Podcasts about second circuit

In this appeal from a now-settled defamation case brought by Virginia Giuffre against Ghislaine Maxwell, the Second Circuit held that many of the documents under seal were properly treated as “judicial documents” to which a strong presumption of public access attached. The court reaffirmed that the status of a document as a judicial document is “fixed at filing” — meaning that if the filing was relevant to the court's exercise of its Article III functions when filed, later events (e.g., the case being settled or the motion becoming moot) do not nullify the presumption of access. The court also clarified that a document does not lose the presumption of access simply because the court did not explicitly rely on it in rendering a decision, and that filings in connection with motions to seal or unseal are themselves judicial documents since they invoke the court's supervisory power.At the same time, the Second Circuit affirmed in part and vacated in part the district court's orders. It agreed that the lower court did not err in declining to unseal certain documents — for example, segments of Maxwell's deposition involving her adult sexual relationships and redacted identifying information of pseudonymized third-parties — because in those instances countervailing privacy interests outweighed the access presumption. But the appellate court vacated the district court's categorical refusal to treat certain undecided motions as judicial documents subject to access, and remanded for further individual review of those materials (including a Florida deposition transcript and filings by non-parties) consistent with the correct standard.to contact me: bobbycapucci@protonmail.com

This Day in Legal History: US Capitol OpensOn November 17, 1800, the United States Congress convened for the first time in the new Capitol building in Washington, D.C., marking a foundational moment in American legal and political history. The relocation came after a decade of Congress meeting in temporary quarters, most recently in Philadelphia, as the young republic grappled with questions of permanence and national identity. Washington, D.C. had been selected as the capital through the Residence Act of 1790, a political compromise that helped balance regional power between North and South. By 1800, the city remained largely undeveloped, and the Capitol itself was still under construction—only the north wing was usable.Despite its incomplete state, the Capitol's occupation by Congress signaled the institutional maturity of the federal government. It gave physical shape to the separation of powers by housing the legislative branch in its own dedicated space, distinct from the executive and judiciary. This move also underscored the federal character of the American system, establishing a neutral location not belonging to any one state. John Adams, still president at the time, had moved into the President's House (now the White House) just weeks earlier, completing the federal trifecta.The decision to proceed with the session in an unfinished building reflected a commitment to constitutional governance and the rule of law, even in the face of logistical and environmental hardships. Lawmakers contended with the muddy streets and sparse accommodations of the nascent city, yet their presence inaugurated what would become one of the most symbolically and functionally important legislative chambers in the world. This moment laid the groundwork for Washington, D.C. to become not only the seat of American government but a focal point for legal development, political conflict, and democratic debate for centuries to come.More than 500 lawsuits alleging that Tylenol use during pregnancy causes autism in children may be revived, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit prepares to hear arguments from plaintiffs challenging a 2024 dismissal of their cases. A lower court had rejected the claims after finding that the plaintiffs' expert testimony lacked scientific rigor, a conclusion supported by Tylenol maker Kenvue. The plaintiffs argue the judge mischaracterized their experts' findings and are citing public support from President Trump and health officials, who linked autism to Tylenol use during a September 2025 press conference.Scientific consensus continues to hold that no definitive link exists between acetaminophen (the active ingredient in Tylenol) and autism, a position echoed by Kenvue. The company is also facing a separate suit from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who accuses Kenvue of concealing risks to children, though a Texas judge recently denied Paxton's efforts to halt a $398 million shareholder dividend and restrict Tylenol marketing. Meanwhile, it remains uncertain whether the appeal will impact Kimberly-Clark's pending $40 billion acquisition of Kenvue, though both companies have indicated that litigation over autism claims won't derail the deal.US appeals court to weigh reviving cases over Tylenol and autism | ReutersGupta Wessler, a boutique appellate firm in Washington, D.C., known for its U.S. Supreme Court advocacy on behalf of plaintiffs, has hired Matthew Guarnieri, a former assistant to the U.S. solicitor general. Guarnieri argued 13 Supreme Court cases under both the Biden and Trump administrations and is the first attorney to leave the solicitor general's office for a firm that exclusively handles plaintiff-side appellate work. His move reflects a growing recognition of Gupta Wessler's nontraditional model, which competes with corporate-heavy appellate practices at larger firms.Guarnieri becomes the fifth principal at the 18-lawyer firm, which