Month: February 2017
Orange County Fl Bail Bond – Fans have fantasy sports, Supreme Court nerds have FantasySCOTUS
Source : USA Today News
By : Richard Wolf
Category : Orange County Fl Bail Bond , Orange County Fl Bail Bondsman
Before the last time a Supreme Court seat was filled, court watchers and legal beavers who ventured on to the “FantasySCOTUS” website correctly predicted it would be Elena Kagan. If the survey proves prescient again, Colorado’s Neil Gorsuch could be President Trump’s guy.
Gorsuch, 49, who sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, has led a field of 22 potential nominees listed on the site since shortly after Trump’s election. At last count, he had 649 votes to 512 for Alabama’s more controversial William Pryor, the early favorite among both conservatives and cognoscenti. The Supreme Court nerds who frequent FantasySCOTUS aren’t as impressed with the other two judges said to be among Trump’s finalists. Michigan’s Raymond Kethledge is in 8th place with 160 votes; Pennsylvania’s Thomas Hardiman is 10th with 91. “I was shocked that Judge Gorsuch shot up so quickly at the outset,” says Josh Blackman, a South Texas College of Law professor who founded the online prediction market in 2009. “I think this is one case where the ‘wisdom of the crowds’ actually identified the leading candidate long before everyone else.”
FantasySCOTUS allows attorneys, law students and others to predict how justices will vote on cases pending before the high court, with winners and prizes announced at the end of each term. The chance to guess who will fill a vacancy has only come around once since the site was created. That was in 2010, when President Obama chose Kagan, then the U.S. solicitor general and a former Harvard Law School dean, to replace the retiring Justice John Paul Stevens. Voters on the site were way ahead of Obama, predicting early that Kagan would outpace other potential nominees — including federal appeals court Judge Merrick Garland, who got the nod after Justice Antonin Scalia’s death last year but was blocked by Senate Republicans.
“These are not random people on the street,” Blackman, 32, says of the thousands who participate on FantasySCOTUS. “They’re people who follow this closely.” That doesn’t mean the voting is completely reliable. Some participants tried to game the system by voting multiple times, until a filter was used to prevent more than one vote per IP address. “They have an interest in their guy winning,” Blackman says. Trump’s favorites are thought to be federal appeals court judges — including, at least until recently, Wisconsin’s Diane Sykes, who is fifth in FantasySCOTUS voting. But ahead of her is Minnesota Supreme Court Justice David Stras, a 42-year-old long shot, with more than 400 votes. And Sen. Ted Cruz is a credible seventh with 170 votes — despite not being on Trump’s list at all.
Read More : usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/01/26/supreme-court-trump-gorsuch-pryor-kagan-fantasyscotus/97037536/
Bail In Orlando Fl – A Guide to the Increasingly Political U.S. Supreme Court
Source : National Law Journal News
By : Tony Mauro
Category : Bail In Orlando , Bail In Orlando Fl
Just over a year ago, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. voiced concern that the U.S. Supreme Court was being tainted by the politics of the confirmation process. “If the Democrats and Republicans have been fighting so fiercely about whether you’re going to be confirmed, it’s natural for some members of the public to think, well, you must be identified in a particular way as a result of that process,” Roberts said at the New England School of Law. He made those remarks before the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, the unsuccessful nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to replace him, the endless and rancorous presidential campaign, and then the nomination by President Donald Trump of Judge Neil Gorsuch—whose upcoming confirmation hearing will almost certainly fit Roberts’ description to a T. Just this week, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg echoed Roberts’ concerns when she said at Stanford Law School that if she were up for confirmation now instead of 1993—when she was confirmed by a 96-3 vote—supporters like Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, “wouldn’t touch me with a 10-foot pole.”
The Supreme Court and politics is the subject of Lincoln Caplan’s recent book “American Justice 2016: The Political Supreme Court.” A lecturer and senior research scholar at Yale Law School, Caplan discussed the court’s political nature in a recent interview (before the nomination of Gorsuch) with Supreme Court Brief. In your book, you say flat out that the Supreme Court is a political institution, and not just in the sense of how justices are picked and confirmed. How else is it political? Caplan: Throughout its history, at various times, the Supreme Court has been a central concern of politics. Politics and court decisions have sometimes been tautly intertwined and even inseparable. A classic example is the decisions about New Deal legislation during the Great Depression—first, those striking down statutes, and, then, after the court reversed itself, those upholding them. Law that the court made in those moments was an extension of politics. But recently the court has become political in the sense that justices appointed by Republicans generally favor conservative outcomes in the most divisive and heavily publicized cases, and those appointed by Democrats generally favor more liberal outcomes. That has happened regularly since Elena Kagan replaced John Paul Stevens as a justice in 2010: this deep and recurring divide is a first in American history.
