Justice Antonin Scalia is getting attention for his outlandish view, expressed in an interview in the magazine California Lawyer, that the promise of equal protection in the Constitution’s 14th Amendment does not extend to protecting women against sex discrimination. Legislatures may outlaw sex discrimination, Justice Scalia suggested, but if they decided to enact laws sanctioning such unfair treatment, it would not be unconstitutional.
Archive for January 24th, 2011
24
Jan
11
Here Goes Scalia Again
Like so many other celebrities, Courtney Love likes to reach her minions via Twitter.
But the rocker/model/bon vivant is now having to answer in court for some tweets that she fired off in 2009.
She has been sued by Dawn Simorangkir, a fashion designer, who in 2009 purportedly requested that Love pay up for clothes Simorangkir had designed.
Love apparently did not take too kindly to the financial request, tweeting that she allegedly had already paid Simorangkir as much as $40,000 and adding: “I do not make a person become famous and get raped too.”
But that wasn’t all. Love also claimed in tweets that Simorangkir was a drug pusher and prostitute.
Simorangkir has claimed that Love’s tweets and other statements in social media about her were false and destroyed her career. Simorangkir’s suit, which is due to be tried in February, is one of the more high profile cases to explore whether tweets, in all their casual, offhanded glory, can give rise to liability.
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has thrown out a $1.4 million fine against ABC for airing a 2003 episode of “NYPD Blue” that contained nudity.
The court issued a nonprecedential summary judgment that found the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) relied on an “unconstitutionally vague” indecency policy for determining when nudity should be considered obscene when it fined 52 ABC affiliates for the incident.
Retired and defeated members of Congress are starting to announce their post-political plans.
Republican-turned-Democrat Arlen Specter is going to teach a course about the relationship between the Supreme Court and Congress at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
Without naming names or casting blame, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. called on Republicans and Democrats to put aside their differences and move more quickly to approve qualified nominees to be federal judges.
About 110 judgeships — about one in eight in the federal judiciary — are vacant, and the Senate approved only 60 of President Obama’s court nominees in the last two years. That was the lowest total for a new president in four decades.
The Press and The Bench 