Law

The Berkeley Tempest

For one Berkeley professor, a recently released torture memo authored by Yoo raises questions about the meaning of academic freedom.

Torture and the Law

Bush told ABC news he knew administration officials met to discuss the use of torture against detainees. Could a prosecutor charge him with a crime?

Spitzer Violated the Public Trust -- Potentially the Mann Act

The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has launched far reaching investigations the past year into corrupt lawmakers and White House secrecy. But now the watchdog is chartering new waters: New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's potential violation of the Mann Act.

Court of the People?

The judiciary deserves a look these days, with the next president expected to replace two or three aging Supreme Court Justices.

EFF, ACLU Intervene in Wikileaks Case

Last week a Federal judge in San Francisco "shutdown" the whistleblower site Wikileaks over a private dispute between a Cayman Islands bank and a disgruntled former employee. The former employee posted company documents to Wikileaks, which the bank claims violated a confidentiality agreement and banking laws.

 

Online rights group, Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU have now intervened in the lawsuit, the bank filed against the site and Dynadot, Wikileaks' domain registrar. EFF and ACLU argue that Judge Jeffrey S. White should not have ordered the closure of the entire site -- an unecessarily far-reaching move.

The Supreme Court v. Reality: FDA Version

Today the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that you can't sue a manufacturer for a defective medical device if the Food and Drug Administration has already approved the device. Legally, perhaps, the decision has its merits. But practically the decision ignores the myriad scandals surrounding the agency that call its core competency into question.

When Congress and the President Face Off

Unseating the ruling party in Congress doesn't mean taking power, but that's your Constitution at work.

Wikileaks 'Shutdown'

A federal judge in San Francisco ordered Web-hosting company Dynadot to pull the plug on Wikileaks today, a site created for goverment and corporate whistleblowes with documents "that the world needs to see." The judge handed down the permanent injunction after a Cayman Islands bank  sued when company documents appeared on the site. The federal judge's move, of course, doesn't actually delete Wikileaks, which was designed to withstand court-ordered shutdowns. The site -- reportedly started by a group of international political dissidents, mathematicians and journalists -- is still accessible via its IP address and mirror sites.

Habeas Case Quietly Heads to Supreme Court

The case demands attention because it presents in stark relief two key questions of governments extraterritorial detentions.

In Solidarity With TPM Muckraker

This is an easy call, especially since Laura and I used to work for Talking Points Memo. But every journalist and citizen of conscience should stand shoulder-to-shoulder with TPM now that the Justice Department has engaged in a sickening course of petty retaliation.

 

In late 2006 and 2007, TPM's Josh Marshall, Paul Kiel and Justin Rood relentlessly pursued the U.S. attorney firings. It wasn't easy, either substantively, or against the media tide. Jay Carney at Time sneered, "some liberals are seeing broad partisan conspiracies where none likely exist." Well, they existed. Without TPM, Alberto Gonzales would still be attorney general. Simple and plain.

Padilla Case Finds a Justice System Failing to Adapt

Six years after 9/11, the jury is still out on whether the American justice system is up to the challenge of dealing with terrorism.

California's Oily Justices

Former employee Braxton Berkley was one of hundreds to sue Lockheed Martin and other chemical supply companies—some of which are among the world’s largest oil companies—for injuries resulting from exposure to toxic chemicals. Berkley, who says the injuries resulted from his work on military planes, appealed his case to the California Supreme Court. But the case was dismissed.

 

Why? Four out of seven justices held stock in some of those oil companies, and therefore couldn’t rule on the case.