McCarthy v. Fuller, US 7th Cir (4/10/13) Constitutional Law, Contracts, Non-Profit Organizations In 1956, Sister Ephrem of the Most Precious Blood, experienced apparitions of the Virgin Mary, during which, Sister Ephrem claimed, she was told: “I am Our Lady of America.” The Archbishop supported a program of devotions to Our…
Justia Law Blog
Florida v. Jardines, United States Supreme Court (3/26/13) Civil Rights, Constitutional Law, Criminal Law Police took a drug-sniffing dog to Jardines’ front porch, where the dog gave a positive alert for narcotics. The officers then obtained a warrant for a search, which revealed marijuana plants. Jardines was charged with trafficking…
In re Bulger, US 1st Cir. (3/14/13) Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, Legal Ethics James “Whitey” Bulger was the leader of a criminal organization in Boston from 1972 to 1999. An indictment returned by a federal grand jury charged Bulger with a number of federal offenses, including violations of the Racketeer…
St. Patrick's Day is a day when we celebrate the Irish in all (or at least 35 million) of us. We honor our Irish ancestors, relatives and friends by dressing in green, visiting an Irish pub, or participating in a festive parade. Food manufacturers also observe St. Patrick's Day through…
California Assemblyman Brian Nestande (R-42nd Dist.) has put forth a bill to apply a Creative Commons License to the California Code of Regulations (CCR). According to Mr. Nestande’s site, “AB 292 will provide that the full text of the California Code of Regulations shall have an open access creative commons…
Last week, Public.Resource.Org, through their counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, filed an action for declaratory judgement against the Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors’ National Association, Inc. [SMACNA]. In its complaint, Public.Resource.org asserts that since SMACNA’s copyrighted standards were explicitly incorporated into federal and state law, they have become…
We start off our picks this week with a dog sniff case from the Supreme Court. A side note that several opinions came down from the High Court this week - to check them all out go to Justia's Supreme Court Center , or sign up for our USSC Summary…
Caldwell v. Cablevision Sys. Corp., New York Court of Appeals (2/7/13) After falling on the street and injuring her leg, Plaintiff commenced this negligence action against Communications Specialists, Inc. (CSI) for creating a hazardous condition in the road by failing to properly pave over a trench CSI cut to install…
Two legislative crowdsourcing efforts came across my desk today: OpenPACER and Fork the Law. I love the idea of collective effort to make laws. The government has tried this to some extent with Regulations.gov. There, you can sort, view, and comment on proposed…
The Judicial Council announced last week that they plan to expand a pilot program to push federal court opinions to FDSys. In theory, that means that all federal court opinions could be published and freely available in the FDSys database soon. FDSys is the digital repository for federal publications. It is…