Trump - Loopholes and workarounds Life under law _ Lithwick_Slate

Many lawyers and top law firms want to represent me in the Russia case...don’t believe the Fake News narrative that it is hard to find a lawyer who wants to take this on. Fame & fortune will NEVER be turned down by a lawyer, though some are conflicted. Problem is that a new......

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 25, 2018

DEFENSELESS
By Dahlia Lithwick/Slate
What’s really new here isn’t so much that no serious lawyer wants to work for Donald Trump; we’ve known that for more than a year. The revelation is that corporate America is built less on a formal system of laws and rules and norms than on an elaborate and expensive set of mechanisms for getting around that formal system.

In New York Real Estate Land, Multiple Divorce Land, and Repeated Bankruptcy Land, one can string together a lifetime’s worth of mandatory arbitration clauses, nondisclosure agreements, prenups, and frivolous lawsuits. The only legal system Trump can comprehend—and the only legal system the Cohens and the Kasowitzes are good at navigating—is one that consists entirely of loopholes and workarounds. That system, which runs on threats and intimidation and huge sums of cash, has made a lot of men who look and sound like Donald Trump obscenely wealthy. It is, like it or lump it, the American way.

Opinion | The 2016 Exit Polls Led Us to Misinterpret the 2016 Election - The New York Times

 White working class voters are now strongly "populist" - which is to me means racist and xenophobic.   But they carried the election (thanks to our unrepresentative system) for a minority candidate.

How to right that ship is the most vexing problem for liberals.

Why do more than 60% of white working class voters think that discrimination against whites is a bigger problem than that against African Americans or Hispanic Americans?  Can such attitudes be changed?  Obama had some success with his we're all in this together message.  The problem grows in severity as Trump "normalizes" blatant racism.  - gwc

Opinion | The 2016 Exit Polls Led Us to Misinterpret the 2016 Election - The New York Times

by Thomas Edsall

The Pew study, in contrast, found that the white working class cast 44 percent, or 60.1 million votes, of all the 2016 votes for president — 13.5 million more votes than in the Edison Research exit polls.

At the same time, Pew found that whites with college degrees made up 30 percent of the total electorate, not the 37 percent reported in the exit polls. In other words, Pew found that white working-class voters outnumbered white college voters among all voters, while the exit polls reported just the opposite.

These numbers have powerful ramifications for both Democrats and Republicans preparing for the 2018 and 2020 elections.

By showing that the white working class makes up a larger proportion of the electorate than previously reported, the Pew report — taken together with similar results in a study sponsored in November 2017 by the liberal Center for American Progress — strengthens the case made by Democratic strategists calling for a greater emphasis on policies appealing to working class voters and a de-emphasis on so-called identity issues.

FOSTA: The New Anti-Sex-Trafficking Legislation May Not End the Internet, But It’s Not Good Law Either - Lawfare

FOSTA: The New Anti-Sex-Trafficking Legislation May Not End the Internet, But It’s Not Good Law Either - Lawfare

On March 21, the Senate passed into law the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA).

Although the president has yet to sign the legislation, the bill’s effects are already being felt. FOSTA (known in a previous form as SESTA, or the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act) amends Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which provides tech companies immunity from most liability for publishing third-party content. Currently, only federal criminal law, intellectual property laws, and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act fall outside the immunity provision. In the years since its enactment in 1996, Section 230 has been characterized as “the Magna Carta of the internet,” as Alan Rozenshtein wrote recently on Lawfare. For its supporters, Section 230 immunity is credited with enabling the growth of online platforms as safe-havens for speech, even speech that platforms would be responsible for if it was expressed offline.

For the first time in twenty years, FOSTA carves out an additional statutory exception for that immunity. The idea is that online platforms should face the same liability for enabling illegal sex-trafficking, as offline outlets do. According to the bill’s oddly-phrased “Sense of Congress” introduction, Section 230 was “never intended to provide legal protection to websites . . . that facilitate traffickers in advertising the sale of unlawful sex acts with sex trafficking victims.” That provision continues, “[i]t is the sense of Congress that websites that promote and facilitate prostitution have been reckless in allowing the sale of sex trafficking victims and have done nothing to prevent the trafficking of children and victims of force, fraud, and coercion.”

