Dec

31

Lessons for Law School Deans Regarding Catholics in Political Life

Posted by: Daniel Suhr | December 31, 2008 | 12 Comments

Let me again extend my appreciation to Deans Kearney and O’Hear for the opportunity to serve as December’s guest alumnus blogger of the month, and to all of you who joined the conversation in the comments section. I’ll be right there with you starting tomorrow. Let me also take advantage of my month’s [...]

Dec

31

Should Immigration Service Employees Be “Looking for a Way to Approve” Petitions and Applications?

Posted by: Jessica E. Slavin | December 31, 2008 | 1 Comment

The answer is a resounding yes, according to this refreshingly outdated 1980 memo from INS Regional Director Durward E. Powell, Jr., regarding “Dispensing of Information and Adjudications Decision Making.”   
Powell admonishes employees that they should not consider themselves “guardians of the treasury of information on Immigration benefits, whose function is to dispense reluctantly that narrow portion of the [...]

Dec

31

Iranian Human Rights Lawyer Shirin Ebadi’s Private Offices Raided

Posted by: Jessica E. Slavin | December 31, 2008 | Leave a Comment

You may be interested to know that the Iranian government’s harassment of Shirin Ebadi continues.   As I posted about last week, the offices of a human rights organization she leads were recently raided and shut down.  Now authorities have raided her private offices, asserting that they are conducting a tax-investigation.  Dr. Ebadi “told CNN [...]

Dec

29

Hills on Local Democracy and ERISA Preemption

Posted by: Paul M. Secunda | December 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Rick Hills (NYU), one of the more thought-provoking and provocative thinkers over at PrawfsBlawg, has an interesting post on the interaction between the democratic process and the law of ERISA preemption.
His post takes off from the recent ERISA preemption case of Golden Gate Restaurant Association, in which the Ninth Circuit recently held that a [...]

Dec

29

Athlete Eligibility Requirements and Legal Protection of Sports Participation Opportunities

Posted by: Matthew J. Mitten | December 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment

In a forthcoming article to be published soon in the Virginia Sports & Entertainment Law Journal, Professor Timothy Davis (Wake Forest University School of Law) and I compare and examine the existing legal frameworks governing athletic eligibility rules and dispute resolution processes for Olympic, professional, college, and high school sports from both private law and [...]

Dec

29

Reparations for “Terrorists”?

Posted by: Lisa J. Laplante | December 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Should victims of human rights violations with alleged or certain ties to groups that use terrorism receive reparations? This complex and sensitive dilemma has begun to arise in countries implementing reparation programs pursuant to the recommendations of their truth and reconciliations commissions.
Reparations law has special relevance to the transitional justice paradigm, as countries seek to [...]

Dec

28

W(h)ither Newspapers—and Their Cities?

Posted by: Joseph D. Kearney | December 28, 2008 | 2 Comments

Newspapers have long been an important part of my life. Whether it was, if returning home from downtown Chicago with my mother in the 1970s, the effort to ensure that we secured for my father the “final markets” edition of that day’s Chicago Daily News (not merely the “latest markets,” I was taught to discriminate), or [...]

Dec

28

Who Owns the Rights to Fantasy League Games?

Posted by: Matthew J. Mitten | December 28, 2008 | 1 Comment

Many sports fans play fantasy baseball or football games.  Should the operators of on-line fantasy games, which generate millions of dollars in annual revenues, have to pay a licensing fee to Major League Baseball, the NFL, and/or their players for using game statistics and player names?  For example, does the unauthorized use of Brett Favre’s [...]

Dec

28

Seventh Circuit Week in Review: Limiting the Reach of the Adam Walsh Act (a Little)

Posted by: Michael M. O'Hear | December 28, 2008 | 2 Comments

The Seventh Circuit had two new opinions in criminal cases this week.  The first, United States v. Sims (No. 07-3798), presented a routine Fourth Amendment issue, with the court upholding a challenged search warrant over the defendant’s objection that police officers failed to disclose important information when they obtained the warrant.
The more notable case of the two was United States v. [...]

Dec

27

Is Cheerleading A Sport?

Posted by: Matthew J. Mitten | December 27, 2008 | 7 Comments

Brittany Noffke, a ninth-grade student at Holmen High School, fell while practicing a three-person cheerleading stunt and suffered a severe head injury.  She sued Kevin Bakke, another cheerleader, for alleged negligence in failing to properly spot her during the stunt. Bakke defended on the ground he is immune from negligence liability under Wisconsin Stat. § [...]

Dec

26

Thoughts on Welda and Hate Crimes

Posted by: Richard M. Esenberg | December 26, 2008 | Leave a Comment

I wanted to comment briefly on one of the cases recently accepted by the Wisconsin Supreme Court, as reported here by Jessica Slavin.
In State v. Welda, the court will consider the application of the hate crime penalty enhancer set forth in § 939.645(1) providing for increased penalties where the state can prove that a defendant [...]

Dec

26

A Heartbreaker Named Detroit

Posted by: Richard M. Esenberg | December 26, 2008 | Leave a Comment

As a native Milwaukeean, Detroit breaks my heart. There are just a few cities that you can go to that you remind you of home. Chicago and Cleveland are the big two. Cincinnati is reminiscent, but a bit too southern. Detroit — or what used to be left of Detroit — was another. (Minneapolis is an entirely [...]

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