is currently involved in high-profile litigation, including representing Consumer Financial Protection Bureau employees challenging President Trump's mass firings and securing a $185 million verdict against Monsanto over chemical contamination. The firm also represents Uber passengers alleging sexual assault and recently blocked an attempt in Nevada to limit contingency fees in civil cases. Guarnieri left the DOJ in October after nine years of service; the department declined to comment on his departure.DC appellate firm picks up departing DOJ Supreme Court advocate | ReutersA federal jury in California has ordered Apple to pay $634 million to Masimo, a medical technology company, for infringing a patent related to blood-oxygen monitoring used in Apple Watches. The jury found that specific features like workout mode and heart rate notifications violated Masimo's patent rights. Apple has announced plans to appeal, arguing that the patent in question, which expired in 2022, covers outdated technology and that most of Masimo's other patent claims have been invalidated.This verdict is part of a broader legal conflict between Apple and Masimo, which accuses Apple of poaching employees and misappropriating pulse oximetry technology. In 2023, the U.S. International Trade Commission imposed an import ban on certain Apple Watch models, prompting Apple to remove the disputed feature and later reintroduce it with customs approval. A new ITC review is now underway to determine if the updated models should also be banned. The legal fight spans several courts and includes ongoing challenges from both companies over import restrictions and intellectual property claims.US jury says Apple must pay Masimo $634 million in smartwatch patent case | Reuters This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

From the moment Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested in July 2020, she launched an aggressive series of bail attempts, all of which were rejected by federal judges who consistently found her to be an extreme flight risk. In her first effort, she requested release to home confinement with electronic monitoring, but prosecutors and the court highlighted her dual citizenships, extensive international ties, history of global travel, and large undisclosed financial resources. The court determined that no conditions—no matter how strict—could reasonably ensure that she would appear for trial. In December 2020, Maxwell's legal team escalated their offer with a proposed $28.5 million bail package, secured by properties and supported by family members willing to act as guarantors. She also offered to waive her citizenships and abide by 24-hour armed guard monitoring, but the judge again ruled that her financial reach and international network made her uniquely capable of disappearing if released.Following that failure, Maxwell submitted multiple additional bail requests in early 2021, each one attempting to address prior objections and each one rejected. The court pointed to documented efforts she had made to evade law enforcement, including hiding on a secluded New Hampshire estate and transferring assets through shell accounts, as evidence that she could not be trusted to remain under supervision. Prosecutors emphasized that her wealth was deliberately obscured, her ties to countries that do not extradite were significant, and the allegations against her were extraordinarily serious. Even her appeals to the Second Circuit were denied, affirming the lower court's conclusion that she posed a flight risk that no bail package could mitigate. Ultimately, her detention remained in place until trial and conviction.to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.com

From the moment Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested in July 2020, she launched an aggressive series of bail attempts, all of which were rejected by federal judges who consistently found her to be an extreme flight risk. In her first effort, she requested release to home confinement with electronic monitoring, but prosecutors and the court highlighted her dual citizenships, extensive international ties, history of global travel, and large undisclosed financial resources. The court determined that no conditions—no matter how strict—could reasonably ensure that she would appear for trial. In December 2020, Maxwell's legal team escalated their offer with a proposed $28.5 million bail package, secured by properties and supported by family members willing to act as guarantors. She also offered to waive her citizenships and abide by 24-hour armed guard monitoring, but the judge again ruled that her financial reach and international network made her uniquely capable of disappearing if released.Following that failure, Maxwell submitted multiple additional bail requests in early 2021, each one attempting to address prior objections and each one rejected. The court pointed to documented efforts she had made to evade law enforcement, including hiding on a secluded New Hampshire estate and transferring assets through shell accounts, as evidence that she could not be trusted to remain under supervision. Prosecutors emphasized that her wealth was deliberately obscured, her ties to countries that do not extradite were significant, and the allegations against her were extraordinarily serious. Even her appeals to the Second Circuit were denied, affirming the lower court's conclusion that she posed a flight risk that no bail package could mitigate. Ultimately, her detention remained in place until trial and conviction.to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-moscow-murders-and-more--5852883/support.

