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Category Archives: Courts

Trump Legal Penalties

NewsTRACS – Trump has over half a billion dollars in legal penalties – “a review of nine+ years of Trump’s cash spreadsheets reveals new information and raises new questions -Wendy Siegelman. Heading into the 2024 presidential election Donald Trump – who faces dozens of felony charges and recently lost several big civil cases – has cinched the GOP nomination. Trump now heads into the general election after having been found liable of sexual abuse, defamation and financial fraud and with over half a billion dollars in legal penalties due.Setting aside Trump’s decades of fraudulent business practices, his network of mafia and criminal associates, his destructive, divisive, nepotistic presidential record, his incitement of violence, support of insurrectionists, and embrace of dictatorship, kleptocracy and fascism – there are also serious questions about how Trump will pay over half a billion dollars in penalties and who he will be indebted to if he becomes president. The media has repeatedly questioned how Trump will find the cash to pay these penalties. But there has been little reporting on public exhibits from the New York attorney general civil fraud case – that include revealing information on almost a decade of Trump’s cash and short-term investment accounts. I dove into the weeds and created a table with highlights and summarize some key findings. I started reviewing the cash documents because I was curious to learn more about the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago and a mysterious $50 million loan associated with the property, and the very odd “0” valuation in ten years of Trump’s Statements of Financial Condition. That information is covered at the end of this piece. Below I highlight a few new findings and my hope is that other researchers, journalists and curious people will spend more time looking at the hundreds of public exhibits from the New York attorney general case which include a wealth of information and likely un-reported findings…”

Publishers’ reply brief in Hachette v. Internet Archive: First Impressions

Dave Hansen and Kyle K. Courtney jointly authored this post. They are also the authors of a White Paper on Controlled Digital Lending of Library Books. We are not, as the Publishers claim in their brief on page 13, a “cadre of boosters.” We wrote the paper independently as part of our combined decades of work… Continue Reading

Growing Racial Disparities in Voter Turnout, 2008–2022

Fact sheet for the report Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law Growing Racial Disparities in Voter Turnout, 2008–2022, published March 13, 2024: “A Brennan Center study of nearly 1 billion voter file data points finds the following: The nationwide racial turnout gap — the difference in voting rates between white… Continue Reading

Illinois Task Force Explores How AI Could Speed Up Litigation

Bloomberg: “Generative artificial intelligence could boost the Illinois judiciary by helping judges produce opinions faster and assist individuals in better preparing their own cases, members of a new Illinois AI task force said. The Illinois Judicial Conference task force, created in January, is meeting monthly to discuss how generative AI could help the court system… Continue Reading

Amicus Lobbying: Friends of the Court or Friends of the Industry?

Bunting, William and Stein, Tomer, Amicus Lobbying: Friends of the Court or Friends of the Industry? (January 29, 2024). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4708986 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4708986  – “This Article reveals that lobbying has a vast and outsized impact on the development of judge-made business law. Lobby groups have taken control of the amicus curiae filing process… Continue Reading

Fetal personhood laws, explained

Vox: “The Alabama Supreme Court touched off a nationwide furor in February when it ruled that frozen, fertilized embryos legally count as “children.” The ruling upended the lives of patients undergoing IVF in Alabama and opened up a new front in the post-Dobbs battle over abortion rights. It also revived interest in — and concern… Continue Reading

Supreme Court Inadvertently Reveals Confounding Late Change in Trump Ballot Ruling

Slate: “The Supreme Court’s decision on Monday to keep Donald Trump on Colorado’s ballot was styled as a unanimous one without any dissents. But the metadata tells a different story. On the page, a separate opinion by the liberal justices is styled as a concurrence in the judgment, authored jointly by the trio. In the… Continue Reading

Amazon’s Big Secret

The Atlantic [unpaywalled] – “…Nearly 30 years after the company was founded, we still don’t really know where its profits come from. The answer will loom large in the antitrust case against it. Under SEC rules, public corporations must file quarterly reports disclosing revenue, expenses, profits, and other metrics. Initially, only company-wide data were required.… Continue Reading

Their States Banned Abortion

ProPublica – Doctors Now Say They Can’t Give Women Potential Lifesaving Care. “…Most medical exceptions in abortion bans only allow the procedure to “save the life of the mother.” But there is a wide spectrum of health risks patients can face during pregnancy, and even those that are potentially fatal could fall outside of the… Continue Reading

New York judge rebukes law firm for using ChatGPT to justify its fees

FT.com [unpaywalled]: “A New York judge has scolded a law firm for citing ChatGPT to support its application for “excessive” attorneys’ fees of up to $600 an hour. The Cuddy Law Firm had invoked the predictive artificial intelligence tool in a declaration to the court over a case it won against the city’s education department.… Continue Reading

The Supreme Court is about to decide the future of online speech

The Verge: “Social media companies have long made their own rules about the content they allow on their sites. But a pair of cases set to be argued before the Supreme Court on Monday will test the limits of that freedom, examining whether they can be legally required to host users’ speech. The cases, Moody… Continue Reading