[Josh Blackman] David French Is Right: Judges Do Seek The "Respect" Of Their Peers

[Claims that Justice Amy Coney Barrett is at the center for the Court are not supported by the data. The truth is more complicated.] In a recent post, Josh Blackman writes that "Justice Barrett is solidifying herself as the swing Justice," citing a recent analysis by Adam Feldman of Legalytics. As someone who follows the Court quite closely, this did not seem right to me. It turns out my skepticism was warranted. The primary point of Feldman's analysis, "The Myth of the Modern Swing Vote," is that there is no Justice Kennedy-style median justice on the current court. Rather, there is a more complex dynamic among the Court's six conservative justices that results in shifting coalitions depending upon the subject-matter and salience of the case at hand. But even with that caveat, and if one solely wishes to focus on which conservative justice's vote is most often in play to form a majority with multiple liberal justices, Feldman's analysis…

As we are already at the mid-point of the year, I thought I would republish the below article of mine from the June 30, 2008  edition of the Pennsylvania Law Weekly:A Mid-Year TuneupTen tips to improve your practice and reduce stressByDaniel E. Cummins, EsquirePennsylvania Law WeeklyJune 30, 2008There is no better time of year than the month of June, when thoughts are beginning to turn to the salty air and sandy beaches at the shore or the cool breezes and lapping lakefronts in the mountains of Pennsylvania, to take a moment to rededicate oneself to the goal of improving one's practice while at the same time reducing any unnecessary stress. The following tips are suggested in this regard.ANTICIPATEBy routinely looking ahead 30 to 45 days on the calendars, conflicts and deadlines will never creep up on you and cause unnecessary stress.In terms of scheduling conflicts, looking ahead and clearing up problems is not only respectful of the schedule of opposing…

This is the post-SCOTUS remand of Moody v. NetChoice. To dispose of various motions, the court must construe the statutory term “social media platform.” Florida’s statutory definition: “Social media platform” means any information service, system, Internet search engine, or access software provider that: 1. Provides or enables computer access by multiple users to a computer server, including an Internet platform or a social media site; 2. Operates as a sole proprietorship, partnership, limited liability company, corporation, association, or other legal entity; 3. Does business in the state; and 4. Satisfies at least one of the following thresholds: a. Has annual gross revenues in excess of $100 million, as adjusted in January of each odd-numbered year to reflect any increase in the Consumer Price Index. b. Has at least 100 million monthly individual platform participants globally. To me, this definition essentially means every website doing…

Here: David A. Robertson (Norway House Cree Nation) gives us 52 practical suggestions—one for each week of the year—to support and connect with Indigenous people. 52 Ways to Reconcilelists tasks as simple and enjoyable as making Bannock, to as challenging as taking personal action toward reconciliation. Matthew Fletcher (Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians) has devoted himself to the legal profession, becoming one of the most respected experts in Indian Law. In his spare time he has written and published a collection of fictional short stories, Stick Houses. He draws from his own observations and stories from his family to illustrate the lives of modern Native Americans. We’ll add Matthew Fletcher’s Stick Houses, and David A. Robertson’s 52 Ways to Reconcile to the Native Bookshelf.

A bill being passed through the Italian legislature by Giorgia Meloni’s government resulted in protests on Saturday in Rome. The bill is being criticized for its alleged reduction of human right protections in the criminal justice system. The law strengthens protections for police accused of violence and doles out harsher punishment for protesters. Legal aid, up to €10,000, will be provided to police on duty who are accused of excessive violence. The bill additionally speeds up eviction procedures for illegal squatters and does not allow pregnant women or mothers of young children to avoid jail. Protests resulting in road blockages now have the potential to incur a 2-year jail sentence. The purpose of the bill is to restore “order, security, and legality.” The bill was introduced in 2024 as part of a large scheme of reform begun in 2021. Since its inception, the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights issued a warning about several…

