The New York Times [read free]: Behind the Scenes at the Dismantling of Roe. On Feb. 10 last year, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. showed his eight colleagues how he intended to uproot the constitutional right to abortion. At 11:16 a.m., his clerk circulated a 98-page draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Courts
Thomas privately pushed for a higher salary and to allow Supreme Court justices to take speaking fees
PrpPublica: “In early January 2000, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was at a five-star beach resort in Sea Island, Georgia, hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. After almost a decade on the court, Thomas had grown frustrated with his financial situation, according to friends. He had recently started raising his young grandnephew, and Thomas’… Continue Reading
NCSC resource tracks mandatory judicial retirement age
NCSC has updated its report on State Judicial Retirement Plans to include a Mandatory Retirement Age tab, which tracks the mandatory retirement ages of judges across the country. In the last decade, voters and legislatures have rejected increases to mandatory judicial retirement ages in eight states. NCSC now offers a data visualization map showing mandatory retirement ages. The… Continue Reading
GIS Technology to assist in identifying “legal deserts”
“NCSC has recently started utilizing Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping technology to assist state courts in identifying “legal deserts” – areas where people may face challenges accessing legal resources and services. GIS technology can help courts gain deeper insights into the needs of people living in legal deserts by generating legal desert maps that consider access-to-justice… Continue Reading
5 Takeaways From Inside the Overturning of Roe v. Wade
The New York Times – A Times investigation [read free] reveals the behind-the-scenes story of how the Supreme Court abolished the constitutional right to abortion. “By the time the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, a draft of the ruling had been leaked to the press and the outcome was anticipated. The story… Continue Reading
The Judiciary Has Policed Itself for Decades. It Doesn’t Work.
ProPublica: “For decades, judges have relied on a select group to make sure the judiciary adheres to the highest ethical standards: themselves. The Judicial Conference, a secretive, century-old council of federal judges led by the chief justice of the Supreme Court, oversees the ethics and financial disclosures for more than 1,700 federal judges, including the… Continue Reading
Judges Given the OK to Use ChatGPT in Legal Rulings
Gizmodo: “Robots may help determine your legal fate if you end up in a British court. The UK Judicial Office issued guidance Tuesday permitting judges to use ChatGPT and other AI tools to write legal rulings and perform several other tasks. “The use of Artificial Intelligence (‘AI’) throughout society continues to increase, and so does… Continue Reading
Google’s Antitrust Loss to Epic Could Preview Its Legal Fate in 2024
The New York Times: “Google’s loss was swift after a monthlong antitrust trial in a San Francisco federal court. A little more than three hours after a jury had begun deliberating on Monday, they returned with their verdict. There were 11 antitrust claims that Epic Games, the maker of the hit videogame Fortnite, had brought… Continue Reading
Care Post-Roe: Documenting cases of poor-quality care since the Dobbs decision
New Data Show Nearly One in Five US Abortion Patients Are Traveling Out of State for Care – December 2023 update – The Guttmacher Institute has released new data from the Monthly Abortion Provision Study, which tracks monthly estimates of procedural and medication abortions provided in the formal US health care system. In addition to… Continue Reading
The IUROPA CJEU Database
EU court cases – via Jeremy Singer Vine / Data is Plual: The IUROPA Project’s CJEU Database “is the most complete collection of research-ready data about the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and European Union (EU) law.” Developed from several official sources by Stein Arne Brekke et al., the database provides tables… Continue Reading
We Should Get Paid for Our Online Data
TIME: “Since January 2023, the United States Department of Justice along with the Attorneys General of California, Colorado, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Virginia, have been in court pursuing a civil antitrust suit against Google. And on Sept. 26, 2023, the Federal Trade Commission and 17 state attorneys general filed a… Continue Reading
The World’s Feminists Need to Show Up for Israeli Victims
Slate – Solidarity for victims of sexual assault should trump other politics. “Of all of the horrors coming out of the Israel-Hamas conflict, among the most horrible are the barbaric murders, rapes, sexual assaults, and kidnappings of women and young girls in Israel during the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas. And yet, deepening this distressing… Continue Reading