In this appeal from a now-settled defamation case brought by Virginia Giuffre against Ghislaine Maxwell, the Second Circuit held that many of the documents under seal were properly treated as “judicial documents” to which a strong presumption of public access attached. The court reaffirmed that the status of a document as a judicial document is “fixed at filing” — meaning that if the filing was relevant to the court's exercise of its Article III functions when filed, later events (e.g., the case being settled or the motion becoming moot) do not nullify the presumption of access. The court also clarified that a document does not lose the presumption of access simply because the court did not explicitly rely on it in rendering a decision, and that filings in connection with motions to seal or unseal are themselves judicial documents since they invoke the court's supervisory power.At the same time, the Second Circuit affirmed in part and vacated in part the district court's orders. It agreed that the lower court did not err in declining to unseal certain documents — for example, segments of Maxwell's deposition involving her adult sexual relationships and redacted identifying information of pseudonymized third-parties — because in those instances countervailing privacy interests outweighed the access presumption. But the appellate court vacated the district court's categorical refusal to treat certain undecided motions as judicial documents subject to access, and remanded for further individual review of those materials (including a Florida deposition transcript and filings by non-parties) consistent with the correct standard.to contact me: bobbycapucci@protonmail.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-moscow-murders-and-more--5852883/support.

In this appeal from a now-settled defamation case brought by Virginia Giuffre against Ghislaine Maxwell, the Second Circuit held that many of the documents under seal were properly treated as “judicial documents” to which a strong presumption of public access attached. The court reaffirmed that the status of a document as a judicial document is “fixed at filing” — meaning that if the filing was relevant to the court's exercise of its Article III functions when filed, later events (e.g., the case being settled or the motion becoming moot) do not nullify the presumption of access. The court also clarified that a document does not lose the presumption of access simply because the court did not explicitly rely on it in rendering a decision, and that filings in connection with motions to seal or unseal are themselves judicial documents since they invoke the court's supervisory power.At the same time, the Second Circuit affirmed in part and vacated in part the district court's orders. It agreed that the lower court did not err in declining to unseal certain documents — for example, segments of Maxwell's deposition involving her adult sexual relationships and redacted identifying information of pseudonymized third-parties — because in those instances countervailing privacy interests outweighed the access presumption. But the appellate court vacated the district court's categorical refusal to treat certain undecided motions as judicial documents subject to access, and remanded for further individual review of those materials (including a Florida deposition transcript and filings by non-parties) consistent with the correct standard.to contact me: bobbycapucci@protonmail.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-epstein-chronicles--5003294/support.

From the moment Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested in July 2020, she launched an aggressive series of bail attempts, all of which were rejected by federal judges who consistently found her to be an extreme flight risk. In her first effort, she requested release to home confinement with electronic monitoring, but prosecutors and the court highlighted her dual citizenships, extensive international ties, history of global travel, and large undisclosed financial resources. The court determined that no conditions—no matter how strict—could reasonably ensure that she would appear for trial. In December 2020, Maxwell's legal team escalated their offer with a proposed $28.5 million bail package, secured by properties and supported by family members willing to act as guarantors. She also offered to waive her citizenships and abide by 24-hour armed guard monitoring, but the judge again ruled that her financial reach and international network made her uniquely capable of disappearing if released.Following that failure, Maxwell submitted multiple additional bail requests in early 2021, each one attempting to address prior objections and each one rejected. The court pointed to documented efforts she had made to evade law enforcement, including hiding on a secluded New Hampshire estate and transferring assets through shell accounts, as evidence that she could not be trusted to remain under supervision. Prosecutors emphasized that her wealth was deliberately obscured, her ties to countries that do not extradite were significant, and the allegations against her were extraordinarily serious. Even her appeals to the Second Circuit were denied, affirming the lower court's conclusion that she posed a flight risk that no bail package could mitigate. Ultimately, her detention remained in place until trial and conviction.to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-epstein-chronicles--5003294/support.

