`I don't think it's OK' - Adam Schiff responds to GOP demand he resign from House Intel Committee

`I don't think it's OK' - Adam Schiff responds to GOP demand he resign from House Intel Committee
The cravenness of every GOP member of the House Intelligence Committee echoing Trump's call for Chairman Adam Schiff to resign is appalling.
Rep. Schiff responds forcefully.

Opinion | A Watchful Eye on Facebook’s Advertising Practices - The New York Times

Opinion | A Watchful Eye on Facebook’s Advertising Practices - The New York Times
by Olivier Sylvain // Fordham Law School

Before the Department of Housing and Urban Development on Thursday announced that it has charged Facebook with violating the Fair Housing Act by enabling advertisers to engage in housing discrimination, Facebook said that it would change its ad-targeting methods to forbid discriminatory advertisements about housing, employment and credit opportunities. This plan, announced last week, is part of its settlement agreement with the civil rights groups that filed suits against the company over the past few years. The substantive terms are not radical. But they outline a basic framework for how policymakers might begin thinking about reforming big tech in ways that are suited to our times.

Ever since reporting revealed in October of 2016 that Facebook allowed advertisers to exclude users by race, the company has denied any legal wrongdoing. If there is a problem under law, its leaders have said, it is with advertisers. That is why Facebook could claim that it was attending to discrimination by requiring advertisers to certify that they were not violating civil rights laws.

But this was always unconvincing because until last week, Facebook made it possible for advertisers to discriminate against users if they fell into a “multicultural affinity” classification like “Mundo Hispanico” or “Hispanic.” These categories are obvious proxies for race, ethnicity and religion. While people do not have to be a member of a particular group to fall into one of these classifications, the likelihood that they do is significant enough to justify them. This is, in part, why HUD filed a lawsuit against the company.

KEEP READING

Unpacking the Barr Letter re Mueller ~ Rosenzweig // Lawfare - Brookings Institution

Paul Rosenzweig carefully analyzes the ambiguities in Attorney General Barr's letter on the still secret Mueller report which reportedly concluded that the Trump campaign did not conspire with the Russian government to steal data and interfere in the 2016 presidential election.

The second aspect is that despite conflicting evidence Mueller decided not to charge Trump with obstruction of justice.  The key factors are likely difficulties of proof of intent (liars lying), and adherence to Justice Department policy not to charge if there is another remedy - here impeachment by the U.S. House of Representatives. - gwc
Unpacking the Barr Letter re Mueller ~ Rosenzweig  Lawfare

by Paul Rosenzweig (former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy in the Department of Homeland Security. He is a Professorial Lecturer in Law at George Washington University and a Board Member of the Journal of National Security Law and Policy.)

On March 24, Attorney General William Barr sent a letter to Congress that summarized the “principal conclusions” of the report filed the previous week by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The first of those conclusions—that the special counsel “did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities”—has been widely seen as a vindication of President Trump’s claim of “no collusion.” There are a few ambiguities, as my Lawfare colleague Robert Litt has pointed out, but in the main this part of Barr’s summary seems fairly definitive.

But Barr’s letter is far more nuanced (dare I say, unclear?) in its description of Mueller’s investigation into obstruction of justice, leaving some mysteries that need to be unpacked.

Traditional Prosecutorial Judgment

The Barr letter says that Mueller “considered whether to evaluate the [obstruction] conduct under Department standards governing prosecution and declination decisions but ultimately determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment.” What does this mean?

Well, first and foremost it is worth understanding what the Justice Department’s traditional standards are. They can be found in the Principles of Federal Prosecution, a manual created by the department to guide its employees in the exercise of their discretion. As the principles put it in § 9-27.220, the

attorney for the government should commence or recommend federal prosecution if he/she believes that the person’'s conduct constitutes a federal offense, and that the admissible evidence will probably be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction, unless (1) the prosecution would serve no substantial federal interest; (2) the person is subject to effective prosecution in another jurisdiction; or (3) there exists an adequate non-criminal alternative to prosecution.