It’s not that justices vote as R’s and D’s, feeling beholden to support positions taken by the party of the president who picked them and the party they favor. Justices, by and large, reflect the liberal or conservative inclinations that presidents expect them to have when picking them, because their track record in the law and their professional experience reflect their “priors”—the attitudes, beliefs, dispositions, impulses, and so on that they bring to a case even before the apply law to facts. These political decisions contradict the image of law as distinct from politics. That is the romantic vision embodied in the beautiful Supreme Court building, which was designed to look like a Temple of Justice and is filled with art that depicts the law as noble and rising above politics. But it is the reality: The court is both a political institution and a legal one. How do you think the Supreme Court fared in the presidential election year in terms of both the perception and reality of its politicization, considering the sharp criticism by Republican candidates, Ginsburg’s serial putdowns of Donald Trump, and the Republican response to the Merrick Garland nomination? Caplan: Each of the developments you mention reinforced the view that the court is enveloped by politics—the reality as well as the perception.
The treatment of the Garland nomination was the worst. As the pollster Evans Witt told me, Chief Judge Garland—who is widely considered a superb judge and as independent as it’s possible to be on the bench—was reduced to a political pawn. It was clearly contrary to the Constitution, and therefore unconstitutional, for the Republican leadership of the Senate to refuse to consider his nomination. But there is no mechanism in the Constitution that allowed the American people to challenge the senators’ refusal to do their duty. In July, when Justice Ginsburg called Mr. Trump a “faker” and bemoaned the effect he would have on the court if he was elected president, her frank disapproval raised the serious question whether that political view also reflected how she votes in cases where liberals and conservatives—appointed by Democrats versus Republicans—tend to be on opposite sides. What she said wasn’t technically a violation of the Judicial Code of Conduct: currently, the code does not bind the justices. But that was a big part of the problem. The code articulates basic rules of judicial ethics and says explicitly that a federal judge should not take a public position about a candidate for election. The justice violated that principle. Hers was the latest in a string of related breaches of ethics by other justices going back a dozen years. The breach made clear that the court and the country would benefit if the court decided that the justices should be bound by the code, just like all other federal judges. The sharp criticism of the court by some Republican candidates underscored what a central place the court now has in American politics. The criticism was largely directed at court rulings about the divisive issues of abortion, affirmative action, and the like, where the court affirmed restrictive holdings but did not strike down practices that conservatives would like banned under the Constitution.
Read More : nationallawjournal.com/more-supreme-court-brief/id=1202778746854/A-Guide-to-the-Increasingly-Political-US-Supreme-Court?mcode=1202617204356&curindex=1&slreturn=20170110010226
Bail In Orlando – Data commissioner tells court US law fails to protect privacy
Source : Irish Times News
By : Mary Carolan
Category : Bail In Orlando , Bail In Orlando Fl
The Data Protection Commissioner has reached a provisional view that recent changes in US law fail to adequately protect the data privacy rights of European Union citizens whose personal data is sent to the United States, the Commercial Court has heard. Commissioner Helen Dixon made her draft finding in May 2016 after receiving independent expert advice on US law, her counsel Michael Collins said. The commissioner also got “unsolicited” submissions from the US government concerning the new Privacy Shield framework between the European Commission and US, he added. Before reaching a final view, the commissioner wants the Irish court to ask the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) to decide the validity of European Commission decisions approving transatlantic data transfer channels – standard contractual clauses (SCCs) – used by Facebook and others. The commissioner’s provisional view is the SCCs do not guarantee protection of EU citizens’ data for reasons including the lack of access to effective remedies in the US for breach of data privacy rights. Her case has potentially enormous consequences for trade between the EU and US and data privacy rights of millions of EU citizens.
