budget, tenure and salaries of chief state court prosecutors, and the full-time office staffing, including attorneys, investigators, victim advocates, and support personnel. It presents data on threats against staff and data on staff who carry firearms. It details the number of felony cases closed, felony jury trial verdicts, and the use of DNA evidence. Statistical tables include selected types of cases prosecuted, such as methamphetamine production, use of internet for child exploitation, elder abuse, and gang-related violence. Data are from the 2007 National Census of State Court Prosecutors, the second complete census of all state prosecutors' offices litigating felony cases in state courts of general jurisdiction. Highlights include the following:
    • In 2007, 2,330 prosecutors’ offices across the United States served districts with populations ranging in size from 500 to 9.9 million residents.
    • In 2007, almost half (47%) of prosecutors’ offices had received a written threat, a threatening phone call, a face-to-face threat, or had staff who were victims of battery or assault.
    • The average annual salary of a chief prosecutor in 2007 was $98,000, with mean salaries ranging from $165,700 for chief prosecutors in the largest offices to less than $45,000 in part-time offices."
  • February 11, 2012
    * EPIC: Google Report Raises New Questions About Compliance with Consent Order

    EPIC: "The Google privacy compliance report, made public today, raises new questions about the company's failure to comply with an FTC Consent Order. The Order required Google to answer detailed questions about how it protects the personal information of Google users. But Google chose not to answer many of the questions. Most significantly, the company did not explain to the Commission the impact on user privacy of the proposed changes that will take place on March 1. EPIC has filed a lawsuit to force the Federal Trade Commission to require Google to comply with the Consent Order to protect the privacy interests of Google users. For more information, see EPIC v. FTC (Google Consent Order)."

    February 09, 2012
    * AG Eric Holder Delivers Remarks at the Mortgage Servicers Settlement Press Conference

    Attorney General Eric Holder Delivers Remarks at the Mortgage Servicers Settlement Press Conference - Washington, D.C. ~ Thursday, February 9, 2012

  • "Good morning. I’m pleased to join with Secretary Shaun Donovan; Attorney General for the State of Iowa, Tom Miller; Associate Attorney General, Tom Perrelli; HUD Inspector General, David Montoya; and Attorney General for the State of Colorado, John Suthers – to announce our latest step forward in righting the wrongs that led to our nation’s housing-market collapse and economic crisis. Today, the Departments of Justice and Housing and Urban Development – along with 49 state attorneys general and other federal agencies – have reached a landmark $25 billion agreement with the nation’s five largest mortgage servicers: Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo & Company, Citibank, and Ally Financial, which was formerly GMAC. This agreement reflects our commitment – at both the federal and state levels – to ensure justice, and to recover losses, for victims of reckless and abusive mortgage practices. In addition to addressing many of the most egregious mortgage loan servicing abuses that our investigations have uncovered, this agreement establishes significant new homeowner protections to help prevent future misconduct. It also provides substantial financial assistance to victim borrowers. In fact, it is the largest joint federal-state civil settlement in history."
  • February 08, 2012
    * EPIC Sues Federal Trade Commission to Enforce Google Consent Order

    "EPIC today filed a Complaint and a Motion for Temporary Restraining Order and Preliminary Injunction in Federal District Court in Washington, DC. EPIC is seeking to compel the Federal Trade Commission to act prior to March 1, when Google plans to make changes in its terms of service that will make it possible for the company to combine user data without user consent. EPIC alleges that this change in business practice is in clear violation of the consent order that Google entered into on October 13, 2011. The consent order arises from a complaint that EPIC brought to the Commission in February, 2010 concerning Google Buzz and a similar attempt by Google to combine user data without user consent. For more information, see EPIC - In re Google Buzz, FTC - FTC Charges Deceptive Privacy Practices in Google's Rollout of Its Buzz Social Network."

    * DOJ Launches Website to Improve Outcomes for At-Risk and Delinquent Girls

    "The Department of Justice announces a new resource — the National Girls Institute website — to better meet the needs of at-risk and delinquent girls, their families and the agencies and organizations that serve them. The institute is supported by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD) through a grant from the Department’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP)...OJJDP established the National Girls Institute in 2010 to develop and provide a range of training, technical assistance and other resources to local, tribal and private organizations serving girls and young women in, or at risk of entering, the juvenile justice system. Through this website, professionals can submit requests for training and technical assistance, as well as find current information about best practices, gender-responsive tools, research and related events."

    February 07, 2012
    * TRAC: Share of Immigration Cases Ending in Deportation Orders Hits Record Low

    "TRAC's web-based tools monitoring ICE's exercise of prosecutorial discretion in the Immigration Courts have been updated with court data tracking outcomes through December 2011. Very current data show that deportation orders fell, while individuals allowed to stay in the U.S. rose during October - December 2011. The share of ICE-initiated Immigration Court deportation proceedings resulting in deportation orders -- 64.8 percent -- reached the lowest level in the past 20 years. Results are believed to reflect in part ICE's ongoing review of the court's backlog. TRAC's findings are based on case-by-case data obtained from the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) by TRAC under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). For the accompanying data tools which allow tracking by outcome, Immigration Court, hearing location, charge and nationality, go here."

    February 06, 2012
    * CRS - Detention of U.S. Persons as Enemy Belligerents

    Detention of U.S. Persons as Enemy Belligerents, Jennifer K. Elsea, Legislative Attorney, February 1, 2012.

  • "P.L. 112-81, affirm that the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF), P.L. 107-40, in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, authorizes the detention of persons captured in connection with hostilities. The Act provides for the first time a statutory definition of covered persons whose detention is authorized pursuant to the AUMF. During debate of the provision, significant attention focused on the applicability of this detention authority to U.S. citizens and other persons within the United States. The Senate adopted an amendment to clarify that the provision was not intended to affect any existing law or authorities relating to the detention of U.S. citizens or lawful resident aliens, or any other persons captured or arrested in the United States. This report analyzes the existing law and authority to detain U.S. persons, including American citizens and resident aliens, as well as other persons within the United States
    who are suspected of being members, agents, or associates of Al Qaeda or possibly other terrorist organizations as “enemy combatants.”
  • * FTC Warns Marketers That Mobile Apps May Violate Fair Credit Reporting Act

    News release: "The Federal Trade Commission warned marketers of six mobile applications that provide background screening apps that they may be violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The FTC warned the apps marketers that, if they have reason to believe the background reports they provide are being used for employment screening, housing, credit, or other similar purposes, they must comply with the Act. According to the FTC, some of the apps include criminal record histories, which bear on an individual's character and general reputation and are precisely the type of information that is typically used in employment and tenant screening."

    February 05, 2012
    * Article: First Amendment Architecture

    First Amendment Architecture, Marvin Ammori, Wisconsin Law Review, Vol. 2012, No. 1, 2012.

  • "The right to free speech is meaningless without some place to exercise it. But constitutional scholarship generally overlooks the role of judicial doctrines in ensuring the availability of spaces for speech. Indeed, when scholarship addresses doctrines that are explicitly concerned with speech spaces such as public forums and media or Internet forums, it generally marginalizes these doctrines as "exceptions" to standard First Amendment analysis. By overlooking or marginalizing these decisions, scholarship has failed to explicate the logic underlying important doctrinal areas and what these areas reveal about the First Amendment's normative underpinnings. This Article adopts a different interpretive approach. It identifies and interprets the Court's role in ensuring, requiring, or permitting government to make spaces available for speech. Across a range of physical and virtual spaces, the Article identifies five persistent judicial principles evident in precedent and practice that require or permit government to ensure spaces to further particular, substantive speech-goals. Further, rather than quarantining these speech-principles as exceptions to the standard analysis, this Article explores the significance of these principles for "core" speech doctrine and theory. The resulting analysis poses fundamental challenges to conventional wisdom about the First Amendment and the normative principles generally believed evident in doctrine. Consequently, the Article provides timely guidance for legislators and judges, particularly for shaping access to the technology-enabled virtual spaces increasingly central to Americans' discourse."
  • February 01, 2012
    * A Guide to the Supreme Court's Review of the 2010 Health Care Reform Law

    A Guide to the Supreme Court’s Review of the 2010 Health Care Reform Law, January 12, 2012

  • "With the Supreme Court preparing to hear oral arguments about challenges to the 2010 Affordable Care Act in March 2012, this Kaiser Family Foundation brief serves as a primer on the pending case, which challenges the constitutionality both of the law's individual mandate that requires most Americans to obtain health insurance and of provisions requiring states to expand eligibility for their Medicaid programs. The brief provides an overview of the pending case, the key constitutional questions, and the legal arguments made by the parties involved. It also outlines how the Court could decide each of the issues and the potential implications of the Court’s decisions."
  • * Border Security: Immigration Enforcement Between Ports of Entry

    CRS - Border Security: Immigration Enforcement Between Ports of Entry, Marc R. Rosenblum, Specialist in Immigration Policy, January 6, 2012

  • "Twenty-five years after the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA, P.L. 99-603) marked the beginning of the modern era in border enforcement, this report reviews recent enforcement efforts, takes stock of the current state of border security, and considers lessons that may be learned about a quarter century of enhanced migration control efforts at U.S. borders. IRCA authorized a 50% increase in the size of the USBP, and at least 10 additional laws since then have included provisions related to migration enforcement and/or border security. Appropriations for the USBP have increased about 750% since 1989—a number which excludes many other programs related to border enforcement."
  • January 31, 2012
    * Boycott Against Scientific Journal Publisher Gathering Supporters

    Wired Campus by Josh Fischman: "Elsevier, the global publishing company, is responsible for The Lancet, Cell, and about 2,000 other important journals; the iconic reference work Gray’s Anatomy, along with 20,000 other books—and one fed-up, award-winning mathematician. Timothy Gowers of the University of Cambridge, who won the Fields Medal for his research, has organized a boycott of Elsevier because, he says, its pricing and policies restrict access to work that should be much more easily available. He asked for a boycott in a blog post on January 21, and as of Monday evening, on the boycott’s Web site The Cost of Knowledge, nearly 1,900 scientists have signed up, pledging not to publish, referee, or do editorial work for any Elsevier journal. The company has sinned in three areas, according to the boycotters: It charges too much for its journals; it bundles subscriptions to lesser journals together with valuable ones, forcing libraries to spend money to buy things they don’t want in order to get a few things they do want; and, most recently, it has supported a proposed federal law (called the Research Works Act) that would prevent agencies like the National Institutes of Health from making all articles written by its grant recipients freely available."

    * European Union: Implementation of the Consumer Credit Directive

    Implementation of the Consumer Credit Directive: "The study examines the state and the main difficulties of the implementation of Directive 2008/48/EC on credit agreements for consumers using the examples of fourteen Member States of the
    European Union. The analysis focuses on fully harmonised aspects of the Directive as well as on the provisions for which the Member States were given a wide margin of appreciation in achieving the objective of the Directive and options provided by the Directive. Furthermore, new regulations and regulations requiring interpretation are dealt with. Finally, the study analyses the regulation of credit agreements which fall outside the scope of the Directive."

    January 29, 2012
    * Report - Most Federal Judges Warn Jurors About Social Media

    Jurors’ Use of Social Media During Trials and Deliberations - A Report to the Judicial Conference Committee on Court Administration and Case Management, Meghan Dunn, Federal Judicial Center November 22, 2011

  • "Most federal judges have taken steps to ensure that jurors do not use social media to discuss the trial in which they are involved, a recently published survey indicates. The Federal Judicial Center was asked by a committee of the policy-making Judicial Conference of the United States to survey federal judges on the issue. Its report says that 94 percent of the 508 judges who responded said they have specifically barred jurors from any case-connected use of social media. “The most common strategy is incorporating social media use into jury instructions – either the model jury instruction provided by (the Conference’s Committee on Court Administration and Case Management) or judges’ own personal jury instructions,” the report said. “Also common are the practice of reminding jurors on a regular basis not to use social media to communicate during trial or deliberations, explaining the reasons behind the ban on social media, and confiscating electronic devices in the courtroom,” the report added. Only 30 of the 508 judges reported instances of detected social media use by jurors during trials or deliberations. The survey questionnaire was sent to all active and senior federal district judges, 952 in all. The response rate was 53 percent."
  • * Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries

    "The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) announces the release of the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries 2012, a clear and easy-to-use statement of fair and reasonable approaches to fair use developed by and for librarians who support academic inquiry and higher education. The Code was developed in partnership with the Center for Social Media and the Washington College of Law at American University. Winston Tabb, Johns Hopkins University Dean of University Libraries and Museums and President of ARL, said, “This document is a testament to the collective wisdom of academic and research librarians, who have asserted careful and considered approaches to some very difficult situations that we all face every day.”

    January 27, 2012
    * CRS - International Trade: Rules of Origin

    International Trade: Rules of Origin. Vivian C. Jones, Specialist in International Trade and Finance; Michael F. Martin, Analyst in Asian Trade and Finance, January 5, 2012

  • "Determining the country of origin of a product is important for properly assessing tariffs, enforcing trade remedies (such as antidumping and countervailing duties) or quantitative restrictions (tariff quotas), and statistical purposes. Other commercial trade policies are also linked with origin determinations, such as country of origin labeling and government procurement regulations. Rules of origin (ROO) can be very simple, noncontroversial tools of international trade as long as all of the parts of a product are manufactured and assembled primarily in one country. However, when a finished product’s component parts originate in many countries—as is often the case in today’s global trading environment—determining origin can be a very complex, sometimes subjective, and time-consuming process. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is the agency responsible for determining country of origin using various ROO schemes. Non-preferential rules of origin are used to determine the origin of goods imported from countries with which the United States has most-favored-nation (MFN) status. Preferential rules are used to determine the eligibility of imported goods from certain U.S. free trade agreement (FTA) partners and certain developing country beneficiaries to receive duty-free or reduced tariff benefits under bilateral or regional FTAs and trade preference programs. Preferential rules of origin are generally specific to each FTA, or preference, meaning that they vary from agreement to agreement and preference to preference."
  • January 26, 2012
    * TRAC Report - DHS Referred Most Federal Criminal Prosecutions in October 2011

    TRAC: "The latest available data from the Justice Department show that during October 2011 the Department of Homeland Security's efforts to enforce immigration and customs laws accounted for 59% of all federal criminal prosecutions. The government reported 8,038 new prosecutions for these DHS matters as compared with a total of 13,628 from all sources. According to the case-by-case information analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), this number is up 9.3 percent over the previous month. These comparisons of the number of defendants charged are based on case-by-case information obtained by TRAC under the Freedom of Information Act from the Executive Office for United States Attorneys."

    * CRS - Proposed Keystone XL Pipeline: Legal Issues

    Proposed Keystone XL Pipeline: Legal Issues, January 23, 2012

  • "In 2008, TransCanada Corp. applied for a presidential permit from the State Department to construct and operate an oil pipeline across the U.S.-Canada border in a project known as Keystone XL. The Keystone XL pipeline would transport oil produced from oil sands in Alberta, Canada, to Gulf Coast refineries. The permit application was subjected to review by the State Department pursuant to executive branch authority over cross-border pipeline facilities as articulated in Executive Order 13337. After several phases of review, on November 10, 2011, the State Department announced that it would seek additional information about alternative pipeline routes before it could move forward with a national interest determination. In response, several pieces of legislation were introducedThis report reviews those legal issues. First, it suggests that legislation related to cross-border facility permitting is unlikely to raise significant constitutional questions, despite the fact that such permits have traditionally been handled by the executive branch alone pursuant to its constitutional “foreign affairs” authority. Next, it observes generally that state oversight of pipeline siting decisions does not appear to violate existing federal law or the Constitution. Finally, the report suggests that State Department’s implementation of the existing authority to issue presidential permits appears to allow for judicial review of its National Environmental Policy Act determinations."
  • January 25, 2012
    * West LegalEdcenter and NALP Foundation Release Study of Law Firm Professional Development

    News release: "The majority of law firms in the United States and Canada expect to increase their reliance on electronic forms of lawyer development in the next 24 months, although associates in those firms say they prefer mentoring and on-the-job training to hone their skills. Details regarding this important disconnect, along with other key findings about the landscape of professional development inside law firms, are available in a first-of-its-kind research report published by the NALP Foundation in partnership with West LegalEdcenter, a Thomson Reuters business. The report, “Leading Law Firm Professional Development: A Comprehensive Study of Professional Development Staffing, Resources and Program Delivery Modes,” examines the perspectives of more than 200 law firm administrators responsible for professional development functions and nearly 1,500 associates from firms ranging in size from less than 10 lawyers to more than 1,000 lawyers. The data for this study was collected in late 2010 and early 2011 from online questionnaires."

