Jane Bambauer and I discuss President Trump's Executive Orders that target major law firms (such as WilmerHale and Jenner & Block). The Orders target the firms for retaliation based largely on their past support of various left-wing legal causes. Do those Orders violate the firms' (and their clients') Free Speech Clause or Petition Clause rights? Might they also violate the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause (in civil cases) and the Sixth Amendment right to counsel (in criminal cases)? See also our past episodes: Can Non-Citizens Be Deported For Their Speech? Freedom of the Press, with Floyd Abrams Free Speech, Private Power, and Private Employees Court Upholds TikTok Divestiture Law Free Speech in European (and Other) Democracies, with Prof. Jacob Mchangama Protests, Public Pressure Campaigns, Tort Law, and the First Amendment Misinformation: Past, Present, and Future I Know It When I See It: Free Speech and Obscenity…

‘The board actually lists all the arguments for the Executive Order being constitutional.’ – The ProfessorsThe Trump administration’s decision to retaliate against the President’s former Biglaw adversaries is unprecedented in American history. Most of the focus has been on Trump’s audacity or Biglaw’s repeated cowardice, but let’s take a second to think about the judges who have to deal with this mess. When deciding matters of first impression, you really want to make sure that you’re seeing all of the angles as clearly as you can. Deciding the matter in good faith may require re-reading a couple of cases — even going back to basics and dusting off some Con Law readings from your 1L years is fair game. But you know what’s better than consulting the textbook? Whoever wrote the book you’re consulting. And at this point, that might apply to all of your books. Hundreds of law professors (363, to be exact)…

The U.S. State Department’s “Catch and Revoke” program uses artificial intelligence (AI) to monitor foreign nationals, particularly student visa holders. The program aims to identify individuals who express support for Hamas, Hezbollah, or other U.S.-designated terrorist organizations through social media activity or participation in protests and revoke their visas. To date, approximately 300 foreign nationals have had their visas revoked under this initiative. AI tools scan social media accounts, news reports, and other publicly available information to flag individuals on visas for further investigation. The U.S. government maintains the program is a national security measure to help identify foreign nationals who should have been denied visas based on support for designated terrorist organizations. Critics argue the AI-driven process may rely on basic keyword searches that are prone to errors, raising concerns about fairness and accuracy. Advocacy groups…

EFF has joined the American Civil Liberties Union and other legal advocacy organizations across the ideological spectrum in filing an amicus brief asking a federal judge to strike down President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting law firm Perkins Coie for its past work on voting rights lawsuits and its representation of the President’s prior political opponents.  As a legal organization that has fought in court to defend the rights of technology users for almost 35 years, including numerous legal challenges to federal government overreach, EFF unequivocally supports Perkins Coie’s challenge to this shocking, vindictive, and unconstitutional executive order. In punishing the law firm for its zealous advocacy on behalf of its clients, the March 6 order offends the First Amendment, the rule of law, and the legal profession broadly in numerous ways. We commend Perkins Coie and other targeted law firms that have chosen to do so (and their legal…

Share The Relist Watch column examines cert petitions that the Supreme Court has “relisted” for its upcoming conference. A short explanation of relists is available here. Over the past couple of conferences, the Supreme Court has continued to clear out the rolls of relisted cases. Remarkably, the Supreme Court denied review without comment in the most recent newly relisted case, Escobar v. Texas, in which Texas conceded that erroneous DNA evidence had contributed to the defendant’s conviction for capital murder. The court denied review on March 24 in Franklin v. New York, involving the right, guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment, of criminal defendants to confront witnesses against them. But Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, in separate opinions respecting the denial of certiorari, suggested that the court would need to revisit the landmark 2004 decision in Crawford v.Washington that narrowed the use of hearsay testimony in criminal trials. The court also…