Complaint
It arises from a June 2013 complaint by Austrian lawyer Max Schrems alleging his privacy rights under the EU charter were breached by transfer of his personal data by Facebook Ireland to its US parent Facebook Inc. The complaint followed revelations by former US National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden of NSA surveillance of certain internet and telecommunications systems operated by companies including Facebook, Microsoft and Google. After the CJEU determined the existing Safe Harbour regime for EU-US data transfers was invalid because it failed to adequately protect data-privacy rights of EU citizens, the Irish courts directed the commissioner to investigate Mr Schrems’s complaint. The commissioner made a draft finding in May 2016 that the complaint was “well-founded” but wants a CJEU decision whether the SCCs are valid before finalising her decision. While her case is against Facebook and Mr Schrems as data sender and complainant, no orders are sought against them and the purpose of the action is to get a referral to the CJEU. The US government is among several parties involved as amici curiae, assistants to the court on legal issues.
Charter
Ms Justice Caroline Costello will hear evidence from legal experts on whether protections under US law for EU citizens’ data privacy rights are equivalent to the protections guaranteed under the EU charter and EU law. On Wednesday, Mr Collins said the commissioner’s view is developments in US law since 2013 do not adequately meet her concerns about deficiencies in US protections for data-privacy rights of EU citizens. Her view is that while EU citizens are not completely without redress in the US, “specific and general deficiencies” remain and the remedies available are fragmented, incomplete and arise only under certain factual circumstances.
She is also concerned about the difficulties facing EU citizens in getting access to the US courts to seek redress and about restrictive interpretations by the US courts of relevant legislative provisions. Even if a EU citizen meets the criteria for a remedy for electronic surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Security Act, it appears, on foot of US court decisions, they cannot sue the US government, Mr Collins added. Developments since 2013 include a 2014 presidential policy directive 28 (PPD28) by former president Obama setting out “high-level principles” to be observed by intelligence agencies, especially in relation to non-US persons. While such executive or presidential orders have the force of law in the US, they don’t give rise to enforceable rights for parties, Mr Collins said. The Judicial Redress Act 2013 provided some extension of remedies of the 1974 Privacy Act to some non-US persons in designated countries but the US only last week designated the EU – excluding the UK and Denmark – as covered countries under the Act, he added.
Read More : irishtimes.com/business/technology/data-commissioner-tells-court-us-law-fails-to-protect-privacy-1.2968383
Bail Bondsman In Orlando Fl – Romanian gov’t seeks loophole for legal corruption law
Source : Dailysabah News
By : ASSOCIATED PRESS
Category : Bail Bondsman In Orlando , Bail Bondsman In Orlando Fl
Romania’s government is on a high-risk mission: to devise a legal and politically acceptable way to remove penalties for some types of official corruption. First, the government tried to effect the change by imposing an emergency decree without public debate. The move backfired badly, sparking massive demonstrations in the capital of Bucharest and other major cities that caused the government to reverse course. The standing of the left-leaning government that assumed power two months ago has fallen so quickly that leaders found it necessary Monday to assert they would not resign even as the protests continued. The prime minister says a new proposal will be put before Parliament instead. Is there a legal and political path for the government to accomplish its goal of easing corruption rules for public officials? Experts say Parliament can indeed pass such a law — and it could take effect if the president signs it — but the political task of winning support is trickier.
Laura Stefan, a Romanian anti-corruption specialist with the Expert Forum public policy think tank in Bucharest, said the government made a strategic blunder with the emergency decree. It would have tolerated abuse of power by officials — ranging from a mayor in a small village to a top government minister — if the amount of graft involved totaled less than about $48,500. “It’s simply un-defendable,” Stefan said. “How can you explain to the people of this country, who maybe don’t make $50,000 in their lifetime, that it is okay for public officials to misuse their office in order to obtain less than $50,000 from the state budget.” Public officials have not offered a specific explanation for why the law is needed, although one minister said it would bring the country in line with other European nations. The decree also would have applied retroactively to officials already convicted of corruption offenses involving less than $48,500. The threshold figure would not have applied to casesin which money was stolen, which would still be prosecuted as theft, but could apply to mismanagement of public funds, kickbacks on purchases or contracts, or other types of official misconduct. It would apply to officials who have hidden interests in companies that they set up and then make purchases from while in office.