    * CRS - Presidential Signing Statements: Constitutional and Institutional Implications

    Presidential Signing Statements: Constitutional and Institutional Implications - Todd Garvey, Legislative Attorney. January 4, 2012

  • "Presidential signing statements are official pronouncements issued by the President contemporaneously to the signing of a bill into law that, in addition to commenting on the law generally, have been used to forward the President’s interpretation of the statutory language; to assert constitutional objections to the provisions contained therein; and, concordantly, to announce that the provisions of the law will be administered in a manner that comports with the administration’s conception of the President’s constitutional prerogatives. While the history of presidential issuance of signing statements dates to the early 19th century, the practice has become the source of significant controversy in the modern era as Presidents have increasingly employed the statements to assert constitutional and legal objections to congressional enactments. President Reagan initiated this practice in earnest, transforming the signing statement into a mechanism for the assertion of presidential authority and intent. President Reagan issued 250 signing statements, 86 of which (34%) contained provisions objecting to one or more of the statutory provisions signed into law. President George H. W. Bush continued this practice, issuing 228 signing statements, 107 of which (47%) raised objections. President Clinton’s conception of presidential power proved to be largely consonant with that of the preceding two administrations. In turn, President Clinton made aggressive use of the signing statement, issuing 381 statements, 70 of which (18%) raised constitutional or legal objections. President George W. Bush continued this practice, issuing 161 signing statements, 127 of which (79%) contain some type of challenge or objection. The significant rise in the proportion of constitutional objections made by President George W. Bush was compounded by the fact that his statements were typified by multiple objections, resulting in more than 1,000 challenges to distinct provisions of law. Although President Barack Obama has continued to use presidential signing statements, the Obama Administration has used the interpretive tools with less frequency than previous administrations—issuing 20 signing statements, of which 10 (50%) contain constitutional challenges to an enacted statutory provision."
  • * UK Report: Serious Economic Crime - A boardroom guide to prevention and compliance

    Serious Economic Crime - A boardroom guide to prevention and compliance, January 2012 [312 pages, UK government]

  • "It is significant that, for this first edition of Serious Economic Crime [Combating major fraud and corruption], published by White Page in association with the Serious Fraud Office, lawyers from the private sector – more usually known for defending clients against allegations of serious fraud – have been asked to contribute to, and indeed edit, the publication. Until relatively recently, the way in which defence lawyers and the SFO were likely to interact was as part of the traditional model of the investigation and prosecution of serious fraud. This would often involve, as far as the suspect was concerned, high-profile arrests and the simultaneous execution of several search warrants early in the morning, followed perhaps by a series of interviews under caution over many months, the eventual bringing of charges, heavily fought interlocutory hearings, battles over disclosure, and ultimately the often lengthy adversarial trial process. While it is certainly the case that all of these things still occur regularly, a large part of the discussion in this book is about a new, more consensual approach towards corporate crime on the part of the SFO, how that is operating in practice, and how it is likely to develop."
  • January 23, 2012
    * FTC, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Pledge to Work Together to Protect Consumers

    News release: "The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) have signed an agreement to coordinate efforts to protect consumers and avoid duplication of federal law enforcement and regulatory efforts. “The FTC has always been committed to protecting consumers and legitimate companies from bad actors in the financial marketplace,” said FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz. “Now we have another cop on the beat, and this agreement ensures that businesses will not be double-teamed by the two agencies.” “Entering this agreement with the FTC is important to making sure markets for consumer financial products are getting efficient and effective federal government oversight,” said Richard Cordray, Director of the CFPB. “We are both motivated by the same thing: To do right by consumers. We look forward to this partnership.” The two agencies signed a memorandum of understanding. It is available here."

    * EPIC: Supreme Court Upholds Fourth Amendment in GPS Tracking Case

    "Today the Supreme Court unanimously held in U.S. v. Jones that the warrantless use of a GPS tracking device by the police violated the Fourth Amendment. The Court said that a warrant is required "[w]here, as here, the government obtains information by physically intruding on a constitutionally protected area," like a car. Concurring opinions by Justices Sotomayor and Alito urged the court to focus on the reasonableness of the suspect's expectation of privacy because physical intrusion is unnecessary to surveillance in the digital age. EPIC, joined by 30 legal and technical experts,filed a "friend of the court" brief. EPIC warned that, "it is critical that police access to GPS tracking be subject to a warrant requirement." For more information, see EPIC: US v. Jones, and EPIC: Location Privacy"

  • See also WSJ: FBI Turns Off Thousands of GPS Devices After Supreme Court Ruling
  • January 21, 2012
    * Less Forgiven? Race and the Bankruptcy System

    Lawless, Robert M. and Cohen, Dov, Less Forgiven? Race and the Bankruptcy System (January 21, 2011). BROKE: HOW DEBT BANKRUPTS THE MIDDLE CLASS, Katherine Porter, ed., 2012. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1745138

  • "For a consumer considering bankruptcy, Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 are options with vastly different consequences. In Chapter 7, a consumer earns a quick discharge after turning over all nonexempt or unencumbered assets to the bankruptcy trustee. In over 90% of Chapter 7 cases, the debtor has no such assets, and the case is a quick administrative affair that allows the debtor to emerge with the proverbial “fresh start.” In contrast, Chapter 13 requires a debtor to devote all of his or her disposable income to repayment to creditors over a 3- or 5-year plan. A Chapter 13 debtor can earn a discharge only after completing the repayment plan, yet only approximately one-third of Chapter 13 debtors complete their plan. With a federal bankruptcy law, one would expect the ratio of Chapter 7 to Chapter 13 cases to be fairly uniform across the country. In fact, huge regional variation exists. In the upper Midwest, only one Chapter 13 is filed for about every ten Chapter 7 cases, while many Southern states about half of all bankruptcies are Chapter 13 cases. Previous scholarship has attributed these differences to local legal culture, concluding that historical norms and the preferences of bankruptcy professionals drive consumers’ chapter choices. This chapter identifies a different variable that is associated with chapter choice: the debtor’s race. African American debtors file Chapter 13 at over twice the rate of debtors of other races. The effect remains after controlling for geographic location, financial variables, home ownership, and other factors that seem likely to affect chapter choice. To earn forgiveness for their debts, African Americans are more likely to have to make some restitution under a Chapter 13 plan, while persons of other races are more likely to be given full forgiveness under a Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Their over-representation in Chapter 13 means that African Americans are more likely to have to wait years for a discharge of their debts and pay higher attorneys fees for relief. The data show association but cannot show causation. The data cannot tell us whether African Americans are being discriminated against by being guided into repayment plans when others are not, or whether African Americans are choosing Chapter 13 out of a moral obligation to repay."
  • January 19, 2012
    * 2012 US GAAP Financial Reporting Taxonomy Now Available

    "The 2012 Taxonomy contains updates for accounting standards and other improvements since the 2011 Taxonomy as used by issuers filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The Financial Accounting Standards Board issued proposed improvements to the taxonomy in the fall of 2011, allowing users of the taxonomy to provide feedback on the updates and the opportunity to become familiar with and to incorporate new element names for their filings. We encourage users to read the release notes and other provided guidance and supporting documents, which contain the details of these changes."

    January 18, 2012
    * House of Representatives House Launches Transparency Portal

    Sunlight Foundation: "Making good on part of the House of Representative's commitment to increase congressional transparency, today the House Clerk's office launched http://docs.house.gov/, a one stop website where the public can access all House bills, amendments, resolutions for floor consideration, and conference reports in XML, as well as information on floor proceedings and more. Information will ultimately be published online in real time and archived for perpetuity. The Clerk is hosting the site, and the information will primarily come from the leadership, the Committee on House Administration, the Rules Committee, and the Clerk's office. The project has been driven by House Republican leaders as part of an push for transparency. Important milestones include the adoption of the new House Rules in January 2011 that gave the Committee on House Administration the power to establish standards for publishing documents online, an April 2011 letter from the Speaker and Majority Leader to the Clerk calling for better public access to House information, a Committee on House Administration hearing in June 2011 on modernizing information delivery in the House, a December 2011 public meeting on public access to congressional information, and finally the late December adoption of online publication standards."

    January 17, 2012
    * LLRX: Forensic Bibliometrics: Information Quality Assurance in Scientific Literature

    Forensic Bibliometrics: Information Quality Assurance in Scientific Literature: Everyone is familiar with the "corrections" columns in newspapers and the errata pages in the backs of books. But those corrigenda are a far cry from identifying the problems created when authors deliberately offer for publication fraudulent results. Research misconduct and the publication of fraudulent results in scholarly publications and news media has become a growing concern in many disciplines. Ken Strutin has researched, annotated and compiled core documents that address the causes of misconduct, spotting faked data, and repairing the damage to the information stream.

    * Authentication of Primary Legal Materials and Pricing Options

    Authentication of Primary Legal Materials and Pricing Options, December 2011

  • "The recent passage of the Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act (UELMA) has brought to the forefront the issue of costs of authenticating primary legal materials in electronic format. This white paper briefly reviews five methods of electronic authentication. These methods are based on trustworthiness, file types, effort to implement, and volume of electronic documents to be authenticated. Six sample solutions are described and their relative costs are compared. The white paper also frames the legal landscape and background of authentication for primary legal materials in electronic format, and provides context and points to applicable resources. The aim of this collective effort is to promote the understanding of costs related to authentication and invite further discussion on the issue...It is not intended to offer legal advice. Please consult an attorney for assistance with specific concerns or advice."
  • January 16, 2012
    * Stanford Law Review: The Iraq War, the Next War, and the Future of the Fat Man

    The Iraq War, the Next War, and the Future of the Fat Man, by Stephen L. Carter, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law, Yale Law School. January 16, 2012 - 64 Stan. L. Rev. Online 46 - Essays

  • "Preemptive warfare is a form of self-defense that occurs when your adversary has the tanks massed on your border, ready to attack. Preventive warfare is aimed at keeping your adversary from gaining the means to attack you. Both the law and the ethics of self-defense have tended to frown on preventive warfare, not least because it has no logical stopping point. But America’s recent wars have all been, in one way or another, preventive—aimed less at foiling current plans than at stopping future ones."
  • January 13, 2012
    * EPIC - FOIA Documents Reveal Homeland Security is Monitoring Political Dissent

    "As the result of EPIC v. DHS, a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, EPIC has obtained nearly thee hundred pages of documents detailing a Department of Homeland Security's surveillance program. The documents include contracts and statements of work with General Dynamics for 24/7 media and social network monitoring and periodic reports to DHS. The documents reveal that the agency is tracking media stories that "reflect adversely" on DHS or the U.S. government. One tracking report -- "Residents Voice Opposition Over Possible Plan to Bring Guantanamo Detainees to Local Prison-Standish MI" -- summarizes dissent on blogs and social networking cites, quoting commenters. EPIC sent a request for these documents in April 2004 and filed suit against the agency in December. For more information, see EPIC: EPIC v. Department of Homeland Security: Media Monitoring."

    * EPIC: FTC Adds Google+ to Antitrust Investigation

    EPIC: "Bloomberg News has reported that the Federal Trade Commission has expanded its antitrust investigation of Google to include Google's social networking service, Google+. The report comes after Google announced that it would include personal data gathered from Google+ in the results of users' searches, a move that led EPIC to urge the FTC to investigate the company. EPIC said that "Google's business practices raise concerns related to both competition and the implementation of the Commission’s consent order," referring to a settlement that the FTC reached with Google that establishes new privacy safeguards for users of all Google products and services and subjects the company to regular privacy audits. Google first confirmed the FTC’s antitrust investigation in June 2011. Recently, the Senate held a hearing on Google's use of its dominance in the search market to suppress competition, and EPIC urged the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Google's use of Youtube search rankings to give preferential treatment to its own video content over non-Google content. For more information, see EPIC: Google/DoubleClick and EPIC: Federal Trade Commission."

    January 12, 2012
    * EPIC Urges Trade Commission to Investigate Google Search

    EPIC: In a letter to the Federal Trade Commission, EPIC has called for an investigation of recent changes by Google to Google Search, the dominant search algorithm on the Internet. EPIC cited Google's decision to include personal data, such as photos, posts, and contact details, gathered from Google+ in Google Search results. “Google’s business practices raise concerns related to both competition and the implementation of the Commission’s consent order,” EPIC said, referring to a settlement that the FTC reached with Google that establishes new privacy safeguards for users of Google products and services and subjects the company to regular privacy audits. Recently, the Senate held a hearing on Google’s use of its dominance in the search market to suppress competition, and EPIC urged the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Google’s acquisition of Youtube, which allowed Google to give preferential treatment to Google's own video content. For more information, see EPIC: Google/DoubleClick and EPIC: Federal Trade."

    * New GAO Reports - Federal Elections on a Weekend, Securities Research
    • Elections - Views on Implementing Federal Elections on a Weekend, GAO-12-69, January 12, 2012
    • Securities Research - Additional Actions Could Improve Regulatory Oversight of Analyst Conflicts of Interest, GAO-12-209, January 12, 2012
    * Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries Over the Decade Ending 2009 Dev

    Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries Over the Decade Ending 2009, Dev Kar and Sarah Freitas1, December 2011

  • "Last year’s report, analyzing flows through 2008, produced a figure for that year of $1.26 trillion. We anticipated that the figure for 2009 might be even larger. However, the global financial crisis and slowdown in world trade combined to reduce illicit flows for the last year of the decade to a range of US$775 billion to US$903 billion. These are still staggering drainages from the poorer countries of the world. The average across the three last years of the decade remains above US$1 trillion annually. We continue to regard these estimates as very conservative, since they do not include smuggling, the mispricing of cross-border services, or the mispricing of merchandise trade that occurs within the same invoice exchanged between exporters and importers. China continues to lead the world, with most of the illicit outflows occurring through trade mispricing. Following are a number of oil exporting countries, with illicit outflows evidenced primarily through balance of payments accounts."
  • Related postings on financial system
  • * Spotlight on Speech Codes 2012: The State of Free Speech on Our Nation's Campuses

    Spotlight on Speech Codes 2012: The State of Free Speech on Our Nation's Campuses, Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE)

  • "The U.S. Supreme Court has called America’s colleges and universities “vital centers for the Nation’s intellectual life,” but the reality today is that many of these institutions severely restrict free speech and open debate. Speech codes—policies prohibiting student and faculty speech that would, outside the bounds of campus, be protected by the First Amendment—have repeatedly been struck down by federal and state courts. Yet they persist, even in the very jurisdictions where they have been ruled unconstitutional; the majority of American colleges and universities have speech codes. FIRE surveyed 392 schools for this report and found that 65% maintain severely restrictive speech codes—policies that clearly and substantially prohibit protected speech. That this figure is so large is deeply troubling, but there is a small silver lining: It represents a decline in the percentage of schools maintaining such policies for the fourth year in a row."
  • * Fraud of the Day Website

    "The Fraud of the Day is a forum dedicated to educating government about how fraud is perpetrated and the solutions to stop it. When you visit the “Fraud of the Day,” you’ll find Larry Brnson's commentary; links to other news, events, and resources pertaining to government fraud; and video commentary from tax fraud expert, Andy Bucholz, and social services fraud expert, Ron Rigores."

    January 08, 2012
    * Maldives: Detailed Assessment Report on Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism

    Maldives: Detailed Assessment Report on Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism, January 2012 - IMF Country Report No. 12/1

  • "This report summarizes the anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing measures (AML/CFT) that were in place in the Republic of Maldives at the time of the on-site visit (October 17–28, 2010) and shortly thereafter. It describes and analyzes these measures and offers recommendations on how to strengthen certain aspects of the AML/CFT system. It also assesses the Maldives’ level of compliance with the 40+9 Recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF)."
  • Maldives: Report on Observance of Standards and Codes—FATF Recommendations for Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism, January 2012, IMF Country Report No. 12/2
  • January 05, 2012
    * FTC Action Bans Payment Processor from Using a Novel Payment Method to Debit Accounts

    News release: "A payment processor and two of its principals are now banned from using a new payment method to process electronic payments under a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, which resolves charges that they debited consumers' bank accounts without their consent. The settlement furthers the FTC's ongoing efforts to protect financially-strapped consumers during the economic downturn by scrutinizing not only merchants, but all parties who participate in defrauding consumers."

    January 03, 2012
    * LLRX - Competitive Intelligence - A Selective Resource Guide - Completely Updated

    Competitive Intelligence - A Selective Resource Guide - Completely Updated - December 2011: Sabrina I. Pacifici's comprehensive, current awareness guide focuses on leveraging a wide but selected range of reliable, focused, predominantly free websites and resources to effectively track, monitor, analyze, background and review current and historical data, news, reports, and profiles on companies, markets, countries, people, and issues, from a global perspective. Sabrina's guide is a "best of" web resource that encompasses search engines, databases, alerts, publisher specific services and tools, along with links to content targeted sources produced by leading media organizations, governments, academia, NGOs and independent researchers.

