Would televising U.S. Supreme Court proceedings promote transparency in the country’s highest legal institution and help generate public confidence in the judiciary, or would putting the court’s oral arguments on TV or the Internet demean the institution?

These and other questions were raised in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this morning on “Access to the Court: Televising the Supreme Court.”

A Brooklyn jury acquitted a man accused of gun possession charges after his criminal defense lawyers discovered a treasure trove of derogatory, racist digital evidence on a Facebook group created by NYPD officers.

According to the New York Times, police officers who did not want to work at New York City’s annual West Indian American Day Parade in Brooklyn created a Facebook group to share their displeasure, complete with vulgar, intolerant epithets directed at members of New York City’s Caribbean community celebrating the event.

Carrier IQ, a mobile phone software and data analytics company that gives telecoms business intelligence on connections, dropped calls and user behavior was hit with at least eleven consumer class-action lawsuits alleging privacy and Federal Wiretap Act violations.

The lawsuits accuse the telecom software analystics company of variously recording Android or Apple mobile phone users’ text messages, e-mails and keystrokes, but a number of reports seriously question such claims.

Last week a New York trial judge denied a defense discovery request for a personal injury plaintiff’s current and historical Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter account information.

New York Justice George J. Silver of State Supreme Court in Manhattan reasoned that simply making conclusory allegations that a party’s “Facebook account is material and necessary to their [client’s] defense” is insufficient to justify disclosure of a litigant’s private Facebook records.

Then Justice Silver talked about a Facebook “fishing expedition”:

Now that November is in the rear-view mirror, it is time to start planning for the upcoming holiday season. If you are having problems coming up with the perfect gift for your family members or friends, consider the plight of those who have to buy gifts for the man who has everything.

For gifts that are worthy of the Most Powerful Man on Earth, you can browse the lists of gifts received by the President (as well as other federal employees) from foreign government sources for yuletide inspiration: 1993, 1994, 1995, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009.

However, the U.S. Constitution prohibits the President and other persons in office from accepting presents from any King, Prince or foreign State without the consent of Congress. Article I, Section 9, Clause 8. Accordingly, these gifts are disposed of pursuant to the regulations concerning the utilization, donation and disposal of foreign gifts and decorations. 41 C.F.R. § 105-42.5. Most gifts are sent to the Archives, transfered to the General Servies Administration or retained for display or official use.

Going to the dentist can be an unnerving experience. It can also feel like you’re getting more than a tooth pulled if you’re asked to give up any rights to critique the dental work you’ve had done, and assign all copyrights to any comments you make about it to…the dentist.

Ouch! That hurts!

That’s what prompted patient Robert Allen Lee to sue his dentist, Dr. Stacy Makhnevich and the North Carolina company, Medical Justice, that created and sold Makhnevich patient consent forms with the restrictive language (Read the lawsuit below)

Writ columnists Vik Amar and Alan Brownstein recently wrote an interesting article on the latest ruling in the litigation regarding Proposition 8, California’s anti-gay-marriage initiative. Using the process known as certification, the Ninth Circuit, in trying to figure out if the the proponents of Prop. 8 had standing to defend the case in federal court, asked the California Supreme Court for their input on “whether, at least as a matter of California law, initiative proponents enjoy some special capacity to represent the state’s electorate when public officials decline to defend a law adopted through direct democracy.”

This wasn’t the only case where the Ninth Circuit requested certification from the California Supreme Court. In fact, the Stanford Law School SCOCAL site has a whole chart about certification issues. This chart was created by attorneys at Hughes Hubbard and Reed (the family firm) and it tracks the questions of certification from the 9th Circuit to the California Supreme Court, with coverage from 1998 to the present, providing the text of the actual question or questions along with the associated 9th Circuit and California Supreme Court decisions. (Links to the full text of the decisions are also provided.)  To learn more about the resource, check out Erika Wayne’s post from Legal Research Plus and also check out the chart, here.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit will hear arguments next year over the dismissal of a class-action by Facebook users who claimed they were hurt when Facebook promoted its “Friend Finder” by displaying their profile information.

A briefing schedule is now listed on the court’s case docket.

Last month, Judge Richard Seeborg granted Facebook’s motion to dismiss the Plaintiffs’ first amended complaint in the ‘Find Friends’ class-action, concluding that the plaintiffs failed to plead how they could actually be hurt. (Read the six-page decision below)

There’s a bitter legal feud in the Wild Yonder out West. The trademark fighter pilot litigators at two telecoms are fueling their IP jets, checking their legal payloads, and heading for a showdown over the clear blue skies of eastern California and northern Nevada.

Carlsbad, California-based ViaSat^®, owner of Yonder mobile broadband, fired the first salvo, launching a service mark infringement lawsuit against Yonder Wireless, a Reno, Nevada-based rural broadband provider. The legal filing contains a number of other claims in this business dispute. (Read the full text of the lawsuit below)

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (‘FTC’) announced that it reached a tentative settlement with Facebook over charges that the social media company engaged in deceptive privacy practices with consumers.

But will the proposed settlement (you can read it below) really protect users in an era when tech privacy law is constantly evolving? It’s not final yet; consumers have until the end of 2011 to tell the FCC what they think about it.