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Ten key points to consider in your book contract. 

http://www.ivanhoffman.com/points.html

The Publishing Law Center site provides legal information for the publishing community. 

http://www.publaw.com/

In June, Leaky reported that author J.K. Rowling had ended her association with the Christopher Little Agency.

The Telegraph has published a follow-up article to this story today, reporting that Ms. Rowling and Mr. Little reached a financial settlement outside of court. According to Mr. Little's spokesperson:

“JK Rowling and her former agent, Christopher Little, have reached an amicable agreement concluding their long-standing business relationship, the terms of which remain confidential. No further comments will be issued by either party.” 

Ms. Rowling is now represented by The Blair Partnership, a new firm launched by Neil Blair, her longtime agent at the Christopher Little Agency.

~*~
Special announcement: Leaky is looking for news editors! If you have what it takes, email us at news [at] the-leaky-cauldron [dot] org.

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By Louis René Beres

Osama bin Laden was assassinated by U.S. special forces on May 1, 2011. Although media emphasis thus far has been focused almost entirely on the pertinent operational and political issues surrounding this “high value” killing, there are also important jurisprudential aspects to the case. These aspects require similar attention. Whether or not killing Osama was a genuinely purposeful assassination from a strategic perspective, a question that will be debated for years to come, we should now also inquire:  Was it legal?

Assassination is ordinarily a crime under international law. Still, in certain residual circumstances, the targeted killing of principal terrorist leaders can be defended as a fully permissible example of  law-enforcement. In the best of all possible worlds, there would never be any need for such decentralized or “vigilante” expressions of international justice, but – we don’t yet live in such a world. Rather, enduring in our present and still anarchic global legal order, as President Barack Obama correctly understood, the only real alternative to precise self-defense actions against terrorists is apt to be a worsening global instability, and also escalating terrorist violence against the innocent.

Almost by definition, the idea of assassination as remediation seems an oxymoron. At a minimum, this idea seemingly precludes all normal due processes of law. Yet, since the current state system’s inception in the seventeenth century, following the Thirty Years’ War and the resultant Peace of Westphalia (1648), international relations have not been governed by the same civil protections as individual states. In this world legal system, which lacks effective supra-national authority, Al Qaeda leader bin Laden was indisputably responsible for the mass killings of many noncombatant men, women and children. Had he not been assassinated by the United States, his egregious crimes would almost certainly have gone entirely unpunished.

The indiscriminacy of Al Qaeda operations under bin Laden was never the result of inadvertence. It was, instead, the intentional outcome of profoundly murderous principles that lay deeply embedded in the leader’s view of Jihad. For bin Laden, there could never be any meaningful distinction between civilians and non-civilians, innocents and non-innocents. For bin Laden, all that mattered was the distinction between Muslims and “unbelievers.”

As for the lives of unbelievers, it was all very simple.  These lives had no value. They had no sanctity.

Every government has the right and obligation to protect its own citizens. In certain circumstances, this may even extend to assassination. The point has long been understood in Washington, where every president in recent memory has given nodding or more direct approval to “high value” assassination operations. Of course,  lower-value or more tactical assassination efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan have become a very regular feature of U.S. special operations.

There are some points of legal comparison with the recent NATO strike that killed Moammar Gadhafi’s second-youngest son, and his three grandchildren. While this was a thinly-disguised assassination attempt that went awry, the target, although certainly a supporter of his own brand of terrorists, had effectively been immunized from any deliberate NATO harms by the U.N. Security Council’s  limited definition of humanitarian intervention.

It is generally

Most people understand that breaking the law is wrong. Laws are there for a reason but they also get updated to suit more modern times. Or at least that is the theory. There are many laws in the world that are so outmoded it makes you wonder why they even still exist.

Here we will take a look at some of the most stupid laws still in affect in some of the states in America.

New Jersey

It is illegal to delay or detain a homing pigeon.

One thing about homing pigeons is that they tend not to stop and take a rest, so how on earth would someone be able to detain it anyway? As for delay it, well that is just ridiculous. Anyway, who actually still uses homing pigeons; phone, fax, letters, e-mails, text messages etc; much quicker and easier. One of the most stupid laws still in affect.