    * Updated edition of Locating the Law: A Handbook for Non-law Librarians

    "The Southern California Association of Law Libraries (SCALL) Public Access to Legal Information (PALI) Committee has just posted the updated edition of Locating the Law: A Handbook for Non-law Librarians. We've corrected links, added a few more sources, and moved the "Common Abbreviations in the Law" from the end of Chapter 2 to Appendix B. You can view individual chapters or the entire publication in one large PDF (274 pages)." [June Kim, Senior Reference Librarian, UCLA Law Library]

    January 01, 2012
    * UK Lord Chief Justice extends Live Text-Based Communication from Court

    Guidance on Live, Text-Based Communications from Court: "This Practice Guidance (the Guidance) applies to court proceedings which are open to the public and to those parts of the proceedings which are not subject to reporting restrictions. It is issued (as Guidance and not a Practice Direction) following a consultation relating to the use of live, text-based communications. Those consulted included the Judiciary, the Secretary of State for Justice, the Attorney General, the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Bar Council, the Law Society, the Press Complaints Commission, and the Society of Editors in addition to interested members of the public via the Judiciary website.
    2) The Guidance clarifies the use which may be made of live text-based communications, such as mobile email, social media (including Twitter) and internet enabled laptops in and from courts throughout England and Wales. For the purposes of this Guidance these means of communication are referred to, compendiously, as live, text-based communications."

    December 31, 2011
    * Chief Justice's Year-End Reports on the Federal Judiciary

    Chief Justice's Year-End Reports on the Federal Judiciary, 2011: "Some observers have recently questioned whether the Judicial Conference’s Code of Conduct for United States Judges should apply to the Supreme Court. I would like to use my annual report this year to address
    that issue, as well as some other related issues that have recently drawn public attention. The space constraints of the annual report prevent me from setting out a detailed dissertation on judicial ethics. And my judicial responsibilities preclude me from commenting on any ongoing debates about particular issues or the constitutionality of any enacted legislation or pending proposals. But I can provide some clarification on how the Justices address ethical issues and dispel some common misconceptions."

    * Treasury Committee on Foreign Investment in U.S - Annual Report to Congress

    Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, 2011 Annual Report to Congress, Report Period CY 2010, December 2011 - Issued December 2011

  • "The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) is an inter-agency committee authorized to review transactions that could result in control of a U.S. business by a foreign person (“covered transactions”), in order to determine the effect of such transactions on the national security of the United States. CFIUS operates pursuant to section 721 of the Defense Production Act of 1950, as amended by the Foreign Investment and National Security Act of 2007 (FINSA) (section 721) and as implemented by Executive Order 11858, as amended, and regulations at 31 C.F.R. Part 800."
  • December 28, 2011
    * New GAO Reports: Higher Education and Disability, Commercial Spectrum
    • Higher Education and Disability - Improved Federal Enforcement Needed to Better Protect Students' Rights to Testing Accommodations, GAO-12-40, November 29, 2011. "Federal enforcement of laws and regulations governing testing accommodations is largely complaint-driven and involves multiple agencies. While Justice has overall responsibility for enforcing compliance under the ADA, Education and HHS have enforcement responsibilities under the Rehabilitation Act for testing companies that receive federal financial assistance from them. Education and HHS officials said that they investigate each eligible complaint. Justice officials said they review each complaint at in-take, but they do not make a determination on every complaint because of the large volume of complaints it receives. Justice has clarified ADA requirements for testing accommodations primarily by revising its regulations, but it lacks a strategic approach to targeting enforcement."
    • Commercial Spectrum - Plans and Actions to Meet Future Needs, Including Continued Use of Auctions, GAO-12-118, November 23, 2011
    • Border Security - Additional Steps Needed to Ensure That Officers Are Fully Trained - GAO-12-269, December 22, 2011
    • Hardrock Mining - BLM Needs to Revise Its Systems for Assessing the Adequacy of Financial Assurances, GAO-12-189R, December 12, 2011
    December 27, 2011
    * iPhone Application Support for FedCtRecords (Federal Court Records)

    "This application allows public access to court electronic records for Federal District Courts across the United States. Users MUST be registered, have a valid PACER account, to use this application. New users may register here PACER. This application is 'CASE SEARCH' only, therefore documents CANNOT be filed using this applciation, users can only view documents and information that is currently filed. It is important to note that a PACER account is separate from any filing account. A PACER account is required for document access in all federal courts."

  • Via iPhoneJ.D. Review: FedCtRecords - access PACER from an iPhone
  • * UN: Children and Justice During and in the Aftermath of Armed Conflict September

    Children and Justice During and in the Aftermath of Armed Conflict, September 2011. Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict

  • "The purpose of this paper is to bring more conceptual clarity to the issue of children and justice in times of armed conflict by examining relevant legal provisions, academic discussions and a number of case studies. It attempts to articulate how children who have suffered grave violations during armed conflict can access justice and how the current system deals with child victims and witnesses. It also explores the issues surrounding responsibility of children who may have committed international crimes during conflict, the nature of their accountability and where they should be placed in the spectrum between total impunity and total responsibility."
  • December 26, 2011
    * CRS - U.S. Nuclear Cooperation with India: Issues for Congress

    U.S. Nuclear Cooperation with India: Issues for Congress, Paul K. Kerr, Analyst in Nonproliferation, December 15, 2011

  • "India, which has not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and does not have International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards on all of its nuclear material, exploded a “peaceful” nuclear device in 1974, convincing the world of the need for greater restrictions on nuclear trade. The United States created the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) as a direct response to India’s test, halted nuclear exports to India a few years later, and worked to convince other states to do the same. India tested nuclear weapons again in 1998. However, President Bush announced July 18, 2005, he would “work to achieve full civil nuclear energy cooperation with India” and would “also seek agreement from Congress to adjust U.S. laws and policies,” in the context of a broader partnership with India...The Obama Administration has continued with the Bush Administration’s policy regarding civil nuclear cooperation with India. According to a November 8, 2010, White House fact sheet, the United States “intends to support India’s full membership” in the NSG, as well as other multilateral export control regimes."
  • * Model Laws for a Safer America: Seven Regulations to Promote Responsible Gun Ownership and Sales

    "Model Laws for a Safer America is designed for use by activists and elected officials nationwide seeking to close dangerous loopholes in our federal regulatory system. This unique publication provides sample language for state and local laws to: 1) require background checks on all gun purchasers; 2) license firearm owners; 3) register all firearms; 4) regulate firearms dealers and ammunition sellers; 5) require the reporting of lost or stolen firearms; 6) impose a waiting period before the sale of a firearm; and 7) limit firearm purchases to one per person every 90 days. The publication also includes a discussion of common opposition arguments and legal issues. Model Laws for a Safer America is the latest publication from Legal Community Against Violence. Other LCAV [Legal Community Against Violence] publications include:

    * BJS: Homicide Trends in the United States, 1980-2008

    Homicide Trends in the United States, 1980-2008 - Annual Rates for 2009 and 2010. Alexia Cooper and Erica L. Smith, BJS Statisticians

  • "The nation’s homicide rate fell to 4.8 homicides per 100,000 U.S. residents in 2010, its lowest level in four decades, the Bureau of Justice Statistics announced today. Much of the decline was in the nation’s largest cities, those with a population of one million or more, where the homicide rate dropped dramatically from 35.5 homicides per 100,000 residents in 1991 to a low of 11.9 per 100,000 in 2008. The sharp increase in homicides from the mid-1980s through the early 1990s, and much of the subsequent decline, is attributable to gun violence by teens (age 14 to 17) and young adults (age 18 to 24). Despite the recent decline, the number of gun homicides committed by teens and young adults in 2008 remained similar to the counts of the mid-1980s. Most murders were intraracial. From 1980 through 2008, 84 percent of white homicide victims were murdered by whites and 93 percent of black victims were murdered by blacks...The number of homicides known to involve adult or juvenile gang violence has quadrupled since 1980, increasing from about 220 homicides in 1980 to 960 homicides in 2008. From 1980 to 2008, gang violence increased from one percent to six percent of all homicides. During this same period, gun involvement in gang-related homicides increased from 73 percent to 92 percent."
  • See also NYT: Easing Restrictions on Gun Permits - In the past 30 years, states across the country have made it easier for people to obtain permits to carry concealed guns. State laws vary but are primarily distinguished by whether the permit process is “shall issue,” in which the authorities must grant a license to anyone who meets certain basic legal requirements, or “may issue,” in which they are afforded discretion in their decisions."
  • * DOJ Reaches $335 Million Settlement to Resolve Allegations of Lending Discrimination by Countrywide

    News release, December 21, 2011: "The Department of Justice today filed its largest residential fair lending settlement in history to resolve allegations that Countrywide Financial Corporation and its subsidiaries engaged in a widespread pattern or practice of discrimination against qualified African-American and Hispanic borrowers in their mortgage lending from 2004 through 2008. The settlement provides $335 million in compensation for victims of Countrywide’s discrimination during a period when Countrywide originated millions of residential mortgage loans as one of the nation’s largest single-family mortgage lenders. The settlement, which is subject to court approval, was filed today in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in conjunction with the department’s complaint which alleges that Countrywide discriminated by charging more than 200,000 African-American and Hispanic borrowers higher fees and interest rates than non-Hispanic white borrowers in both its retail and wholesale lending. The complaint alleges that these borrowers were charged higher fees and interest rates because of their race or national origin, and not because of the borrowers’ creditworthiness or other objective criteria related to borrower risk."

    • WSJ: Countrywide Victims Sought - "The Justice Department faces the daunting task of tracking down more than 210,000 alleged victims and determining how to compensate them, following its landmark settlement with Bank of America's Countrywide unit."
    • Related postings on financial system

    December 25, 2011
    * What Can We Learn from Law School? Legal Education Reflects Issues Found in All of Higher Education

    What Can We Learn from Law School? Legal Education Reflects Issues Found in All of Higher Education, Julie Margetta Morgan, Center for American Progress, December 2011

  • "This report explores the field of legal education with the hope that putting a magnifying glass to this small part of higher education will help us better understand the problems that face all colleges. It details the steady rise in law school enrollment, despite high tuition rates and a heavy reliance on student loan debt. And it describes the unpleasant surprise that awaits law students upon graduation: Though a few lucky grads will make more than $130,000 per year, most new lawyers can expect annual salaries of around $63,000. With monthly loan payments near $1,000, graduates are finding that membership in the legal profession is not the golden ticket they thought it would be. These observations show that in legal education — as in the rest of higher education — forces such as rising tuition and limited availability of jobs are changing the value proposition of earning a degree. Schools, students, and policymakers, however, are slow to respond."
  • * EFF - the major trends influencing digital rights in 2011

    News release: "As the year draws to a close, EFF is looking back at the major trends influencing digital rights in 2011 and discussing where we are in the fight for a free expression, innovation, fair use, and privacy. The government has been using its secrecy system in absurd ways for decades, but 2011 was particularly egregious. Here are a few examples...

    December 21, 2011
    * Governmental Tracking of Cell Phones and Vehicles: The Confluence of Privacy, Technology, and Law

    CRS — Governmental Tracking of Cell Phones and Vehicles: The Confluence of Privacy, Technology, and Law. Richard M. Thompson, Law Clerk. December 1, 2011

  • "Technology has advanced considerably since the framers established the constitutional parameters for searches and seizures in the Fourth Amendment. What were ink quills and parchment are now cell phones and the Internet. It is undeniable that these advances in technology threaten to diminish privacy. Law enforcement’s use of cell phones and GPS devices to track an individual’s movements brings into sharp relief the challenge of reconciling technology, privacy, and law...This report will briefly survey Fourth Amendment law as it pertains to the government’s tracking programs. It will then summarize federal electronic surveillance statutes and the case law surrounding cell phone location tracking. Next, the report will describe the GPS-vehicle tracking cases and review the pending Supreme Court GPS tracking case, United States v. Jones. Finally, the report will summarize the geolocation and electronic surveillance legislation introduced in the 112th Congress."
  • December 15, 2011
    * New Report: Obama Administration Makes Transparency Gains; Challenges Remain

    News release: "Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and OpenTheGovernment.org released a joint report, Measuring Transparency Under the FOIA: The Real Story Behind the Numbers, analyzing the government’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) data for 2010 and how it compares to the previous administration’s data...The results paint a very mixed picture on the FOIA front, with agencies generally processing more requests more quickly, but also increasing their reliance on the FOIA’s nine exemptions to withhold more information from the public. Our analysis revealed an even more alarming truth: the government’s FOIA data is flawed, making it impossible to assess key areas of progress and casting doubt on its overall reliability. As a result, what started as a statistical report on agencies’ handling of FOIA requests ended as an expose of the problems with the data and tools the government has developed to measure its progress in implementing the FOIA."

    * Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids: The 1998 State Tobacco Settlement 13 Years Later

    Kaiser - Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, A Broken Promise to Our Children: The 1998 State Tobacco Settlement 13 Years Later - A Report on the States’ Allocation of the Tobacco Settlement Dollars

  • "Since the states settled their lawsuits against the tobacco companies in November 1998, our organizations have issued annual reports assessing whether the states are keeping their promise to use a significant portion of their settlement funds – expected to total $246 billion over the first 25 years – to attack the enormous public health problems posed by tobacco use in the United States. In addition to the billions of dollars they receive each year from the tobacco settlement, the states collect billions more in tobacco taxes. In the current budget year, Fiscal Year 2012, the states will collect a total of $25.6 billion in revenue from the tobacco settlement and tobacco taxes, near record levels...The states’ failure to use more of their tobacco money to fight the tobacco problem is especially troubling in light of recent national surveys indicating that smoking declines in the United States have slowed. The nation’s progress in the battle against tobacco use – the number one cause of preventable death – is at risk unless states increase funding for tobacco prevention and cessation programs. Given the deep cutbacks in state programs, it is more critical than ever that the federal government also fund and implement a robust, national tobacco prevention and cessation campaign."
  • December 14, 2011
    * Bureau of Justice Statistics - Prisoners in 2010

    News release: "The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) reported today in Prisoners in 2010 that the number of offenders under adult correctional supervision in the U.S. declined 1.3 percent in 2010, the second consecutive year of decline since BJS began reporting on this population in 1980. At yearend 2010, about 7.1 million people, or 1 in 33 adults, were under the supervision of adult correctional authorities in the U.S. In addition, the total U.S. prison population fell to 1.6 million at yearend 2010, a decline of 0.6 percent during the year, the first decline in the total prison population in nearly four decades. This decline was due to a decrease of 10,881 in the number of state prisoners, which fell to just under 1.4 million persons and was the largest yearly decrease since 1977. The federal prison population grew by 0.8 percent (1,653 prisoners) to reach 209,771, the smallest percentage increase since 1980. Most offenders under correctional supervision (about 7 in 10 persons or nearly 4.9 million people) were supervised in the community on probation or parole at yearend 2010. About 3 in 10 (or nearly 2.3 million people) were incarcerated in state or federal prisons or local jails. The decline in the total correctional population during 2010 was mainly due to a decrease in the number of probationers during the year (down 69,500 persons) and a decrease in the number of inmates incarcerated in local jails (down 18,700 persons)."

  • See also BJS, Correctional Population in the United States, 2010
  • * Record Number of Federal Criminal Health Care Fraud Prosecutions Filed in FY 2011

    Jeff Lamicela: "The latest available data from the Justice Department show that federal health care fraud prosecutions reached an historic high last year. During the twelve months of fiscal year 2011, the government reported 1,235 new health care fraud prosecutions - the largest number reported since separate tracking of this offense began twenty years ago. This number is up 68.9% over the past fiscal year when the number of criminal prosecutions totaled 731...The Southern District of Florida (Miami) led the nation in activity, accounting for nearly one out of every nine health care fraud prosecutions, followed by the Southern District of Texas (Houston). Together, these two districts accounted for over one out of every five health care fraud prosecutions."

    December 11, 2011
    * Paper: The Dodd-Frank Act and Housing Finance

    The Dodd-Frank Act and Housing Finance, Levitin, Adam J., Pavlov, Andrey D. and Wachter, Susan M., (November 17, 2011). Yale Journal on Regulation, Forthcoming; U of Penn, Inst for Law & Econ Research Paper No. 11-35.

  • "Private risk capital has virtually disappeared from the U.S. housing finance market since the market’s collapse in 2008. This Article argues that private risk capital is unlikely to return on any scale until the informational problems in housing finance are resolved so that investors can accurately gauge and price the risks they assume. The Dodd-Frank Act represents a first step in reforming the U.S. housing finance. It takes a multi-layered approach, regulating both loan origination and securitization. Dodd-Frank’s reforms, however, fail to adequately address the opacity of credit risk information in mortgage markets and thus are insufficient for the restoration of private risk capital. The Article argues that Dodd-Frank reforms like “skin-in-the-game” credit risk retention fail to solve the informational problems in the housing finance market, as they merely replace one informational opacity with another. Instead, the Article argues, it is necessary to institute structural changes in the housing finance market, particularly the standardization of mortgage securitization, that force the production of information necessary for accurate risk-pricing."
  • December 09, 2011
    * EPA Annual Enforcement Results Highlights Commitment to Address Largest Pollution Problems with Greatest Community Impact

    News release: "Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its annual enforcement and compliance results. EPA’s enforcement and compliance program enforces environmental laws that protect our nation’s air, land and water by taking action to cut illegal pollution and protect people’s health and communities. In fiscal year Fiscal Year 2011, EPA enforcement actions led to more than 1.8 billion pounds in pollution reduced, an estimated $19 billion in required pollution controls and approximately $168 million in civil penalties."

