The Wall Street Journal broke the story, that the Department of Justice was “in talks” to provide compensation to families that were separated at the border.

The Biden administration is in talks to offer immigrant families that were separated during the Trump administration around $450,000 a person in compensation, according to people familiar with the matter, as several agencies work to resolve lawsuits filed on behalf of parents and children who say the government subjected them to lasting psychological trauma.

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A relatively new phenomenon has developed with Supreme Court Justices writing dissentals when cert is denied. For the most part, lawyers, pundits and the public kinda dig them, as they give us insight into what the justice’s views will be if and when the issue finally gets the nod for a merits ruling. As much as people hate the “shadow docket,” few make a stink about this aspect of it.

But an even more problematic aspect of the court’s shadow docket has received scant attention. These are opinions being issued by justices when the Supreme Court rejects an appeal of a case from a lower court — what are called “cert denials,” or denial of petitions for certiorari.

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Jury selection for the murder trial of the three defendants charged with the murder of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery did not go smoothly. Ultimately, only one black person was selected to be a juror in a county where more than 25% of the population is black.

After a grueling process that lasted two and a half weeks, a jury was selected on Wednesday in the trial of the three white men accused of killing Ahmaud Arbery, the 25-year-old Black man who was chased through a suburban Georgia neighborhood before being fatally shot by one of his pursuers in February 2020. Continue reading →

Tom Cotton, the Gray Lady’s riot-act-reading bête noire, is back with an op-ed (but at NRO this time) in support of qualified immunity – the well-known judicial doctrine that protects state employees from being sued under a federal statute, 42 USC § 1983, when they violate someone’s rights. Let’s take a dive.

Qualified immunity is essential to effective and diligent policing. It shields good police officers from bankruptcy while still subjecting individual bad actors to personal financial repercussions.

No, QI doesn’t “shield police officers from bankruptcy.” Police officers in just about any jurisdiction in America are indemnified by their employers, meaning they don’t have to pay a cent even if they’re successfully sued for things they did on the job. All QI does is stop a certain kind of federal suit – which is already financially harmless to cops – from getting to the point where the injured party could recover at all for the harm done to them. Continue reading →

I should have seen it coming. In retrospect, it’s obvious. If elected progressive district attorneys can simply choose which duly enacted laws they prefer to prosecute and which they can ignore because, legislative action notwithstanding, they fail to conform to their ideological vision of their jurisdiction, why not a sheriff?

Lomax embraces the unique powers of elected sheriffs, who report directly to voters, unlike police chiefs, who are generally hired and fired at will by city councils. “You pretty much have no authority above you government-wise; you answer to the voters,” Lomax said, adding that despite this freedom he plans to be “a sheriff who enforces the laws.”

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There was a time when the idea of having female cops seemed silly. After all, they weren’t strong enough, tough enough, threatening enough, to deal with all the bad dudes out there. And yet here we are, with women in blue who are just as familiar with the First Rule of Policing as the guys. And yet, Slate posits that we can fix the excesses of police violence with this one cool trick.

“We’re not the ones out there shooting,” says Janeé Harteau, former chief of police of the Minneapolis Police Department. “This is really about gender at its very core.” Continue reading →

Anti-vaxxer RFK Jr.’s feelings were hurt when it was asserted that the audience at a rally in Germany at which he spoke, run by a group called Querdenken, weren’t just “very fine people,” but neo-Nazis. It was fairly widely reported, including the usual suspects like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

The rally and his speech were widely covered in the mainstream media, which reported that his rally was heavily attended by neo-Nazis  and that a variety of antisemitic and neo-Nazi factions  had been involved in organizing the event. Kennedy was infuriated by this coverage of the audience to whom he had become connected by speaking at the rally.  His position is that any neo-Nazis were at some other rally on the same day, and that Querdenken is a fine group unsullied by neo-Nazi or anti-Semitic ties. Our expert witness says otherwise.

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The CEO of American Airlines, Doug Parker, said “this type of behavior has to stop.” And he’s not wrong, caveats of what happened and why notwithstanding. The allegation is that a first class passenger on a flight from JFK Airport to Santa Ana punched a flight attendant twice in the face.

Why this happened is unclear. Maybe it was that the flight attendant bumped him (and apologized), or maybe she said “let’s go, Brandon.” Maybe it was something else entirely. Whatever it was, it provides no excuse for his assault, even though punching people with whom you have a difference of opinion has become all the rage. Continue reading →

The problems with the supply chain are big and serious. And petty as well.

There’s the pop culture homage — Marilyn Monroe, Tony Soprano, The Matrix.

Then there are the festive ways to embody the zeitgeist, a socially acceptable method for donning an outfit that says “look at me, I am clever” — a meme costume, an obscure reference or a Netflix phenomenon nobody saw coming (looking at you, “Tiger King” and “Squid Game”). Continue reading →

One of the opportunities that make academic scholarship and expertise rewarding is to be in a position to testify as to the subject you spent your career studying. When a case involving voting rights as a result of a law passed in Florida, signed by Governor DeSantis, needed experts on behalf of those challenging the law, the plaintiffs turned to three professors at University of Florida.

Cool, right? Not as it turned out for either UF or the three profs. Continue reading →