It is illegal to slurp your soup.

Social etiquette is one thing, I mean slurping your soup may not be the most polite thing to do but for it to be illegal is just plain stupid. More to the point who is actually going to enforce it?

Kentucky 

It is illegal to not take a bath at least once a month.

Ok, let’s be honest here, general cleanliness tells you that to not wash for more than a month is a very bad thing. Now obviously when this law was written there was no such thing as a shower (unless you count pouring water through a colander over your head as a shower. lol) so this law does mean that you have to wash yourself at least once a month. Really? Talk about stating the obvious. Does there really need to be a law to tell people this?

It gets worse.

It is illegal to dye a duckling blue and offer it for sale unless more than six are for sale at once.

Just another law that raises more questions than it answers. So what is it trying to say really? You are allowed to dye a duckling blue but not sell it. You can only sell a dyed blue duckling if you have six of them. Anyway, I am sure animal protection might have something to say if someone tried testing this law. Oooh, that gives me an idea. lol

Florida

It is illegal to walk your alligator on a Sunday without a tie.

Wait a minute, what does this one even mean? Does the alligator have to wear a tie? Is it the person walking it that has to wear a tie? In fact more to the point, who actually takes an alligator for a walk? Does anyone actually own an alligator as a pet these days?

Surely that is one of the most stupid laws still in affect. Nope it gets worse.

You must tie up your horse on the left side of the road.

Yeah because tying it up on the right hand side would be a major disaster, the whole world will end; you have been warned. lol Seriously though, just another example of a law that, way back when, was probably very sensible but not in modern times.

New York 

It is against the law to put money in another persons meter.

So, picture this; you are walking down the road and you see that one of the meters has nearly run out with no sign of the driver. Feeling a bit generous, you decide to drop a bit of money in; a random act of kindness. Across the road stands a police officer who sees you do this, comes over to you and arrests you. What a stupid law.
.

It is against the law to spit on the sidewalk.

Yeah there is an argument that spitting is disgusting anyway, but to make it illegal is just stupid. And anyway, does this law mean that someone can spit on the road and not be breaking the law? What happens if someone aims for the road but a large gust of wind blows it onto the sidewalk? For that matter, what if you are just walking along happily when a fly flies into your mouth? Do you have to swallow it and enjoy the taste? Either that or spit it out and run the risk of being arrested apparently!

I hope you have found something in here that brought a smile to your face. Perhaps you know of other stupid laws and would like to share them.

The worst one i found was on a site called dumblaws.com which i searched to try to fix an issue with this article. This one is from Florida once again.

Florida

It is illegal to fart after 6pm in a public building.

Bo Jack Russo this law was added on at the end just for you. You are always talking about farting so I figured that you may want to know this one before you ever decide to take a vacation in Florida.lol

Most people understand that breaking the law is wrong. Laws are there for a reason but they also get updated to suit more modern times. Or at least that is the theory. There are many laws in the world that are so outmoded it makes you wonder why they even still exist.

Here we will take a look at some of the most stupid laws still in affect in some of the states in America.

New Jersey

It is illegal to delay or detain a homing pigeon.

One thing about homing pigeons is that they tend not to stop and take a rest, so how on earth would someone be able to detain it anyway? As for delay it, well that is just ridiculous. Anyway, who actually still uses homing pigeons; phone, fax, letters, e-mails, text messages etc; much quicker and easier. One of the most stupid laws still in affect.

It is illegal to slurp your soup.

Social etiquette is one thing, I mean slurping your soup may not be the most polite thing to do but for it to be illegal is just plain stupid. More to the point who is actually going to enforce it?

Kentucky 

It is illegal to not take a bath at least once a month.

Ok, let’s be honest here, general cleanliness tells you that to not wash for more than a month is a very bad thing. Now obviously when this law was written there was no such thing as a shower (unless you count pouring water through a colander over your head as a shower. lol) so this law does mean that you have to wash yourself at least once a month. Really? Talk about stating the obvious. Does there really need to be a law to tell people this?

It gets worse.

It is illegal to dye a duckling blue and offer it for sale unless more than six are for sale at once.