FOSTA then goes on to provide that technology companies will not be shielded from civil liability if they knowingly assist, support, or facilitate advertising activity that violates federal sex-trafficking law, specifically 18 USC 1591. (Section 230 does not immunize platforms from federal criminal liability.) Currently, advertisers are liable under Section 1591(a)(2) if they knowingly benefit from outlawed ads. FOSTA not only carves out an exception to Section 230 immunity for violations of Section 1591, but it also redefines what constitutes a Section 1591 violation to include “knowingly assisting, supporting, or facilitating” advertising.

About Justice Stevens call to repeal the Second Amendment

About Justice John Paul Stevens call to repeal the Second Amendment

1) In an ideal world we would delete the Second Amendment

2) In an ideal world we would use privately owned guns only to kill animals we or our families will eat

3) In the best of all actual worlds the U.S. Constitution is neither sacred nor subject to Amendment except in rare circumstances

4) In the best of all actual worlds the effectively unamendable U.S Constitution creates a grossly unrepresentative government:

The 25 least populous states contain less than one-sixth of the total population.

California, the most populous state, contains more people than the 21 least populous states combined. They get 42 Senators. California gets 2 Senators. 1 person, 1 vote?

Google and Facebook remember EVERYTHING

Want to freak yourself out? I'm gonna show just how much of your information the likes of Facebook and Google store about you without you even realising it

— Dylan Curran (@iamdylancurran) March 24, 2018

John Paul Stevens: Repeal the Second Amendment - The New York Times

John Paul Stevens: Repeal the Second Amendment - The New York Times

Rarely in my lifetime have I seen the type of civic engagement schoolchildren and their supporters demonstrated in Washington and other major cities throughout the country this past Saturday. These demonstrations demand our respect. They reveal the broad public support for legislation to minimize the risk of mass killings of schoolchildren and others in our society.

That support is a clear sign to lawmakers to enact legislation prohibiting civilian ownership of semiautomatic weapons, increasing the minimum age to buy a gun from 18 to 21 years old, and establishing more comprehensive background checks on all purchasers of firearms. But the demonstrators should seek more effective and more lasting reform. They should demand a repeal of the Second Amendment.

Concern that a national standing army might pose a threat to the security of the separate states led to the adoption of that amendment, which provides that “a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Today that concern is a relic of the 18th century.

Active Shooter Response Training- ALICE Training

Appalling that we subject our children to this because so many in our country - and a Supreme Court majority - has embraced the absurd notion of a personal constitutional "right to bear arms".  If you want to know why I don't mourn the "brilliant, etc., etc." Antonin Scalia check out 
Active Shooter Response Training- ALICE Training

This is what democracy looks like!

The most perilous moment - Richard Haas

Richard N. Haas

"The liberal world order cannot survive on its own without the United States, its principal architect, backer, and beneficiary. Others lack the interest or the means to sustain it. The result will be a world less free, less prosperous, and less peaceful."

When an establishment leader like Richard N. Haas sounds the alarm as he did yesterday,  it is time to listen.   The President of the Council on Foreign Relations, he was Director of Policy Planning for the State Department during the presidency of George H.W. Bush.

.@realDonaldTrump is now set for war on 3 fronts: political vs Bob Mueller, economic vs China/others on trade, and actual vs. Iran and/or North  Korea. This is the most perilous moment in modern American history-and it has been largely brought about by ourselves, not by events.

— Richard N. Haass (@RichardHaass) March 23, 2018

Add another zealot to the White House - The Washington Post

Add another zealot to the White House - The Washington Post
by  Max Boot (Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Fellow, Hoover Institute)
***The job of the national security adviser is to coordinate all of the defense and foreign-policy agencies and to get them to work smoothly together. This requires the kind of interpersonal skills that Bolton singularly lacks. The national security system is chaotic enough under Trump; look for it to get worse without McMaster’s attempts to impose some discipline.