    December 07, 2011
    * BSEE Issues 2nd Set of Deepwater Horizon Violations

    News release: "The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) today issued a second set of regulatory violations arising from operations conducted in connection with the Macondo well. The violations were issued as Incidents of Non-Compliance (INC). A total of five INCs were issued by faxed letter to BP; four of the INCs were violations of one regulation in different sections of the well...The following is a listing of the federal regulations and INCs issued today to BP: One violation of 30 CFR 250.427 – BP failed to conduct an accurate pressure integrity test at the 13-5/8” liner shoe. Four violations of 30 CFR 250.427(b) – BP failed to suspend drilling operations at the Macondo well when the safe drilling margin identified in the approved application for permit to drill was not maintained...More information regarding the initial INCs issued to BP, Transocean and Halliburton can be found here."

    December 05, 2011
    * Congressional Lawmaking: A Perspective On Secrecy and Transparency

    CRS - Congressional Lawmaking: A Perspective On Secrecy and Transparency - Walter J. Oleszek, Senior Specialist in American National Government, November 30, 2011

  • "Openness is fundamental to representative government. Yet the congressional process is replete with activities and actions that are private and not observable by the public. How to distinguish reasonable legislative secrecy from impractical transparency is a topic that produces disagreement on Capitol Hill and elsewhere. Why? Because lawmaking is critical to the governance of the nation. Scores of people in the attentive public want to observe and learn about congressional proceedings. Yet secrecy is an ever-present part of much legislative policymaking; however, secrecy and transparency are not “either/or” constructs. They overlap constantly during the various policymaking stages. The objectives of this report are four-fold:
    • first, to outline briefly the historical and inherent tension between secrecy and transparency in the congressional process;
    • second, to review several common and recurring secrecy/transparency issues that emerged again with the 2011 formation of the Joint Select Deficit Reduction Committee;
    • third, to identify various lawmaking stages typically imbued with closed door activities; and
    • fourth, to close with several summary observations."
  • December 04, 2011
    * Changes to Federal Court Rules Take Effect

    "Amendments to the Federal Rules of Appellate, Bankruptcy, Criminal Procedure, and Evidence took effect December 1, 2011. Congress took no action after the changes were approved by Supreme Court more than seven months earlier. That means new amendments to these rules are now in effect:

    November 29, 2011
    * Facebook Settles FTC Charges That It Deceived Consumers By Failing To Keep Privacy Promises

    News release: "The social networking service Facebook has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it deceived consumers by telling them they could keep their information on Facebook private, and then repeatedly allowing it to be shared and made public. The proposed settlement requires Facebook to take several steps to make sure it lives up to its promises in the future, including giving consumers clear and prominent notice and obtaining consumers' express consent before their information is shared beyond the privacy settings they have established. The FTC's eight-count complaint against Facebook is part of the agency's ongoing effort to make sure companies live up to the privacy promises they make to American consumers. It charges that the claims that Facebook made were unfair and deceptive, and violated federal law."

    * What’s So Hard About Regulating Supreme Court Justices’ Ethics? — A Lot

    What’s So Hard About Regulating Supreme Court Justices’ Ethics? - A Lot, Russell Wheeler, Visiting Fellow, Governance Studies, The Brookings Institution

  • "The Supreme Court’s decision to hear a challenge to the health care law is renewing calls for recusal, described here and here and here. Some, mainly Democrats, charge that Justice Thomas (and his wife) have been too close to some of the law’s strongest critics. Others, mainly Republicans, charge that as solicitor general Justice Kagan may have had even a limited role as the administration crafted the law’s defense. There are no signs that either justice will sit out the case. These recusal demands are mostly tactics to try to influence who decides the case or delegitimize the decision, but they reflect a growing debate over whether the justices’ ethics need more regulation to avoid conflicts of interest, or their appearance. With Gallup reporting the Court’s approval rating at 46 percent, second lowest since 2000, it’s a debate worth having."
  • * FCC Dismissal Without Prejudice of AT&T's Applications for Transfer of Control of T-Mobile USA, Inc.

    "On March 21, 2011, AT&T Inc. ("AT&T") and Deutsche Telekom AG ("Deutsche Telekom") announced an agreement under which AT&T will acquire T-Mobile USA, Inc. ("T-Mobile USA") from Deutsche Telekom. On April 21, 2011, the parties filed applications seeking the Commission's consent to the transfer of control of the licenses and authorizations held by T-Mobile USA and its wholly-owned and controlled subsidiaries from Deutsche Telekom to AT&T (the "Applications"). Now that the Applications have been filed, this proceeding is governed by permit-but-disclose ex parte procedures that are applicable to non-restricted proceedings under section 1.1206 of the Commission's rules."

    November 28, 2011
    * Report - How Politics Trumps Protection of Public Health, Worker Safety, and the Environment

    Behind Closed Doors at the White House: How Politics Trumps Protection of Public Health, Worker Safety, and the Environment, by Center for Progressive Reform (CPR) Member Scholar Rena Steinzor, CPR Intern Michael Patoka, and CPR Policy Analyst James Goodwin

  • "In preparing the report, CPR researchers compiled a comprehensive database of OIRA’s [The White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs] meetings with outside groups over the past 10 years. That database is online and available for searching. For more information:
  • * Federal Judge Rejects SEC Settlement With Citi, Sets Trial Date

    NYT DealBook: "Jed S. Rakoff, a judge for the Federal District Court for the Southern District of Manhattan, has rejected the proposed $285 million settlement between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Citigroup related to the sale of mortgage securities. Here is the judge’s 15-page opinion, which concluded that the pact was “neither reasonable, nor fair, nor adequate, nor in the public interest.” Judge Rakoff has in the past expressed concern with the S.E.C.’s custom of not forcing a defendant to “neither admit nor deny the allegations” when settling a case. In his ruling Monday, the judge said he couldn’t approve a settlement that was based on “mere allegations.”

    November 26, 2011
    * 2011 Peer-to-Peer Violence and Bullying: Examining the Federal Response

    2011 Peer-to-Peer Violence and Bullying: Examining the Federal Response, September 2011, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

  • "This report focuses on the government‘s efforts to enforce federal civil rights laws with respect to peer-to-peer violence based on race, national origin, sex, disability, religion, and sexual orientation or gender identity. The Commission examined the nature and incidence of peer-to-peer violence in public K-12 schools and studied the types of peer-to-peer violence faced by students, as well as the effects of such violence. The Commission further reviewed the policies and procedures employed by the United States Departments of Education and Justice in enforcing prohibitions against peer-to-peer violence. The Commission, by majority vote, concluded that bullying and harassment, including bullying and harassment based on sex, race, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, or religion, are harmful to American youth, and developed findings and recommendations to address the problem.."
  • November 25, 2011
    * National Security Archives: The Iran-Contra Scandal - Documents from the Declassified History

    News release [Note; scroll down to locate links to the documents obtained via FOIA]: "President Ronald Reagan was briefed in advance about every weapons shipment in the Iran arms-for-hostages deals in 1985-86, and Vice President George H. W. Bush chaired a committee that recommended the mining of the harbors of Nicaragua in 1983, according to previously secret Independent Counsel assessments of "criminal liability" on the part of the two former leaders posted today by the National Security Archive. Twenty-Five years after the advent of the "Iran-Contra affair," the two comprehensive "Memoranda on Criminal Liability of Former President Reagan and of President Bush" provide a roadmap of historical, though not legal, culpability of the nation's two top elected officials during the scandal from the perspective of a senior attorney in the Office of Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh. The documents were obtained pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the National Security Archive for the files compiled during Walsh's six-year investigation from 1987-1993."

    November 24, 2011
    * EC - Anti-money laundering supervision of and reporting by payment institutions in various cross-border situations

    Commission Staff Working Paper - Anti-money laundering supervision of and reporting by payment institutions in various cross-border situations, October 7, 2011

  • "The purpose of this working document is to provide guidance to EU supervisors and private stakeholders as regards the interaction of the Payment Services Directive (2007/64/EC, hereafter "the PSD") and the Anti-Money Laundering Directive (2005/60/EC, hereafter "the AMLD") with respect to the supervision of payment institutions and their reporting obligations under the AMLD in various cross-border situations."
  • November 23, 2011
    * Report of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry

    Report of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry, presented in Manama, Bahrain, on 23 November 2011 [501 pages, PDF].."The Commission‘s mandate...is to report on the events in question on the basis of international human rights norms..occurring in Bahrain in February/March 2011, and any subsequent consequences arising out of the aforementioned events, and to make such recommendations as it may deem appropriate."

  • "...The Kingdom of Bahrain is an archipelago consisting of 33 islands, five of which are inhabited. The largest of these islands are Bahrain, Muharraq, Umm an Nasan and Sitra. Bahrain is one of the most densely populated countries in the world, with a total landmass of 760 square kilometres. The legal system of Bahrain is based on a hybrid of Islamic law; Egyptian civil, criminal and commercial codes; local traditional customs; and principles drawn from British common law. The court system of Bahrain includes Civil Courts, Islamic Courts and Military Courts.
  • New York Times: Torture Used on Protesters in Bahrain, Report Says
  • November 22, 2011
    * FindLaw Legal Pulse is launched - aggregates topical news and social media

    News release: "FindLaw.com is introducing FindLaw Legal Pulse, a new content area that offers continuously updated legal headlines from around the world, along with news, photo feeds and analysis from such sources as Reuters, the Associated Press, New York Times and Washington Post. The content covers a broad range of law-related topics -- everything from Supreme Court decisions to legislative updates, everyday legal issues and even sports and celebrity news. FindLaw Legal Pulse offers tangible user benefits -- the news is up-to-date, comes from a rich variety of sources, and is tailored to audiences with legal interests."

    November 19, 2011
    * The growing impact of full disk encryption on digital forensics

    The growing impact of full disk encryption on digital forensics - Eoghan Caseya, Geoff Fellowsb, Matthew Geigerc, Gerasimos Stellatosd

  • "The increasing use of full disk encryption (FDE) can significantly hamper digital investigations, potentially preventing access to all digital evidence in a case. The practice of shutting down an evidential computer is not an acceptable technique when dealing with FDE or even volume encryption because it may result in all data on the device being rendered inaccessible for forensic examination. To address this challenge, there is a pressing need for more effective on-scene capabilities to detect and preserve encryption prior to pulling the plug. In addition, to give digital investigators the best chance of obtaining decrypted data in the field, prosecutors need to prepare search warrants with FDE in mind. This paper describes how FDE has hampered past investigations, and how circumventing FDE has benefited certain cases. This paper goes on to provide guidance for gathering items at the crime scene that may be useful for accessing encrypted data, and for performing on-scene forensic acquisitions of live computer systems. These measures increase the chances of acquiring digital evidence in an unencrypted state or capturing an encryption key or passphrase. Some implications for drafting and executing search warrants to dealing with FDE are discussed."
  • November 16, 2011
    * EEOC Intake, Relief Obtained and Charges Resolved Hit Record Highs in 2011

    News release: "The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) finished fiscal year 2011 with a ten percent decrease in its pending charge inventory—the first such reduction since 2002, achieved the highest ever monetary amounts through administrative enforcement, and received a record number of charges of discrimination, the agency reported in its annual Performance and Accountability Report (PAR) filed today. The EEOC received a record 99,947 charges of discrimination in fiscal year 2011, which ended Sept. 30, the highest number of charges in the agency’s 46-year history. EEOC staff also delivered historic relief through administrative enforcement—more than $364.6 million in monetary benefits for victims of workplace discrimination. This is also the highest level obtained in the Commission’s history. The fiscal year ended with 78,136 pending charges—a decrease of 8,202 charges, or ten percent. In previous years, the pending inventory had increased as staffing declined 30 percent between fiscal years 2000 and 2008."

  • Performance and Accountability Report FY 2011
  • * Sunlight Foundation Update: Digitizing Legislative Documents

    A Year Later, Little Progress on Digitizing Legislative Documents, Daniel Schuman: "A year ago today, Congress' Joint Committee on Printing directed that three sets of vital legislative and legal documents be published online "as quickly as possible." We've reviewed how well that order was implemented, and the results are not encouraging. Of the three documents, there's only apparent progress on one. The vital documents are the Constitution Annotated, the Congressional Record, and the Statutes at Large. The Government Printing Office is responsible for publishing them, and shares that responsibility to a certain extent with the Library of Congress and its subsidiary agencies, the Congressional Research Service and the Law Library of Congress. These agencies are custodians of America's heritage, and have an important obligation to make it available to every citizen. Here's how they've performed..."

    November 15, 2011
    * TRAC: Criminal Prosecutions for Financial Institution Fraud Continue to Fall

    "Federal criminal prosecutions for financial institution fraud have continued their downward slide despite the financial troubles reported in this sector. TRAC's analysis of timely Justice Department data show that during the first eleven months of FY 2011 the government reported 1,251 new prosecutions were filed. If this activity continues at the same pace, the annual total of prosecutions will be 1,365 for this fiscal year, down 28.6 percent from their numbers of just five years ago and less than half the level prevalent a decade ago."

    * ABA Directory for Disability Rights

    ABA Directory for Disability Rights: "This first of its kind directory helps lawyers find information regarding disability rights and disability law from state and local associations across the U.S."


    November 14, 2011
    * Commentary - Scholars' Briefs and the Vocation of a Law Professor

    Scholars’ Briefs and the Vocation of a Law Professor, by Richard H. Fallon, Jr.

  • "At least within the loosely defined domain of public law, any law professor who does not get asked to sign a "scholars' briefs" is not much of a scholar. Scholars= briefs, in which collections of professors appear as amici curiae to support a party in litigation before a court, appear to grow more common each year. During the 2010 Term, in which the Supreme Court decided 85 cases, it received 56 briefs on behalf of groups of self-identified legal scholars or law professors, with at least one such brief being filed in 30 cases, or more than a third of the total..The subject of scholars’ briefs, and the standards that law professors ought to apply in determining whether to sign them, has received almost no attention in the literature. Yet the topic is an important one. Besides forming an increasingly significant component of many law professors’ professional lives, scholars’ briefs open a window onto broader questions about law professors’ professional roles. We are long past the day, if there ever was one, when most law professors thought their sole professional contributions should come through traditional scholarship and teaching. Modern law professors familiarly participate in law reform initiatives, take on paid and unpaid client representation, and write regularly for non-scholarly audiences. Indeed, many law schools now boast in their alumni magazines and on their websites whenever their faculty publish op-ed articles, appear on radio or television programs, or even post comments on blogs."

  • * Attorney General Guidelines for Victim and Witness Assistance, 2011

    Attorney General Guidelines for Victim and Witness Assistance, 2011: "This updated edition of the Attorney General Guidelines for Victim and Witness Assistance reflects current statutory provisions, recognizes the technological and legal changes that have taken place since the previous Guidelines were promulgated, and incorporates best practices that will benefit victims and enhance investigations and prosecutions."

    November 13, 2011
    November 12, 2011
    * Commentary - The WikiLeaks-Fueled Erosion of Civil Liberties Has Begun

    Atlantic Wire - Adam Clark Estes: "When a federal judge ruled that Twitter must reveal the private data of three WikiLeaks associates on Thursday, privacy advocates died a little inside. The two organizations that had defended the three users, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Frontier Foundations (EFF), immediately filed mournful blog posts that respectively raised doubts about the United States government's secretive handling of the case and highlighted grave message the ruling sends about the future of privacy on the internet. But Wall Street Journal reporter Jennifer Valentine-DeVries sums up the implications of the case best with a leading question: "Should the government be able to collect information related to your Internet use without a warrant?" We now know that the federal court's answer is, "Yes."

    November 10, 2011
    * President Richard Nixon's Watergate grand jury testimony released

    "The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has publicly released the transcripts of President Richard Nixon's Watergate grand jury testimony. In collaboration with the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO), the collection has been released on FDsys. This collection has been made public as a result of the July 29, 2011 order by Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia Royce C. Lamberth that the June 1975 transcript of Nixon's testimony and the "Associated Materials" to that testimony be released to the public following the review of these documents for any information that must be redacted as required by law. It is rare for any grand jury testimony to be made public." These documents are available on three websites as follows:

    * New GAO Reports: Dodd-Frank Act Regulations, IRS's Financial Audit, Medicaid
    • Dodd-Frank Act Regulations: Implementation Could Benefit from Additional Analyses and Coordination, GAO-12-151, Nov 10, 2011
    • Financial Audit: IRS's Fiscal Years 2011 and 2010 Financial Statements, GAO-12-165, Nov 10, 2011
    • Financial Audit: Office of Financial Stability (Troubled Asset Relief Program) Fiscal Years 2011 and 2010 Financial Statements, GAO-12-169, Nov 10, 2011
    • Medicaid: Prototype Formula Would Provide Automatic, Targeted Assistance to States during Economic Downturns, GAO-12-38, Nov 10, 2011
    November 06, 2011
    * New Paper: Why parents help their children lie to Facebook about age: Unintended consequences of the COPPA

    "The Berkman Center for Internet & Society is pleased to share a new paper published in First Monday, Why parents help their children lie to Facebook about age: Unintended consequences of the ‘Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act,’ authored by Berkman community members danah boyd, Eszter Hargittai, Jason Schultz, and John Palfrey.