One possible beneficiary would be Social Democratic Party leader Social Democratic Party leader Liviu Dragnea, whose path to becoming prime minister has been effectively blocked by corruption charges. His party enjoys broad support in Parliament, giving backers hope the redrafted measure will pass despite vocal opposition in the streets. The provocative proposal could be difficult to enact even if it passes in Parliament, however, because it would still require the approval of President Klaus Iohannis, who has expressed opposition to the measure in its current form. Transparency International, which lobbies for greater openness in government, has opposed both the way in which the emergency measure was imposed without public scrutiny and the proposal now set to be debated in Parliament. Adam Foldes, one of the group’s international lawyers at its Berlin headquarters, said the proposal does not meet international conventions set out by the United Nations and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that call for corruption penalties to be “proportionate, effective, and a deterrent.”
“It doesn’t look good from an international perspective or a domestic legal perspective,” Foldes said, adding that the original proposal cost the relatively new government a substantial amount of public support and should have been put before elected representatives all along. Many protesters say they plan to continue nightly demonstrations until the government steps down even though the emergency ordinance was withdrawn on Sunday. Lawyer Nicholas Hammond, who practices in Romania, said the procedure for approving emergency decrees was put in place after the country’s 1989 anti-communist revolution to deal with critical situations that developed when Parliament was not in session. However, it soon was abused by officials seeking to act without input from legislators, he said. “They realized they could do it even when Parliament was in session,” Hammond said. “This wasn’t even on the agenda and it was done at 10 at night.” There were signs Monday that the government, facing nightly protests, is wavering in its commitment to press for quick adoption of the proposal in Parliament. Justice Minister Florin Iordache said in a statement Monday that he is “not preoccupied” with drawing up a draft law and will await clarification from the Constitutional Court.
Read More : dailysabah.com/europe/2017/02/07/romanian-govt-seeks-loophole-for-legal-corruption-law
Bail Bondsman In Orlando – Legal Aid Justice Center, Law School to launch pro bono clinic
Source : Cavalier Daily News
By : Lucy Whitney
Category : Bail Bonds Orlando Fl , Bail Bondsman In Orlando
Over winter break, nine law students from the University’s School of Law volunteered at the Legal Aid Justice Center, which will be launching a new pro bono clinic this coming semester. The Civil Rights Litigation Pro Bono Clinic is a partnership between the Law School and Charlottesville’s Legal Aid Justice Center. “We’re always looking to elevate our cases to make a big impact that will help as many people as we can,” said Mario Salas, an attorney at the Legal Aid Justice Center who is working with the Civil Rights Pro Bono Clinic. Volunteers will work on civil rights and racial justice cases pro bono, which means they don’t receive academic credit for their work, but can receive volunteer hours. Many of the topics involved in the cases can be seen in today’s headlines, such as policing and race, the criminalization of poverty and mental health.
The cases in the clinic are in all different stages of litigation. Some of the cases haven’t been brought to court yet and are still in the research phase, while others have been filed and are currently being heard in court. For example, Salas is currently in the middle of litigation on a case involving a Virginia law that automatically suspends an individual’s driver’s license suspension when they don’t pay their court costs and fines on time. Salas said students often choose to volunteer because they want actual experience working on cases. “In law school, you often don’t get a chance to do that,” Salas added. “Classes are more abstract, theoretical and concept-based rather than practical skills[-based]. But by doing clinics, students get to see the day-to-day real side of lawyering.” Second-year Law student Andrew Ognibene said in an email to The Cavalier Daily that he worked on a case for the LAJC in its housing group.
“Our client was a recovering crack addict who was well on his way to recovery — holding down a job on the downtown mall, staying clean —until his landlord started to harass him, defacing his bedroom door with spray-painted insults, hanging disparaging banners outside of the house, and locking him out of the front gate,” Ognibene said. “He ended up being driven to homelessness as a result and reverted to drug use again.” The LAJC brought a suit on the man’s behalf and was able to win him a significant amount of money. Ognibene said that besides his contributions to trial preparation, he got to spend some time with the client and realized that “he was a good man who was just struggling with [addiction] and was down on his luck.”“It felt really good to [help] a client like that, no matter how small my role was,” Ognibene said. “And as a Law student, I couldn’t [have] hope[d] for a better two weeks in terms of learning about courtroom procedure and the justice system as a whole.”Mika Bray, a first-year Law student, worked with the Special Immigrant Juvenile Status program.