Just another law that raises more questions than it answers. So what is it trying to say really? You are allowed to dye a duckling blue but not sell it. You can only sell a dyed blue duckling if you have six of them. Anyway, I am sure animal protection might have something to say if someone tried testing this law. Oooh, that gives me an idea. lol

Florida

It is illegal to walk your alligator on a Sunday without a tie.

Wait a minute, what does this one even mean? Does the alligator have to wear a tie? Is it the person walking it that has to wear a tie? In fact more to the point, who actually takes an alligator for a walk? Does anyone actually own an alligator as a pet these days?

Surely that is one of the most stupid laws still in affect. Nope it gets worse.

You must tie up your horse on the left side of the road.

Yeah because tying it up on the right hand side would be a major disaster, the whole world will end; you have been warned. lol Seriously though, just another example of a law that, way back when, was probably very sensible but not in modern times.

New York 

It is against the law to put money in another persons meter.

So, picture this; you are walking down the road and you see that one of the meters has nearly run out with no sign of the driver. Feeling a bit generous, you decide to drop a bit of money in; a random act of kindness. Across the road stands a police officer who sees you do this, comes over to you and arrests you. What a stupid law.
.

It is against the law to spit on the sidewalk.

Yeah there is an argument that spitting is disgusting anyway, but to make it illegal is just stupid. And anyway, does this law mean that someone can spit on the road and not be breaking the law? What happens if someone aims for the road but a large gust of wind blows it onto the sidewalk? For that matter, what if you are just walking along happily when a fly flies into your mouth? Do you have to swallow it and enjoy the taste? Either that or spit it out and run the risk of being arrested apparently!

I hope you have found something in here that brought a smile to your face. Perhaps you know of other stupid laws and would like to share them.

The worst one i found was on a site called dumblaws.com which i searched to try to fix an issue with this article. This one is from Florida once again.

Florida

It is illegal to fart after 6pm in a public building.

Bo Jack Russo this law was added on at the end just for you. You are always talking about farting so I figured that you may want to know this one before you ever decide to take a vacation in Florida.lol

Although not quite a week since the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in movie theaters, counterfeit copies of the film are already making the rounds. News today out of England brings word that a raid on a car boot sale in Stafford "resulted in the seizure of more than 10,000 counterfeit discs, including the new Harry Potter film, the Half Blood Prince. The paper continued:

"Offi... Read the rest of this post

A followup today regarding the legal case involving actor Jamie Waylett (Crabbe), who earlier this month plead guilty to growing cannabis plants at a residence in London, England. Today, the AP reports that Jamie was sentenced to to 120 hours of community service. The report continues:  Judge Timothy Workman said Tuesday that he accepted that the cultivation was on a small scale and for Waylett... Read the rest of this post

A followup today regarding the case involving actor Jamie Waylett (Vincent Crabbe) and his arrest involving possession of an illegal substance. Appearing at the City of Westminster Magistrates' Court in London, England, the Telegraph reports Jamie plead guilty to growing ten Cannabis plants at his mothers home in England.  Readers will recall that Jamie (19) and a friend John Innis (20) were bo... Read the rest of this post

By Edward Zelinsky

When President Bush nominated my law school classmate Circuit Judge Samuel A. Alito, Jr., to the U.S. Supreme Court, I supported Judge Alito’s confirmation to the high court. Now that President Obama has nominated Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, I favor her confirmation as well. To those who view the Supreme Court primarily as a forum for partisan struggle, this conclusion will seem anomalous. To those concerned about the rule of law, this conclusion will seem compelling.

In earlier times, Presidents reached across party lines in making Supreme Court appointments. President Truman, for example, appointed to the Court Senator Harold H. Burton of Ohio, a Republican. President Eisenhower similarly crossed party lines to nominate to the Supreme Court Judge William J. Brennan, Jr., a New Jersey Democrat. In today’s environment, such bi-partisan appointments are inconceivable.

When President Bush, with a Republican-controlled Senate, confronted a vacancy on the Court in 2005, the realistic expectation was that he would appoint a professionally qualified Republican. Judge Alito easily met that criterion and was properly confirmed by the Senate.