This is my 10th and final blog post in my series celebrating my 20 year blogiversary. Sadly, the series (and maybe the blog) will end on a depressing note. You might want to grab some tissues before digging in. In this post, I’m going to talk about the blog’s future. I recognize that looking forward is an inherently optimistic act, because it assumes there is a future for our world, our country, the Internet, and me. To reach that conclusion, we must disregard many possible cataclysmic scenarios. For example, I’m assuming that in 10 years: the earth will still be habitable; there will still be an Internet worth blogging about; the censors will have not taken away my ability to blog; and I will not be jailed or executed for my acts of resistance or being Jewish. I hope all of these assumptions will be true in 2035, but there are no guarantees. Subject to those caveats, my thoughts about the 10-year future of the blog. I’ll Still Be Here. Blogging is a…

Upcoming oral arguments before the Tennessee Supreme Court April 1, 2025 Nashville, Tenn. - The Tennessee Supreme Court has two cases set for its April 9, 2025, docket in Jackson, Tennessee. The two cases are related actions involving similar legal...

Columbia Global Freedom of Expression seeks to contribute to the development of an integrated and progressive jurisprudence and understanding on freedom of expression and information around the world.  It maintains an extensive database of international case law. This is its newsletter dealing with recent developments  in the field. Committed to advancing legal scholarship on freedom of expression, CGFoE is back to teaching. Last week, in collaboration with the University of Buenos Aires, CGFoE’s Team members led a class on Freedom of Expression in the European and African Regional Systems. The instructors – Anderson Javiel Dirocie De León, Senior Legal and Policy Consultant; Lautaro Furfaro, Senior Legal Researcher; and Juan Manuel Ospina, Senior Legal Editor – focused on the European Court of Human Rights and the African Commission and Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, with comparative references to…

Advance release contract law opinion: Pryor v. Brignole (Breach of contract; special motions to dismiss filed pursuant to anti-SLAPP statute (§ 52-196a); statutory interpretation of § 52-196a; matter of public concern pursuant to § 52-196a, discussed.)

The Connecticut Appellate Court reversed and remanded the denial of an anti-SLAPP motion to dismiss a breach of contract action brought against a law firm by a former associate In these related appeals, the defendants, Timothy Brignole and the law...

[thrown out for lack of evidence of "actual malice" (i.e., knowing or reckless falsehood on Newsweek's part).] A short excerpt from today's long decision by Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil (S.D.N.Y.) in The Satanic Temple, Inc. v. Newsweek Magazine LLC: The Satanic Temple, Inc. … [sued] Newsweek Magazine LLC … [for alleged defamation] in the article titled "Orgies, Harassment, Fraud: Satanic Temple Rocked by Accusations, Lawsuit" published by Newsweek. After this Court's [earlier] Opinion and Order on Defendant's motion to dismiss, only one statement, "Accounts of sexual abuse being covered up in ways that were more than anecdotal" (the "Article Statement"), remains at issue…. The court grants Newsweek summary judgment as to that last statement. The court concludes that there's a material factual dispute as to what the statement would mean to a reasonable reader (and whether it's false): The…

The “targeted advertising” data protection case of O’Carroll v Meta Platforms Ireland Ltd (KB-2022-004365) was settled on 21 March 2025 with a  Facebook has agreeing to stop the claimant’s personal data to target ads at her. Human rights campaigner, Tanya O’Carroll  had objected to Facebook’s use of her personal data for ad targeting, after she noticed she was receiving pregnancy-related ads before she had shared the news of her pregnancy privately. She argued that targeted advertising should be classified as direct marketing under UK law, giving users the right to opt out. The ICO supported this view, emphasising that “organisations must respect people’s choices about how their data is used.” Meta argued that its ads are targeted at groups of at least 100 users, not individuals, and that its model keeps services free. The case has set a precedent for others seeking to disable Facebook’s ads, however Meta has…

It was no coincidence that President Donald Trump announced on the campaign trail that he would seek to end birthright citizenship via executive order on the heels of the 125th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark. For well over a century, Congress, the courts, the executive branch, and the American public have understood and adhered to the principle set forth by the Court in 1898 that U.S. citizenship is automatically conferred to anyone born in the United States (except the children of diplomats and occupying foreign powers). Trump’s Executive Order No. 14160, however, distorts the Wong Kim Ark decision, apparently in the belief that the Court’s language provides a blueprint to limit birthright citizenship only to the children of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents (“LPRs” or green card holders). Not so. Despite the fact that the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause does not include the words…

