Criminal Law Library BlogIn a video of an interview with his Fox Business Network, Rupert Murdoch, News Corp. Chairman discusses what he considers the future of media and the Company’s plan to charge for content. During the interview Mr. Murdoch said that in order to get people to pay for content online you simply “…turn them off. They’ve got to sign on. They give you their credit card number. And that’s it. And then you e-mail them and say you’re putting the price up or you’re taking it down or whatever.”
Articles Posted in Commentary and Opinion
State Judicial Elections
Selections from the Fair Courts e-lert May 28, 2010, published by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.
State Judicial Elections
1. Retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor continues to advocate for states to replace contested judicial elections with merit selection systems. In an op-ed appearing in the New York Times, O’Connor urges individuals to pay attention to the selection of state court judges because “In too many states, citizens are being shortchanged by the way [state court judges] are chosen . . . . When you enter one of these courtrooms, the last thing you want to worry about is whether the judge is more accountable to a campaign contributor or an ideological group than to the law.”
The Third Way: A Narrowly Tailored Broadband Framework
David Badertscher
This posting is essentially a followup of two of our earlier postings on this topic which you can find here and here.
It begins with two statements released by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on May 6, 2010 in partial response to the recent decision in the Comcast case.and continues with a listing of recent Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports addressing various aspects of the topic:
A U.S. Supreme Court Case Brief: Professor Rory Little’s Perspective
United States v. Marcus, No. 08-1341, 130 S.Ct. ___(may 24, 2010).
A Service from the ABA Criminal Justice Section, http://www.abanet.org/crimjust
This summary has been created by Professor Rory K. Little (littler@uchastings.edu), U.C. Hastings College of the Law, San Francisco, who has long presented “Annual Review of the Supreme Court’s Term” program at the ABA’s Annual Meetings. It represents his personal, unofficial views of the Justices’ opinions. The original opinions should be consulted for their authoritative content.
Attorney General Andrew Cuomo Formally Announces His Campaign for New York Governor
On Saturday May 22, 2010, Democrat Andrew Cuomo the New York State Attorney General made an official announcement that he will seek the New York governor’s job once held by his father, Mario Cuomo. Below we include two links to documents released along with the announcement. The first link is to the transcript of the announcement The second is to a policy statement which he calls his “New York Agenda: A Plan for Action”. This is an extensive document which focuses on many areas including new education, environment, and energy.
The beginning of the “New York Agenda: A Plan for Action” includes a summary in the form of the following bullet points which collectively provide an overall picture of the agenda being presented.:
1. Clean Up Albany. We must restore honor and integrity to government, with tough new ethics standards, expanded disclosure requirements, independent investigators to root out and punish corruption, and an overhaul of campaign finance laws. We must remove legislative redistricting from partisan elected politicians and place it in the hands of an independent commission that works only for the people. And we must hold a constitutional convention – A People’s Convention – to rewrite the Constitution and make these changes immediately because we cannot wait any longer for the state legislature to act.
U.S. Department of Justice Audits New York Police Interaction With Non-English Speakers
An abstract prepared for the Criminal Law Library Blog by Michael Chernicoff.
Are language barriers playing a role in law enforcement? The Justice Department has begun a “routine audit” in New York to determine whether federal civil rights laws were being complied with in police dealing with non‐English speakers. Such reviews have been regular since 2002 when the Justice Department required recipients of grants to provide services to no‐English speakers
CLICK HERE TO SEE COMPLETE ABSTRACT
Broadening the Definition of “Sex Offender”
An Abstract prepared for the Criminal Law Library Blog by Michael Chernicoff.
The Adam Walsh Act [is] currently in place to protect children against abuse and child pornography and promote Internet safety is being used to classify criminals whose crimes were not sexual in nature as sex offenders. The Adam Walsh Act also requires information to be posted in an online sex offender registry.
Judicial Diversity
Selections from the Brennan Center Fair Courts E-lert May 21, 2010.
Summarized news articles and editorials related to the independence of judges and the courts….:
1. A recent George Mason University study suggests that certain factors such as “support for diversity in the state’s leadership,” the “location of a judgeship,” and the “history of diversity” have a significant impact on the success of efforts aimed at enhancing diversity on the state bench – this, irrespective of the judicial selection mechanisms used in a given state. In a broad survey of state trial court judges of color, the report’s authors observed “that the varying selection mechanisms tend to operate to produce a surprising similarity in the processes, strategies, and experiences of judicial candidates . . . [R]ather than a specific selection mechanism, the judges [interviewed] overwhelmingly point to other factors – such as politics, networking, mentorship, and other resources as determinative of the ability of diverse candidates to become judges.” The American Judicature Society has released another important study on judicial diversity, by Malia Reddick, Michael J. Nelson, and Rachel Paine Caufield. The AJS study explores the relationship between judicial diversity and the institutional, political, and legal environment in which judges are selected. Among other conclusions, the study reported that “Merit selection and pure gubernatorial appointment placed more minorities on high courts than did contested elections, while merit selection placed fewer women on intermediate appellate courts.”
Department of Technology NYC: How Are We Doing?
An Internet Society NYC update with video:
ISOC-NY on May 8 2010, hosted a seminar “dot nyc – How are we doing?” at NYU. NYC Council Member Gale Brewer delivered keynote remarks, then vendor Eric Brunner-Williams of CORE Internet Council of Registrars revealed details of their proposal to the City, and Antony Van Couvering of Minds + Machines and Public Advocate Beill DeBlasio’s earlier comments to the City Council were shown in video. There was a discussion “What’s it for?” about possible applications – civic, community, commercial, and “outside the box” – for a local top level domain. Speakers included Tom Lowenhaupt of Connecting .nyc and Richard Knipel of Wikimedia NYC. Audio/video is available .
Nylink To Close Its Operations In A Year
Many of us just learned the sad news that Nylink, which has served New York State Libraries for 37 years, is phasing out its operations and will be closing in one year. We understand that Nylink will be closing its operations primarily due to a steep decline in its revenue stream which has seriously degrated Nylink’s ability to remain fully self supporting and continue delivering an acceptable level of service to its members beyond this period. Throughout the years many of us have come to rely on Nylink for its sustained high level of dedicated, personalized service. Nylink will be missed. We wish the employees a good 12 months and every success in the future
David Badertscher
For additional details see: