Search

Categories

Total Results

No Record Found

View All Results
DONATE

News & Opinion

U.S. Supreme Court refuses to adopt rule to limit number of sealed civil cases

donal brown November 10, 2011

The U.S. Supreme Court has decided not to adopt a procedural rule to limit the number of civil cases under seal. The Court wants to rely on a new Judicial Conference policy encouraging federal judges to limit the number of sealed cases. The Reporter Committee for Freedom of the Press had suggested the rule citing the lack of uniform standards used by lower courts for sealing cases from public view. -db From The Reporters Committee

Read More »

Rapper responds to Lohan defamation lawsuit

donal brown November 8, 2011

Through his lawyers the Rapper Pitbull struck back at Lindsay Lohan who sued him for defamation for a hit song that mentioned Lohan’s incarceration. Providing a detailed account of her encounters with the law to prove Lohan is a California resident, the lawyers said she did not have standing to sue in Long Island. Lohan’s defamation complaint contended that since the song had an international impact and over 3 million downloads in the U.S., she

Read More »

Bloggers’ ranting style protects in free speech cases but may hurt in other realms

donal brown November 8, 2011

Bloggers may win victories in defamation cases since their heated critical commentary is easily identified as opinion rather than fact and not libelous, but the advantage may have a serious down side, writes John Sharkey for the Citizen Media Law Project. Sharkey is concerned that in ruling for bloggers in defamation cases,  judges are making disparaging  comments about blogging, saying in one case that “blogs are a subspecies of online speech which inherently suggest that

Read More »

Occupy Atlanta sues city for free speech violations

donal brown November 8, 2011

After police arrested over 75 protesters since October 6 in the Occupy Atlanta demonstrations, six of the protesters including a state senator are suing the city for enforcing unconstitutional ordinances in making the arrests. The protesters say the city code is unconstitutionally vague in restricting speech and the time, manner and place of the demonstrations. -db From the Courthouse News Service, November 7, 2011, by Jacqueline J. Holness. Full story     

Read More »

Bloomberg editors call National Security Agency secrecy policy ‘dysfunctional’

donal brown November 8, 2011

Bloomberg editors Max Berley and Tobin Harshaw were unimpressed with NSA’s declassification of 50,000 pages of historic documents and the agency’s boast that the act demonstrated the Obama administration’s commitment to openness. The editors said one of the documents released was already long in the public domain and that the release of the documents was a pathetic diversion from the administration’s poor record on open government. -db From a commentary for Bloomberg Businessweek, November 8, 2011,

Read More »