I supported Justice Alito’s confirmation not because I concur with every decision he has made or is likely to make. Indeed, I have disagreed with several of (now) Justice Alito’s decisions, most recently, District of Columbia v. Heller in which the Court read the Second Amendment as invalidating a gun control law of the District of Columbia. I supported Justice Alito’s confirmation because of his professional distinction, not because of his political ideology.

Similar observations apply to Judge Sotomayor. I will not agree with every decision she will make on the high court. Indeed, I disagreed with her participation as an appellate judge in Ricci v. DeStefano, which invalidated New Haven’s promotional examination for firefighters because too many white males passed the test. Recently, a five justice majority of the Supreme Court concluded that, indeed, Ricci was wrongly decided.

However, the relevant question is, given the pool from which Barack Obama will appoint Supreme Court justices, did the President pick a lawyer who is professionally qualified to sit on the nation’s highest court? By that criterion, Judge Sotomayor passes muster.

There are commentators, many quite distinguished, who find naive an emphasis upon a judge’s professional credentials. From their vantage, the Supreme Court has been and will continue to be nothing more than a cockpit of partisan struggle. Concern about professional qualifications is, from this vantage, at best unsophisticated, at worst a smokescreen for other agendas.

I respectfully suggest that it is those commentators who are indulging in naivete. President Bush in 2005 was going to place a conservative Republican on the Supreme Court. Similarly, in 2009, President Obama will place a liberal Democrat on the Supreme Court. Given those political realities, the question becomes whether the President, in satisfying his political imperatives, has nominated to the Court a professionally qualified appointee.

The professional qualifications of judges matter because of the role the courts play in our national life. Courts are where Americans go for the fair, principled application of law administered by a judge who is guided, not by the identity of the parties, but by legal norms and standards. All too often, the reality falls short of this ideal. Nevertheless, this ideal is an important part of America’s self-image and of our success as a nation: We believe in the rule of law. Our judges should thus be more than partisans. They should be legal professionals in the best sense of that term, knowledgeable, hardworking craftsmen who seek to administer the law in a fair and principled fashion. This commitment to professionalism should start with the judges at the pinnacle of the legal system.

To be sure, judges, particularly Supreme Court justices, are also policymakers. Many of the cases reaching the U.S. Supreme Court are there because conventional legal reasoning does not resolve them. Consequently, much of what the Supreme Court does entails choices of policy and political philosophy.

It is accordingly appropriate for Judge Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing to focus, not just on her professional credentials, but upon the substantive issues she will address on the Supreme Court. Supreme Court confirmation hearings (a relatively recent innovation in our constitutional history) have become an important and legitimate part of our national conversation – though I would urge the Republicans to approach this hearing with greater civility than many of his Democratic interlocutors brought to Justice Alito’s confirmation process. Judge Sotomayor’s hearing should be a dialogue befitting constitutional principles, not a partisan slugfest.

In short, I was for Sam and now, for the same reasons, I’m for Sonia.

Yesterday there was an update in the case involving Robert Knox, the young actor who appears as Marcus Belby in the upcoming Half-Blood Prince, who was tragically murdered last May. As reported earlier, a jury in England found Karl Bishop, 22 guilty of the murder of Robert Knox, and today Mr. Bishop was handed a life sentence in jail for his crimes. The BBC reports:

Bishop, who was found guilty

Lawrence H. Tribe is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor and Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard University.  He has published more than 100 books and articles, argued more than three dozen cases before the Supreme Court of the United States and has frequently testified before Congress on a broad range of constitutional issues.  In his newest book, The Invisible Constitution, he argues that there is an unseen Constitution-impalpable but powerful-that accompanies the parchment version.  Tribe illustrates how some of our more cherished and widely held beliefs about constitutional rights are not part of the written document but can be discerned only by piecing together hints and clues from its design and history.  In the excerpt below we look at Congress’s power over States and Cities.