  • Abstract from the authors: Facebook, like many communication services and social media sites, uses its Terms of Service (ToS) to forbid children under the age of 13 from creating an account. Such prohibitions are not uncommon in response to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which seeks to empower parents by requiring commercial Web site operators to obtain parental consent before collecting data from children under 13. Given economic costs, social concerns, and technical issues, most general–purpose sites opt to restrict underage access through their ToS. Yet in spite of such restrictions, research suggests that millions of underage users circumvent this rule and sign up for accounts on Facebook. Given strong evidence of parental concern about children’s online activity, this raises questions of whether or not parents understand ToS restrictions for children, how they view children’s practices of circumventing age restrictions, and how they feel about children’s access being regulated. In this paper, we provide survey data that show that many parents know that their underage children are on Facebook in violation of the site’s restrictions and that they are often complicit in helping their children join the site. Our data suggest that, by creating a context in which companies choose to restrict access to children, COPPA inadvertently undermines parents’ ability to make choices and protect their children’s data. Our data have significant implications for policy–makers, particularly in light of ongoing discussions surrounding COPPA and other age–based privacy laws."
  • * Report to Congress: Mandatory Minimum Penalties in the Federal Criminal Justice System

    Follow up to previous postings on sentencing guidelines, see the following

  • Report to Congress: Mandatory Minimum Penalties in the Federal Criminal Justice System, October 2011: "This report assesses the impact of mandatory minimum penalties on federal sentencing, particularly in light of the Supreme Court's decision in Booker v. United States, which rendered the federal sentencing guidelines advisory. The United States Sentencing Commission prepared this report pursuant to a congressional directive contained in section 4713 of the Matthew Shepherd and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, Pub L. No. 111–84, and the Commission's general authority under 28 U.S.C. §§ 994–995, as well as its specific authority under 28 U.S.C. § 995(a)(20) to "make recommendations to Congress concerning modification or enactment of statutes relating to sentencing, penal, and correctional matters that the Commission finds to be necessary and advisable to carry out an effective, humane, and rational sentencing policy."
  • * 'Thinking' in a Deweyan Perspective: The Law School Exam as a Case Study for Thinking in Lawyering

    'Thinking' in a Deweyan Perspective: The Law School Exam as a Case Study for Thinking in Lawyering, Donald J. Kochan, Chapman University School of Law, November 4, 2011, Nevada Law Journal, Forthcoming

  • "As creatures of thought, we are thinking all the time, but that does not necessarily mean that we are thinking well. Answering the law school exam, like solving any problem, requires that the student exercise thinking in an effective and productive manner. This Article provides some guidance in that pursuit. Using John Dewey’s suspended conclusion concept for effective thinking as an organizing theme, this Article presents one basic set of lessons for thinking through issues that arise regarding the approach to a law school exam. This means that the lessons contained here help exercise thought while taking the exam—to think through the exam approach. The second, more subtle, purpose is to demonstrate that the law school exam can serve as a case study in the effectiveness of certain thinking tools that have much broader application. For that reason, this Article is not your typical “how-to” guide, but instead provides guidance critically and generally applicable to the thinking enterprise itself."
  • * 2011 Federal Sentencing Guidelines Manual Now Online

    Follow up to previous postings on sentencing guidelines, the 2011 Guidelines Manual (effective November 1, 2011) is available in HTML and Adobe PDF formats (large file and broken into chapters), which can be viewed, downloaded or printed via the website. Individual Chapters 1-8 and Guidelines in HTML or PDF Format

    November 03, 2011
    * September 2011 Sees SSA Disability Backlog Climb Ever Higher

    Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse: "Despite the Social Security Administration's longstanding goal of reducing the number of pending disability cases, very recent SSA data show that these matters continue to head in the opposite direction, reaching 771,318 by the end of September. The increase -- up 9.3% from what it was a year ago -- marked the fifth straight quarter that the number of these cases has increased. These disturbing trends regarding SSA's faltering efforts, noted by TRAC in two previous reports, thus appear to be continuing. In testimony to Congress on July 11, Commissioner Michael J. Astrue reemphasized that "[e]liminating our hearings backlog and preventing its recurrence remains our number one priority." Since these new cases are only beginning to reach the decision stage, it is too early to determine their ultimate impact on decision times. But nationally, average processing times rose for the first time for cases disposed of during September. In addition, almost half (46 percent) of all hearing offices saw their average hearing times increase as compared with the previous month, and nearly one in four have had rising processing times for at least a year. More details on pending SSA disability cases and processing times nationally and for each region and hearing office can be found in the TRAC report and accompanying free user app are here."

    * SEC IG Allegations of Enforcement Staff Misconduct in InsiderTrading Investigation

    Report of Investigation, United States Securities and Exchange Commission, Office of Inspector General. Case No. OIG-511. Allegations of Enforcement Staff Misconduct in Insider Trading Investigation, August 22, 2011 [Redacted]

  • "On January 30, 2009, complainant Mark Cuban, through his counsel at the law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf, filed a complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC" or "Commission") Office of Inspector General ("OIG"), outlining various allegations of misconduct by the SEC Division of Enforcement ("Enforcement") staff. Mr. Cuban, a well-known entrepreneur and owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team, alleged Enforcement staff engaged in misconduct in the course of its investigation of Mr. Cuban for insider trading in connection with the sale of all of his Mamma.com stock before the company publicly announced a private investment in public equity ("PIPE") transaction in June 2004...In all, the OIG concluded that there was insufficient evidence to substantiate Mr. Cuban's claims that the SEC Enforcement staff engaged in misconduct in conducting their investigation into Mr. Cuban's sale of his Mamma.com stock shares. Specifically, the OIG investigation found that there was insufficient evidence to substantiate the claim that Enforcement improperly provided Mr. Cuban with a "Wells" notice before the
    investigation was substantially complete. The OIG investigation also did not find sufficient evidence to substantiate Mr. Cuban's claim that an earlier investigation into Mamma.com was closed as a quid pro quo for the investigation relating to Mr. Cuban."
  • * SIGTARP Quarterly Report to Congress October 27, 2011

    Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, Quarterly Report to Congress October 27, 2011

  • "This past quarter, SIGTARP brought transparency to some of the largest banks’ exit from TARP as they pressured Federal banking regulators to expedite their TARP exit because of concerns over executive compensation restrictions and a stigma associated with TARP participation. In stark contrast, approximately 400 smaller community banks remain in TARP and SIGTARP made recommendations that Treasury, in consultation with Federal banking regulators, develop a clear TARP exit path for community banks. SIGTARP also published an audit questioning $8.1 million in legal fees Treasury paid to law firms whose bills included block billing, either no or vague descriptions of work performed, unsupported expenses, and administrative charges not allowed under the contract. SIGTARP also made four new recommendations to improve servicer performance in TARP’s housing programs." See also:
  • November 02, 2011
    * New on LLRX.com - The Digital Death of Copyright's First Sale Doctrine

    via LLRX.com - The Digital Death of Copyright's First Sale Doctrine: An important copyright case won't be argued in the Supreme Court, which on October 3, 2011 declined to review Vernor v. Autodesk, a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision involving the applicability of copyright's first sale doctrine to transactions involving software and other digital information goods. Law professor Annmarie Bridy discusses the wide reaching impact of the first sale doctrine, without which there would be no free market for used books, CDs, or DVDs, because the copyright owner's right of distribution would reach beyond the first sale, all the way down the stream of commerce.

    * New York Law School Law Review's 2010-2011 Law Review Diversity Report

    "In 2011, the New York Law School Law Review launched its Law Review Diversity research project examining gender and minority diversity among law review membership and leadership at ABA law schools nationwide. This research builds upon the 2010 survey conducted by Ms. JD, an organization dedicated to the success of women in law school and the legal profession. In its 2010-2011 Law Review Diversity Report NYLS found, based on self-reported data collected from law reviews in two samples, that law reviews at schools having a high percentage of female full-time faculty and at law schools having a high percentage of minority full-time faculty on average had significantly greater gender diversity among their 2010-2011 student membership and leadership, as well as a higher rate of female EICs, than law reviews at schools ranked in the Top 50 by U.S. News & World Report, which were surveyed by Ms. JD in 2010. Ms. JD reported in 2010 that the representation of women in editor-in-chief positions at law reviews at schools ranked in the Top 50 by U.S. News was “disproportionately low” as compared to those law reviews’ female membership. In each of the three measures used in Ms. JD’s 2010 survey (i.e., rates of female law review membership and leadership, and gender of the EIC), law reviews in the two NYLS samples significantly outperformed those in the Top 50 sample."

    October 31, 2011
    * New on LLRX - FOIA Facts: DOJ FOIA Regulations

    LLRX.com - FOIA Facts: DOJ FOIA Regulations - Scott A. Hodes addresses the proposed new Department of Justice ("DOJ") FOIA regulations which call for DOJ components to "respond to the request as if the excluded records did not exist." This response should not differ in wording from any other response given by the component" when applying an exclusion to the FOIA. The purpose of this article is to clear up some of the confusion around FOIA exclusions and these proposed regulations. He is giving no opinion on whether or not the proposed regulations should be adopted.

    * Paper shares some information addressing questions of judges' personal use of social networks

    Judicial Ethics and Social Networking Sites: "Michael Crowell
    UNC School of Government, September 2011 (Revised)

  • "One of the significant developments in communication in the last few years is the astounding growth of social networking websites. Increasing numbers of people join Facebook or LinkedIn or Twitter or other on-line social networks as a means to notify others of news in their lives, to learn what their friends and relatives and acquaintances are doing, and to generally stay in touch with other people with whom they have something in common. Businesses, organizations and government agencies use social networks to communicate information about their products and services and get limited feedback. For individuals, and for some kinds of organizations, the appeal of such sites is the opportunity for ongoing back-and-forth communication among large groups of people. Typically a social network allows someone to post a profile and photographs, videos, music, etc., and invite others to become “friends” or “fans.” Some information may be shared with the whole world; other parts may be restricted to a select, small group. For some time now state bar regulatory agencies have been addressing the effect of electronic communication on traditional ethical rules for lawyers ― the extent to which law firm websites constitute advertising, whether e-mail inquiries establish an attorney/client relationship, and so on. Likewise, judges hearing cases have faced new legal issues involving electronic discovery and searches of computers. Judges are becoming familiar, too, with problems of jurors communicating with the outside world and conducting their own research via their Blackberries, smart phones and other devices. Compared to the information available on those other electronic communication issues, there is relatively little reference material for judges concerning their own social networking and the Code of Judicial Conduct. The purpose of this paper is to share some information addressing questions of judges’ personal use of social networks. I welcome any additional material anyone knows about."
  • October 30, 2011
    * Privacy and Security in the Implementation of Health Information Technology: U.S. and EU Compared

    Privacy and Security in the Implementation of Health Information Technology (Electronic Health Records): U.S. and EU Compared, B.U. J. SCI. & TECH. L., Vol. 17, Winter 2011.

  • "The importance of the adoption of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and the associated cost savings cannot be ignored as an element in the changing delivery of health care. However, the potential cost savings predicted in the use of EHR are accompanied by potential risks, either technical or legal, to privacy and security. The U.S. legal framework for healthcare privacy is a combination of constitutional, statutory, and regulatory law at the federal and state levels. In contrast, it is generally believed that EU protection of privacy, including personally identifiable medical information, is more comprehensive than that of U.S. privacy laws. Direct comparisons of U.S. and EU medical privacy laws can be made with reference to the five Fair Information Practices Principles (FIPs) adopted by the Federal Trade Commission and other international bodies. The analysis reveals that while the federal response to the privacy of health records in the U.S. seems to be a gain over conflicting state law, in contrast to EU law, U.S. patients currently have little choice in the electronic recording of sensitive medical information if they want to be treated, and minimal control over the sharing of that information. A combination of technical and legal improvements in EHRs could make the loss of privacy associated with EHRs de minimis. The EU has come closer to this position, encouraging the adoption of EHRs and confirming the application of privacy protections at the same time. It can be argued that the EU is proactive in its approach; whereas because of a different viewpoint toward an individual’s right to privacy, the U.S. system lacks a strong framework for healthcare privacy, which will affect the implementation of EHRs. If the U.S. is going to implement EHRs effectively, technical and policy aspects of privacy must be central to the discussion."
  • October 27, 2011
    * New on LLRX.com: Law Periodical Publishing Practices and Trends

    Law Periodical Publishing Practices and Trends - Law librarian, criminal defense attorney and prolific author Ken Strutin brings into focus how electronic access to scholarly information is impacting library collection policies as well as professional publication formats, and as a result, how a new legal research environment is developing. Ken's article provides a selected collection of resources about the law review publishing process, emerging trends in the information cycle, and practical guides for developing an article and getting it to press.

    October 26, 2011
    * EFF Sues for Answers About PATRIOT Act on Law's 10th Anniversary

    News release: "The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) sued the Department of Justice (DOJ) today for answers about "secret interpretations" of the USA PATRIOT Act, signed into law ten years ago today. Several senators have warned that the DOJ is using Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act to support what government attorneys call a "sensitive collection program" that may be targeting large numbers of Americans. Section 215 allows for secret court orders to obtain "tangible things" when the FBI certifies they are relevant to a government investigation. The list of possible "tangible things" the government can obtain is seemingly limitless, and could include everything from driver's license records to Internet browsing patterns. Section 215 also limits the court's discretion to deny the order and prevents the recipient of an order from disclosing its existence."

    * Google's Transparency Reporting - government entities requests for removal of content

    Google Transparency Report - Government Requests: "Like other technology and communications companies, Google regularly receives requests from government agencies and courts around the world to remove content from our services and hand over user data. Our Government Requests tool discloses the number of requests we receive from each government in six-month reporting periods with certain limitations. Governments ask companies to remove content for many different reasons. For example, some content removals are requested due to allegations of defamation, while others are due to allegations that the content violates local laws prohibiting hate speech or pornography. Laws surrounding these issues vary by country, and the requests reflect the legal context of a given jurisdiction. We hope this tool will be helpful in discussions about the appropriate scope and authority of government requests. These observations on content removal requests highlight some trends that we've seen in the data during each reporting period, and are by no means exhaustive."

    October 24, 2011
    * TRAC: Decline in Federal Prosecutions from ATF-Led Investigations

    Jeff Lamicela/TRAC: "During the first ten months of FY 2011, federal prosecutions credited to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) have fallen almost 7 percent from the previous fiscal year. This continues a downward slide that began six years ago, according to TRAC's analysis of timely Justice Department data. So far this fiscal year, the number of ATF-led investigations that resulted in prosecution have totaled 7,282. If the same pace continues for the remaining two months, criminal filings should reach 8,738. This is 18 percent fewer than the peak in FY 2005 of 10,715 ATF prosecutions during the Bush Administration.For the complete report go here. In addition to the ATF, TRAC continues to offer free reports on the enforcement activities of selected government agencies such as DHS, the FBI and the IRS. In addition, TRAC's reports cover program categories such as immigration, drugs, weapons, white collar crime, terrorism and civil rights. For the latest information on prosecutions and convictions through the first ten months of fiscal year 2011, go here.

    * FTC Gives Final Approval to Settlement with Google over Buzz Rollout

    News release: "Following a public comment period, the Federal Trade Commission has accepted as final a settlement with Google, and authorized the staff to provide responses to the commenters of record. The settlement resolves charges that Google used deceptive tactics and violated its own privacy promises to consumers when it launched its social network, Google Buzz, in 2010. The agency alleged that the practices violate the FTC Act. The settlement bars the company from future privacy misrepresentations, requires it to implement a comprehensive privacy program, and calls for regular, independent privacy audits for the next 20 years. The Commission vote approving the final settlement was 4-0.

