Monday, April 1, 2019

The Week of Laws



March 25: People think conservatives have no sense of humor, which is why they constantly have to explain that their racist comments, emails, and memes were intended as humor.

But the grim-faced old men of the US Supreme Court turn out to be real knee-slappers. As SCOTUSblog described a case they heard last week:

As part of this complicated question, the argument veers to the issue of whether PDR Network or any other party may challenge an FCC interpretation from 2006 when it presumably was not violating the TCPA at that time.
“The notice of rule-making was published in the Federal Register,” says Glenn Hara, the lawyer representing the chiropractic practice. “And that constitutes constructive notice to the whole world.”
Justice Neil Gorsuch hypothesizes about a federal rule that “all persons named Bob” must pay the federal government $100 a year. “And a young man is born after the regulation was adopted, and he didn’t read the Federal Register.”
Maybe a lot of people don’t read it, Gorsuch continues, not least because “maybe they can’t read it. It’s in eight-point type.”
Young Bob could petition the relevant agency, Hara says, though he agrees that Bob might be barred from raising a challenge to the regulation in federal district court.
Justice Samuel Alito asks about a World War II-era decision in which the justices upheld a law that stripped federal courts of jurisdiction to consider the validity of a wartime price regulation when raised as a defense to a prosecution. He hypothesizes about a new federal agency that sets prices for homegrown tomatoes.
“And somebody raises heirloom tomatoes in the backyard and charges more than the specified price,” Alito says. Would that person be barred from challenging the regulation in a prosecution?
Hara says that the 1944 decision, Yakus v. United States, is still good law.
“But you think that would be consistent with due process?” Alito says. “You would say to the person who was growing these tomatoes in the backyard, well, you know, you should have kept up with the Federal Register.”
Alito is not done with the wonky publication. “Do you know how many pages were issued in the Federal Register in 2018?” he asks. Hara does not, but Alito does. “I think it is something like 90,000 pages,” the justice says.
“I once saw somebody riding home on the Metro at midnight in Washington, D.C., reading the Code of Federal Regulations,” Alito continues. “And I thought: Only in Washington, D.C., could you see this sight. But you think people out in other parts of the country are waiting for the latest addition to the Code of Federal Regulations?”
I am thinking that I may have been the person Alito saw on the subway. I was once in a position that required close attention to the Federal Register. In fact, I was once assigned to cover a party to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the publication, in 2006.
The Federal Register was launched in 1934 amid the blizzard of regulations emanating from New Deal-era legislation. The anniversary celebration was thrown by the National Archives and Records Administration, which compiles the publication, and the Government Printing Office, which, uh, prints the daily booklet full of dense text on newsprint paper. (The register has been available online since 1994.)
The party was so wild that people are still talking about it. It was held at 9 a.m. on a Tuesday at the GPO’s headquarters. There was a cake decorated with a frosting rendition of the first issue and the most recent issue of the Register. Then-U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement was one of the featured speakers, citing the “disorder and chaos” that reigned in administrative law before the publication’s birth because of a lack of a written repository of federal rules and regulations.
March 26: Private prisons catch on because corporations are better at pricing the risk of prisoners cluttering up the courts, asserting rights and shit.

March 31: One big British law firm made $32 billion in billings the last year.

April 1: "Ms. Gonzalez was one of six innocent people who collectively spent 77 years in prison for the murder of a 68-year-old woman named Helen Wilson, whose death haunted this rural county for decades. Now, years after DNA evidence exonerated the defendants, they are about to collect a $28 million civil rights judgment against Gage County, which prosecuted them based on false confessions." The 97.6% white residents of Gage County, who voted 63.5% for Trump, think it's outrageous having to pay for what someone else did, a sentiment the wronged defendants share.

April 1: Trump's SCOTUSboys are earning their keep.

April 1: Naked Swedish police officer apprehends fugitive while visiting sauna

No comments:

Post a Comment