It should go without saying that liberals aren’t the only ones who would suffer buyer’s remorse were we to accept a text-only Constitution as our lot.  Consider an act of Congress-the “Above-Average Gun Violence Act”-that requires any city in the United States with a higher-than-average annual per capita rate of violent crimes involving the use of firearms to enact, within one month of the Justice Department’s release of the relevant annual figures, a gun control law  (i.e., a law regulating the purchase, sale, and possession of firearms) that has been submitted to, and approved by, the attorney general, who in turn is directed to approve no gun control law that is not “at least as strict as that of the city or county in the United States with the lowest annual per capita rate of violent crime involving the use of firearms.”  Would such a congressional enactment be constitutional?  Can the question be answered by looking at the imaginary statute on its face, or would the answer depend on whether the statute was being applied to a city other than the nation’s capital, the District of Columbia?

As to the District of Columbia, there would be no difficulty finding an affirmative source of the authority being exercised by Congress.  It would be the Article I, section 8, clause 17, stating that “Congress shall have Power To…exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Accepting of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States.” Whether acting directly, or through power it has delegated to the District of Columbia government, Congress is affirmatively authorized to regulate economic and social life throughout the nation’s capital, and thus to direct those whom it entrusts with governmental power over Washington, D.C., to adopt the firearms measures specified in the Above-Average Gun Violence Act-subject, of course, to any limitations we conclude the Second Amendment imposes on laws enacted by Congress.

As for other cities, it is at least strongly arguable that Congress, acting pursuant to the Commerce Clause, would be exercising one of the “powers…delegated to the United States by the Constituion,” as the Tenth Amendment requires.  The inclusion in the statute of firearms “possession” along with “purchase” and “sale” would, at least under modern precedent, be justified by the power of Congress, conferred by Article I, section 8, clause 18, “To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers,” on the theory that Congress could reasonably deem federal control of possession essential to effective enforcement of a federal ban on purchase and sale-a theory articulated most recently by Justice Scalia in connection with the congressional ban on the possession as well as sale of marijuana, even under close supervision by a state that permits medically licensed marijuana use.

At most, however, this analysis establishes that the imagined federal statue falls within the affirmative authority of Congress under the Constitution, leaving open the question whether the statute nonetheless runs afoul of some negative constitutional prohibition.

The most obvious one would seem to be the Second Amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bare Arms, shall not be infringed.” Does the statute “infringe” that Second Amendment right?

There is precious little judicial precedent, but a mass of academic writing addresses the meaning and scope of the Second Amendment, with a majority of scholars concluding that it is only each state’s “well regulated Militia” that the Second Amendment protects from federal interference, and a minority arguing that the preamble’s reference to the necessity of a “well regulated Militia” should not render irrelevant or totally dilute “the right of the people”- even as individuals unconnected to any organized state military force-”to keep and bear Arms.”  Sorting through this body of precedent and scholarhsip would be well beyond the point of this book; it suffices here to recognize that neither pole in this ongoing debate can point to decisive textual support for its conclusion and that both must rely on sources of meaning well beyond the visable text.

A District of Columbia statute undergoing judicial challenge as of the writing of this book raises the question whether, whatever else it might mean, the Second Amendment has either no application or at most a far less obust application to congressional measures to regulate firearms traffic, possession, and use in the nation’s capital. Even if the preamble of the amendment is not read to limit its reach to weaponry in the hands of state militias as such, that preamble might well be read to limit the amendment’s reach to federal control of firearms in the hands of citizens in the several states, as opposed to federal control of firearms in distinctly federal territoris, and especially in the seat of the federal government.  If that reading were adopted, then the imagined statute would seem to pose no great constitutional difficulty in its application to the District of Columbia.  But what of its application to New Orleans or Dallas or Los Angeles?…

Last May, we learned the tragic news that actor Rob Knox, a young actor who will be seen as Marcus Belby in the upcoming Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, had been murdered in London. Today, the BBC reports that a jury has convicted Karl Bishop, 22, and found him guilty of the stabbing of Rob Knox. The BBC states "Mr Knox was stabbed five times as he defended his brother Jamie from Bishop... Read the rest of this post

The government thinks books are a danger to children and mandates destruction of millions of kids' books starting February 10th, 2009. It sounds like the plot form a science fiction novel, but new regulations are all too real.