What Bolton lacks in management skills, he more than makes up for with his ideological extremism. A month ago he wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal making the case for a first strike against North Korea: “Pre-emption opponents argue that action is not justified because Pyongyang does not constitute an ‘imminent threat.’ They are wrong.” At least with Bolton on the job, there is less chance of Trump selling out South Korea in one-sided deal with Kim Jong Un. But the chances of failed talks leading the administration to launch a “bloody-nose” strike have gone way up — and such a strike, in turn, could easily escalate into an all-out war against a nuclear-armed state.***KEEP READING

‘Generally Known?”: ABA Clarifies Attorney’s Duty of Confidentiality | Legal Ethics in Motion

‘Generally Known?”: ABA Clarifies Attorney’s Duty of Confidentiality | Legal Ethics in Motion
Professional Responsibility and Ethics Program - University of Miami Law School

In December, the ABA issued Formal Opinion 479, clarifying the concept of “generally known” in ABA Model Rule 1.9(c)(1). Under the rule, “A lawyer who has formerly represented a client in a matter or whose present or former firm has formerly represented a client in a matter shall not thereafter: (1) use information relating to the representation to the disadvantage of the former client except as these rules would permit or require with respect to a client, or when the information has become generally known; or (2) reveal information relating to the representation except as these rules would permit or require with respect to a client.”

Confidentiality is one of the foundational concepts of professional responsibility, and an attorney’s duty of confidentiality extends to both former and current clients. ABA Model Rule 1.9(c)(1) provides that an attorney cannot use information related to the representation of a former client in a way that disadvantages that client devoid of their informed consent, unless that information has become “generally known.”

The “generally known” exception of Rule 1.9(c)(1) has been the subject of some debate. As such, the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility recently provided guidance on the connotation of this exception in Formal Opinion 479. Courts have held that information is “not generally known just because it’s a public record or in a court filing. The information must be within the understanding and knowledge of the general public.” Opinion 479 states that information is generally known if “(a) it is widely recognized by members of the public in the relevant geographic area; or (b) it is widely recognized in the former client’s industry, profession or trade.” The ABA Opinion adds that information can become widely recognized through “traditional media sources, such as newspapers, magazines, radio or television; through publication on internet websites; or through social media.”

Additionally, the Opinion states that “information that is publicly available is not necessarily generally known.” “Certainly, if information is publicly available but requires specialized knowledge or expertise to locate, it is not generally known within the meaning of Model Rule 1.9(c)(1).” The opinion adds that “for information to be generally known, it must previously have been revealed by some source other than the lawyer or the lawyer’s agents.”

Opinion 479 is in concurrence with numerous state bar ethics opinions, such as the 2017 New York State Bar Association Committee on Professional Ethics, which state that “information is not ‘generally known’ simply because it is in the public domain or available in a public file.”

Read ABA Formal Opinion 479 here. To read the ABA Journal article on the Opinion, click here.

Attorney-Client Relationship | Legal Ethics in Motion

Attorney-Client Relationship | Legal Ethics in Motion
by Professionl Responsibility and Ethics Program/ University of Miami Law School

Last month a Tampa attorney settled a case brought against her by the Florida Bar for, among other things, charging excessive fees. The Florida Bar’s complaint specifically stated that the attorney’s “hourly rate of $400 per hour for the services of law clerks was clearly excessive.” While the Florida Bar has brought claims against attorneys for unethical billing practices, it has generally avoided the question of law clerk fees. This case clarifies that, in the eyes of the Florida Bar, law clerks are non-lawyers and cannot be billed at the same rate as an attorney admitted to the state bar.

The Florida Rules of Professional Conduct Rule 4-1.5 states that when determining reasonable fees, a factor to be considered is “the time and labor required, the novelty, complexity, and difficulty of the questions involved, and the skill requisite to perform the legal service properly.” When the attorney is participating only in overseeing or partially conducting research, the hours billed should not be the same as when he or she is performing the actions themselves. The Rules also consider all factors when determining an excessive fee. Here, the court found the total number of hours charged at $400 was clearly excessive as well.

Read more about the case here, and the Florida rules here.

Trump Considers Reshuffling Legal Team as He Takes On Mueller More Aggressively - The New York Times

Trump Considers Reshuffling Legal Team as He Takes On Mueller More Aggressively - The New York Times
by Michael Schmidt and Maggie Haberman
In another sign of the president’s more aggressive posture, on Monday he hired Joseph E. diGenova, a longtime Washington lawyer who has appeared regularly on Fox News in recent months to claim that the F.B.I. and the Justice Department had manufactured evidence against Mr. Trump to aid Hillary Clinton.

