Michael Goldblatt:
November 2018 Archives
Michael Goldblatt:
Corporate lawyers at Paul Weiss, a prestigious Manhattan law firm, often spend their days scouring the fine print of client documents and government regulations. But for the past few months, they have been on a different search.
In the firm's Midtown offices, about 75 lawyers have been trying to find more than 400 parents who were separated from their families at the southern border this year and then deported without their children.
Paul Weiss, where partners charge more than $1,000 an hour and clients include the National Football League and Citigroup, is looking for these parents, pro bono, as part of a federal American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit against the Trump administration over its family separation policy.
In a case originating in Suffolk County, a court ruled Wednesday that state and local law enforcement have no authority to arrest and detain people on behalf of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency for deportation purposes.
The Appellate Division of the state Supreme Court, in a 4-0 ruling (full text), upended a policy implemented by former Suffolk County Sheriff Vincent F. DeMarco of detaining for up to 48 hours any person who was subject to an ICE warrant. DeMarco announced the policy one month after the election of President Donald Trump.
Such a policy was "unlawful" under New York law, the court ruled. Shortly after the decision came down Wednesday, Sheriff Errol Toulon, who succeeded DeMarco, issued a staff directive saying: "This practice shall cease immediately."
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The project is known as Caselaw Access Project API; API is the application program interface. It allows users to access the information in different ways.
The website has applications designed for different uses, such as compiling cases and doing word searches. The API is open for other developers to create other tools.
The digital library includes:
- All official, book-published cases in the United States
- Cases from all state courts, federal courts, territorial courts from 1658 to 2018
CNN and its chief White House correspondent, Jim Acosta, have sued President Donald Trump for revoking the reporter's White House press pass after a staffer tried, without success, to take away Acosta's microphone.
The suit, filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., alleges violations of a First Amendment right of access and a Fifth Amendment right to due process. The suit also claims the administration violated the Administrative Procedure Act by acting arbitrarily and capriciously. CNN's statement and additional lawsuit documents are here. CNN, the Washington Post and Politico have coverage.
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"There can be no question that the revocation of Acosta's credentials is a content- and viewpoint-based punishment imposed on him because the president and his administration do not like CNN or Acosta's reporting," CNN's lawyers say in a memorandum of points and authorities.
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State Correction Commission review panels repeatedly found medical staff failed to conduct basic checkups and mental health screenings. Doctors and nurses regularly ignored serious ailments until it was too late, according to the reviews.
Multiple deaths involved mentally ill prisoners who committed suicide after they were continually tossed in solitary confinement. At least four prisoners died from asthma-related ailments that could have been prevented had they been given inhalers and other medications.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 applies to state and local governments, regardless of their size.
I fought the law, and my app won. Here is my story.
For many years now, there have been systems in place in many cities allowing you to pay for a parking spot using an iPhone app. I live in New Orleans, and the system that we use here is called ParkMobile, which operates in 350 cities in the United States. It is convenient that you can pay for a parking spot before you even leave your car, it is helpful to see how much time you have on the meter even when you are far away from your car, and perhaps best of all, you can add more time to the parking meter no matter where you are. There have been multiple times when I have been in a deposition or a meeting which ran long and I was able to quickly add more time to the meter without having to go all the way back to my car. The system works so well that it has almost seemed too easy, making me wonder if simply using the app really would protect me from getting a parking ticket.
In a new lawsuit claiming $30 million in damages, a prominent personal injury firm, Ginarte Gallardo Gonzalez & Winograd, is alleging two competitor law firms enticed clients to switch attorneys by offering them Uber rides from a doctor's office and then money from a briefcase full of cash in a partner's office.
New York courts have seen several scandalous spats among personal injury law firms. However, the lawsuit filed Monday in Manhattan Supreme Court includes especially remarkable claims, such as competitor attorneys using "case runners" to meet clients at a pain management specialist's office, then luring them to their firm and finally paying them off in cash if they agreed to substitute counsel.
On Dec. 1, 1971, acting on Ms. Bamberger and Mr. Hellerstein's lawsuit, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ordered the District Court to prevent guards, State Police and correctional personnel from inflicting any further cruelty on the inmates, as had been committed for at least several days, the judges said.
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In honor of the upcoming US election on November 6, we've decided to revisit this collection of teaching materials from Teaching Tolerance. This resource was originally featured in the 10-28-2016 issue of the Scout Report, which was a special edition focused on voting. The 1965 Voting Rights Act is an essential part of U.S. voting history and a milestone for the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. Teaching Tolerance has compiled this collection of classroom activities and resources to help middle school and high school students better understand the circumstances behind the passage of the Voting Rights Act and its significance. These resources include video footage of Lyndon Johnson signing the act into law (part of NBC's archival footage collection), a succinct summary of the key points of the Voting Rights Act, and powerful graphs that show the number of black legislators in the south (1868-1900 and 1960-1992) and the percentage of registered voters in black voting-age population. This website also features resources related to contemporary debates surrounding voting rights in the 1965 law, including information and materials relating to the 2009 and 2013 Supreme Court challenges to the Voting Rights Act. [MMB] |
The United States and the European Union evaluate the aviation safety standards of countries and their airlines. Here's where to find that information before you book.