How are the federal courts faring during these tumultuous times? I thought it would be worthwhile to discuss this important subject with a former federal judge: someone who understands the judicial role well but could speak more freely than a sitting judge, liberated from the strictures of the bench.Meet Judge Nancy Gertner (Ret.), who served as a U.S. District Judge for the District of Massachusetts from 1994 until 2011. I knew that Judge Gertner would be a lively and insightful interviewee—based not only on her extensive commentary on recent events, reflected in media interviews and op-eds, but on my personal experience. During law school, I took a year-long course on federal sentencing with her, and she was one of my favorite professors.When I was her student, we disagreed on a lot: I was severely conservative back then, and Judge Gertner was, well, not. But I always appreciated and enjoyed hearing her views—so it was a pleasure hearing them once again, some 25 years later, in what turned out to be an excellent conversation.Show Notes:* Nancy Gertner, author website* Nancy Gertner bio, Harvard Law School* In Defense of Women: Memoirs of an Unrepentant Advocate, AmazonPrefer reading to listening? For paid subscribers, a transcript of the entire episode appears below.Sponsored by:NexFirm helps Biglaw attorneys become founding partners. To learn more about how NexFirm can help you launch your firm, call 212-292-1000 or email careerdevelopment@nexfirm.com.Three quick notes about this transcript. First, it has been cleaned up from the audio in ways that don't alter substance—e.g., by deleting verbal filler or adding a word here or there to clarify meaning. Second, my interviewee has not reviewed this transcript, and any errors are mine. Third, because of length constraints, this newsletter may be truncated in email; to view the entire post, simply click on “View entire message” in your email app.David Lat: Welcome to the Original Jurisdiction podcast. I'm your host, David Lat, author of a Substack newsletter about law and the legal profession also named Original Jurisdiction, which you can read and subscribe to at davidlat.substack.com. You're listening to the eighty-fifth episode of this podcast, recorded on Monday, November 3.Thanks to this podcast's sponsor, NexFirm. NexFirm helps Biglaw attorneys become founding partners. To learn more about how NexFirm can help you launch your firm, call 212-292-1000 or email careerdevelopment@nexfirm.com. Want to know who the guest will be for the next Original Jurisdiction podcast? Follow NexFirm on LinkedIn for a preview.Many of my guests have been friends of mine for a long time—and that's the case for today's. I've known Judge Nancy Gertner for more than 25 years, dating back to when I took a full-year course on federal sentencing from her and the late Professor Dan Freed at Yale Law School. She was a great teacher, and although we didn't always agree—she was a professor who let students have their own opinions—I always admired her intellect and appreciated her insights.Judge Gertner is herself a graduate of Yale Law School—where she met, among other future luminaries, Bill and Hillary Clinton. After a fascinating career in private practice as a litigator and trial lawyer handling an incredibly diverse array of cases, Judge Gertner was appointed to serve as a U.S. District Judge for the District of Massachusetts in 1994, by President Clinton. She retired from the bench in 2011, but she is definitely not retired: she writes opinion pieces for outlets such as The New York Times and The Boston Globe, litigates and consults on cases, and trains judges and litigators. She's also working on a book called Incomplete Sentences, telling the stories of the people she sentenced over 17 years on the bench. Her autobiography, In Defense of Women: Memoirs of an Unrepentant Advocate, was published in 2011. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Judge Nancy Gertner.Judge, thank you so much for joining me.Nancy Gertner: Thank you for inviting me. This is wonderful.DL: So it's funny: I've been wanting to have you on this podcast in a sense before it existed, because you and I worked on a podcast pilot. It ended up not getting picked up, but perhaps they have some regrets over that, because legal issues have just blown up since then.NG: I remember that. I think it was just a question of scheduling, and it was before Trump, so we were talking about much more sophisticated, superficial things, as opposed to the rule of law and the demise of the Constitution.DL: And we will get to those topics. But to start off my podcast in the traditional way, let's go back to the beginning. I believe we are both native New Yorkers?NG: Yes, that's right. I was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, in an apartment that I think now is a tenement museum, and then we moved to Flushing, Queens, where I lived into my early 20s.DL: So it's interesting—I actually spent