So, a traditional evaluation begins with the obvious question: Can the government prove the case in court and obtain and sustain a conviction? 

Supreme Court justice warns of the ‘greatest judicial power grab since Marbury v. Madison’ – ThinkProgress

Supreme Court justice warns of the ‘greatest judicial power grab since Marbury v. Madison’ – ThinkProgress
by Ian Millhiser

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority on Wednesday appeared likely to execute what Justice Stephen Breyer described as the “greatest judicial power grab” since its 1803 decision holding that federal courts have the power to declare laws unconstitutional.

Breyer’s warning referred to Kisor v. Wilkie, a case for which the court heard oral arguments this week. Chief Justice John Roberts suggested in some of his questions during that session that he would prefer a somewhat more moderate decision than the outcome favored by the court’s right flank. So it is possible that the outcome in Kisor will only make incremental steps toward a goal popularized by the conservative Federalist Society during President Barack Obama’s time in the White House — transferring power from executive branch agencies to a judiciary that is increasingly dominated by the Society’s hand-selected judges.

Nevertheless, the court’s four liberal justices spent much of Wednesday in a defensive crouch, trying to warn their colleagues of the consequences that could result if their conservative colleagues toss out a legal doctrine that, according to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, stretches back to at least 1850.

Kisor involves the future of a doctrine known as “Auer Deference,” so named because of Justice Antonin Scalia’s unanimous opinion in Auer v. Robbins. That case held that courts should defer to a federal agency’s reasonable interpretations of its own regulations.

Unfit for office: George Conway ~WaPo

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-conway-trump-is-guilty--of-being-unfit-for-office/2019/03/26/0b5f851e-4ffd-11e9-88a1-ed346f0ec94f_story.html

When Trump Blocks You on Twitter, He’s Violating the First Amendment - POLITICO Magazine

When Trump Blocks You on Twitter, He’s Violating the First Amendment - POLITICO Magazine: This lawsuit lawsuit could finally give us a way to police the president’s attacks on the media.
by Joshua Geltzer and Laurence Tribe

55 years after first SCOTUS appearance, lawyer is back for second redistricting case

55 years after first SCOTUS appearance, lawyer is back for second redistricting case: 

Bondurant’s current age is 82, and he says he has no plans to retire or to quit his work to improve democracy through the courts.

“I’d rather spend my time doing that than playing golf, in part because I play golf so badly that the opportunity not to play is itself a positive,” Bondurant told NPR. “But this is really important stuff, and it’s very fundamental.”

Talking with folks in ME 2 from potato growing in Aroostook to lobstering in Stonington

Woke up thinking about the exchange I had ahead of the midterms in #ME2 — *a district that ultimately flipped red to blue* — with this brother-sister lobstering team:

“You guys know who Paul Manafort is?”
“I don’t.”
“How about Robert Mueller?”
“Nope.”pic.twitter.com/Y6vJSmpdWg

— Jacob Soboroff (@jacobsoboroff) March 25, 2019

William Barr doesn’t get to exonerate Donald Trump.

Obstructing an investigation into one's allies crimes IS a crime, Barr's assertion to the contrary notwithstanding.  The cover-up is a crime.
- gwc
William Barr doesn’t get to exonerate Donald Trump.: 
The attorney general doesn’t get to decide if Trump obstructed justice.
by David R. Lurie // Slate

No conspiracy or coordination. But lots of Trump-Russia ties and lies. - Max Boot - The Washington Post

No conspiracy or coordination. But lots of Trump-Russia ties and lies. - The Washington Post
by Max Boot
Trump has gotten a big and unexpected political boost from the end of the Mueller investigation. What he did not get was a clean bill of ethical health. Trump may not have “conspired” or “coordinated” with the Russian government, but he definitely welcomed its interference in the U.S. election (“I love WikiLeaks,”), lied to cover up the attack (“It could be Russia. … It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds”), and did his utmost to stymie investigations of Russia’s actions. Trump infamously preferred the false denials of Russian President Vladimir Putin over the accurate assessment of the U.S. intelligence community.

