A public school system may suspend a student for posting ugly accusations about another student on a MySpace page, even though the activity was outside of school, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has decided. The decision addresses an issue still undecided by the U.S. Supreme Court: Whether schools can regulate out-of-school speech targeting other [...]

The great Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. once confessed that his greatest thoughts were the result of wrestling with those of others. “Life-transforming ideas,” he wrote, “have always come to me through books." Each summer for the last three years we’ve wrestled in these pages with the role lawyers play in the broadest range of our culture of literature—from the pages of pulp fiction to the grittiest portrayals on the silver screen. This year, however, we thought we’d turn our view 180 degrees and observe the effects of literature on some of the lawyers we know. Click here to browse our…

Think you had a harrowing time taking the bar exam? It probably can't compare to Elana Nightingale Dawson's experience. The 2011 Northwestern University Law School graduate sat for the Illinois bar in Chicago on July 27, and less than two hours after she finished gave birth to her first child, a boy who weighed in at 6.6 pounds. This was Dawson's first child, and she told the ABA Journal that it was not until Wednesday afternoon, while she was working through the bar exam's multiple-choice section, that she realized something was going on. But, what, exactly, she was unsure of.…

Florida’s Drug Abuse Prevention and Control law, which in 2002 was amended to remove language that intent was required for a conviction, was recently overturned in Orlando federal court. Defense lawyers there told the St. Petersburg Times that the July 27 order (PDF) will affect thousands of cases. The law violates due process, U.S. District Court Judge Mary Scriven wrote in her order. It involved the habeas petition of Mackle Vincent Shelton, who in is serving an 18 year cocaine sentence. Jury instructions in his state court case directed that for a conviction the government had to prove Shelton delivered…

A Wythe County Circuit Court says a VDOT construction project to expand an I-77 bridge damaged petitioners’ farm property because it affected their access easement and directed water onto their property, creating erosion ditches, and the owners are entitled to a condemnation award. The court must decide if damages arose from the 2002 expansion of [...]

A federal judge has ordered the release of former President Nixon’s grand jury testimony about Watergate. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth of Washington, D.C., found that the historical interest in the documents outweighed the need for secrecy, according to The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times. The transcripts won’t be immediately released, however, to allow the government time to appeal the decision. Nixon gave the testimony in 1975 after his resignation and pardon. “Nearly 40 years later, Watergate continues to capture both scholarly and public interest,” Lamberth wrote. “The disclosure of President Nixon’s grand jury testimony would likely enhance the…

Over the years, Title IX probes have languished as schools accused of denying females equal access to athletics are asked to investigate themselves and develop their own plans for change. A New York Times investigation found Title IX has spurred progress, but when schools don’t comply, the cases “drag on for years, long after the affected athletes have graduated.” The Office of Civil Rights is charged with enforcing the law, which punishes violators with the loss of federal funds. No school has ever lost funds, however, and no case has ever been referred to the Justice Department for action. “Scores…

The nomination of a former Kansas attorney general to a federal appeals court has been scuttled amid controversy over his stance on Obama’s health care law and an abortion clinic investigation. Neither home-state senator initially opposed the nomination of Steve Six for the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the Lawrence World Journal reports. U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts explained his changed stance in a statement issued Thursday to the newspaper. “After reviewing his testimony and written responses to the committee’s questions, I found his answers very troubling,” Roberts said about Six. “Notably, as Kansas attorney general, he failed to…

Corrected: Polygamous leader Warren Jeffs fired his defense lawyers minutes before trial on Thursday and then remained silent as the proceedings got under way. Judge Barbara Walther of the 51st District in Texas urged Jeffs to allow his lawyers to defend him as he is tried for having sex with two underage girls, one 12 and the other 15, report the Associated Press, Reuters, the San Angelo Times and the Wall Street Journal (sub. req.). Walther told Jeffs he had a top-notch defense team. "It's not as easy as it looks on TV, Mr. Jeffs," she said. But Walthers refused…

A public school system may suspend a student for posting ugly accusations about another student on a MySpace page, even though the activity was outside of school, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has decided. The decision addresses an issue still undecided by the U.S. Supreme Court: Whether schools can regulate out-of-school speech targeting other [...]