some time as a child in that area. What was your upbringing like? What did your parents do?NG: My father owned a linoleum store, or as we used to call it, “tile,” and my mother was a homemaker. My mother worked at home. We were lower class on the Lower East Side and maybe made it to lower-middle. My parents were very conservative, in the sense they didn't know exactly what to do with a girl who was a bit of a radical. Neither I nor my sister was precisely what they anticipated. So I got to Barnard for college only because my sister had a conniption fit when he wouldn't pay for college for her—she's my older sister—he was not about to pay for college. If we were boys, we would've had college paid for.In a sense, they skipped a generation. They were actually much more traditional than their peers were. My father was Orthodox when he grew up; my mother was somewhat Orthodox Jewish. My father couldn't speak English until the second grade. So they came from a very insular environment, and in one sense, he escaped that environment when he wanted to play ball on Saturdays. So that was actually the motivation for moving to Queens: to get away from the Lower East Side, where everyone would know that he wasn't in temple on Saturday. We used to have interesting discussions, where I'd say to him that my rebellion was a version of his: he didn't want to go to temple on Saturdays, and I was marching against the war. He didn't see the equivalence, but somehow I did.There's actually a funny story to tell about sort of exactly the distance between how I was raised and my life. After I graduated from Yale Law School, with all sorts of honors and stuff, and was on my way to clerk for a judge, my mother and I had this huge fight in the kitchen of our apartment. What was the fight about? Sadie wanted me to take the Triborough Bridge toll taker's test, “just in case.” “You never know,” she said. I couldn't persuade her that it really wasn't necessary. She passed away before I became a judge, and I told this story at my swearing-in, and I said that she just didn't understand. I said, “Now I have to talk to my mother for a minute; forgive me for a moment.” And I looked up at the rafters and I said, “Ma, at last: a government job!” So that is sort of the measure of where I started. My mother didn't finish high school, my father had maybe a semester of college—but that wasn't what girls did.DL: So were you then a first-generation professional or a first-generation college graduate?NG: Both—my sister and I were both, first-generation college graduates and first-generation professionals. When people talk about Jewish backgrounds, they're very different from one another, and since my grandparents came from Eastern European shtetls, it's not clear to me that they—except for one grandfather—were even literate. So it was a very different background.DL: You mentioned that you did go to Yale Law School, and of course we connected there years later, when I was your student. But what led you to go to law school in the first place? Clearly your parents were not encouraging your professional ambitions.NG: One is, I love to speak. My husband kids me now and says that I've never met a microphone I didn't like. I had thought for a moment of acting—musical comedy, in fact. But it was 1967, and the anti-war movement, a nascent women's movement, and the civil rights movement were all rising around me, and I wanted to be in the world. And the other thing was that I didn't want to do anything that women do. Actually, musical comedy was something that would've been okay and normal for women, but I didn't want to do anything that women typically do. So that was the choice of law. It was more like the choice of law professor than law, but that changed over time.DL: So did you go straight from Barnard to Yale Law School?NG: Well, I went from Barnard to Yale graduate school in political science because as I said, I've always had an academic and a practical side, and so I thought briefly that I wanted to get a Ph.D. I still do, actually—I'm going to work on that after these books are finished.DL: Did you then think that you wanted to be a law professor when you started at YLS? I guess by that point you already had a master's degree under your belt?NG: I thought I wanted to be a law professor, that's right. I did not think I wanted to practice law. Yale at that time, like most law schools, had no practical clinical courses. I don't think I ever set foot in a courtroom or a courthouse, except to demonstrate on the outside of it. And the only thing that started me in practice was that I thought I should do at least two or three years of practice before I went back into the academy, before I went back into the library. Twenty-four years later, I obviously made a different decision.DL: So you were at YLS during a very interesting time, and some of the law school's most famous alumni passed through its halls around that period. So tell us about some of the people you either met or overlapped with at YLS during your time there.NG: Hillary Clinton was one of my best friends. I knew Bill, but I didn't like him.DL: Hmmm….NG: She was one of my best friends. There were 20 women in my class, which was the class of ‘71. The year before, there had only been eight. I think we got up to 21—a rumor had it that it was up to 21 because men whose numbers were drafted couldn't go to school, and so suddenly they had to fill their class with this lesser entity known as women. It was still a very small number out of, I think, what was the size of the opening class… 165? Very small. So we knew each other very, very well. And Hillary and I were the only ones, I think, who had no boyfriends at the time, though that changed.DL: I think you may have either just missed or briefly overlapped with either Justice Thomas or Justice Alito?NG: They're younger than I am, so I think they came after.DL: And that would be also true of Justice Sotomayor then as well?NG: Absolutely. She became a friend because when I was on the bench, I actually sat with the Second Circuit, and we had great times together. But she was younger than I was, so I didn't know her in law school, and by the time she was in law school, there were more women. In the middle of, I guess, my first year at Yale Law School, was the first year that Yale College went coed. So it was, in my view, an enormously exciting time, because we felt like we were inventing law. We were inventing something entirely new. We had the first “women in the law” course, one of the first such courses in the country, and I think we were borderline obnoxious. It's a little bit like the debates today, which is that no one could speak right—you were correcting everyone with respect to the way they were describing women—but it was enormously creative and exciting.DL: So I'm gathering you enjoyed law school, then?NG: I loved law school. Still, when I was in law school, I still had my feet in graduate school, so I believe that I took law and sociology for three years, mostly. In other words, I was going through law school as if I were still in graduate school, and it was so bad that when I decided to go into practice—and this is an absolutely true story—I thought that dying intestate was a disease. We were taking the bar exam, and I did not know what they were talking about.DL: So tell us, then, what did lead you to shift gears? You mentioned you clerked, and you mentioned you wanted to practice for a few years—but you did practice for more than a few years.NG: Right. I talk to students about this all the time, about sort of the fortuities that you need to grab onto that you absolutely did not plan. So I wind up at a small civil-rights firm, Harvey Silverglate and Norman Zalkind's firm. I wind up in a small civil-rights firm because I couldn't get a job anywhere else in Boston. I was looking in Boston or San Francisco, and what other women my age were encountering, I encountered, which is literally people who told me that I would never succeed as a lawyer, certainly not as a litigator. So you have to understand, this is 1971. I should say, as a footnote, that I have a file of everyone who said that to me. People know that I have that file; it's called “Sexist Tidbits.” And so I used to decide whether I should recuse myself when someone in that file appeared before me, but I decided it was just too far.So it was a small civil-rights firm, and they were doing draft cases, they were doing civil-rights cases of all different kinds, and they were doing criminal cases. After a year, the partnership between Norman Zalkind and Harvey Silverglate broke up, and Harvey made me his partner, now an equal partner after a year of practice.Shortly after that, I got a case that changed my career in so many ways, which is I wound up representing Susan Saxe. Susan Saxe was one of five individuals who participated in robberies to get money for the anti-war movement. She was probably five years younger than I was. In the case of the robbery that she participated in, a police officer was killed. She was charged with felony murder. She went underground for five years; the other woman went underground for 20 years.Susan wanted me to represent her, not because she had any sense that I was any good—it's really quite wonderful—she wanted me to represent her because she figured her case was hopeless. And her case was hopeless because the three men involved in the robbery either fled or were immediately convicted, so her case seemed to be hopeless. And she was an extraordinarily principled woman: she said that in her last moment on the stage—she figured that she'd be convicted and get life—she wanted to be represented by a woman. And I was it. There was another woman in town who was a public defender, but I was literally the only private lawyer. I wrote about the case in my book, In Defense of Women, and to Harvey Silvergate's credit, even though the case was virtually