AIPAC is not the victim but the victimizer. – The Forward

AIPAC is not the victim but the victimizer. – The Forward
by Peter Beinart

[AIPAC] is a major force behind the Combatting BDS Act, which in the words of the American Civil Liberties Union, would encourage states to “require state contractors — including teachers, lawyers, newspapers and journalists, and even students who want to judge high school debate tournaments — to certify that they are not participating in politically motivated boycotts against Israel.”

Thus, according to the ACLU, the bill “would encourage states to adopt unconstitutional measures intended to suppress protected political expression.”

AIPAC is also pushing the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, which directs the US government to define “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination” as anti-Semitism.

Yes, Trump Obstructed Justice. And William Barr Is Helping Him Cover It Up. | The New Republic

Yes, Trump Obstructed Justice. And William Barr Is Helping Him Cover It Up. | The New Republic
by Marcy Wheeler
The hack-and-leak is not the crime Trump may have committed. It is, instead, a quid pro quo deal by which Russia would help Trump win and Trump would relieve Russia of the sanctions imposed for engaging in human rights violations, annexing Crimea, and hacking the election to help Trump win.

Mueller’s report didn’t indict Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, or anyone for the Trump Tower meeting. Why?

Mueller’s report didn’t indict Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, or anyone for the Trump Tower meeting. Why?: It would be extremely troubling if he didn’t indict anyone for the Trump Tower meeting because of the First Amendment.
by rick Hasen // UCLA

ASA Calls Time on ‘Statistically Significant’ in Science Research

It's a rare pleasure to be able to say "I told you so".  In this case I did. Almost 30 years ago I was arguing against over-reliance on measures of statistical significance and Relative Risk in making inferences of causal relationship in asbestos related disease.  After a few years I discussed my views in, among other things, a 1995 article titled "Against the Odds - Proving Causation of Disease with Epidemiological Evidence."  I relied on two leading thinkers - Sir Austin Bradford Hill, an architect of the studies linking smoking and disease; and South Africa born Columbia University epidemiologist and theorist Mervyn Susser.  Now the mountain is moving in my direction.   - gwc

American Statistical Association Calls Time on ‘Statistically Significant’ in Science Research

Scientists should stop using the term “statistically significant” in their research, urges the authors of an editorial in a newly published special issue of The American Statistician.

The issue, Statistical Inference in the 21st Century: A World Beyond p<0.05, calls for an end to the practice of using a p-value of less than 0.05 as strong evidence against a null hypothesis or a value greater than 0.05 as strong evidence favoring a null hypothesis. Instead, p-values should be reported as continuous quantities and described in language stating what the value means in the scientific context.

Containing 43 papers by statisticians from around the world, the special issue is expected to lead to a major rethinking of statistical inference by initiating a process that ultimately moves statistical science—and science itself—into a new age.

In the issue’s editorial, Ronald Wasserstein, executive director of the ASA; Allen Schirm, retired from Mathematica Policy Research; and Nicole Lazar of the University of Georgia said:

Based on our review of the articles in this special issue and the broader literature, we conclude that it is time to stop using the term ‘statistically significant’ entirely.

No p-value can reveal the plausibility, presence, truth, or importance of an association or effect. Therefore, a label of statistical significance does not mean or imply that an association or effect is highly probable, real, true, or important. Nor does a label of statistical nonsignificance lead to the association or effect being improbable, absent, false, or unimportant.

For the integrity of scientific publishing and research dissemination, therefore, whether a p-value passes any arbitrary threshold should not be considered at all when deciding which results to present or highlight.

The Trailer: What we learned about Buttigieg 2020 this weekend - The Washington Post

The Trailer: What we learned about Buttigieg 2020 this weekend - The Washington Post: In this edition: The Pete Buttigieg moment, the Mueller report and voters, and not quite an AIPAC boycott.
by Dave Weigel

Collusion Doesn’t Have to be Criminal to be an Ongoing Threat - Just Security

Collusion Doesn’t Have to be Criminal to be an Ongoing Threat - Just Security:  
by Alex finley, Asha Rangapa, John Sipher  DECEMBER 2017!