Bray said her group worked with “minor children who are living in the United States and typically fleeing from some sort of situation of abuse, abandonment, neglect or danger in their home country” as they helped “try to get them on the road to a status where they could apply for a green card.”“I was really excited when I left the project because it showed me very concretely how lawyers are able to make a difference in individual lives,” Bray said. “That wasn’t really something I was able to see on such a tangible level before. By meeting with clients and working on some of these cases that I was doing, I was able to really help people and that was a really wonderful thing to realize about law.” Ognibene said he was committed to public interest work before his experience with LAJC, but he is really energized about the prospect after volunteering. “A lot of students come to law school hoping to ‘help people,’ and that sentiment tends to be cliche even within circles at the law school,” Ognibene said. “At the same time, I was one of those people, and it felt reaffirming to work alongside talented attorneys on behalf of a worthy issue.”
Read More : cavalierdaily.com/article/2017/02/legal-aid-justice-center-to-launch-pro-bono-law-clinic
Bail Bonds Orlando Fl – Apple legal fight with Qualcomm spreads to China
Source : Phys org
By : Associated Press
Category : Bail Bonds Orlando Fl , Bail Bondsman In Orlando
Apple on Wednesday took its legal war with Qualcomm to China, filing lawsuits there accusing the chip-making giant of illegally wielding monopoly power. Apple confirmed the suits and referred AFP to comments it released when it filed an antitrust suit against Qualcomm in the United States last week. “For many years, Qualcomm has unfairly insisted on charging royalties for technologies they have nothing to do with,” California-based Apple said in the statement. “Qualcomm built its business on older, legacy, standards but reinforces its dominance through exclusionary tactics and excessive royalties.”
Qualcomm, also based in California, told AFP that it had not seen the legal complaints but that a press release from a Beijing court said one of the filings accused the company of violating China’s anti-monopoly law. The other asked for a determination regarding terms of a patent license agreement, the company said. “These filings by Apple’s Chinese subsidiary are just part of Apple’s efforts to find ways to pay less for Qualcomm’s technology,” Qualcomm general counsel Don Rosenberg said in a statement. “Qualcomm is prepared to defend its business model anywhere in the world.”
High stakes
Apple last week sued Qualcomm in US federal court, accusing the chipmaker of abusing its market power to demand unfair royalties, echoing recent charges by US antitrust regulators. The suit accuses Qualcomm of building a business model based on its rights to technologies that are considered telecommunication industry standards and then ramping up royalties when Apple innovated its mobile devices with features such as TouchID fingerprint recognition or digital wallets. Tech giant Apple said in the US court filing that it has been overcharged “billions of dollars” by its chipmaking partner’s “illegal scheme.” The company also claimed Qualcomm owes it a billion dollars but is refusing to pay in retaliation for Apple’s cooperation with South Korean antitrust regulators looking into the chipmaker’s actions in that country.
South Korea’s anti-trust watchdog last month slapped Qualcomm with a record fine over $850 million for abusing its dominant market position as a maker of baseband chipsets used in mobile phones. Qualcomm will appeal the decision, seeking a stay in the Seoul High Court while the process takes place, according to Qualcomm president Derek Aberle. “Apple has been actively encouraging regulatory attacks on Qualcomm’s business in various jurisdictions around the world… by misrepresenting facts and withholding information,” Rosenberg said in an earlier statement.
Just the chips
Apple noted in the US suit that Qualcomm’s business practices have come under scrutiny by antitrust regulators in an array of countries for selling its smartphone chipsets only to makers agreeing to its “preferred license terms” for essential mobile telecom patents. Apple relies on Qualcomm for chip-based modems that enable iPhones and iPads to communicate with telecommunication networks. Modem chips are separate from processors that act as the brains or graphics engines for mobile devices.
Apple’s legal complaints in China and California argue that Qualcomm should only be able to charge royalties on the prices of modem chips and not on what is paid for smartphones, Aberle said Wednesday during an earnings call with analysts. He contended that the positon was at odds with longstanding industry practice. “Apple’s complaint contains a lot of assertions, but in the end, this is a commercial dispute over the price of intellectual property,” Qualcomm chief executive Steve Mollenkopf said on the earnings call. “We intend to remain a good supplier to Apple even while this dispute continues.”
Read More : phys.org/news/2017-01-apple-legal-qualcomm-china.html
Bail Bonds Orange County Fl – Science and the US Supreme Court: The cases to watch in 2017
Source : Nature News
By : Sara Reardon
Category : Bail Bonds In Orlando Fl , Bail Bonds Orange County Fl
US President Donald Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Gorsuch, a conservative federal appeals court judge, would fill the vacancy left by the death of conservative justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016. Since then, the court has been split evenly between conservative and liberal justices; if Gorsuch is confirmed by the US Senate, the court’s ideological centre would shift towards the conservative.Nature looks at the science-related cases that are already on the court’s agenda this year, and others that are likely to advance to the highest court in the land.