Remember all of history - Mitch Landrieu-Trevor Noah Interview

What We Know, and Don’t Know, About the Firing of Andrew McCabe - Lawfare

After all the appropriate cautions Wittes and Jurecic explain the rush to judgment - to force McCabe out before he retired as the final step in a long, vicious, and venal campaign by Tweets to get McCabe out.  It is obviously part of Trump's efforts to block the investigation of Trump's campaign and his finances. - gwc
What We Know, and Don’t Know, About the Firing of Andrew McCabe - Lawfare
by Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes

Anyone who is confidently pronouncing on the merits of Andrew McCabe’s firing Friday night is venturing well beyond the realm of known facts.

We certainly understand the instinct to rally to McCabe’s defense at a time when the president is issuing triumphant tweets and White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders is declaring him a “bad actor.” McCabe’s dismissal comes as part of a broader purge of the senior FBI leadership and specifically targets a man who behaved with extraordinary courage and dignity in the wake of James Comey’s firing last year. It is only natural for those repulsed by the president’s broader interactions with the FBI to assume the worst.

But on McCabe’s innocence or culpability for some infraction that might justify his dismissal, we will reserve judgment—and we caution others to as well. It is simply not clear at this stage whether or not the record will support his dismissal. KEEP READING

Former CIA Director Brennan denounces Trump for McCabe firing

 John Brennan , the former CIA Director, now a Distinguished Fellow at Fordham's Center for National Security Studies denounces Trump.

When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history. You may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but you will  not destroy America...America will triumph over you. https://t.co/uKppoDbduj

— John O. Brennan (@JohnBrennan) March 17, 2018

The War on Terror as the Launching of an American Crusade – LobeLog

With God on our side...
The War on Terror as the Launching of an American Crusade – LobeLog

by James Carroll

America may be sinking ever deeper into the moral morass of the Trump era, but if you think the malevolence of this period began with him, think again. The moment I still dwell on, the moment I believe ignited the vast public disorder that is now our all-American world, has been almost completely forgotten here.  And little wonder.  It was no more than a casually tossed-off cliché, a passing historical reference whose implications and consequences meant nothing to the speaker. “This crusade,” said President George W. Bush just days after the 9/11 attacks, “this war on terrorism…”

That, however, proved to be an invocation from hell, one that set the stage for so much of the horror to follow.  The Crusades were, of course, a centuries-long medieval catastrophe. Bush’s Global War on Terror, in contrast, has already wreaked comparable havoc in a paltry 17 years, leading to almost unimaginable mayhem abroad and a moral collapse at home personified by President Donald J. Trump.

Despite the threads of causality woven together as if on some malignant loom that brought about his election — the cult of reality-show celebrity, the FBI director’s last-minute campaign intervention, Russian mischief, Hillary Clinton’s vulnerability to self-defeat and misogyny, electoral college anomalies, Republican party nihilism, and a wickedly disenchanted public — the ease with which such a figure took control of the levers of power in this country should still stun us. Some deep sickness of the soul had already played havoc with our democracy’s immune system or he wouldn’t have been imaginable.  Think of him as a symptom, not the disease. After Trump finally leaves the Oval Office, we’ll still be a stricken people and the world will still be groaning under the weight of the wreckage this country has brought about. How, then, did we actually get here?  It might be worth a momentary glance back.

A Fever Dream of a War

“This is a new kind of evil.”  So said the president that September 16th, standing on the South Lawn of the White House.  “And the American people are beginning to understand. This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a while.” In that way, only five days after the 9/11 attacks, George W. Bush elevated a band of petty nihilists to the status of world-historic warriors. “And the American people must be patient,” he continued. “I’m going to be patient.”

He, of course, is long gone, but what he initiated that day is still unspooling. It could have been so different. September 11th was a tragic moment, but the initial reactions of most Americans to those collapsed towers and a damaged Pentagon were ones of empathy and patriotism.  The selflessness of first responders that day had its echo in a broad and surprising manifestation of national altruism. The usual left-right divides of politics disappeared and the flag, for once, became a true symbol of national unity. The global reaction was similar. From across the world, including from erstwhile adversaries like Russia and China, came authentic expressions of support and sympathy, of grief-struck affection.

But in every phrase the president would speak in those weeks — “this is war… with us or against us… dead or alive” — he chose to take this country on quite a different path into the future.