[The modern crime victims' rights movement has been remarkably successful in inserting the victim's voice into criminal justice processes.] This post is the second of three posts, serializing my comprehensive law review article on the crime victims' rights movement. In yesterday's post, I described the movement's roots in the history of private prosecution. This post describes the movement's last several decades, during which the movement has successfully created participatory rights for victims throughout America's criminal justice system. The modern victims' rights movement began to stir in the late 1960s, coalesced in the 1970s, and gained momentum in the early 1980s. The movement has continued ever  since "as one of the most significant and successful forces for reshaping the criminal justice process."  The movement's birth can be traced to the confluence of five developments: (1) the creation of an…

Most discovery disputes involve requests for production of documents.  This is because there are specific requirements for a party to properly respond to the request which has been the subject of many of my blogs, including a responding party’s obligation to state whether the documents you are seeking ever existed and where they are now as well as which request the documents being produced are responsive. However, there is nothing more combative in discovery than parties arguing over objections to a document request and the adequacy of the privilege log–assuming one was even provided.  To begin, in responding to the document request, a party is obligated to list the documents in a privilege log that are being withheld on the claim of privilege.  C.C.P. §2031.240.  According to Cal. Prac. Guide: Civil Procedure Before Trial (TRG 2024) §8:1474.5a, citing Hernandez v. Sup. Ct. (2003) 112 CA4th 285, pg.…

 According to the Securities and Exchange Commission, a DAO is a "term used to describe a 'virtual' organization embodied in computer code and executed on a distributed ledger or blockchain".  See Report of Investigation Pursuant to Section 21(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934: The DAO.  That does not answer the question, however, of the legal status of DAOs.  Two years ago, I wrote that U.S. District Court Judge  William H. Orrick  had ruled that  Ooki DAO was an unincorporated association under California law.  CFTC v. Ooki DAO, 2022 WL 17822445. Several months later, U.S. District Court Judge  Larry Alan Burns found that the plaintiffs had sufficiently pled the existence of bXz DAO as a partnership under California law.  Sarcuni v. bZx DAO, 664 F. Supp. 3d 1100 (S.D. Cal. 2023) In the meantime, California Assembly Member Matt Haney introduced legislation, AB 1229, that…

On September 29, 2024, the Governor of California signed into law a new bill that would create a uniform resentencing procedure. In the past decade, the California legislature has passed numerous bills that have provided incarcerated individuals with the opportunity to ask courts to have their sentences recalled and reduced. Some of these ameliorative statutes include AB 2942 – Recall of Sentence and Resentencing, which grants district attorneys the ability to make resentencing referrals; the RISE Act (SB 483); and SB 775/SB 1437, which effectively eliminated the role of the natural and probable consequences doctrine in murder cases and dramatically limited who can be charged under the felony murder doctrine. Those and other legislation have provided an opportunity for countless people to petition the courts to have their sentences reduced. The new laws have given defendants hope that the tough-on-crime policies of the past would not result in them serving unjust…

Whenever an employer investigates employee misconduct, there’s a chance it will find—and may have to disclose—negative facts. This is true when a hospital investigates the medical conduct of a doctor, or an employer investigates an employee for potential harassment. In both instances, and in the absence of malice, those investigations are protected by the litigation and the common interest privileges. Mounting Problems Dignity Health hired orthopedic surgeon Troy I. Mounts to work in a spine surgery practice at the San Luis Obispo French Hospital Center. Concerns regarding his clinical competence arose almost immediately. At the same time, he complained he wasn’t getting staff support or adequate time in the operating room to perform complex surgeries. Dignity put Mount’s complex surgeries “on hold” and required him to complete a previously scheduled surgery with a second surgeon he hadn’t worked with before.…