no money, he said, “If you want to do it, do it.”Because I didn't know what I was doing—and I literally didn't know what I was doing—I researched every inch of everything in the case. So we had jury research and careful jury selection, hiring people to do jury selection. I challenged the felony-murder rule (this was now 1970). If there was any evidentiary issue, I would not only do the legal research, but talk to social psychologists about what made sense to do. To make a long story short, it took about two years to litigate the case, and it's all that I did.And the government's case was winding down, and it seemed to be not as strong as we thought it was—because, ironically, nobody noticed the woman in the bank. Nobody was noticing women in general; nobody was noticing women in the bank. So their case was much weaker than we thought, except there were two things, two letters that Susan had written: one to her father, and one to her rabbi. The one to her father said, “By the time you get this letter, you'll know what your little girl is doing.” The one to her rabbi said basically the same thing. In effect, these were confessions. Both had been turned over to the FBI.So the case is winding down, not very strong. These letters have not yet been introduced. Meanwhile, The Boston Globe is reporting that all these anti-war activists were coming into town, and Gertner, who no one ever heard of, was going to try the Vietnam War. The defense will be, “She robbed a bank to fight the Vietnam War.” She robbed a bank in order to get money to oppose the Vietnam War, and the Vietnam War was illegitimate, etc. We were going to try the Vietnam War.There was no way in hell I was going to do that. But nobody had ever heard of me, so they believed anything. The government decided to rest before the letters came in, anticipating that our defense would be a collection of individuals who were going to challenge the Vietnam War. The day that the government rested without putting in those two letters, I rested my case, and the case went immediately to the jury. I'm told that I was so nervous when I said “the defense rests” that I sounded like Minnie Mouse.The upshot of that, however, was that the jury was 9-3 for acquittal on the first day, 10-2 for acquittal on the second day, and then 11-1 for acquittal—and there it stopped. It was a hung jury. But it essentially made my career. I had first the experience of pouring my heart into a case and saving someone's life, which was like nothing I'd ever felt before, which was better than the library. It also put my name out there. I was no longer, “Who is she?” I suddenly could take any kind of case I wanted to take. And so I was addicted to trials from then until the time I became a judge.DL: Fill us in on what happened later to your client, just her ultimate arc.NG: She wound up getting eight years in prison instead of life. She had already gotten eight years because of a prior robbery in Philadelphia, so there was no way that we were going to affect that. She had pleaded guilty to that. She went on to live a very principled life. She's actually quite religious. She works in the very sort of left Jewish groups. We are in touch—I'm in touch with almost everyone that I've ever known—because it had been a life-changing experience for me. We were four years apart. Her background, though she was more middle-class, was very similar to my own. Her mother used to call me at night about what Susan should wear. So our lives were very much intertwined. And so she was out of jail after eight years, and she has a family and is doing fine.DL: That's really a remarkable result, because people have to understand what defense lawyers are up against. It's often very challenging, and a victory is often a situation where your client doesn't serve life, for example, or doesn't, God forbid, get the death penalty. So it's really interesting that the Saxe case—as you talk about in your wonderful memoir—really did launch your career to the next level. And you wound up handling a number of other cases that you could say were adjacent or thematically related to Saxe's case. Maybe you can talk a little bit about some of those.NG: The women's movement was roaring at this time, and so a woman lawyer who was active and spoke out and talked about women's issues invariably got women's cases. So on the criminal side, I did one of the first, I think it was the first, battered woman syndrome case, as a defense to murder. On the civil side, I had a very robust employment-discrimination practice, dealing with sexual harassment, dealing with racial discrimination. I essentially did whatever I wanted to do. That's what my students don't always understand: I don't remember ever looking for a lucrative case. I would take what was interesting and fun to me, and money followed. I can't describe it any other way.These cases—you wound up getting paid, but I did what I thought was meaningful. But it wasn't just women's