KEEP READING

Sullivan on Sunstein on Impeachment

Can Donald Trump Be Impeached? https://nyti.ms/2GiErFN

Why the CLOUD Act is Good for Privacy and Human Rights - Lawfare

Why the CLOUD Act is Good for Privacy and Human Rights - Lawfare
by Jennifer Daskal and Peter Swire

A dozen privacy and human rights groups have opposed the bipartisan CLOUD Act regulating cross-border data access, claiming that it will erode basic liberties. They describe the bill as helping “empower” foreign governments to commit human rights abuses; endangering constitutional rights; and even, in an email sent to the Hill this week, undercutting LGBT rights around the world.

We respectfully disagree. Contrary to these claims, the bill would improve privacy and civil liberties protections compared to a world without such legislation.

This opposition to the CLOUD Act has so far focused on a provision authorizing the president to enter into executive agreements in order to facilitate cross-border access to communications content in the investigation of serious crimes.  Absent such an agreement, U.S. law requires foreign governments to make a diplomatic request for any such data that is U.S.-held, employing what is known is the Mutual Legal Assistance (MLA) process. There is broad consensus, however, that the current MLA system is slow, cumbersome and in need of updating to handle the growth of online cloud services and the globalization of criminal evidence.

The bill provides that needed update. It lifts blocking provisions for certain types of requests from certain rule of law-abiding governments: Partner governments can, pursuant to a long list of qualifications, directly request data of non-U.S. persons from U.S.-based providers without going through the MLA process. If the foreign government wants to request the data of a U.S. citizen or resident, it still needs to employ the MLA system. The bill sets forth a long list of privacy and human rights criteria as to the contours of those requests.

What’s more, for the first time, the bill sets up a mechanism for the U.S. government to review what foreign governments do with data once it is turned over. This is a privacy win—something that that no foreign government has agreed to in the past. In our view, these criteria will raise privacy protections on a global scale.

Russia wanted to Harm Hillarly clinton - Gowdy Statement on Russia Investigation | Congressman Trey Gowdy

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), Hillary Clinton nemesis, driving force in the Benghazi pseudo investigation is showing signs of independence since he announced he will not seek re-election.  He has announced that though he found "no collusion" the evidence nonetheless found that Russia was out to harm Hillary Clinton. - gwc

Gowdy Statement on Russia Investigation | Congressman Trey Gowdy

***It remains clear Russia sought to sow the seeds of discord and challenge the reliability of the 2016 election cycle. Russia is not our friend. Russia will do what it can, when it can, to undermine the foundations of our democracy.

It is also clear, based on the evidence, Russia had disdain for Secretary Clinton and was motivated in whole or in part by a desire to harm her candidacy or undermine her Presidency had she prevailed.

It is crystal clear Russia's ultimate goal was to turn Americans against Americans, undercut our confidence in the electoral process, and sow the seeds of discord. On that measure, we are in direct control—as Americans—of whether they succeed or not."

Mueller’s Choice of Criminal Charges: Why the Trump Team Should Be Very Worried | Just Security

We KNOW that the Trump campaign coordinated with the Russians.  Former foreign policy aide George Papadopoulos in his plea statement affirmed that his Russian contacts had stated their willingness to deploy emails to hurt Hillary Clinton.  And we know hat Trump, Sr. lauded the Russians.  There is a lot for the Mueller team to work on.  And they haven't even taken the testimony of the Donalds!
Mueller’s Choice of Criminal Charges: Why the Trump Team Should Be Very Worried | Just Security
by Sam Berger

Ryan Goodman recently highlighted an important revelation contained in the memo written by Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee: Not only had the Russians told the Trump campaign that they had dirt on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of emails, but they had also previewed for George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser on the campaign, that they could help with disseminating them.

This revelation would suggest significant legal exposure on its own. But when viewed within the broader context of what we know about the Russia investigation, it is further evidence of an extremely troubling pattern of interactions between the Trump campaign and Russia-linked operatives, which show an intertwining of two campaigns to elect Donald Trump: one run out of Trump Tower and one run out of the Kremlin.

Goodman and the experts he spoke with identified four types of actions that could create criminal liability for the Trump team stemming from this new information: If the campaign consulted with the Russians on their plans to disseminate the emails; if the Trump campaign gave tacit assent or approval or support; if Trump officials intentionally encouraged the Russians; or if they sought to conceal the facts of a crime. Just looking at the publicly available information shows the outlines of a potential legal case against members of the Trump team along these very lines.

