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Opinion: First Amendment lawyer argues for open trials at Guantanamo Bay

donal brown April 19, 2012

The country would be well served if the military judge at Guantanamo Bay would open the tribunals trying terrorism suspects, writes First Amendment lawyer David A. Schulz. Schulz argues that open trials would provide public acceptance of verdicts, accountability for those trying the cases and and democratic oversight. -db From a commentary for The New York Times, April 18, 2012, by David A. Schulz. Full story  

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Challenge mounted to removal of public database of doctor discipline and malpractice

donal brown September 19, 2011

Newspaper associations and public interest groups are protesting a move by the Obama administration to withhold a data bank created by Congress in 1986 to assist hospitals and state licensing boards to check doctor’s records for discipline and malpractice. The records had been useful in creating laws to protect the public as reported by Blythe Bernhard and Jeremy Kohler in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.”The Post-Dispatch used the public file last year in an investigation of

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California Supreme Court to hear case challenging restrictions on releasing computer data

donal brown September 19, 2011

Why is okay to withhold information transferred to electronic format when the same information in document form is available under the California Public Records Act( (CPRA)? That is the question the California Supreme Court will consider in reviewing a Court of Appeal decision that Orange County could charge the Sierra Club $300,000 for the Orange County GIS basemap of public property information, effectively blocking public access. The lower court had ruled that transferring the property

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Open meetings: City council barred from taking private tour of water facility

donal brown September 1, 2011

California’s Attorney General Kamala Harris demonstrated the long reach of the state’s open meeting law, the Brown Act,  in her opinion that for majority of a Southern California city council to take an invitation-only tour of a Northern California water district facility would be a violation of the law. Harris also said that even if properly noticed and inclusive, holding a meeting at such a distance from the city would limit public access and further

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