Joel Stashenko 

New York Law Journal

June 02, 2011

A New York City Department of Education rule blocking off-hours use of school facilities for religious worship services complies with the federal Constitution, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit decided yesterday.

Ruling for the fourth time in a decade on a lawsuit brought by a Christian church in the Bronx, the majority concluded that the rule does not constitute viewpoint discrimination under the First Amendment because it "does not exclude expressions of religious points of view or of religious devotion, but excludes for valid non-discriminatory reasons only a type of activity--the conduct of worship services."

Judges Pierre N. Leval and Guido Calabresi also concluded that the policy was a genuine attempt by the city to avoid violating the Establishment Clause.

The Chesapeake Digital Preservation Group has completed its fourth annual investigation of link rot among the original URLs for online law and policy-related materials archived though the group's efforts.

Originally launched as a Web-preservation pilot project in 2007, the Chesapeake Group is today part of the Legal Information Archive. Group participants include two academic law libraries, the Georgetown Law and Harvard Law School Libraries, and the State Law Libraries of Maryland and Virginia.

The Chesapeake Group focuses primarily on the preservation of Web-published legal materials, which often disappear as Web site content is rearranged or deleted over time. In the four years since the program began, the Chesapeake Group has built a digital archive collection comprising more than 7,400 digital items and 3,200 titles, all of which were originally posted to the Web.

For this study, the term "link rot" is used to describe a URL that no longer provides direct access to files matching the content originally harvested from the URL and currently preserved in the Chesapeake Group's digital archive. In some instances, a 404 or "not found" message indicates link rot at a URL. In other cases, the URL may direct to a site hosted by the original publishing organization or entity, but the specific resource has been removed or relocated from the original or previous URL.

All of the Web resources described in this report that have disappeared from their original locations on the Web remain accessible via permanent archive URLs here at legalinfoarchive.org, thanks to the Chesapeake Group's efforts.

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For instance, a professor could allow his or her students to reserve time during office hours each week. A hair salon could let anyone visiting their web site schedule an appointment during set business hours.

This is a handy tool with many possibilities! 

Unlike software-specific text replacement features, Texter runs in the Windows system tray and works in any application you're typing in. Texter can also set return-to markers for your cursor and insert clipboard contents into your replacement text, in addition to more advanced keyboard macros. Did we mention it's free?

Miles co-founded the company in February, and started full operations this month in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island, having built a roster of criminal lawyers who do not mind getting late-night calls.

Read entire article.  (Requires registration)

LulzSec and other groups have been hacking an assortment of prominent organisations. For good or for bad, they have also been publishing their databases, which typically include emails and passwords. Given that most people re-use their passwords, this site allows the average person to check if their password(s) may have been compromised and need to be changed.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:58 -- 16.6MB)

News that a "marriage equality" measure was headed toward passage Friday night was greeted by cheers and shouts among members of the New York State Bar Association House of Delegates attending the organization's summer meeting in Cooperstown.

After a week of nail-biting negotiations and appeals to conscience, the Senate voted, 33-29, to give final approval to a bill, A-08354,  that recognizes gay marriage in New York. The proposal passed with the support of every Democrat but one and four Republicans. Govenor Andrew M. Cuomo immediately signed a measure that he had made one of his top priorities.

"This is great news for all New Yorkers," Stephen Younger, the immediate past president of the state bar, said in an interview after the vote was announced.

It was only two years ago that the state bar's policymaking body, also in Cooperstown, voted to endorse state recognition of same-sex marriage.

Read entire NYLJ report with extensive quotes from bar associations and bar leaders here. (Requires free registration)

Read the marriage equality bill and supporting memorandum.

Read the entire NYLJ article by Joel Stashenko here.  (Requires free registration)

At a single address in this sleepy city of 60,000 people, more than 2,000 companies are registered. The building, 2710 Thomes Avenue, isn't a shimmering skyscraper filled with A-list corporations. It's a 1,700-square-foot brick house with a manicured lawn, a few blocks from the State Capitol.

Neighbors say they see little activity there besides regular mail deliveries and a woman who steps outside for smoke breaks. Inside, however, the walls of the main room are covered floor to ceiling with numbered mailboxes labeled as corporate "suites." A bulky copy machine sits in the kitchen. In the living room, a woman in a headset answers calls and sorts bushels of mail.

A Reuters investigation has found the house at 2710 Thomes Avenue serves as a little Cayman Island on the Great Plains. It is the headquarters for Wyoming Corporate Services, a business-incorporation specialist that establishes firms which can be used as "shell" companies, paper entities able to hide assets.

Wyoming Corporate Services will help clients create a company, and more: set up a bank account for it; add a lawyer as a corporate director to invoke attorney-client privilege; even appoint stand-in directors and officers as high as CEO. Among its offerings is a variety of shell known as a "shelf" company, which comes with years of regulatory filings behind it, lending a greater feeling of solidity.

Read entire, much longer, article here.