Edward A. Zelinsky is the Morris and Annie Trachman Professor of Law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law of Yeshiva University. He is the author of The Origins of the Ownership Society: How The Defined Contribution Paradigm Changed America.  In this article, Professor Zelinsky discusses the recent arrest of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich and the public maneuvering in New York for Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat. He concludes that the Seventeenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution should be amended to eliminate gubernatorial appointments of temporary U.S. Senators.  Be sure to check back next month for another installation of EZ Thoughts.

The arrest of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, along with the public maneuvering in New York for Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat, have focused attention on one of the anomalous features of the U.S. Constitution: the power of state governors to select interim U.S. Senators. While that gubernatorial power made sense two hundred years ago, it is not appropriate today. The Seventeenth Amendment of the Constitution should be amended to eliminate gubernatorial appointments of temporary U.S. Senators.

Originally, the Constitution authorized state legislatures to elect U.S. Senators. In this earlier age, transportation and communication were primitive by modern standards. It was difficult for state legislatures to convene and legislatures met less frequently than they do today. In this environment, if a U.S. Senator died or resigned, it was onerous, sometimes impossible, for the legislature to convene in a timely fashion to fill the resulting senatorial vacancy. It was thus sensible to authorize the governor to fill a Senate vacancy temporarily until the legislature could meet to elect a new senator.

Without that gubernatorial authority, it was possible under these pre-modern conditions for a U.S. Senator to die or resign while his state’s legislature was adjourned and for that state to consequently lack full representation in the Senate for an extended period. A temporary gubernatorial appointment was a sensible way to reduce this gap in senatorial representation until the legislature met to elect a new U.S. Senator.

The Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution switched the selection of U.S. Senators from the legislatures to popular election. This Amendment should have ended the tradition of interim gubernatorial appointments in favor of immediate special elections to fill senatorial vacancies. Such special elections have always been the method for filling vacancies in the House of Representatives. Once Senators were also elected popularly, special elections likewise became the logical method of filling vacancies in that chamber.

Instead, the Seventeenth Amendment retained the option of gubernatorial appointments of temporary U.S. Senators, though the justification for such appointments – the difficulty of convening state legislatures in an earlier age – had long disappeared. Recent events in Illinois, as well as the well-publicized efforts to influence New York Governor David Paterson’s appointment of Senator Clinton’s successor, highlight the mistake in retaining the once prudent provision for gubernatorial selection of interim U.S. Senators.

In the modern age, it is anomalous for governors to continue to appoint temporary U.S. Senators, a vestigial power reflecting the primitive communications and transportation of an earlier period when legislatures picked U.S. Senators. When a Senate vacancy occurs today, the voters should immediately replace their U.S. Senator through a special election. The Seventeenth Amendment should be amended to eliminate gubernatorial appointments of temporary U.S. senators.

If that happens, Governor Blagojevich will have inadvertently helped to improve the U.S. Constitution.

As we reported in September, Judge Robert Patterson ruled in favor of J.K. Rowling and Warner Brothers in the copyright case against RDR Books, publisher of the book version of the Harry Potter Lexicon website. RDR Books has now officially filed a notice of appeal. An actual appeal will follow.

A court in the UK has refused to hear an appeal filed by Big Pictures LTD in regards to a case involving a photo of the young child of author J.K. Rowling. The Harry Potter author and her husband Dr. Neil Murray had won an appeal in May of the case they brought seeking to protect the privacy of their children, in specific photos of their young son that were published in a UK paper several years... Read the rest of this post

Paul M. Collins, Jr. is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of North Texas. He is author of Friends of the Supreme Court: Interest Groups and Judicial Decision Making which explores how organized interests influence the justices’ decision making, including how the justices vote and whether they choose to author concurrences and dissents. In this article, Collins discusses the differences between John McCain and Barack Obama relating to their likely appointments to the federal courts.

One of the most significant choices presidents make involves the selection of federal judges. Through these decisions, presidents, with the advice and consent of the Senate, are able to leave their mark on the American political system long after they leave office. In the last forty years, each president has appointed an average of two Supreme Court justices, whose service on the Court lasts about 26 years. Equally, if not more importantly, each president has appointed an average of more than 200 judges to the U.S. Courts of Appeals and the U.S. District Courts, who typically serve more than two decades on the bench. While less visible than the Supreme Court, these lower federal courts play a major role in the fate of legal and public policy. In fact, the vast majority of appeals in the federal court system are terminated in the U.S. Courts of Appeals, making these institutions the de facto courts of last resort in the federal judiciary.