During the hearing with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on Wednesday, some members of the House Judiciary Committee did not try to conceal their attempt to discredit and derail Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election. The way that the Russia investigation has been framed has made it easy for them to do that: Its legitimacy appears to rest on finding a smoking gun of criminality – a simple yes or no on whether any of the cast of characters in this saga committed a serious federal offence.

But making this merely about the bright line between illegality (criminality) and legality means that most Americans are missing what is right under our noses. To wit, there is no question that Russia made multiple, unprecedented attempts to penetrate a U.S. presidential campaign, that its approaches were not rebuffed, and that its contacts were sensitive enough that everyone, to a person, has concealed them. These facts might never be adjudicated inside a courtroom – they may not even be illegal – but they present a clear and present national security threat that we cannot ignore. We write here to broaden the public understanding of that security threat, and to underscore why the principal part of Mueller’s investigation—which is a counterintelligence probe not a criminal one—is performing a vital role for our country.

Assets: Tools In A Toolbox

Pelosi, Schumer Joint Statement On Attorney General Barr’s Summary Of The Mueller Report - Speaker Nancy Pelosi

Pelosi, Schumer Joint Statement On Attorney General Barr’s Summary Of The Mueller Report - Speaker Nancy Pelosi: Washington, D.C. – Today, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi released the following statement regarding Attorney General Barr’s summary of the Mueller report.

Pelosi, Schumer Joint Statement On Attorney General Barr’s Summary Of The Mueller Report

MARCH 24, 2019

Washington, D.C. – Today, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer released the following statement regarding Attorney General Barr’s summary of the Mueller report:

“Attorney General Barr’s letter raises as many questions as it answers.  The fact that Special Counsel Mueller’s report does not exonerate the president on a charge as serious as obstruction of justice demonstrates how urgent it is that the full report and underlying documentation be made public without any further delay.  Given Mr. Barr’s public record of bias against the Special Counsel’s inquiry, he is not a neutral observer and is not in a position to make objective determinations about the report.

“And most obviously, for the president to say he is completely exonerated directly contradicts the words of Mr. Mueller and is not to be taken with any degree of credibility.

“Congress requires the full report and the underlying documents so that the Committees can proceed with their independent work, including oversight and legislating to address any issues the Mueller report may raise.  The American people have a right to know.”

What we know. ~ Marcy Wheeler

https://www.emptywheel.net/2019/03/23/after-mueller-an-off-ramp-on-russia-for-the-venal-fucks/

For Theresa May, ‘I’m a tin-eared lunatic’ seems to be the hardest word | Marina Hyde | Opinion | The Guardian

For Theresa May, ‘I’m a tin-eared lunatic’ seems to be the hardest word | Marina Hyde | Opinion | The Guardian: 

Arriving at the EU summit this week, Theresa May had that purposeful air of a school superintendent walking up the drive to the Addams family mansion, determined that Wednesday and Pugsley should be enrolled in a conventional educational establishment without delay. Some long hours later, May staggered back down the drive much as that school superintendent might, short of having no shoes and an actual bat in her electrocuted hair. 
 And so to the latest scenes in the Brexit farce. The formula for successful farce-writing, as laid down in the 19th century, is to get your character up a tree in the first act, throw stones at them in the second, then get them down in the third. As far as Brexit goes, the UK went up the tree voluntarily, and has now been throwing human waste at itself for two and a half years. 
Does anyone want to come and get us down? Sorry, it’s quite … disgusting up here now. We have been given a fortnight’s grace to get our shit together – which was almost the formal wording on the communique My sole point of light this week was being told that David Cameron had finished his memoir – and that the publishers want him to cut 100,000 words from it. No idea what that ....

