Nov

25

Blevins on the EFCA

Posted by: | November 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment

John Blevins (South Texas) had an opinion piece supporting the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) in the Houston Chronicle this past Saturday. Here’s a taste: The EFCA . . . would provide employees with an alternate method of creating a recognized union — the “card check.” When a majority of employees signs [...]

Nov

25

Thoughts About Violence Against Trafficked Women on International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women

Posted by: | November 25, 2008 | 2 Comments

November 25th is designated by the United Nations as “International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.”  The date was selected to “commemorate the lives of the Mirabal sisters,” who were assassinated on November 25, 1960 during the Trujillo dictatorship, as explained in the General Assembly resolution designating the day: Previously, 25 November was [...]

Nov

25

As Honest As We Like to Think We Are

Posted by: | November 25, 2008 | 11 Comments

So . . . if no one knew when you lied, would you do it? Would you lie to save money? Would you lie to save your client money? Would the amount of money matter? I have often taught negotiation ethics using Richard Shell’s division of people: the idealists, the pragmatists, and the poker-players. The [...]

Nov

24

New York Nuisance Law Survives NLRA Preemption

Posted by: | November 24, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Thanks to Bill Herbert (Deputy Chair and Counsel to the New York PERB) for letting us know about a recent New York Court of Appeals ruling concerning whether a nuisance suit under New York law was preempted by the NLRA.  Readers will recall that Prof. Hirsch and I debated the relationship between the NLRA and [...]

Nov

24

Court Holds That Wikipedia Entries Are “Inherently Unreliable”

Posted by: | November 24, 2008 | 7 Comments

On the Legal Writing Prof blog, Jim Levy noted today (hat-tipping BNA Internet Law News) that a court expressly rejected an appellant’s attempt to rely on Wikipedia. In State v. Flores, an unpublished decision by the Texas Court of Appeals for the 14th District dated October 23, 2008, the court refused the appellant’s request to take [...]

Nov

24

Copyrighted Works Must Be Novel and Nonobvious

Posted by: | November 24, 2008 | Leave a Comment

To anyone who knows IP law, the title of this post looks like either ignorance or craziness. I assure you, it’s not ignorance. Everyone knows that one of the distinguishing features between copyrights and patents is that patents require novelty and nonobviousness, and copyrights don’t. All you need to get a copyright is to have [...]

Nov

23

“The Power That I Have On You Is To Spare You”

Posted by: | November 23, 2008 | 2 Comments

While instant messaging a high school friend yesterday, she mentioned that she had just seen the final episode of The West Wing on DVD (in which outgoing president Josiah Bartlett pardons ex-Director of Communications Toby Ziegler from a conviction for leaking national security secrets to The Washington Post), and then linked me to a recent [...]

Nov

22

Seventh Circuit Week in Review: More and More on the Use of Prior Crimes Evidence

Posted by: | November 22, 2008 | Leave a Comment

The Seventh Circuit had two new opinions in criminal cases in the past week, with the government winning both appeals.  By some coincidence, both cases involved the use of prior crimes evidence at trial, a topic that was also the focus of my last ”Week in Review” post.  Indeed, one of this past week’s cases was strikingly similar in [...]

Nov

21

Pitfalls of Plea Bargaining

Posted by: | November 21, 2008 | 1 Comment

One of my former students recently sent me this link to a great Frontline program on plea bargaining. The program is four years old, but remains a timely and engaging exploration of some of the important plea-bargaining issues that I cover with my Criminal Procedure students, including the liberal use of “trial penalties” (i.e., longer [...]

Nov

21

Significant Canadian Labor Decision on Right to Bargain

Posted by: | November 21, 2008 | Leave a Comment

David Doorey (York Univ.) sends along word that there was a big decision this week from the Ontario Court of Appeal that ruled unconstitutional a statute that did not require employers to bargain collectively with unions selected by  a majority of employees, and that provided for no dispute resolution mechanism to deal with bargaining impasses. [...]

Nov

20

Outlawing Amnesty?

Posted by: | November 20, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Lisa Laplante, in response to last month’s “question of the month,” priorities for the next president, blogged about the need provide accountability for torture.  I noticed that in her comments on a recent post on Opinio Juris, she wrote that “[t]he issue of amnesty could become one of the most contentious” in the debate about Bush [...]

Nov

19

Marquette Legal Writing Professors Contribute to Column in Wisconsin Lawyer Magazine

Posted by: | November 19, 2008 | 2 Comments

Beginning with the current issue, the Wisconsin Lawyer magazine (a publication of the Wisconsin State Bar) will publish  a new column on legal writing.  The first contributor is the most experienced legal writing professor on the Marquette faculty, Jill Hayford. As the magazine explains, Through this new column, the legal writing faculty at Marquette University Law School [...]

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