As campaign finance law expert Paul S. Ryan points out, campaigns cannot coordinate with foreign nationals on any expenditure that seeks to influence a U.S. election. Coordination includes cooperation, consultation, or acting in concert with, or at the request or suggestion of the candidate or his team. A key word is “or”—each of those actions could independently suffice to establish a violation. KEEP READING

"A bundle of irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas"

2. Here's the main point: the contemporary right-wing in the US has become, in Lionel Trilling's immortal words, a bundle of "irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas." It's just a tangle of resentments & bigotries, driven by the erosion of white privilege.

— David Roberts (@drvox) March 11, 2018

On Prisoner Rights, Justice Gorsuch Is Precisely Who We Thought He'd Be | Brennan Center for Justice

On Prisoner Rights, Justice Gorsuch Is Precisely Who We Thought He'd Be | Brennan Center for Justice

 He went out of his way last month to protect officials at the expense of injured inmates.

Andrew Cohen

March 2, 2018

Justice Neil Gorsuch may have been curiously silent last week when a big public union case came before the Court. But he spoke eloquently one week earlier in an Illinois case about prison litigation that merits more attention than it so far has received. What the newest justice said, in effect, is that a dubious federal law used for decades to undermine accountability in cases of prison abuse and neglect ought to be even more protective of corrections officials and even less hospitable to inmates.

The Illinois case, styled Murphy v. Smith, was about who must pay attorney’s fees when a prisoner sues his guards and wins a damage award from a judge or jury. So this isn’t a case about a frivolous lawsuit. It’s a case about a meritorious one. Charles Murphy, the prisoner, was abused by guards at the Vandalia (Ill.) Correctional Center after he complained that the chair he was supposed to sit in for a meal had food and water in it. For that he was handcuffed and escorted to a segregation unit. Once there, Justice Sotomayor wrote in her dissent:

Murphy taunted respondent Correctional Officer Robert Smith, who responded by hitting Murphy in the eye and applying a choke hold, causing Murphy to lose consciousness. When Murphy woke up, Officer Smith and respondent Lieutenant Gregory Fulk were pushing him into a cell. His hands were still cuffed behind his back and he fell face-first into the cell and hit his head on a metal toilet. Officer Smith and Lieutenant Fulk then stripped Murphy of his clothes, removed his handcuffs, and left him in the cell without checking his condition. Thirty or forty minutes passed until a nurse arrived to attend to Murphy, who was sent to a hospital. Part of his eye socket had been crushed and required surgery. Despite the procedure, Murphy did not fully recover; almost five years later, his vision remained doubled and blurred.    KEEP READING

Why White Evangelicalism is So Cruel // Chris Ladd // Forbes

When you watch them cheering Trump, you know how little has changed. White.  Fundamentalist.  They won a victory when political correctness brought the change from `fundamentalist; to `evangelical' [which actually means spreading the Gospel] and `Bible belt' became unacceptable in the MSM.  Let's be candid - white is the part of their identity that matters most.  African Americans have been as "evangelical" as their white co-religionists and political antagonists. - gwc

Why White Evangelicalism is So Cruel  // Chris Ladd // Forbes
by Chris Ladd
"White Evangelical Christians opposed desegregation tooth and nail. Where pressed, they made cheap, cosmetic compromises, like Billy Graham’s concession to allow black worshipers at his crusades. Graham never made any difficult statements on race, never appeared on stage with his “black friend” Martin Luther King after 1957, and he never marched with King. When King delivered his “I Have a Dream Speech,” Graham responded with this passive-aggressive gem of Southern theology, “Only when Christ comes again will the little white children of Alabama walk hand in hand with little black children.” For white Southern evangelicals, justice and compassion belong only to the dead."

31,527 prisoners granted amnesty in 5 years: supreme court - Xinhua | English.news.cn

It is good to hear that death penalties are "extremely small" and only for "extreme" crimes.  But the transparency which otherwise characterizes China's courts is completely absent regarding the imposition of capital punishment.  Maintaining this state secret only guarantees the presumption outside China that the death penalty is not rare.
31,527 prisoners granted amnesty in 5 years: supreme court - Xinhua | English.news.cn

BEIJING, March 9 (Xinhua) -- A total of 31,527 prisoners were granted amnesty across China in the past five years, a work report of the Supreme People's Court (SPC) said Friday.