The Duke myth

http://bostonreview.net/class-inequality/nan-enstad-debunking-capitalist-cowboy

Discriminatory Driver's License Suspension Schemes - American Constitution Society

Danielle Conley of Wilmer Hale and former associate Ariel Levinson have authored an issue brief on Discriminatory License Suspension Schemes published by the American Constitution Society.  Driver's license suspension for debt drives low income people further into poverty, often piling job loss onto more punishment for driving while suspended.  Many states have moved to ameliorate these burdens, awareness of which has grown since the U.S. Department of Justice highlighted the problem of the burdens of fines and court penalties place on low income people in Ferguson, Missouri.  
A New Jersey judge has declared void the state's automatic suspension policy for child support delinquencies.  Imposed without notice and without an opportunity to be heard on ability to pay, the state has been ordered in Kavadas v. Martinez to provide hearings and counsel at state expense.

Don't recognize Golan as Israeli territory ~ Hussein Ibish. Bloomberg

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-20/golan-annexation-by-israel-shouldn-t-get-u-s-recognition

Pete Buttegieg on James Joyce

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a26861236/peter-buttigieg-interview/

What the Candidates in Israel’s Elections Say about the Conflict – LobeLog

What the Candidates in Israel’s Elections Say about the Conflict – LobeLog: by Dahlia Scheindlin 972
The scramble to predict who might win the Israeli elections is understandable, but it begs a towering question: Will the next government actually change anything? To hone in fu…

Legal Deserts - Crisis in Rural America ACS/Harvard Law & Policy Review

 The American Constitution Society and  the Harvard Law and Policy Review have announced a new issue on the crisis of  justice in rural areas. 

The American Constitution Society is pleased to announce the release of Harvard Law & Policy Review (HLPR) Volume 13.1 Revitalizing Rural America. Published twice annually, HLPR is the official law review of ACS. This journal provides a forum for substantive debate between progressive legal scholars, policymakers, and practitioners, with a focus on promoting scholarship through practical application to societal challenges. Descriptions and links to the articles in Volume 13.1 can be found below. Foreword James J. Sandman and Ronald S. Flagg The President and General Counsel of the Legal Services Corporation describe the challenges of providing legal services to low-income rural residents and identify key strategies for meeting those challenges. Legal Deserts: A Multi-State Perspective on Rural Access to Justice Lisa R. Pruitt, Amanda L. Kool, Lauren Sudeall, Michelle Statz, Danielle M. Conway, and Hannah Haksgaard Six of the leading academic voices on the rural access-to-justice crisis survey legal deserts in California, Georgia, Maine, Minnesota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin, exploring common themes and the ways that justice system stakeholders—including legal educators—can fill the gap. The Neighbors Who Feed Us: Farmworkers and Government Policy- Challenges and Solutions Alexis Guild and Iris Figueroa Ms. Guild and Ms. Figueroa, of Farmworker Justice, highlight the vulnerability of farmworkers with respect to immigration, labor, occupational health and safety, and health-care policy, and propose concrete solutions to revitalize farmworker communities. Rural Blight Ann M. Eisenberg Developing an underexplored area of legal scholarship, Professor Eisenberg shows how blighted rural properties implicate law and policy and discusses solutions at the local, state, and regional levels. Rural Health, Universality, and Legislative Targeting Nicole Huberfeld Professor Huberfeld looks at state resistance to the Affordable Care Act and concludes that targeted legislation—as opposed to universal social programs like the ACA—can only minimally improve rural health disparities. Also featuring: Shelter-in-Place: Reducing Displacement and Increasing Inclusion in Gentrifying Neighborhoods Ryan Cohen Through case studies of Detroit and Los Angeles, Ms. Cohen examines gentrification and provides guidance on how governments can protect low-income communities from displacement and immobility with tailored policy interventions. Reforming Unemployment Insurance in the Age of Non-Standard Work Jeremy Pilaar The number of workers receiving unemployment insurance has declined substantially in recent decades. Examining this problem, Mr. Pilaar suggests that the rise of temporary, contract, and other non-standard employment may explain the change, and proposes reforms to combat this imbalance.

