Articles Posted in 2011

Considering the amount of attention that our dear Congress devotes to children, I am quite surprised by the average academic performance delivered by our sweet angels when compared to their peers in other countries. Lest you think Congress is too focused on earmarks for their donors constituents, I must point out that even the rancorous debt ceiling debate during the past few weeks was all about the children. In face of the spending cuts called for in the debt ceiling bill, Senator Durbin urged his colleagues to consider its impact on the children:

Durbin, speaking from the Senate floor, said fewer poor children will be enrolled in early childhood education programs, working families and children will face more college debt and medical research dollars stand to be cut.

So, how else does Congress look out for the future of America? Let’s take a look.

Here is a rundown of July’s highest scoring lawyers on Justia Legal Answers, along with a look at which Onward blog and Facebook posts readers viewed the most.

Justia Legal Answers’ Top 10 Legal Answerers for July 2011

1. Mark A. Siesel, 11,600 points, 232 answers
2. Burton A. Padove, 10,195 points, 215 answers
3. Terrence Rubino, 2,805 oints, 72 answers
4. Robert Neal Katz, 1,545 points, 33 answers
5. David Philip Shapiro, 1,020 points,22 answers
6. Cedulie Renee Laumann, 850 points, 17 answers
7. Andrew Bresalier, 650 points, 13 answers
8. Stephen J. Plog, 552 points, 11 answers
9. Gojko Kasich, 510 points, 13 answers
10. Christopher Gilreath, 500 points, 10 answers

Update: In a post  I wrote on collaborative democracy back in April, I mentioned that our friend Mary Minow had recently traveled to Sacramento to voice her support for California Senate Bill (“SB”) 445. The Bill, which increases privacy protections for library patrons by amending the California Public Records Act, was Mary’s idea and one which she submitted as a part of a “There Oughta be a Law” contest.  As a contest winner, Mary’s bill was introduced by California State Senator Joe Simitian in Feburary, 2011. I’m happy to report that SB 445 was signed into law by Governor Brown a few weeks ago.

Way to go Mary!

As more and more information becomes increasingly accessible, our attention spans grow ever shorter. Several decades ago, one needed only to turn to the newspaper, radio, or television for all the news someone else deemed was relevant to you and your life. Now, with the Internet, blogs, email and RSS feeds, we no longer rely on others to decide what information we should be processing, for better and for worse.

If you’ve made it to this sentence, you’ve probably made it farther than 80 percent of those who read the headline. While the merits of a wealth of readily available information are generally obvious (more information means more knowledge, right?), the drawbacks are what I want to discuss.

I wanted to make sure that all of our readers are aware that Justia recently launched the new legal commentary site Verdict.  Have no fear, the Onward backbenchers will still post here, but each weekday, you’ll also be able to catch original and informed analysis of breaking news and developments in the law written by a great group of columnists over at Verdict.

Verdict columns cover a broad range of legal subjects, including constitutional law, international human rights, new technologies, discrimination, family law, law and economics, defamation, consumer issues, child sexual abuse and animal rights. Check out recent articles on such breaking legal issues as the debt limit controversy, cell phone hacking by Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World and health care.

Verdict’s team of ten columnists includes nine former law clerks—among them four U.S. Supreme Court clerks—seven law professors and the director of a new college-level human-rights program, all currently teaching at eminent schools.  We’ve set up a twitter feed @verdictjustia if you’d like to follow Verdict there, or you can also subscribe via RSS to make sure you’re staying on top of all these great columns.  Stop by and check it out!

John Mayer, Executive Director of CALI

For the third year in a row, I’ve had the pleasure of being part of a delegation that represented Justia and the Free Law Coalition at CALICon, the annual Conference for Law School Computing^® from CALI (The Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction).

This year’s conference was themed “Unbound,” which to CALI meant both the idea that boundaries to technology in legal education are falling away, and that the binding of books are becoming “electronically unbound,” which is certainly a theme we here at Justia can get behind.

California State Senator Loni Hancock (D-Alameda) recently introduced Senate Bill 490, which seeks to abolish the death penalty in California. This is the first time that the California Legislature has considered the issue of capital punishment since the current statute was enacted in 1978.

After Gregg vs. Georgia reinstated capital punishment nationwide, California voters approved the current death penalty law in a referendum. To amend that law, SB 490 must be approved by the voters because state law mandates that referendums can only be repealed at the ballot box.

If California voters approve SB 490, first-degree murder with one or more special circumstances will be punished by life without the possibility of parole. The death penalty option would no longer be available. Additionally, the state would halt future executions and commute all existing death sentences to life without parole.

The impetus for this effort comes from a Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review article authored by U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Senior Judge Arthur L. Alarcon and Loyola Law School Los Angeles Adjunct Professor of Law Paula M. Mitchell. Their study contended that the abolition of capital punishment in California could save the state $1 billion dollars every five or six years. The study also found that “the state’s 714 death row prisoners cost $184 million more per year than those sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.”

Don Heller, the author of the original enacting initiative, supports Senator Hancock’s bill. Heller has since come to “fervently believe” that capital punishment should be abolished. He says that when the law was drafted in 1978, his office grossly underestimated the costs to the state. He argues that each execution since the death penalty was reinstated under that law has cost the state $330 million, and it’s simply not worth it. It should be noted that the American Law Institute, which promulgates the Model Penal Code (upon which many states base their own statutes), has also reversed its position, taking capital punishment out of the model code.

Earlier this month, I wrote about Amazon terminating its Amazon Associates program in California in wake of the Golden State passing ABX1 28, a new law that imposed use tax collection duties on certain out-of-state retailers.

Last week, Amazon upped the stakes when Charles T. Halnan, an Amazon lobbyist, submitted a proposed statewide referendum to Attorney General Kamala D. Harris regarding Section 1 of ABX1 28. That section states that retailers with an affiliate or corporate nexus with the State of California must collect use taxes from their California customers who have purchased tangible personal property.

In response to the increasing number of states that have authorized medical marijuana use during the past two years, the U.S. Department of Justice recently issued a memorandum to its field offices regarding federal enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act in such states. Many fear that the memo signals an impending federal crackdown on the production, distribution and possession of marijuana in these states, in contrast to the previously relaxed stance toward prosecution. To better understand the situation, here’s a background on the law.

State Laws

State laws regulating marijuana use can be divided into two categories: decriminalization laws and those that authorize medical use of marijuana. De-criminalization refers to the reduction of penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana for personal use. Decriminalization statutes do not legalize possession, but treat it as a civil offense that subjects an offender to a monetary fine, instead of incarceration.

Last month, Representative Charles Rangel introduced the Second Chance for Ex-Offenders Act of 2011. The Act allows certain individuals convicted of nonviolent offenses to petition for an expungement upon completion of their sentence and satisfaction of other substance abuse, educational, and community service requirements.

So, what does this bill exactly propose to expunge?

Upon order of expungement, all official law enforcement and court records, including all references to such person’s arrest for the offense, the institution of criminal proceedings against him, and the results thereof, except publicly available court opinions or briefs on appeal, shall be expunged (in the case of nontangible records) or gathered together and sealed (in the case of tangible records).