Conflict of Interest on the Supreme Court

I seldom recommend radio programs in this blog but have to make an exception for this morning's Diane Rehm Show on NPR. The topic--whether Justices Kagan and Thomas should recuse themselves from hearing case(s) on the federal health care reform laws--definitely merits attention from legal scholar and law students. But the discussion/debating skill demonstrated by the guests (Prof. Sherrilyn Ifill of U. of Maryland Law School, Prof. Jeffrey Rosen of George Washington Law School, and Jeffrey Toobin of New Yorker) are remarkable. It is an intellectual treat to listen to this program.

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The Amazing, but True, Deportation Story of Carlos Marcello

Earlier this week, the University of Houston Law Center was fortunate to have as its guest Professor Daniel Kanstroom of Boston College of Law. An expert in immigration law, he is the Director of the International Human Rights Program, and he both founded and directs the Boston College Immigration and Asylum Clinic. Speaking as the guest of the Houston Journal of International Law’s annual Fall Lecture Series, Professor Kanstroom discussed issues raised in his new book, Aftermath: Deportation Law and the New American Diaspora . Professor Michael Olivas introduced Professor Kanstroom to the audience, and mentioned the fascinating tale of Carlos Marcello, which Professor Kanstroom wrote about in his chapter “The Long, Complex, and Futile Deportation Saga of Carlos Marcello,” in Immigration Stories , a collection of narratives about leading immigration law cases. My interest piqued, I read and was amazed by Kanstroom’s description of one of the most interesting figures in American le...

Lessons for Today from the Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda

“Man’s inhumanity to man is not only perpetrated by the vitriolic actions of those who are bad. It is also perpetrated by the vitiating inaction of those who are good.” –Martin Luther King Jr. Last week, I had the pleasure of attending Professor Zachary D. Kaufman ’s presentation on Lessons for Today from the Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda hosted by the Johannesburg Holocaust & Geno cide Ce ntre . Among the many takeaways highlighted by Professor Kaufman and drawn from Lessons from Rwanda: Post-Genocide Law and Policy were ten simple yet profound lessons: Lesson #1: Hate speech is dangerous. To illustrate the role that hate speech played in the Rwandan genocide, Professor Kaufman discussed multiple forms of propaganda , such as Kangura, Radio Rwanda, and RTLM “hate radio.” He concludes that we must have limits, including with respect to social media, and further asserts that social media must do a better jo...

Texas Subsequent History Table Ceases Publication

This week, Thomson Reuters notified subscribers that publication of the Texas Subsequent History Table will be discontinued and no further updates will be produced, due to “insufficient market interest.” Practitioners have been extracting writ (and since 1997, petition) history from the tables since their initial publication in 1917 as The Complete Texas Writs of Error Table . The tables, later published by West, have been used for nearly a century to determine how the Texas Supreme Court or Court of Criminal Appeals disposed of an appeal from an intermediate appellate court. The purpose of adding this notation to citations is to indicate the effect of the Texas Supreme Court’s action on the weight of authority of the Court of Appeals’ opinion. For example, practitioners may prefer to use as authority a case that the Texas Supreme Court has determined is correct both in result and legal principles applied (petition refused), rather than one that simply presents no error that requ...

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