  • In the Matter of Google Inc., a corporation, FTC File No. 102 3136
  • * World Bank Report - How the Corrupt Use Legal Structures to Hide Stolen Assets and What to Do About It

    The Puppet Masters -How the Corrupt Use Legal Structures to Hide Stolen Assets and What to Do About It. Emile van der Does de Willebois, Emily M. Halter, Robert A. Harrison, Ji Won Park. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank

  • "Corruption is estimated to be at least a $40 billion dollar a year business. Every day, funds destined for schools, healthcare, and infrastructure in the world’s most fragile economies are siphoned off and stashed away in the world’s financial centers and tax havens. Corruption, like a disease, is eating away at the foundation of people’s faith in government. It undermines the stability and security of nations. So it is a development challenge in more ways than one: it directly affects development assistance, but it also undermines the preconditions for growth and equity. We need mobilization at the highest level so that corruption is tackled effectively. This report deals with the corporate and financial structures that form the building blocks of hidden money trails. In particular, it focuses on the ease with which corrupt actors hide their interests behind a corporate veil and the difficulties investigators face in trying to lift that veil. It serves as a powerful reminder that recovering the proceeds of corruption is a collective responsibility that involves both the public and private sector. Law enforcement and prosecution cannot go after stolen assets, confiscate and then return them if they are hidden behind the corporate veil. All financial centers and developed countries have committed, through the UN Convention against Corruption and international anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism standards, to improving the transparency of legal entities and other arrangements. This StAR report provides evidence of how far we still have to go to make these commitments a reality. Narrowing the gap between stated commitments and practice on the ground has a direct impact on actual recovery of assets."
  • October 23, 2011
    * The Costs of Reproduction: History and the Legal Construction of Sex Equality

    The Costs of Reproduction: History and the Legal Construction of Sex Equality, Deborah Dinner, Washington University in Saint Louis - School of Law. Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review (CR-CL), Vol. 46, 2011

  • "Today, legal and political actors argue that sex equality does not require society to share the costs of pregnancy, childbirth, and childrearing with individual women and private families. Courts interpret the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 (“PDA”), amending Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, to prohibit only market-irrational discriminatory animus. Political pundits oppose paid parental-leave legislation as a mandate that unfairly subsidizes private reproductive choice by shifting its costs onto the larger public. This Article uses novel historical research to deconstruct the boundaries between cost sharing and sex equality. I recover the redistributive dimensions of the vision for sex equality that legal feminists articulated from the 1960s through the 1980s. Legal feminists’ challenge to the family-wage system entailed efforts to redistribute the costs of reproduction between women and men within the home and between the family and society. The history of feminist mobilization, anti-feminist counter-mobilization, and norm evolution in law and policy, illustrates the overlap in the normative purpose and cost effects of antidiscrimination and cost-sharing mandates. To realize women’s right to social and economic independence, feminists pursued classic antidiscrimination mandates, the accommodation of pregnancy in the workplace, and affirmative social-welfare entitlements related to caregiving. All of these reforms, moreover, shifted the costs of reproduction from individual women to the larger society. The history related in this Article holds significant implications for contemporary legal and political debates. The history suggests that courts adopt an artificially narrow perspective when they interpret the PDA to fall short of requiring structural change in the workplace. It also suggests that Congress might build upon an evolving commitment to cost sharing as a critical component of sex equality by augmenting the entitlements created by the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (“FMLA”)."
  • October 21, 2011
    * TRAC: New Tools For Tracking ICE Prosecutorial Discretion

    Jeff Lamicela: "TRAC has launched a bundle of new report series, with accompanying data tools and regular updates, which allow the public to monitor Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) exercise of prosecutorial discretion in the Immigration Courts, as spelled out in Director John Morton's June 17, 2011 memorandum. TRAC's new tools allow tracking by charge, nationality, and location (state, court or specific hearing location). The most recent data, current through July 2011, show that there has not as yet been any meaningful upturn in cases where the person charged has been allowed to remain in this country. Indeed, during the three most recent quarters, the proportion of individuals allowed to remain in the country is now below 30 per cent, down from levels in 2010. However, Immigration Courts varied widely in the proportion of cases in which deportation orders were granted -- from a low of 28.8 percent in the New York City Immigration Court, up to 98.8 percent in the Lumpkin, Georgia Immigration Court. Among nationalities, cases resulting in deportation orders ranged from highs of 86.8 percent for individuals from Mexico and 84.4 percent for those from Honduras, down to 13.1 for individuals from Eritrea and 20.7 percent for those from Ethiopia.

    • TRAC's latest report can be viewed here
    • For the accompanying data tools which allow tracking by charge, nationality, and specific location, go to: Deportation Proceedings, Deportation Outcomes
    • TRAC is also releasing today an updated report on Immigration Court processing times which continue to increase, and are now 30 percent longer than average dispositions times during FY 2009. Accompanying data apps have been expanded to allow tracking disposition times both by type of outcome, and by original charge: by Type of Outcome and by Charge."
    October 18, 2011
    * Report - The Delay Game: How the Chemical Industry Ducks Regulation of the Most Toxic Substances

    News release: "By exploiting loopholes in the law, the chemical industry for decades has systematically subverted Environmental Protection Agency efforts to protect public health, a study by the Natural Resources Defense Council found. As a result, the industry has made enormous profits while delaying restrictions on unsafe chemicals, largely by ginning up scientific uncertainties, according to the NRDC study, released today. "These industry tactics have prolonged the exposure of millions of people to toxic chemicals such as TCE, formaldehyde and styrene, which can cause serious harm," said Jennifer Sass, senior scientist with NRDC's Health Program. Trichloroethylene, or TCE, is a solvent used for metal degreasing; formaldehyde is a cancer-causing agent used to manufacture plywood, particle boards and glues; and styrene is a toxic substance found in plastics, latex paint, synthetic rubbers and polyesters....The NRDC report, The Delay Game: How the Chemical Industry Ducks Regulation of the Most Toxic Substances, is a case-study of how the chemical industry has stymied government action that would protect the public from exposure to TCE, formaldehyde and styrene. The study highlights the need to update the 35-year old Toxic Substances Control Act, so that the EPA can test, assess and regulate chemicals in a timely manner in order to protect public health. Because the law has never been updated, the public has been exposed to thousands of chemicals in consumer products that have never been tested for safety by EPA."

    * CFPB releases the CFPB Supervision and Examination Manual

    Peggy Twohig and Steve Antonakes: "...the CFPB released the CFPB Supervision and Examination Manual, the guide for our examiners to use in overseeing companies that provide consumer financial products and services. Federal government regulators usually have manuals for their examiners. Our manual provides our examiners with direction on how to determine if providers of consumer financial products and services are complying with consumer protection laws – and how to determine if the providers have adequate policies and procedures in place to comply with those laws. For example, it incorporates examination procedures long used by other federal regulators to check for compliance with laws like the Truth in Lending Act. The manual also helps ensure that we are applying the law consistently across everyone that we supervise."

    * EFF Posts Cell Phone Guide for Protestors

    "Protesters of all political persuasions are increasingly documenting their protests -- and encounters with the police -- using electronic devices like cameras and cell phones. The following tips apply to protesters in the United States who are concerned about protecting their electronic devices when questioned, detained, or arrested by police. These are general guidelines; individuals with specific concerns should talk to an attorney."

    October 16, 2011
    * US and EU Antitrust Agencies Issue Revised Best Practices for Coordinating Merger Reviews

    News release: "The Federal Trade Commission, Department of Justice, and the European Commission today issued an updated set of “best practices” that they use to coordinate their merger reviews. The agencies also celebrated the 20th anniversary of the United States-European Union bilateral antitrust agreement...The agencies reaffirmed their commitment to cooperation and coordination in order to benefit consumers and business."

    October 13, 2011
    * Conflict-Specialists-As-Leaders: Revisiting the Role of the Conflict Specialist from a Leadership Perspective

    Kuttner, Ran, Conflict-Specialists-As-Leaders: Revisiting the Role of the Conflict Specialist from a Leadership Perspective (September 9, 2011). Conflict Resolution Quarterly, 2011.

  • "The aim of this article is to explore the cross fertilization between the emerging fields of ADR and Leadership. The first section will explore similarities in themes and characteristics of both disciplines that are influenced by the zeitgeist. The second section will argue that the parallels between the disciplines challenge and call for further exploration of the conflict specialist’s role. The third section will offer a reading into skills emphasized in leadership scholarship not commonly stressed in ADR trainings, examining how conflict specialists can ameliorate their practice by incorporating a leadership mindset and additional relevant skills into their work."
  • October 12, 2011
    * United States Courts Opinions - BETA via FDsys

    United States Courts Opinions - BETA

  • United States Courts Opinions (USCOURTS) collection is a pilot project between the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) and the Administrative Office of the United States Courts (AOUSC) to provide public access to opinions from selected United States appellate, district, and bankruptcy courts. The content of this collection dates back to April 2004, though searchable electronic holdings for some courts may be incomplete for this earlier time period. Once an opinion is located, all associated opinions within the same case can be accessed from the opinion About United States Courts Opinions. + Appellate + District + Bankruptcy
  • October 11, 2011
    * Federal Reserve Board seeks comment on proposal to implement "Volcker Rule" requirements of the Dodd-Frank Act

    News release: "The Federal Reserve Board on Tuesday requested public comment on a proposed regulation implementing the so-called "Volcker Rule" requirements of section 619 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Section 619 generally contains two prohibitions. First, it prohibits insured depository institutions, bank holding companies, and their subsidiaries or affiliates (banking entities) from engaging in short-term proprietary trading of any security, derivative, and certain other financial instruments for a banking entity's own account, subject to certain exemptions. Second, it prohibits owning, sponsoring, or having certain relationships with, a hedge fund or private equity fund, subject to certain exemptions. The act also prohibits banking entities from engaging in an exempted transaction or activity if it would involve or result in a material conflict of interest between the banking entity and its clients, customers, or counterparties, or that would result in a material exposure to high-risk assets or trading strategies, in each case as defined by the rule. The act similarly prohibits banking entities from engaging in an exempted transaction or activity if it would pose a threat to the safety and soundness of the banking entity or to the financial stability of the United States. The proposal, which was developed jointly with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, clarifies the scope of the act's prohibitions and, consistent with statutory authority, provides certain exemptions to these prohibitions. It is anticipated these agencies will issue a comparable proposal today or in the near future."

    October 10, 2011
    * The Private and Social Costs of Patent Trolls

    The Private and Social Costs of Patent Trolls, Bessen, James E., Meurer, Michael J. and Ford, Jennifer Laurissa, (September 19, 2011). Boston Univ. School of Law, Law and Economics Research Paper No. 11-45.

  • "In the past, non-practicing entities (NPEs) - firms that license patents without producing goods - have facilitated technology markets and increased rents for small inventors. Is this also true for today’s NPEs? Or are they “patent trolls” who opportunistically litigate over software patents with unpredictable boundaries? Using stock market event studies around patent lawsuit filings, we find that NPE lawsuits are associated with half a trillion dollars of lost wealth to defendants from 1990 through 2010, mostly from technology companies. Moreover, very little of this loss represents a transfer to small inventors. Instead, it implies reduced innovation incentives."
  • October 09, 2011
    * UN Report:Treatment of Conflict Related Detainees in Afghan Custody

    Treatment of Conflict Related Detainees in Afghan Custody - United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan [UNAMA], UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. October 2011 Kabul, Afghanistan

  • UNAMA press release: Mistreatment of Conflict-Related Security Detainees in National Directorate of Security and Afghan National Police Facilities: "UNAMA today released a report that documents the torture and mistreatment of detainees in a number of detention facilities of the National Directorate of Security (NDS) and Afghan National Police (ANP) across the country. UNAMA is committed to assisting the Afghan Government and people attain the highest standards of human rights and its detention observation programme is a crucial aspect of this work. UNAMA’s report, the result of extensive interviews from October 2010 to August 2011 of 379 detainees at 47 facilities in 22 provinces, and of thorough analysis that concluded in September 2011, found the use of interrogation techniques that constitute torture under international law and crimes under Afghan law, as well as other forms of mistreatment. The report includes recommendations to the National Directorate of Security, the Ministry of Interior (MoI), the Government of Afghanistan, Afghan judicial institutions and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)."
  • * A Citizen's Guide to Reporting on #OccupyWallStreet

    Citizen Media Law Project - A Citizen's Guide to Reporting on #OccupyWallStreet: "We at the Citizen Media Law Project have taken great interest in the ongoing "Occupy Wall Street" protest in New York. Much of what we know about the protest has come from independent reporters and citizen journalists covering the story from the ground. Knowing this, we are alarmed to hear reports of police arresting reporters during the protest. This, of course, could greatly discourage press coverage of this story. In order to encourage citizen reporting from the ground in New York, and to dispel the uncertainties as to the rights of those covering the protest, we have created this special question-and-answer guide regarding covering the protest in New York as a special addendum to our CMLP Legal Guide. For more general information, you can also refer to our guide's section on New York law. Note: This guide specifically addresses the law as it pertains to New York City and the protests currently occurring in Zuccotti Park. The information provided below will not apply with respect to the other #occupy protests throughout the country. While we tried our best to present the law as it generally applies in New York, specific facts and circumstances often alter outcomes in specific cases. Also, this post provides the law as it exists in October of 2011. We do not intend to update this post as the law changes, so if you find yourself returning to this at a later time please note that the law may have changed."

  • New York Times editorial, Protesters Against Wall Street, October 8, 2011: "...income inequality is grinding down that middle class, increasing the ranks of the poor, and threatening to create a permanent underclass of able, willing but jobless people. On one level, the protesters, most of them young, are giving voice to a generation of lost opportunity. The jobless rate for college graduates under age 25 has averaged 9.6 percent over the past year; for young high school graduates, the average is 21.6 percent. Those figures do not reflect graduates who are working but in low-paying jobs that do not even require diplomas. Such poor prospects in the early years of a career portend a lifetime of diminished prospects and lower earnings — the very definition of downward mobility."
  • Related postings on financial system
  • October 07, 2011
    * The Song of the Sirens: Google Book's Project and Copyright in a Digital Age

    The Song of the Sirens: Google Book's Project and Copyright in a Digital Age, Clarice Castro and Ruy De Queiroz, September 1, 2011

  • "Numerous scholars have highlighted the extraordinary book-scanning project created by Google in 2004. The project aims to create a digital full text search index which would provide people with online access to books and assist research. A few months after the original idea started being implemented, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers-AAP filed a class-action lawsuit, claiming that Google Book’s Project violated copyright law in the United States. The main contention was that the books which were not under public domain could not have been scanned without permission and compensation for authors and publishers. Google’s Book Project radically changed its character from the time of its birth until the negotiation of an Amended Settlement Agreement - ASA with the plaintiffs. It has raised serious controversies not only regarding different aspects of the future of the Internet but also over the issue of privatization of knowledge. Those in favour of the initiative highlight the astonishing accomplishment of Google, allowing us to access books more easily than ever before in human history. However, their claim is as dangerous as the song of the sirens. While at first sight Google tells a tale of extraordinary inclusion, it excludes those who cannot pay to access snippets or limited view of around 80% of the books available. We will also discuss the Amended Settlement Agreement of Google with the Author’s Guild and its failure on March, 2011. Finally, we will explore the concept of “fair use,” or “exceptions and limitation on copyright,” which provides for full access to books to any individual, library or archive as long as they are used for educational or scientific purposes."
  • October 05, 2011
    * Reducing Overclassification Through Accountability

    Reducing Overclassification Through Accountability Publications, by Elizabeth Goitein and David M. Shapiro, October 5,2011

  • "The authority to classify documents exists to protect information that could threaten national security if it got into the wrong hands. It is one of the most important tools our government has to keep us safe. But many secrets “protected” by the classification system pose no danger to the nation’s safety. On the contrary, needless classification—“overclassification”—jeopardizes national security. Excessive secrecy prevents federal agencies from sharing information internally, with other agencies, and with state and local law enforcement, making it more difficult to draw connections and anticipate threats. The 9/11 Commission found that the failure to share information contributed to intelligence gaps in the months before the September 11, 2001, attacks, cautioning that “[c]urrent security requirements nurture overclassification and excessive compartmentation of information among agencies. Overclassification also corrodes democratic government. Secret programs stifled public debate on the decisions that shaped our response to the September 11 attacks. Should the military and CIA have used torture to extract information from detainees in secret overseas prisons and at Guantánamo Bay? Should the National Security Agency have eavesdropped on Americans’ telephone calls without warrants? Even leaving aside the legality of these measures, whether to use torture or to forego the use of warrants are questions that, in a democracy, properly belong in the public sphere. Classification forced the nation to rely on leaked information to debate these questions, and to do so well after torture and warrantless surveillance programs were in place...When a member of the public asks an agency to review particular records for declassification (through a process called “mandatory declassification review”), 92 percent of the time the agency determines that at least some of the requested records need not remain classified. But the number of documents reviewed through this process pales in comparison to the universe of documents that, though they may not require classification, remain unreviewed—and thus classified—for many years..A major theme of this report—and a source of frustration to those who have studied the classification system—is the persistent gap between written regulation and actual practice."
  • * Cell Phone and Texting Laws

    Governors Highway Safety Administration, Cell Phone Laws and Texting, October 2011 - "This chart outlines all state cell phone and text messaging laws. Some local jurisdictions may have additional regulations. Enforcement type is shown in parenthesis.