A federal judge on Friday prevented the Trump administration from revoking temporary protected status for 5,000 Venezuelans – halting the invalidation of work permits and other residency documents. San Francisco U.S. District Judge Edward Chen found that Home Security Kristi Noem potentially exceeded her legal authority when trying to invalidate Temporary Protection Status (TPS)-related documents issued under the Biden administration to the Venezuelans. In April of 2024 former Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas announced an 18-month extension of the Temporary Protected Status, a program that grants temporary work authorization to individuals of certain countries deemed unsafe, allowing the current beneficiaries to re-register and maintain work authorizations until March of 2026. Shortly after the second Trump administration took over, however, Secretary Kristi Noem announced the cancellation of the TPS, calling it “against the country’s national…

As readers of this blog may be aware, I’m a big fan of the governance model known as Purpose-Driven Board Leadership (PDBL). If you’re not familiar with PDBL, it follows four basic principles: Purpose Over Organization – commitment to an organization’s mission, core values, and immutable vision (i.e., the social outcome that is the reason for the organization’s existence) above the outcome that is the best for the organization in isolation Respect for Ecosystem – commitment to decisions and actions that take into account how they may impact the organization’s (a) communities (e.g., service recipients and other beneficiaries, employees, volunteers, donors, allies, adversaries, applicable geographic communities) and (b) ecosystem (including the natural environment in which the organization operates or impacts) Equity Mindset – commitment to advancing equitable outcomes without favoritism built on…

Join Michael H. Cohen, founding attorney at Cohen Healthcare Law Group, as he discusses the crucial FDA guidelines that functional food and beverage companies must follow. The post Legal Essentials for Functional Food and Beverage Companies: Compliance and Marketing appeared first on Cohen Healthcare Law Group | Healthcare Lawyers | FDA & FTC Law.

As reported by Reuters here:  An attorney defending artificial-intelligence company Anthropic in a copyright lawsuit over music lyrics told a California federal judge on Thursday that her law firm Latham & Watkins was responsible for an incorrect footnote in an expert report caused by an AI "hallucination." Ivana Dukanovic said in a court filing that the expert had relied on a legitimate academic journal article, but Dukanovic created a citation for it using Anthropic's chatbot Claude, which made up a fake title and authors in what the attorney called "an embarrassing and unintentional mistake." Although not about AI hallucinations, Matthew Dahl in this recent paper, shows that LLMs are not very good even at technical conformance with bluebook rules:  Bye-bye, Bluebook? Automating Legal Procedure with Large Language Models Legal practice requires careful adherence to procedural rules. In the United States, few are more complex than…

On June 5, 2025, the Minerva Center for the Rule of Law under Extreme Conditions, in collaboration with the Clinical Legal Education Center and the Fried-Gal Transitional Justice Program at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, will host webinar on "Transitional Justice for Israel-Palestine in Comparative Perspective." Details are here.     

A jury charge in Texas serves a specific purpose: to instruct the jury on the law applicable to the case being tried. Article 36.14 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure outlines the procedure and requirements for a proper jury charge. It is a critical stage in the trial process that informs the jury not only about the legal standards it must use in determining the defendant’s guilt or innocence but also about the jury’s prerogative to find a lesser-included offense or accept an affirmative defense if the facts and law permit such findings. Article 36.14 and its application, as defined by the State’s jurisprudence, has carved out several basic prerequisites for a proper jury charge: It must include all the elements for the offense being tried, such as the definition of the offense (e.g., murder), the required mental state to commit the offense, and the required theories of liability (e.g., acting as principal or accomplice). The jury charge must be in…

 Pix credit here On the basis of Resolution 26/9 (2014), the Human Rights Council established an open-ended intergovernmental working group on transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights. The mandate for the OEIGWG, buttressed by a cohesive and like minded group of supporters, was to elaborate an "international legally binding instrument to regulate, in international human rights law, the activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises." This, the  OEIGWG has sought to do with great vigor, aided by a closely self-referencing group of supporters who have managed to maintain the sort of committed solidarity that may be necessary in this age to put forward a compulsory version of their vision for the rest of us. To that end, they have singlemindedly labored for more than a decade to produce a draft of something that appeals to them and their supporters. Pix credit hereThey have come…