Biological drugs
Patents for genes
Water-pollution limits
Endangered species
Climate-change rules
Biological drugs
The court will hear a pair of patent cases dealing with biological drugs. Because these living products are impossible to copy exactly, companies seeking to make cheaper generic versions called biosimilars must prove that their manufacturing process is as safe and effective as that of the original product. Only then will the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allow a biosimilar onto the market. The Supreme Court will decide whether such manufacturing processes themselves are trade secrets. In 2014, Sandoz, the generics arm of Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis, patented a generic version of the biological cancer drug filgrastim. Amgen, the company in Thousand Oaks, California, that makes filgrastim, then sued Sandoz, alleging that it infringed Amgen’s patents and failed to comply with legal requirements to disclose its manufacturing process to Amgen. Sandoz later countersued, challenging a federal requirement that a biosimilar maker wait six months after approval before marketing its therapy. Because the FDA has already evaluated each company’s manufacturing process for safety and efficacy, the court’s ruling will have no bearing on patient care, says Arti Rai, a legal expert at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. But the ruling could have a massive effect on the biologics market.
Patents for natural products
The court may also revisit when patents can be awarded for products made by naturally occurring processes. In 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that Prometheus Laboratories in San Diego, California, could not patent a kit that measured chemicals in a patient’s blood to determine whether a drug is working. And in 2013, it ruled that Myriad Genetics of Salt Lake City, Utah, could not patent a gene linked to breast cancer. The decisions shocked the biotechnology industry, because they implied that a wide array of products could not be patented, and companies are now hoping that the Supreme Court will provide clarity by taking another case. Although in 2016 the court declined to hear a lawsuit over whether companies could patent prenatal tests that measure fetal DNA in maternal blood samples, Rai says that most experts in the field expect that it will accept a similar case soon.
Water-pollution limits
The court agreed in January to hear a case that will determine which lower court should be the first to hear a lawsuit brought by developers challenging federal water-pollution regulations. The case could also decide whether the Clean Water Act applies to small tributaries and watersheds that contain as much as 60% of the fresh water in the United States. The law was originally intended to protect lakes and other navigable waterways from pollution, but the administration of former president Barack Obama expanded it to cover more waters.“It’s a big-time rule,” says Patrick Parenteau, an environmental lawyer at the University of Vermont in South Royalton. “If you shrink the scope of the Clean Water Act, you’re going to do incredible damage to water across the country.” The court’s ruling could affect nine lawsuits that are pending around the country in federal district courts. Among them is a case filed by Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt — Trump’s pick to lead the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which enforces the Clean Water Act.
Endangered species
Another case that could reach the court is a challenge to the Endangered Species Act that is now pending in Utah, Parenteau says. Property owners filed the suit to protest government restrictions on harassing or killing the endangered Utah prairie dog, even on private lands. In 2014, a federal judge ruled that the Endangered Species Act cannot be used to protect the prairie dog. When the US Congress enacted the species law, it relied on a provision in the US Constitution that allows the government to regulate interstate commerce. Because the prairie dog appears to exist only in Utah, the interstate commerce provision — and thus, the endangered species law — does not apply, the federal judge said. The US Fish and Wildlife Service, which administers the endangered-species law, has appealed against the ruling, but that court’s decision has been pending for a year. Parenteau says that the appeals’ court’s long deliberation time suggests that it may uphold the Utah judge’s ruling. If the case ultimately reaches the Supreme Court, it could affect whether the federal government can protect other species that are only found in one state.
Climate-change rules
The most closely watched environmental case that might appear before the court deals with the Clean Power Plan, Obama’s 2015 policy to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions produced by power plants. Twenty-seven states have sued the EPA over the rule, saying that the agency’s authority to regulate air quality does not extend to greenhouse-gas emissions. (Trump’s EPA pick Pruitt filed suit on Oklahoma’s behalf.) In February 2016, the Supreme Court forbade the EPA from enforcing the policy until the suit had been decided. A federal court in Washington DC heard the case in September 2016, and a ruling is expected any day. Jonathan Adler, a legal expert at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, says that the court is widely expected to side with the EPA, in which case the states would almost certainly appeal to the Supreme Court. Trump has promised to repeal the Clean Power Plan, and his administration is not expected to defend the regulations in court. But the president cannot reverse the regulations himself without providing a valid, non-political reason, Adler says, citing a 1983 Supreme Court ruling. Formulating such a reason could take Trump’s EPA a great deal of time, and it may not finish before the Supreme Court rules on the pending case.