New Jersey Supreme Court Rejects Mandatory Malpractice Insurance, embraces disclosure of coverage

The New Jersey Supreme Court has issued a Notice to the Bar.  It has rejected in part, accepted in part, and deferred in part the recommendations of its Ad Hoc Committee on Attorney Malpractice Insurance.  It concurred with the November 2017 report recommendation that malpractice insurance not be mandated for all private practitioners.  The Court retains its Rule 1:21-1A that all limited liability firms must carry insurance in the minimum amount of $100,000 (multiplied by the number of attorneys in the firm). The Court concurred with its Committee that lawyers be required to publicly register evidence of the coverage they carry.  The Administrative Office of the Courts is directed to develop procudures to implement the principle.  And the Court announced that it will revisit at an unspecified date whether attorneys who lack coverage should be required to disclose that fact. - gwc

Birch Bayh - Senator of a more civil political time - GEORGE VECSEY

Reviews - GEORGE VECSEY: Birch Bayh called me at the Times about a decade ago. I was curious why a former US senator wanted to talk to a sports columnist, and of course I called him back. Now I can’t remember the reason he...

Why it's a mistake to be a-waitin' "the" Mueller Report (and why you should instead focus on two other reports) - Just Security

Why it's a mistake to be a-waitin' "the" Mueller Report (and why you should instead focus on two other reports) - Just Security: OLC’s governing view of the constitutionality of a grand jury indictment of a sitting president therefore doesn't stand in the way of DOJ providing a comprehensive account to Congress and the public of the facts uncovered in the Russia investigation.
by Mary Lederman (Georgetown Law School)

Last Thursday, the House of Representatives passed a resolution, by a resounding vote of 420-0, calling for Robert Mueller’s Section 600.8(c) report explaining his prosecution and declination decisions—a report he’s required to submit to Attorney General Barr at the “conclusion of [his] work”—to be released to Congress in “full” and to be released to the public “except to the extent the public disclosure of any portion thereof is expressly prohibited by law.”

In a new Op-Ed in the Washington Post I explain that this so-called “Mueller Report” probably won’t see the light of day . . . but that that’s not as troubling as it might appear at first glance, for two reasons.

First, we’ll already know most of what’s in Mueller’s report to Barr, because the information is already right out there in the public record, in the many grand jury indictments and other court filings that already are, or soon will be, widely available.  The only substantive parts of the report that won’t be transparent, then, are Mueller’s explanations of why he chose not to seek indictments of others — possibly including the President.

Second, Mueller’s report to Barr is only one of three or more “reports” that ought to emerge when the Russia investigation ends.  And at least two of those other reports, which will be submitted to Congress and parts of which may well become public, are likely to be far more revealing and more significant than the so-called “Mueller Report”:

(i)  Barr’s own Section 600.9(a)(3) notification to the judiciary committees—which presumably Mueller will have drafted in large part—can be, and should be, a comprehensive account of the Russia investigation, consistent with Barr’s promise to senators in connection with his confirmation hearing that because “it is very important that the public and Congress be informed of the results of the Special Counsel’s work . . . my goal will be to provide as much transparency as I can consistent with the law.”  That report might well reveal a great deal of factual information about President Trump’s actions involving Russia.  We should not expect it, however, to include Mueller’s assessment about whether there are grounds to ask a grand jury to bring criminal charges against Trump after he leaves office, nor to offer any conclusions about whether Trump’s conduct did or did not satisfy the elements of any particular criminal offenses.  Accordingly, as long as Trump is in office it will be up to the committees themselves—and Congress as a whole—to (in the words of the Jaworski road map) “determine what action may be warranted . . . by [the] evidence” presented in Barr’s notification.

