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This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps

This is a pretty familiar story line. A businessman wants to open a strip club. Some members of the local community decide that they do not want that kind of thing in their town. The resistance is usually faith-based (which is where the wheels really come off). I fail to understand how anyone can believe in a supreme being, who

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Bloggers are protected as "Media" – Comins v. VanVoorhis (Chapter 2)

It’s an all-too-common scenario: A blogger criticizes someone online, and then gets sued for his statements.   But two things make this case unique: First, the plaintiff sued because of the blogger’s characterizations of him shooting two dogs at close range; second, the defendant blogger was in Florida – and thus protected by Fla. Stat. § 770.01. (I am proud

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Law Enforcement Priorities

I’ve been involved in the debate over whether we should criminalize “revenge porn.” As much as I despise the practice, I don’t agree with new criminal laws to punish it. In fact, I just spent some time on a panel at Stanford Law School, in the company of three people I greatly admire — one of whom (Attorney Erica Johnstone

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Revenge Porn Scumbags Spanked With $385,000 Judgment

Founders of the revenge porn site You Got Posted, Eric Chanson and Kevin Bollaert, have been ordered to pay an Ohio woman $385,000, including $75,000 in punitive damages, for distributing child pornography – photos of her when she was underage. (judgment) The plaintiff, represented by Randazza Legal Group, sued You Got Posted’s operators after finding several sexually explicit images of

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Was Saint Patrick Really Italian?

Irish is, without a doubt, the dominant immigrant culture in Massachusetts. Growing up there, in a town where Sicilians were the plurality, St. Patrick’s Day was always a little underwhelming. Instead, we celebrated St. Joseph’s day on March 19. Of course, every St. Joseph’s Day, someone would bring up the old story that St. Patrick’s day should be “our” day

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Happy 50th Birthday, New York Times v. Sullivan

By Reed Lee, Esq. Today rings in the 50th anniversary of the SCOTUS decision in New York Times v. Sullivan. In my view, this was the single most important free speech case the United States Supreme Court has ever decided. Alexander Mieklejohn described the Sullivan decision as “an occasion for dancing in the streets.” I would like to suggest its

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An Open Letter to Journalists

Dear Members of the Media, I sincerely appreciate all of your hard work in bringing us the news of the day. In this day and age, there is a lot of burgeoning information and it is cumbersome to sift through all of it to provide summaries to the masses. However, there is one thing you do not do that is

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Even if you win, you just screwed yourself

Rachel Canning and her parents’ problems seem like pretty typical (albeit on the upper end of things) 18 year old acting-out-behavior. Suspensions. Drinking. A lousy boyfriend. Parental ultimatum of “break up with your boyfriend, or you’re financially cut off.” So, she moves out, moves in with a friend, and the friend’s parents pay for an attorney to sue her parents

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Accused of a crime? There go your assets.

  I had some serious misgivings about Kagan due to her view that New York Times v. Sullivan should be reined in.  (source)  Of course, her views on that are at least debatable.  She just prefers some of the logic in Canada’s Hill v. Church of Scientology, [1995] 2 S.C.R. 1130.   But in Kaley v. United States, she just

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