Rephael Stern, Harvard Law School; Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, has published The Lost English Roots of Notice-and-Comment Rulemaking at 134 Yale L.J. 1955 (2025). Notice-and-comment rulemaking is arguably the most important procedure in the modern administrative state. Influential accounts even frame it as the 1946 Administrative Procedure Act's "most important idea." But its historical origins are obscure. Scholars have variously suggested that it grew out of the constitutionally sanctioned practice of congressional petitioning, organically developed from the practices of nineteenth-century agencies, or was influenced by German conceptions of administrative rulemaking. These histories, however, are incomplete. Using original archival research, this Article demonstrates that notice-and-comment rulemaking was the product of a series of American transplantations of English rulemaking procedures that developed in the late nineteenth and early…

Amnesty International decried an Italian government order Saturday, claiming its elevated sanctions against activists, prisoners and migrants constitute a potential grant of arbitrary law enforcement power. The new measures, called “draconian” by the organization, create new offenses for prisoners and migrants at detention centers for not cooperating with or passively resisting police orders. According to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, parts of the measure may contradict fundamental pillars of criminal justice. The decree law contains, according to the Special Rapporteurs of the United Nations, several instances of vaguely worded provisions that expand the concept of terrorism beyond current international definitions. Human rights experts believe this may cause the bill to stand on uneasy legal footing and violate well known standards in international human rights law. The new provisions would also limit “passive resistance” in…

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) urged El Salvador Friday to repeal its newly enacted “foreign agents” law, calling it a direct threat to press freedom and civil society. The law, approved on May 20 by the Legislative Assembly dominated by President Nayib Bukele’s party, requires organizations and individuals receiving international funding to register with the Ministry of Interior and imposes a 30 percent tax on such funds. It also grants the government sweeping authority to monitor, fine, or shut down those who fail to comply. Journalists and legal experts have expressed concern that the law’s vague and broad language allows authorities to arbitrarily classify anyone receiving foreign support as a foreign agent. This could impact freelance reporters, trainers, and nonprofit workers, who risk being labeled as hostile actors simply for engaging in international partnerships. The measure has drawn sharp comparisons to authoritarian regimes,…

In the case of Neubauer v. Piercy, 2025 IL App (2d) 240357-U, the Illinois Appellate Court for the Second District affirmed the dismissal of a breach of fiduciary duty claim against a law firm on statute of limitations grounds. The court held that the two-year statute of limitations barred the claim because the plaintiffs knew or should have known of their injury more than two years before they filed suit. Plaintiffs sued the Defendant law firm for breach of fiduciary duty. Rodney Piercy founded Piercy & Associates, an estate planning law firm. In 2014, Rodney Piercy and his son, Matthew, formed an investment firm known as Family Wealthy Legacy. Matthew was principally responsible for managing the investments of the company. In 2018, plaintiffs invested $1.4 million in Family Wealth Management.  Plaintiffs were essentially alleging that Rodney breached his fiduciary duty to them by failing to disclose to them in 2018 that his son was likely a fraud and crook. The…

While Colombia has made notable progress in protecting the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and gender-diverse (LGBT) individuals, the country must urgently address widespread discrimination and violence still faced by these communities, a UN human rights expert has warned Friday. Graeme Reid, the UN Independent Expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, concluded a fact-finding mission across multiple Colombian cities. In his statement, Reid praised the government’s commitment to equality and its legal reforms, but emphasized the stark disconnect between institutional progress and the daily lived experiences of LGBT individuals. “Despite these positive developments, many LGBT people continue to experience discrimination and violence in their daily lives,” Reid said. “This is particularly acute for trans women and for those who face intersecting forms of marginalization as…

In 2013, with an increasing number of wrongful convictions—many of which were based on flawed forensic evidence (“junk science“) such as disproven arson investigation techniques, bite mark analysis, misapplied bloodstain pattern analysis, and shaking baby syndrome—the Texas Legislature enacted the first legal pathway for an inmate to challenge their conviction when new or advanced science discredited the evidence used to convict. This pathway was created through the codification of Article 11.073 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure. This new law was primarily driven by the case of Michael Morton, who was wrongfully convicted due to misinterpreted forensic evidence and blatant prosecutorial misconduct. Morton spent 25 years in prison for the murder of his wife and was later exonerated through DNA evidence. The law thus had one basic purpose: to “accommodate evolving science“ and provide a meaningful pathway to overturn convictions based…