(ii) It’s likely, however, that the most important “report” of them all will be the briefing that DOJ must provide to the congressional intelligence committees conveying the results of the counterintelligence investigation Mueller has superintended.  In order to comply with the requirement of keeping those committees “fully and currently informed” of the results of the investigation, that briefing—which will probably include at least some written document—should include Mueller’s assessment, if any, about whether, how and to what extent Trump is compromised or is otherwise unable to perform his constitutional duties on behalf of the nation when it comes to the Russian threat to our electoral system.  Does Trump have financial obligations to Russian interests?  Was he — and does he continue to be —motivated by the prospects of a Moscow Trump Tower?  Does Russian intelligence have kompromat on Trump that makes him susceptible to undue influence?  Or is there a more benign explanation for Trump’s otherwise inexplicable conduct regarding Russia and Putin?  The counterintelligence investigation’s answers to these and similar questions — especially its assessment, if any, of the President’s current capacity to address the foreign threat — are of far greater current importance to the functioning of our government than determining whether Trump’s conduct in 2016-2017 violated any particular criminal statutes.

Of course, the FBI and the intelligence committees rarely disclose the results of counterintelligence investigations to the public, for obvious reasons:  In the ordinary case, much of the information is classified because it could reveal sensitive sources or methods and because there’s an interest in not revealing to the foreign subjects of the investigation what our government has learned about their activities.  This is far from an ordinary case, however.  Congress and the public have a critical need to know whether and to what extent the president is compromised and whether he’s fit to respond to the Russian threat without fear or favor.  It’s therefore safe to assume Mueller will try to convey such information to the committees in a form that permits the greatest possible dissemination consistent with national security imperatives.  At which point it will primarily be the responsibility of the chairs of the committees — Richard Burr (R-N.C.) in the Senate and Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) in the House — to assess how much of the information they can and should share with the rest of Congress and the public.

In the remainder of this post I’ll try to fill in some of the legal details that space constraints precluded me from including in the Op-Ed, in the context of answering some of the questions the Op-Ed naturally raises.

ISP Liability: China's internet court said Wechat is not obliged to disconnect portal to a Mini-Program upon notification of copyright infringing content

This post is a stub.  This is an important decision which presents an opportunity to look at the notice and take down provisions of the 2010 Tort Law - which it is expected will be preserved in the draft civil code.  The Supreme People's Court in November 2014 issued a set of rules governing such claims.  I'll have more to say about this development. - gwc
ISP Liability: China's internet court said Wechat is not obliged to disconnect portal to a Mini-Program upon notification of copyright infringing content: In a recent decision issued by the Hangzhou Internet Court on 27 February 2019, the Court finds that Wechat is not liable for copyright infringing content uploaded to three Mini-Programs ran via its public account platform.
by Christine Yiu
Bird & Bird

In a recent decision issued by the Hangzhou Internet Court on 27 February 2019, the Court finds that Wechat is not liable for copyright infringing content uploaded to three Mini-Programs ran via its public account platform. The case relates to a copyrighted series of online psychology tutorials taught by a KOL. The plaintiff Daodou enjoys an exclusive licence of the online dissemination right to the copyright work. Daodou discovered that infringing copies of the tutorials were made available on three separate Mini-Programs ran by the first defendant Baizhan. Daodou thus complained to Wechat and requested that it uses its power as the platform owner to disconnect the three Mini-Programs.  Wechat argued that it does not have the obligation to do so under the law and also in view of objective technical reasons.

"I have the support of the police..." Trump warns

You can't say we were never warned. - gwc

Daniel Dale - Toronto Star

 @ddale8

Trump to Breitbart on how the left plays tough: "I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump — I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point and then it would be very bad, very bad."

7:10 AM - 14 Mar 2019

Tanker oil spill in the Bohai bay near Tianjin, China | EJAtlas

Tanker oil spill in the Bohai bay near Tianjin, China | EJAtlas: Collision of two vessels caused a massive oil spill in the Bohai sea leading to heavy pollution of the maritime ecological system. The following lawsuit served as a landmark for similar cases in China.