Chinese courts have strengthened efforts to protect human rights in judicial practices, according to the report delivered by Chief Justice Zhou Qiang at a plenary meeting of the ongoing annual session of the National People's Congress.

Death penalty decisions were strictly reviewed to make sure that death sentences only apply to an extremely small number of criminals for extremely severe offenses, it said.

The report noted that the SPC has worked with the Ministry of Justice to enhance the legal aid system.

Cases involving minors have seen declines for five consecutive years, according to the report.

A total of 2.67 billion yuan (420 million U.S. dollars) of judicial subsidies have been granted to victims who failed to get compensations to help them continue their life, it said.

Trump’s World and the Retreat of Shame - The New York Times

 When the Luftwaffe and their Italian fascist allies destroyed the town of Guernica in 1937 there was outrage - memorialized by the great Spanish painter Pablo Picasso.  There was outrage during the Vietnam war - over napalm, carpet bombing, defoliants, the Christmas bombing of Hanoi, and the slaughter of innocents.  But such shame and outrage are scarce commodities today.

Trump’s World and the Retreat of Shame - The New York Times
by Roger Cohen

After Aleppo, now comes the agony of Eastern Ghouta. This suburb of Damascus, the last rebel-held enclave close to the Syrian capital, is bombarded by Bashar al-Assad’s forces for weeks on end, with Russian air support. More than 900 people, including many children, are killed. Hospitals are targeted in what François Delattre, the French ambassador to the United Nations, has called “a siege worthy of the Middle Ages.” Pregnant women bleed to death. Some 400,000 people are trapped.

France and Britain convene an emergency meeting of the Security Council and press for enforcement of last month’s Resolution 2401, calling for an immediate cessation of hostilities. In this effort, the United States is nowhere, silent, AWOL, as President Vladimir Putin and his Syrian sidekick do their worst. The message to Moscow is clear: Donald Trump’s America does not care about Syria, or war crimes, or human rights. Russian cynicism and American absence produce disaster.

Yes, it has come to this.

Emmanuel Macron, the French president, calls Putin. He dispatches his foreign minister to Moscow and Tehran in an attempt to stop the slaughter. Trump, to whom moral indignation — indeed morality itself — is a stranger, does not care. His Middle East foreign policy has two components: Back Israel, bash Iran. With respect to Putin, he is compromised, or enamored, to the point of incapacity. Let Syria burn.

KEEP READING

Rakoff send Uber suit to Arbitration, denounces binding federal precedent

Rakoff sendS Uber suit to Arbitration, denounces binding federal precedent

BY JASON GRANT/alm

New York-based federal judge Jed Rakoff has sent a major antitrust price-fixing lawsuit against Uber Technologies Inc. into arbitration, albeit reluctantly, and dismissed the case from court.

But not before first devoting pages of his opinion in Meyer v. Kalanick, 15-cv-9796, to fiercely criticizing the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and the federal judiciary as a whole, for repeatedly upholding U.S. companies’ use of mandatory arbitration clauses that consumers assent to via internet-based customer agreements that appear on screens. Rakoff said such terms of service agreements “totally coerce” the consumer into waiving his or her constitutional right to a jury trial.

In two and a half pages of dictum that open the opinion, Rakoff, a senior judge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, spares no niceties. He makes clear that he thinks the federal judiciary has gotten an important constitutional issue wrong for years, and that the law must change.

“Thus, while [federal] appellate courts still pay lip service to the ‘precious right’ of trial by jury,” he wrote, “and sometimes add that it is a right that cannot readily be waived, in actuality federal district courts are now obliged [because of appellate court rulings] to enforce what everyone recognizes is a totally coerced waiver of both the right to a jury and the right of access to the courts—provided only that the consumer is notified in some passing way that in purchasing the product or service she is thereby ‘agreeing’ to the accompanying voluminous set of ‘terms and conditions.’

“This being the law,” he continued, “this judge must enforce it—even if it is based on nothing but factual and legal fictions.”***KEEP READING

Follow the money

Looking for an indictable offense?
Follow the money!
Could be a stormy day!

Remembering Professor Whitmore Gray- pioneer student of China Law

Whit Gray has died.  Like Jerry Cohen he was one of the earliest American academics and lawyers to engage with China.  An emeritus law professor at Michigan, he taught at Fordham for many years.   Whit - a multi-linguist - was the first to teach Chinese law at Fordham. He was a member of the founding faculty of Peking University's School of Transnational Law in Shenzhen.  