    • Handheld Cell Phones: 9 states, D.C. and the Virgin Islands prohibit all drivers from using handheld cell phones while driving. Except for Maryland, all laws are primary enforcement—an officer may cite a driver for using a handheld cell phone without any other traffic offense taking place.
    • All Cell Phone Use: No state bans all cell phone use (handheld and hands-free) for all drivers, but many prohibit all cell phone use by certain drivers - Novice Drivers: 30 states and D.C. ban all cell phone use by novice drivers. School Bus Drivers: Bus drivers in 19 states and D.C. may not use a cell phone when passengers are present.
    • Text Messaging: 34 states, D.C. and Guam ban text messaging for all drivers. 31 states, D.C., and Guam have primary enforcement; the others, secondary. Novice Drivers: An additional 7 states prohibit text messaging by novice drivers. School Bus Drivers: 3 states restrict school bus drivers from texting while driving.
    • Some states such as Maine, N.H. and Utah treat cell phone use and texting as part of a larger distracted driving issue. In Utah, cellphone use is an offense only if a driver is also committing some other moving violation (other than speeding)."

    October 03, 2011
    * FTC publication, A Business Guide to the FTC's Mail or Telephone Order Merchandise Rule

    News release: "As part of the Federal Trade Commission’s systematic review of all of the agency’s rules and guides, the FTC is seeking public comment on proposed amendments to the Mail or Telephone Order Merchandise Rule. The Rule, issued in 1975, requires that marketers who solicit buyers to order merchandise through mail or telephone must have a reasonable basis to expect that they can ship ordered merchandise within the time frame they advertise, or, if no time frame is specified, within 30 days. The Rule also requires that, when a seller cannot ship within the promised time, the seller must obtain the buyer’s consent to a delay in shipping or refund payment for the unshipped merchandise. In 2007, the FTC sought public comment on how the Rule could be amended to address changes in technology and commercial practices. Based on a review of comments received, the FTC has concluded that the Rule continues to benefit consumers and will be retained."

  • "An FTC publication, A Business Guide to the FTC's Mail or Telephone Order Merchandise Rule, offers information about the Rule and how to comply. The Commission also published a notice announcing some technical amendments to alphabetize the definitions and move them to the beginning of the Rule."
  • * Audit Report - FHFA's Oversight of Fannie Mae's Default-Related Legal Services

    FHFA’s Oversight of Fannie Mae’s Default-Related Legal Services. Audit Report AUD-2011-004, Dated: September 30, 2011

  • "FHFA recognized the importance of its oversight of the Enterprises' default-related legal services and gradually accumulated information on the attorney network programs of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. However, FHFA did not schedule comprehensive examination coverage of foreclosure issues, including allegations of abuse by RAN law firms until after news stories about alleged abuses surfaced in August 2010. FHFA had not previously considered risks associated with foreclosure processing to be significant. Instead, FHFA focused its examination resources on assessing high risk areas such as the Enterprises’ management of credit risk.
  • Related postings on financial services
  • October 02, 2011
    * ACLU Cell Phone Location Tracking Public Records Request

    News release: "In a massive coordinated information-seeking campaign, 35 ACLU affiliates are filing over 381 requests in 32 states across the country with local law enforcement agencies large and small that seek to uncover when, why and how they are using cell phone location data to track Americans. The requests seek information from local law enforcement agencies, including:

    • whether law enforcement agents demonstrate probable cause and obtain a warrant to access cell phone location data;
    • statistics on how frequently law enforcement agencies obtain cell phone location data;
    • how much money law enforcement agencies spend tracking cell phones and
    • other policies and procedures used for acquiring location data.

    * (Re)Forming the Jury: Detection and Disinfection of Implicit Juror Bias

    Roberts, Anna, (Re)Forming the Jury: Detection and Disinfection of Implicit Juror Bias (September 29, 2011). Connecticut Law Review, Vol. 44, 2012.

  • "This Article investigates whether one of the most intractable problems in trial procedure can be ameliorated through the use of one of the most striking discoveries in social science. The intractable problem is selecting a fair jury. Current doctrine fails to address the fact that jurors harbor not only explicit, or conscious bias, but also implicit, or unconscious, bias. The discovery is the Implicit Association Test (“IAT”), an online test that aims to reveal implicit bias. This Article conducts the first comparison of proposals that the IAT be used to address jury bias. They fall into two groups. The first group would use the IAT to “screen” potential jurors for implicit bias; the second group would use the IAT to educate jurors about implicit bias. These proposals merit deeper consideration. Implicit bias is pervasive, and affects crucial juror functions: evaluation of evidence, recall of facts, and judgments of guilt. Juries are generally told nothing about implicit bias. The judiciary has expressed concern about implicit juror bias, and sought help from the academy in addressing the problem. I provide what the proposals lack: critique and context. I show that using the IAT to screen jurors is misguided. The educational project has merit, however, since implicit bias can be countered through knowledge of its existence and motivation to address it. To refine the project, I identify two vital issues that distinguish the proposals: when jurors should learn about implicit bias, and how they should learn."
  • October 01, 2011
    * Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence: Third Edition

    "The Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, Third Edition assists judges in managing cases involving complex scientific and technical evidence by describing the basic tenets of key scientific fields from which legal evidence is typically derived and by providing examples of cases in which that evidence has been used. First published in 1994 by the Federal Judicial Center, the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence has been relied upon in the legal and academic communities and is often cited by various courts and others. Judges faced with disputes over the admissibility of scientific and technical evidence refer to the manual to help them better understand and evaluate the relevance, reliability and usefulness of the evidence being proffered. The manual is not intended to tell judges what is good science and what is not. Instead, it serves to help judges identify issues on which experts are likely to differ and to guide the inquiry of the court in seeking an informed resolution of the conflict. The core of the manual consists of a series of chapters (reference guides) on various scientific topics, each authored by an expert in that field. The topics have been chosen by an oversight committee because of their complexity and frequency in litigation. Each chapter is intended to provide a general overview of the topic in lay terms, identifying issues that will be useful to judges and others in the legal profession. They are written for a non-technical audience and are not intended as exhaustive presentations of the topic. Rather, the chapters seek to provide judges with the basic information in an area of science, to allow them to have an informed conversation with the experts and attorneys."

    September 29, 2011
    * Slaughter, 19 Colleagues, Call for Investigation into Justice Thomas’s Non-Disclosure

    News release: "Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, Ranking Member of the House Rules Committee, together with 19 Members of Congress, today sent a letter to the Judicial Conference, requesting that the Conference follow the law and refer the matter of Justice Clarence Thomas's non-compliance with the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 to the Department of Justice. Throughout his entire tenure on the Supreme Court, Justice Thomas has checked a box titled "none" on his annual financial disclosure forms, indicating that his wife had received no income, despite the fact that his wife had in fact earned nearly $700,000 from the Heritage Foundation from 2003-2007 alone."

    * NY Dept of Environmental Conservation: Issues Draft Regulations for High-Volume Hydraulic Fracturing

    News release: "The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation today issued its draft regulations for high-volume hydraulic fracturing which are based on the proposed requirements contained in the agency's revised draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement released earlier this month, DEC Commissioner Joe Martens announced today...The draft regulations create a legal framework for implementing the proposed mitigation measures in the revised dSGEIS. The public comment period on the draft regulations begins today and runs concurrently with the public comment period on the dSGEIS, which ends Dec. 12. DEC also released the proposed State Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (SPDES) General Permit (GP) for Stormwater Discharges associated with high-volume hydraulic fracturing."

    * FTC Settlement Bans Alleged Spammer from Sending Unsolicited Text Messages

    News release: An operator who allegedly sent millions of illegal spam text messages to consumers is banned from sending any unsolicited text messages, under a settlement agreement with the Federal Trade Commission entered by a federal court. According to the FTC complaint filed in February 2011, the marketer sent a “mind-boggling” number of unsolicited commercial text messages pitching mortgage modification services to consumers, and misrepresented that he was affiliated with a government agency. The FTC alleged that many consumers had to pay fees to their mobile carriers to receive the unsolicited text messages. The FTC also alleged that the marketer advertised his text message blasting services by sending consumers illegal spam. The agency charged him with violating the FTC Act and the CAN-SPAM Act."

    September 28, 2011
    * ACLU: How Long Is Your Cell Phone Company Hanging On To Your Data?

    News release: "What do you think about when choosing a cell phone provider? Their prices? Their coverage area? Whether they have spiffy, high-tech phones? Whether their phones work overseas or in the subway? What about how long they retain information about you and under what circumstances they turn it over to law enforcement? All of the nation's major mobile carriers are retaining their customers' location data for at least a year, according to a chart the Department of Justice (DOJ) developed in 2010 — and that the ACLU of North Carolina received in response to our public records request about local law enforcement's use of cell phone location information. And location info's not all they hang onto. We gave a copy of this document to Wired.com, which has written about it here."

    September 27, 2011
    * CDT: Neutrality Rules Slated to Take Effect this Fall

    News release: "Last week, the FCC published its final Open Internet rules in the Federal Register, which means they will formally go into effect later this fall. The publication caps off a two-year process at the Commission to get the rules in place. While the rules won’t change much in terms of day-to-day use of the Internet, it is good news for consumers and innovators that they will at long last be enforceable. The rules essentially preserve the status quo online. They prevent cable, DSL, and fiber carriers from favoring or disfavoring certain sites or applications over others and prevent mobile carriers from blocking websites or competing voice and video applications – leaving consumers to decide which services they might prefer. The only significant change will be that now, if carriers engage in discriminatory routing or network management practices, those whose traffic is affected will have a place to go to demand recourse. The rules themselves reflect a light-touch and flexible approach to preserving the competitive environment that currently exists on the Internet. The rules do not, as some critics declare, amount to “regulating the Internet,” and there is ample evidence that in the absence of rules carriers might discriminate (as a few have done already) against some lawful traffic."

    September 26, 2011
    * The FLARE Index to Treaties Extended

    The FLARE Index to Treaties Extended - The FLARE Index to Treaties (FIT), launched in March 2009 on the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies web server has been extended to cover about a third more treaties and conventions. In the past two years the Index has established itself as a valuable finding tool for the international lawyer. It is a fully searchable database now indexing and listing over 2,000 of the most significant multilateral treaties concluded from 1353 onwards and a number of significant bilateral treaties signed between 1353 and 1815. This article, by Steven Whittle and Peter Clinch describes the background to the extension and technical aspects of the updated implementation employed to deliver new content and finding features.

    * World Bank: Women, Business and the Law 2012

    Women, Business and the Law 2102 - Removing barriers to economic inclusion.

  • "UN Women informs us that “women perform 66 percent of the world’s work, produce 50 percent of the food, but earn 10 percent of the income and own 1 percent of the property.” To shed light on why this grim statistic still holds true, Women, Business and the Law aims to examine legal differentiations on the basis of gender in 141 of the world’s economies. In order for men and women throughout the developing world to have access to an earned income and own property, effort in a broad range of areas, from security and infrastructure to education and health is required. In recent years, we have seen an increasing number of governments devote efforts to the formulation of sounder business regulations. The World Bank’s Doing Business publication, which tracks reforms in business regulations critical for small- and medium-size domestic firms, highlights the efforts being made in countries as varied as Peru and Kazakhstan, Vietnam and Cape Verde, Hungary and China. And we see increasing evidence of the impact of these reforms on the formal registration of firms, access to finance and job creation. But how can we ensure that, as governments go about improving business regulation, women entrepreneurs and workers benefit alongside men? To answer this question, we must examine those regulations and institutions which differentiate between women and men in ways that affect their incentives or capacity to work, earn an income, own and manage property or set up and run a business."
  • September 25, 2011
    * Criminal Prohibitions on the Publication of Classified Defense Information

    CRS - Criminal Prohibitions on the Publication of Classified Defense Information, Jennifer K. Elsea, Legislative Attorney. September 8, 2011

  • "The online publication of classified defense documents and diplomatic cables by the organization WikiLeaks and subsequent reporting by The New York Times and other news media have focused attention on whether such publication violates U.S. criminal law. The suspected source of the material, Army Private Bradley Manning, has been charged with a number of offenses under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), including aiding the enemy, while a grand jury in Virginia is deciding whether to indict any civilians in connection with the disclosure. A number of other cases involving charges under the Espionage Act demonstrate the Obama Administration’s relatively hard-line policy with respect to the prosecution of persons suspected of leaking classified information to the media. This report identifies some criminal statutes that may apply, but notes that these have been used almost exclusively to prosecute individuals with access to classified information (and a corresponding obligation to protect it) who make it available to foreign agents, or to foreign agents who obtain classified information unlawfully while present in the United States."

  • September 24, 2011
    * ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20 Recommends Amending Lawyer Ethics Rules Relating to Globalization of Law Practice

    News release: "The American Bar Association Commission on Ethics 20/20, in its release of initial proposals for comment, is recommending amendments to the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct and other association policies to take into account the proliferation of new technologies, including cross-border practice issues, lawyer mobility and differences in lawyer rules across jurisdictions."

    September 23, 2011
    * Report - Evaluating the Use of Public Surveillance Cameras for Crime Control and Prevention

    Evaluating the Use of Public Surveillance Cameras for Crime Control and Prevention - A Summary. Nancy G. La Vigne, Samantha S. Lowry, Joshua Markman, Allison Dwyer. September 19, 2011

  • "A growing number of cities are using surveillance cameras to reduce crime, but little research exists to determine whether they’re worth the cost. With jurisdictions across the country tightening their belts, public safety resources are scarce—and policymakers need to know which potential investments are likely to bear fruit. This research brief summarizes the Urban Institute’s series documenting three cities use of public surveillance cameras and how they impacted crime in their neighborhoods."
  • September 22, 2011
    * Symantec Survey Finds Emails Are No Longer the Most Commonly Specified Documents in eDiscovery Requests

    News release: "Symantec Corp. announced the findings of its 2011 Information Retention and eDiscovery Survey which examined how enterprises manage their ever-growing volumes of electronically stored information and prepare for the eventuality of an eDiscovery request. The survey of legal and IT personnel at 2,000 enterprises worldwide found email is not the primary source of records companies must produce, and more importantly, respondents who employ best practices for records and information management are significantly less at risk of court sanctions or fines."

    * One Hundred Billion Problem in Small Claims Court: Robo-Signing and Lack of Proof in Debt Buyer Cases

    The One Hundred Billion Dollar Problem in Small Claims Court: Robo-Signing and Lack of Proof in Debt Buyer Cases, Peter A. Holland, University of Maryland School of Law

  • "Recent years have seen the rise of a new industry which has clogged the dockets of small claims courts throughout the country. It is known as the "debt buyer" industry. Members of this $100 billion per year industry exist for no reason other than to purchase consumer debt which others have already deemed uncollectable, and then try to succeed in collecting where others have failed. Debt buyers pay pennies on the dollar for this charged off debt, and then seek to collect, through hundreds of thousands of lawsuits, the full face value of the debt. The emergence and vitality of this industry presents several legal, ethical and economic issues which merit exploration, study and scholarly debate. This article focuses on the problem of robo-signing and the lack of proof in debt buyer cases. Although this problem has received limited attention from the media and from regulators, there is a paucity of legal scholarship about debt buyers in general, and this problem in particular. This article demonstrates that robo-signing and fraud are rampant in this industry, and that the debt buyers who pursue these claims often lack proof necessary to show that they own the debt, and often lack proof even that a debt was ever owed in the first place. The fact that this lack of proof has led to consumers being sued twice on the same debt demonstrates the due process concerns which are implicated when courts enter judgments against consumers based on robo-signing and insufficient proof. This article calls on courts to hold plaintiffs in debt buyer cases to the same standards required of other litigants. Courts must require a demonstration of personal knowledge of the matter at issue before any affidavit is accepted, before any person testifies, and before any documents are admitted into evidence."
  • * Patent Reform Unleashing Innovation, Promoting Economic Growth & Producing High-Paying Jobs

    House Committee on the Judiciary: Background on H.R. 1249, the America Invents Act: "On June 23 the House overwhelmingly approved HR 1249, the America Invents Act, by a vote of 304-117. H.R. 1249 updates our patent system to encourage innovation, job creation, and economic growth. The last major patent re­form was nearly 60 years ago. Since then, U.S. innovators have developed cell phones and launched the Internet. And yet the laws protecting the technologies of today are stuck in the past. The current system is bogged down by frivolous lawsuits and uncertainty regarding patent owner­ship. America’s innovators spend years and millions of dollars defending their claims to patent owner­ship. Meanwhile, our competitors are busy developing new products that expand their businesses and grow their economies. This year, for the first time, China is expected to become the world’s number one patent publisher, surpassing the U.S. and Japan in the total and basic number of patents. Our outdated patent system has become a barrier to innovation. We cannot expect America’s innovators and job creators to keep pace with the global marketplace with the patent system of the past. We need a system that ensures patent certainty, approves good patents quickly and weeds out bad patents effectively."

  • Patent Reform Unleashing Innovation, Promoting Economic Growth & Producing High-Paying Jobs, A White Paper from the U.S. Department of Commerce, April 13, 2010: "Stimulating economic growth and creating high-paying jobs are key priorities for the Obama Administration. This paper provides data demonstrating that technological innovation is a key driver of a pro-growth, job-creating agenda. It further demonstrates that patent reform legislation, by accelerating the pace of growth and of job creation, will be a powerful and deficit-neutral mechanism for expanding America’s ability to innovate."
  • September 20, 2011
    * 2011 edition of the U.S. Employment Law for Global Employers

    Via Baker & McKenzie’s North American Compensation and Employment Law
    Practice Group - 2011 edition of the U.S. Employment Law for Global Employers. "Companies operating in the United States today face an increasingly complex and ever-evolving maze of federal, state, and local labor and employment laws. This can be particularly daunting for companies new to the United States who are trying to familiarize themselves with these laws. As such, the goal of this guide is to provide an overview of U.S. labor and employment laws to global employers operating in the United States."