On Lawrence Freedman on Law & society

Legal Theory - Law and Society:  
Discussions of law are often divided between two very different perspectives -- what has been called the "external" and "internal" points of view. Prominent Law and Society scholars adopt a similar distinction when they call for an "outside" instead of an "inside" perspective on law. Most law schools (especially during the first year) concentrate on teaching an "inside" perspective, an internal - doctrinal framework as the model for "thinking like a lawyer." 
This internal - doctrinal perspective has some similarity to the "legal formalism" and "conceptualism" that Progressives and Legal Realists had been denouncing since the turn of the century. One of the most important characteristics of the formalism of late nineteenth century Classical Legal Thought was the way in which it represented its closed, internalistic point of view as "neutral, natural and necessary." The Law and Society movement arose as an extension of Legal Realism’s effort to criticize the dominantly internalistic point of view in Classical Legal Thought for having produced a "heaven of legal concepts" unrelated to the real world. 

The Law and Society perspective, like much of Legal Realism, treats law not as a closed system with an internal logic all its own but as the product of various external influences, like power, history and social, economic, and cultural influences. When Holmes proclaimed that "the life of law has not been logic; it has been experience," he was attacking an exclusively internalistic perspective that produced false certainty by confusing legal reasoning with mathematical or geometrical reasoning. 
Another influence on the Law and Society movement was the Sociological Jurisprudence of Roscoe Pound. Pound had also delivered a powerful critique of late-nineteenth century classical legal thought for having lost touch with society’s needs. Pound distinguished the "law in books" from the "law in action", and followed Holmes in deploring the increasing separation of the two.
After Holmes, this was the second intellectual seed from which the twentieth century Law and Society movement was spawned. It became the basis for Pound’s own "sociological jurisprudence," which, in turn, laid the foundation for studying why there has often existed a substantial "lag" or "gap" between social change and legal change . The Brandeis Brief is the most famous application of Pound’s ideas to the actual practice of legal argument . Brandeis and Justice Benjamin Cardozo were the foremost judicial proponents of Pound’s ideas.  Here we should note the convergence between the anthropologists highlighting "cultural lag" and the Progressive followers of sociological jurisprudence who sought to explain "legal lag," e.g., why law had lost touch with life -- why, for example, law had often failed to respond to the shift from an agricultural to an industrial society .The idea of "legal lag" figures prominently in the opinions both in Brown v. Board of Education and the assisted suicide cases.
Finally, Law and Society scholars were influenced by the Realists’ reconceptualization of legal rights . Legal Realists emphasized that the way to determine in practice whether a legal right exists is by studying what remedies the law actually allows. In contract law, for example, the Realists shifted the focus to different theories of damages (e.g., reliance vs. expectancy damages) ₅.

For Lawrence Friedman "The law and society movement is the scholarly enterprise that explains or describes legal phenomena in social terms." The work of Law and Society falls into a few broad classes: KEEP READING

The politics of China’s ‘rule of law’ - Inkstone

Northwestern University's William Hurst sees a central divide in the development of the Chinese legal system.  In criminal law non-legal (mainly Party) actors intervene to prevent and contain any action challenging the CP .  But civil law develops in a more normalized way. Of course the pervasive censorship is Orwellian.  But progress in civil justice nevertheless advances in many respects. - gwc
The politics of China’s ‘rule of law’ - Inkstone: Everybody loves “rule of law,” or at least loves invoking it to score points. ...
by William Hurst

Harvard Law Prof Defends Decision to Represent Weinstein

Ronald Sullivan, a former Public Defender and the Director of Harvard Law's criminal justice program, is one of the most prominent criminal defense lawyers in the country.  An African American long associated with criminal justice reform, he has drawn disapproval from some for signing on to the defense team of Harvey Weinstein, the Hollywood mogul now under indictment for sexual assault.

After students criticized him, including the editors of the student-edited daily Harvard Crimson fifty two Harvard Law Professors rose to his defense in an open letter. 
Sullivan has now defended himself in a long interview published today in the New York magazine.

- GWC