Given the fact that the selection of federal court judges is one of presidents’ longest lasting legacies, the question remains: what types of judges will the presidential candidates, John McCain and Barack Obama, nominate to the federal bench? One fairly non-controversial factor is immediately apparent: both candidates will nominate qualified judges who will survive the scrutiny of the Senate confirmation process. In addition, it is likely that both candidates will seek to diversify the federal bench in terms of its racial, ethnic, and gender composition. Beyond these similarities, the presidential candidates exhibit stark differences in terms of their potential judicial nominations.

The primary factor that distinguishes the two presidential candidates centers on the ideologies of their likely judicial nominees. McCain, who is more outspoken about his potential judicial selections than Obama, would attempt to appoint conservative judges who fit the molds of Chief Justice John Roberts, former Chief Justice William Rehnquist, and Justice Samuel Alito—three of the most conservative justices to serve on the Supreme Court in the past forty years. Conservative judges tend to support restrictions on civil rights and liberties, favor the expansion of government funding to religious institutions, oppose affirmative action programs, and side with the interests of the states over the federal government in federalism disputes. While it is difficult to predict exactly who a president would appoint, potential Supreme Court nominees in a McCain administration might include District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Janice Rogers Brown, Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Emilio Garza, Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Edith Hollan Jones, former Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge J. Michael Luttig, and former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson.

Obama would likely move to appoint liberal or moderately liberal judges who share the judicial philosophies of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Justice John Paul Stevens. Liberal judges tend to reject limitations on civil rights and liberties, favor a clear division between church and state, endorse affirmative action programs, and support the interests of the federal government over that of the states in federalism disputes. Potential Supreme Court nominees in an Obama Administration might include District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Merrick Garland, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, Second Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Sonia Sotomayor, and Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw. Some have even entertained the potential nomination of New York Senator Hillary Clinton, although I think that is a rather far-fetched possibility.

A second and related issue that distinguishes the two candidates involves the politics of abortion. While neither candidate has indicated a willingness to use support for or against a woman’s right to choose as a litmus test, it is very likely that McCain would push to appoint judges who would restrict access to abortion, while Obama would attempt to appoint judges who oppose most restrictions on access to abortion. While I am confident that it is extremely unlikely that Roe v. Wade will be overturned by the Supreme Court because its central holding—that the right to privacy encompasses a woman’s decision to have an abortion—is embedded within American political culture, the ability of judges to expand or restrict access to abortions is nonetheless a powerful authority. This fact will not be lost on interest groups, which will elevate the abortion issue in their efforts to sway the selection of federal judges though both grassroots lobbying efforts and direct contact with members of the Senate. The high levels of interest group conflict over the next president’s judicial nominees will be made apparent to the American public as organized interests run internet, radio, and television ads centering on the next Supreme Court vacancy.

Finally, there is a pragmatic issue that must be kept in mind when discussing the presidential candidates’ potential judicial nominations. That is, it is very likely that the Democratic Party will not only maintain its Senate majority, but also expand the size of its majority by picking up additional seats in the 2008 election. This bodes better for Obama than McCain in terms of their ability to appoint judges with relatively strong ideologies to the courts. Simply put, it is very unlikely that a Democratically-controlled Senate will confirm an extremely conservative judge. However, there is little reason to believe that a Senate controlled by Democrats would interfere with Obama’s attempts to appoint strongly liberal judges. Given this reality, it is likely that McCain would have a difficult time appointing judges in the mold of Alito, Rehnquist, and Roberts, while Obama would have little trouble appointing judges who mimic Ginsburg and Stevens.