In 2004 Ben Liebman delivered to me the first draft of what became China's Tort Law in 2009.  I brought it to Whit who had translated China's 1986 General Principles of Civil Law and suggested he translate it.  Why don't you do it? he replied.  He gave me the glossary he had developed for his translation of the General Principles.  I took to the task.  My translation appeared first in the Chinese law review Private Law 私法 and then with commentary in the Fordham International Law Journal  in 2007.

Remembering Professor Whitmore Gray

Xi Jinping Amends China's Constitution - Jerome Cohen - Lawfare

Jerome Cohen - the NYU professor and former partner in Paul Weiss - is the godfather and mentor of all all who study Chinese law in the U.S.
He recognizes China's great progress - in normalization of government, and in economic development.  But he is a determined critic of anti-democratic practices.  Among them are recent actions against dissenting lawyers and lawyers fr dissidents.  Now is the aggrandizement of a sitting leader, putting him on a plane with familiar icons - Marx, Lenin, Mao Tse Tung; and now eliminating term limits for the PRC's President.  - gwc
Xi Jinping Amends China's Constitution - Lawfare
by Jerome Cohen

The instantaneous reaction to the momentous news that Xi Jinping will be eligible to serve a third term and beyond as chairman of China’s government is the most recent demonstration that we live in a connected world. Domestically, Xi’s bold move to amend his country’s Constitution, although undoubtedly popular with the masses, has clearly generated significant elite opposition. This has been visible even in non-transparent China, despite Xi’s stifling of information and free expression. Indeed, adoption of what could be life tenure for Xi apparently inspired considerable opposition even within the secret confines of the Communist Party Central Committee, which reportedly had to be dragooned into supporting his political coup.

The elimination of term limits for what are usually translated into English as China’s presidency and vice-presidency is only one of three crucial constitutional amendments about to be adopted. The other two are the enshrinement of “Xi Jinping Thought” and the formalization of government “supervisory commissions” that will strengthen what should be called the Inquisition with Chinese characteristics. Together they will expand Xi’s already fearsome powers over his countrymen and potentially extend his dictatorship into the indefinite future.

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Today's New Low "CRAZY"

Mainstream Media in U.S. is being mocked all over the world. They’ve gone CRAZY! https://t.co/4UGYuJpUA7

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 3, 2018

Lawyer Discipline in China: Insights from Zhejiang Province, China by Judith A. McMorrow, Sida Liu, Benjamin van Rooij :: SSRN

China's contradictions are many.  This week we saw the Communist Party propose a constitutional amendment lifting the ten year (two term) limit on the Presidency.  Critical remarks were blocked on Wechat - China's Facebook.

Lawyers have been disciplined for "fighting words" and what we would consider at most discourteous remarks about the government or Party.  Committee to Support Chinese Lawyers, housed at Fordham, has documented these abuses.

On the other hand the legal system continues to advance in competence and professionalism.  But all within the bounds of the ordained order - in which the CP's leading role is enshrined in the Constitution.  Boston College Law Professor Judith McMorrow and colleagues heere explore the contradictions in practice. - gwc
Lawyer Discipline in an Authoritarian Regime: Empirical Insights from Zhejiang Province, China by Judith A. McMorrow, Sida Liu, Benjamin van Rooij :: SSRN

Abstract
On paper, the state-run lawyer disciplinary system in China serves multiple interests: client protection, maintaining the reputation of the legal profession, upholding the rule of law, and safeguarding the party-state authority. This Article assesses which of these interests dominates in the lawyer disciplinary process by analyzing 122 published lawyer discipline cases from Zhejiang Province from 2007–2015. These records of lawyer discipline evidence an authoritarian political logic of attorney discipline, with punishment most clearly serving to safeguard the Communist Party’s rule by keeping lawyers in bounds and tightly tied to their law firms. 
Subordinate to this are other state interests such as upholding the legal system and rule of law, as well as private interests of protecting firm income. Client protection is a secondary interest at best, with only a handful of cases having clear client-protection goals. The dominance of party-state interests reflects not only the socialist legacy, but also the persistence of an authoritarian legality in contemporary China.

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