Read More : nature.com/news/science-and-the-us-supreme-court-the-cases-to-watch-in-2017-1.21419
Bail Bonds In Orlando Fl – Admin clarifies, again, travel ban rules for legal residents
Source : Fox News
By : Associated Press
Category : Bail Bonds In Orlando Fl , Bail Bonds Orange County Fl
Legal permanent U.S. residents from seven countries whose citizens are covered by a three-month American travel ban won’t need special permission to come back to the United States after all, the Trump administration announced Wednesday. White House spokesman Sean Spicer said green card holders will now be allowed to enter and leave the United States as they please, despite the ban. Spicer’s announcement was the latest effort to clarify and adjust President Donald Trump’s executive order banning travel and immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries.
The order, signed Friday, has caused drawn international criticism and spawned widespread panic among travelers and apparent confusion within the government about how the order should be implemented. In the earliest hours of the travel ban, green card holders were blocked from getting on planes overseas or detained upon their arrival. Also blocked were some Iraqi nationals with special visas issued to people who helped U.S. troops fighting in that country.
As of Tuesday more than 1,000 green card holders had been let in under a special waiver, acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan said. Spicer said Wednesday that for “the sake of efficiency,” green card holders “no longer need a waiver.” The executive order also included a four-month halt to the U.S. refugee program and an indefinite ban on U.S. travel for all Syrians.
Read More : foxnews.com/us/2017/02/01/admin-clarifies-again-travel-ban-rules-for-legal-residents.html
Bail Bonds In Orlando – Federal justice minister pledges review of ‘zombie law’ that caused legal stumble in Travis Vader conviction
Source : Edmonton Journal News
By : Paige Parsons
Category : Orlando Fl Bail Bonds , Bail Bonds In Orlando
Criminal Code struck down as unconstitutional, responding to calls of the family of two murdered Alberta seniors whose killer’s murder convictions were vacated as a result of a judge being tripped up by one of these so-called ‘zombie laws.’After hearing Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Denny Thomas sentence Travis Vader to life in prison for the deaths of his parents, Lyle and Marie McCann, on Wednesday, Bret McCann once again reiterated that the Criminal Code must be reformed to deal with defunct legislation. In September 2016, Thomas found Vader guilty of two counts of second-degree murder. Thomas based his decision on a finding that Vader was trying to rob the McCanns when he caused their death. However, upon review it was determined that the judge had relied on a defunct section of the Criminal Code that allowed for a finding of second-degree murder in the event of unintentional deaths during the commission of another crime, such as robbery. That section had been struck down as unconstitutional in 1990, but has never been removed from the code. Thomas vacated the murder convictions, and instead found Vader guilty of two counts of manslaughter on Oct. 31.
In December, Bret McCann held a news conference in St. Albert and called for reform of the Criminal Code. “The consternation and pain endured by my family because of this so-called zombie law was enormous,” he said at the event organized by St. Albert-Edmonton Conservative MP Michael Cooper. “While Justice Thomas was responsible for this mistake in the verdict in the Vader case, I think it is ludicrous that these booby traps are allowed to just exist within the Criminal Code,” McCann said. After seeing Vader sentenced to life on Thursday, McCann said he plans to continue to advocate for the code to be changed, and said that although he had reached out to the minister’s office in the fall, he hadn’t heard back.
In an emailed statement on Thursday, Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould said she has already asked staff to begin looking at the issue as part of a “larger review” of the criminal justice system. “I have already instructed my officials in the Department of Justice to conduct a review of Criminal Code provisions found to be unconstitutional with a view to updating the Criminal Code to reflect these decisions. Cases like this highlight the crucial need for such a review,” Wilson-Raybould said in an emailed statement. The email sent by a Justice spokesperson added that the minister’s office had recently received a letter from the McCanns, and would be responding shortly.
Read More : edmontonjournal.com/news/crime/federal-justice-minister-pledges-review-of-zombie-law-that-caused-legal-stumble-in-travis-vader-conviction
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