Law in the News 11-11-11

By: Janet Soave

Movin’ on Up

President Obama’s Affordable Care Act is making its way to the Supreme Court one step at a time after a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit ruled that the Act is constitutional this morning. Although the panel (and every other news source) is predicting that the Supreme Court will make an announcement about whether to take the case up on cert within the next week or so, the panel provided a 130-page opinion. I hope Judge Silberman isn’t too sad that none of the justices will care what he wrote when they deny cert for lack of ripeness…

Big Brother is watching?

Maybe George Orwell was off by a few years, but if the 9 gentlemen and ladies of SCOTUS have anything to say about whether or not we move closer to being subject to the government’s ever-watchful eye (and they have everything to say about it) the threat of constant surveillance may continue to be a fiction. It will all come down to the justice’s latest confrontation with privacy and technology.

Not so Smooth Criminal

Michael Jackson’s personal physician, Conrad Murray, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter on November 7. The jury concluded that by providing Jackson with fatal amounts of propofol he acted with criminal negligence.

The song that never ends…

It goes on and on…

Almost as annoying and demeaning as Lamb Chop’s Play-Along theme song is the endless supply of stories about law school administration royally screwing over their students by providing inaccurate information about student successes.  In case you were still confident in your decision to pay astronomical amounts of dough to come to law school…

And if you have already joined the jaded majority, you can add fuel to the fire knowing that you could have gotten a better value on your law school education if you had attended one of these schools instead.