Presidential elections are about many things and, while the judges presidents choose are rarely at the forefront, judicial appointments nonetheless allow presidents to shape the American political system long after they leave office. In all likelihood, we will see two or more retirements from the Supreme Court in the next few years. The most obvious candidates for retirement are Justice Stevens and Justice Ginsburg, who are 88 and 75 years old, respectively. Both of these justices regularly vote with the liberal bloc of the Supreme Court, thereby giving the next president the power to substantially shape the future of this august institution. Moreover, history tells us that the next president will likely appoint more than 200 lower federal court judges. While less visible than the Supreme Court, these judges also wield considerable power in shaping American legal and social policy. The bottom line is this: Like it or not, there is no doubt that judges are policymakers. Because McCain and Obama differ in fairly substantial ways in terms of the judges they would likely appoint, it will serve the public well to consider the candidates’ potential judicial nominees before entering the voting booth to cast their ballots.

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Jon L. Mills is Dean Emeritus, Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Governmental Responsibility at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. Listed as Florida Trend magazine’s “Legal Elite” he also served as Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives for ten years.  In his new book, Privacy: The Lost Right, he provides an overview of privacy in today’s intrusive world.  The book explores the complex web of laws and policies that fail to provide privacy protection and identifies available protections.  In the post below Mills argues that the general public would care much more about intrusions to their privacy if they had a better idea of how often it is subtly violated.

A recent article suggests modern Americans, unlike previous generations, don’t care about privacy intrusions. I disagree. It is not that we don’t care, we really don’t know how often our privacy is invaded.

Citizens’ expectations of privacy have not changed. What has changed is the oft-invisible, technology-driven depth and subtly of intrusion into personal privacy.

A study reported that 84 percent of Britons polled said they did not give personal income information over the Internet when, actually, 89 percent “willingly” did. The real questions are: Did they understand what information they were revealing? Did they expose their income information knowingly?

People are unaware of privacy intrusions in everyday life because intruders don’t put the public on notice, unless it’s in the fine print. Yet, when people feel the effects of privacy invasions, they do care, deeply.

Imagine the Los Angeles woman who began receiving harassing contacts and telephone calls after an anonymous person in Berlin posted suggestive and salacious information about her on a dating Web site.

Imagine the parents of six young college students murdered by serial killer Danny Rolling when media sought to publish photos of their children’s mutilated bodies. Imagine racecar icon Dale Earnhardt’s widow, Teresa, when his autopsy photos were about to be posted on the Internet. I know firsthand how these families suffered because I was the attorney representing them in blocking these hurtful intrusions.

Ask the person who has lost his job, his health insurance, or his freedom due to compromised privacy data.

Citizens become privacy advocates when painful privacy intrusions affect them or their families.

Privacy intrusions are possible everywhere – government sources, anonymous bloggers, data brokers and the media all have the motivation and the technology to invade our privacy. Using the Internet and technology is not a license to surrender our privacy.

Citizens need greater awareness of privacy invasions and protections. Lack of knowledge does not equal lack of caring.

There are some things we cannot change. If you are in an accident, the press will write about you and maybe your family. If government is opening your email because of your recipients names writing or the things you write, you can change friends and topics. But, if we do not want to withdraw from modern society, we can do some things for ourselves. Read the boring privacy statements from your credit card company. Know how they are using your information and claim as much privacy as you can. Minimize the amount of information you give out in purchases, surveys and questionnaires-particularly over the internet. Always assume information you disclose in today’s world will be available to your neighbor or next date. Finally, let policy makers know you care about privacy.

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Just last week U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel handed down his verdict in the Lenz v. Universal case stating that thanks to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) copyright holders must have:

…a consideration of fair use prior to issuing a takedown notice will not be so complicated as to jeopardize a copyright owner’s ability to respond rapidly to
potential infringements. The DMCA already requires copyright owners to make an initial review of the potentially infringing material prior to sending a takedown notice; indeed, it would be impossible to meet any of the requirements of Section 512 (c) without doing so. A consideration of the applicability of the fair use doctrine simply is part of that initial review.

Just a Minute has been produced in video, and my first copies arrived on time for the celebrations.
The story is narrated by su servidora, yours truly. The producers at Nutmeg Media asked me earlier this year to do the recording where I read Just a Minute, counted from one to ten in English and Spanish, and also talked about creating the book.
So there I am narrating in English the story of Señor Calavera and Grandma Beetle in all my glorious Mexican accent. I would say I better get used to it because my English intonations are here to last me for the rest of my life.