    * 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' is Repealed

    News release: "The official end today of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law reflects the American values that military members uphold, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said today [in a briefing]. “Thanks to this change, I believe we move closer to achieving the goal at the foundation of the values that America's all about -- equality, equal opportunity and dignity for all Americans,” he told reporters during a Pentagon news briefing. Panetta reaffirmed his dedication to all who are serving and ensuring everyone who wishes to serve has the opportunity to do so regardless of sexual preference. “As secretary of defense, I am committed to removing all of the barriers that would prevent Americans from serving their country and from rising to the highest level of responsibility that their talents and capabilities warrant,” he said. “These are men and women who put their lives on the line in the defense of this country, and that's what should matter the most.” Panetta credited several groups for helping prepare the Defense Department for the implementation of the repeal. “I want to thank the repeal implementation team and the service secretaries, along with the service chiefs, for all of their efforts to ensure that DOD is ready to make this change, consistent with standards of military readiness, with military effectiveness, with unit cohesion, and with the recruiting and retention of the armed forces,” he said."

  • Special Report: Don't Ask, Don't Tell is Repealed
  • * Illegal Internet Streaming of Copyrighted Content: Legislation in the 112th Congress

    CRS - Illegal Internet Streaming of Copyrighted Content: Legislation in the 112th Congress, Brian T. Yeh, Legislative Attorney, August 29, 2011

  • "Technological developments related to the Internet benefit consumers who want convenient ways to view and hear information and entertainment content on a variety of electronic devices (such as televisions, radios, computers, mobile phones, video game consoles, and portable media players). New technologies offer the potential to help copyright holders promote their creative works for artistic, educational, and commercial reasons. However, new technologies may increase the risk of infringement of the copyright holders’ rights because they often provide faster, cheaper, and easier means of engaging in unauthorized reproduction, distribution, and public performance of copyrighted works than previous technologies. The widespread consumer use of high-speed Internet connections as well as increased reliance on data storage offered by “cloud computing” services may also contribute to infringement problems. One of these new technologies enables the “streaming” of copyrighted content over the Internet
    from a website to an end user. There are many legitimate streaming websites such as Hulu, Netflix, YouTube, and HBO GO that offer on-demand streams of television programs, motion pictures, live sporting events, and sound recordings. However, streaming technology can also be misused for facilitating copyright infringement online."
  • September 19, 2011
    * Future of the First Amendment 2011 Survey of High School Students and Teachers

    Future of the First Amendment 2011 Survey of High School Students and Teachers, Commissioned by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation - September 2011

  • "There is a clear, positive relationship between student use of social media – such as Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr – to get news and information and greater support for free expression rights. Though this study establishes the link between social media use and First Amendment support, its cause is open to debate. Does consuming news frequently on social media increase one’s appreciation for the First Amendment? Or is it the reverse: The more someone agrees with the First Amendment, the more likely they are to use social media for their news and information? Either way, there is a relationship between the two factors. As the graph below shows, fully 91 percent of students who use social networking daily to get news and information agree that “people should be allowed to express unpopular opinions.” But only 77 percent of those who never use social networks to get news agree that unpopular opinions should be allowed."
  • September 18, 2011
    * FTC Seeks Comment on Proposed Revisions to Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule

    News release: "The Federal Trade Commission is seeking public comment on proposed amendments to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule, which gives parents control over what personal information websites may collect from children under 13. The FTC proposes these amendments to ensure that the Rule continues to protect children’s privacy, as mandated by Congress, as online technologies evolve. The Commission proposes modifications to the Rule in five areas: definitions, including the definitions of “personal information” and “collection,” parental notice, parental consent mechanisms, confidentiality and security of children’s personal information, and the role of self-regulatory “safe harbor” programs."

    September 17, 2011
    * HathiTrust Statement on Authors Guild, Inc. et al. v. HathiTrust et al.

    Press release: "On September 12, 2011 the Authors' Guild and a number of other entities filed suit against HathiTrust and a number of its university partners. The issues in the suit are the orphan works project as well as the digitization effort that we have been engaged in for almost two decades. Digitization is a reflection of library prudence, rather than the reckless activity as characterized by the Authors' Guild complaint and accompanying statement. From its inception, the primary motive driving our digitization effort has been, and remains, preservation. Preserving the scholarly and cultural record is at the core of the Library's mission. Digitization offers a means of preserving the intellectual content of books whose lives as objects are subject to the vagaries of storage conditions and their own composition; for example, the vast majority of the volumes in our collection are printed on acid paper. Many of these volumes are protected by copyright, but if we wait until they enter the public domain they will be too brittle to circulate or digitize, and of no use to anyone. The Orphan Works Project is an example of library prudence in other ways. Digitized collections offer other obvious benefits. They can be more readily shared with our community, who increasingly expect their research materials to be available in digital form, and they can also provide a trove of data, both humanistic and scientific, that will help scholars and researchers discover and create new knowledge. And in many cases, they can also be made available to anyone in the world with a connection to the Internet. The way in which the HathiTrust partners share this particular collection is guided by a deep and abiding respect for intellectual property and US copyright law, particularly Sections 107 and 108, which help define how libraries may lawfully share their collections. While the law does not specifically address orphan works, we are certain that our scholarly purpose, along with our careful methodology in determining whether these works have a market or an extant copyright holder who can be contacted, make this sharing legal. Sharing, by the way, which is limited to online reading by our faculty and students in the United States, and one-page-at-a-time downloads; not, as the Guild complaint states, worldwide availability and full PDF downloads."

    September 16, 2011
    * An Examination of Parole Release for Prisoners Serving Life Sentences with the Possibility of Parole in California

    Life in Limbo - An Examination of Parole Release for Prisoners Serving Life Sentences with the Possibility of Parole in California, Robert Weisberg, Debbie A. Mukamal and Jordan D. Segall. September 2011. Stanford Criminal Justice Center

  • "In recent years, California’s prison system has been under federal judicial control because of severe overcrowding,
    which partly results from the recycling of revoked inmates under parole supervision. The federal litigation has cast a
    sharp focus on the mandatory parole system created by the 1976 Determinate Sentencing Law and viewed as the legal mechanism by which this recycling has developed. But far too little attention has been given to the prison population serving life sentences with the possibility of parole under older indeterminate sentencing principles, a population that as of 2010 represents a fifth of California state prisoners. More than 32,000 inmates comprise the “lifer” category, i.e., inmates who are eligible to be considered for release from prison after screening by the parole board to determine when and under what condition. (This group of prisoners is distinct from the much smaller population of 4,000 individuals serving life sentences without the possibility of parole (LWOP)). The goal of this project is to examine in empirical detail (a) the lifer population, covering key details of its demographics, and (b) the processes by which lifers are considered for release, including an examination of historical trends in grant and denial rates, the recidivism record of released inmates, and legal and policy analysis of the specific mechanisms of the parolee hearing process. Despite the importance of the lifer population in terms of its size and the major legal and policy changes that have occurred to the parole process for lifers in the last several years, little research has yet been
    devoted to this topic."
  • * Judicial Conference of the United States Approves Pacer Rate Increase

    News release: "The Conference also authorized an increase in the Judiciary's electronic public access fee in response to increasing costs for maintaining and enhancing the electronic public access system. The increase in the electronic public access (EPA) fee, from $.08 to $.10 per page, is needed to continue to support and improve the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system, and to develop and implement the next generation of the Judiciary's Case Management/Electronic Case Filing system. The EPA fee has not been increased since 2005. As mandated by Congress, the EPA program is funded entirely through user fees set by the Conference. Implementation of the two-cent per page increase will take a minimum of six months."

    September 15, 2011
    * Worldwide Web Consortium Launches Tracking Protection Working Group

    "The Tracking Protection Working Group is chartered to improve user privacy and user control by defining mechanisms for expressing user preferences around Web tracking and for blocking or allowing Web tracking elements. The group seeks to standardize the technology and meaning of Do Not Track, and of Tracking Selection Lists." See in Input Documents as follows

    September 14, 2011
    * TRAC: Immigration Court Backlog Climbs, Yet Criminal Cases Fall

    Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse - Rising Immigration Backlog At All-time High Yet Criminal, National Security, and Terrorism Cases Fall

  • "The number of cases awaiting a resolution before the Immigration Courts reached a total of 285,526 at the end of July 2011. According to the very latest data obtained and analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), that total represents a new all-time high, up 3.7 percent from just three months ago. Wait times also rose. Only 8.3 percent of the pending cases involved a charge of engaging in criminal activities, actions adverse to national security or aiding terrorism -- a fraction which has fallen during the last ten months. Those charged with violating immigration rules made up 90 percent of all cases, and their numbers rose sharply. Using TRAC's updated app, you can get information about backlog and wait times by charge on all of the cases filed in the Immigration Courts. In addition, you can drill down to the state, court, hearing office and nationality for both backlog and wait times."
  • * FTC Report Examines How Authorized Generics Affect the Pharmaceutical Market

    News release: "The Federal Trade Commission issued a final report, Authorized Generic Drugs: Short-Term Effects and Long-Term Impact, that concludes when pharmaceutical companies introduce an authorized generic version of their brand-name drug, it can reduce both retail and wholesale drug prices. The report also found that authorized generics have a substantial effect on the revenues of competing generic firms. Over the longer term, by lowering expected profits for generic competitors, the introduction of an authorized generic could affect a generic drug company’s decision to challenge patents on branded drug products with low sales. However, the report concludes that in spite of this, patent challenges by generic competitors remain robust. Finally, the report finds that some brand companies may have used agreements not to launch an authorized generic as a way to compensate would-be generic competitors for delaying entry into the market. The FTC has for years opposed pay-for-delay patent litigation settlements, in which a brand-name drug manufacturer compensates its generic competitor to delay entering the market and offering consumers a lower-cost alternative. With this report, the agency has found that promises by a branded firm not to market competing authorized generics are frequently present in pharmaceutical patent settlements."

    September 13, 2011
    * Tobacco Companies and FDA - Lawsuits in Response to New Cigarette Labeling

    Blog of the Legal Times: "Responding to a lawsuit filed by five of the nation's largest cigarette manufacturers, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration filed Friday to block any delay to new regulations requiring graphic warning labels on cigarette packages. The tobacco companies are suing the agency in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, claiming that the new labels cross the line from factual warnings to unconstitutionally compelled speech. The companies want a preliminary injunction postponing the date the new rules go into effect. In its opposition brief, the FDA is pushing back against the companies’ claim that they would suffer “economic harm” by spending several million dollars to produce the new labels in the meantime. The new regulations are set to go into effect in September 2012."

    September 12, 2011
    * LexisNexis® Launches Open Alliance Program for HPCC Systems, Enterprise-Proven, Open Source Alternative to Hadoop

    News release: "LexisNexis® Risk Solutions today unveiled the HPCC Systems Alliance Program, which is a collaboration of partners to stimulate innovation and accelerate market adoption of the newly open sourced HPCC Systems, an enterprise-proven, open source solution to help large organizations process “Big Data”. Built on a high performing computer cluster technology, HPCC Systems is an alternative to Hadoop. Interest in processing and managing Big Data is growing rapidly among enterprise and service provider customers. LexisNexis collaboration with innovative leaders will help customers navigate options for addressing large data sets, reduce overall infrastructure costs, and improve business agility and data insight. Products and solutions from these partners will help deliver fully integrated, turnkey solutions."

    September 10, 2011
    * Legislation Related to the Attack of September 11, 2001

    The Library of Congress - THOMAS: "This site was begun in September 2001 as a way of keeping the public readily apprised of legislation related to the terrorist attack on the United States that month. The selection, made by hand, is necessarily subjective, as the September 11th attack had a ripple effect on legislation in the second session of the 107th Congress, making boundaries difficult to draw. The site will not be updated after the conclusion of the 107th. Not included here are appropriations and authorization bills, which may include provisions relevant to our response to terrorism, but included are some bills related to bio-terrorism and not September 11th."

  • Bills & Joint Resolutions Signed Into Law | Other Resolutions Approved | Legislation With Floor Action | Legislation Without Floor Action
  • See also the 9/11 Commission Report and a continually updated topical set of related postings on 9/11
  • September 09, 2011
    * Decline Seen in DHS Deportation Proceedings of Terrorists and Criminals

    Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, Immigration Enforcement Since 9/11: A Reality Check - "An examination of millions of case-by-case records show that the overall number of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) deportation proceedings in the Immigration Courts in the decade after 9/11 were up by almost one half (45%) -- from 1.6 million in the ten years before the attack to 2.3 million in the ten years since. But the data also show that DHS requests for removal orders on terrorism and national security charges -- always a very small part of the total -- have declined from what they were before the attacks. Likewise, in the decade after 9/11 the number of deportation proceedings on those charged with criminal activity has also fallen."

    * Tracking Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act

    worldAtWork: Tracking Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Updated September 8, 2011: "On Wednesday, July 21, 2010, President Obama signed into law the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The Act calls for sweeping reforms, not just for the financial services industry, but for all publicly-traded companies. With many of the provisions in this bill subject to forthcoming regulations and guidance, this page is dedicated to bringing you the most up-to-date information about regulations and guidance that have been issued that will affect the implementation of this bill."

    September 07, 2011
    * DOJ Releases Investigative Findings on the Puerto Rico Police Department

    News release: "Following a comprehensive investigation, the Justice Department today announced its findings that the Puerto Rico Police Department (PRPD) has engaged in a pattern and practice of misconduct that violates the Constitution and federal law. The investigation, launched in July 2008, was conducted in accordance with the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 and the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968. The Justice Department found reasonable cause to believe that a pattern and practice of unconstitutional conduct and/or violations of federal law occurred in several areas, including: Use of excessive force; Use of unreasonable force and other misconduct designed to suppress the exercise of protected First Unconstitutional stops, searches and arrests."

  • Investigation of the Puerto Rico Police Department, United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division - September 5, 2011
  • * EPIC: DC Circuit Court Grants Access to Cell Phone Surveillance Records

    "The Circuit Court for the District of Columbia has ruled that the Department of Justice must release information regarding government surveillance of cell phone location data. The American Civil Liberties Union had filed a Freedom of Information Act request for information regarding current and past cases where the Department of Justice had accessed cell phone location data without a warrant. The agency sought to keep this information secret, claiming that releasing cell phone tracking data could implicate privacy of investigation subjects. The court, however, disagreed, stating, "The disclosure sought by the plaintiffs would inform this ongoing public policy discussion by shedding light on the scope and effectiveness of cell phone tracking as a law enforcement tool." For more information, see EPIC: Wiretapping and EPIC: Electronic Surveillance 1968-2010."

    September 06, 2011
    * 2011 Secrecy Report - OpenGovernment.org

    Obama Administration Fulfills Some Open Gov Goals, National Security Bureaucracy Hinders Progress - "The Obama Administration has made some positive changes towards an open government this year, but the national security bureaucracy continues to hinder progress, according to a report released today. The 2011 Secrecy Report was released by OpenTheGovernment.org, a coalition of more than 80 groups (including POGO) advocating for a more open and accountable government. According to the report, some of the Obama Administration’s promises of transparency are paying off—but certain national security agencies are ignoring the open government agenda. Some of the good news highlighted in the report centers on the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The Administration has been “rebuilding openness” and FOIA performance has improved from previous years. Compared to 2009, FOIA backlogs in 2010 were reduced by 10 percent.Other moves the Obama Administration has made towards transparency include releasing newly declassified details about the U.S. nuclear stockpile, updating sites like FederalReporting.gov and USAspending.gov, and refusing to assert Executive Privilege to deny congressional requests for information (Obama is the first president in OpenTheGovernment.org’s records not to do so.)...The report points to an Associated Press study that found that the Central Intelligence Agency and Securities and Exchange Commission rejected information requests more than half the time during 2010."

    September 02, 2011
    * FHFA Sues 17 Firms to Recover Losses to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

    News release: "The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), as conservator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the Enterprises), today filed lawsuits against 17 financial institutions, certain of their officers and various unaffiliated lead underwriters. The suits allege violations of federal securities laws and common law in the sale of residential private-label mortgage-backed securities (PLS) to the Enterprises. These complaints were filed in federal or state court in New York or the federal court in Connecticut. The complaints seek damages and civil penalties under the Securities Act of 1933, similar in content to the complaint FHFA filed against UBS Americas, Inc. on July 27, 2011. In addition, each complaint seeks compensatory damages for negligent misrepresentation. Certain complaints also allege state securities law violations or common law fraud."

    August 31, 2011
    * International Journal of Central Banking, September 2011 issue

    International Journal of Central Banking - Volume 7, Number 3 September 2011