rights issues, and it wasn't just criminal defense. We represented white-collar criminal defendants. We represented Boston Mayor Kevin White's second-in-command, Ted Anzalone, also successfully. I did stockholder derivative suits, because someone referred them to me. To some degree the Saxe case, and maybe it was also the time—I did not understand the law to require specialization in the way that it does now. So I could do a felony-murder case on Monday and sue Mayor Lynch on Friday and sue Gulf Oil on Monday, and it wouldn't even occur to me that there was an issue. It was not the same kind of specialization, and I certainly wasn't about to specialize.DL: You anticipated my next comment, which is that when someone reads your memoir, they read about a career that's very hard to replicate in this day and age. For whatever reason, today people specialize. They specialize at earlier points in their careers. Clients want somebody who holds himself out as a specialist in white-collar crime, or a specialist in dealing with defendants who invoke battered woman syndrome, or what have you. And so I think your career… you kind of had a luxury, in a way.NG: I also think that the costs of entry were lower. It was Harvey Silverglate and me, and maybe four or five other lawyers. I was single until I was 39, so I had no family pressures to speak of. And I think that, yes, the profession was different. Now employment discrimination cases involve prodigious amounts of e-discovery. So even a little case has e-discovery, and that's partly because there's a generation—you're a part of it—that lived online. And so suddenly, what otherwise would have been discussions over the back fence are now text messages.So I do think it's different—although maybe this is a comment that only someone who is as old as I am can make—I wish that people would forget the money for a while. When I was on the bench, you'd get a pro se case that was incredibly interesting, challenging prison conditions or challenging some employment issue that had never been challenged before. It was pro se, and I would get on the phone and try to find someone to represent this person. And I can't tell you how difficult it was. These were not necessarily big cases. The big firms might want to get some publicity from it. But there was not a sense of individuals who were going to do it just, “Boy, I've never done a case like this—let me try—and boy, this is important to do.” Now, that may be different today in the Trump administration, because there's a huge number of lawyers that are doing immigration cases. But the day-to-day discrimination cases, even abortion cases, it was not the same kind of support.DL: I feel in some ways you were ahead of your time, because your career as a litigator played out in boutiques, and I feel that today, many lawyers who handle high-profile cases like yours work at large firms. Why did you not go to a large firm, either from YLS or if there were issues, for example, of discrimination, you must have had opportunities to lateral into such a firm later, if you had wanted to?NG: Well, certainly at the beginning nobody wanted me. It didn't matter how well I had done. Me and Ruth Ginsburg were on the streets looking for jobs. So that was one thing. I wound up, for the last four years of my practice before I became a judge, working in a firm called Dwyer Collora & Gertner. It was more of a boutique, white-collar firm. But I wasn't interested in the big firms because I didn't want anyone to tell me what to do. I didn't want anyone to say, “Don't write this op-ed because you'll piss off my clients.” I faced the same kind of issue when I left the bench. I could have an office, and sort of float into client conferences from time to time, but I did not want to be in a setting in which anyone told me what to do. It was true then; it certainly is true now.DL: So you did end up in another setting where, for the most part, you weren't told what to do: namely, you became a federal judge. And I suppose the First Circuit could from time to time tell you what to do, but….NG: But they were always wrong.DL: Yes, I do remember that when you were my professor, you would offer your thoughts on appellate rulings. But how did you—given the kind of career you had, especially—become a federal judge? Because let me be honest, I think that somebody with your type of engagement in hot-button issues today would have a challenging time. Republican senators would grandstand about you coming up with excuses for women murderers, or what have you. Did you have a rough confirmation process?NG: I did. So I'm up for the bench in 1993. This is under Bill Clinton, and I'm told—I never confirmed this—that when Senator Kennedy…. When I met Senator Kennedy, I thought I didn't have a prayer of becoming a judge. I put my name in because I knew the Clintons, and everybody I knew was getting a job in the government. I had not thought about being a judge. I had not prepared. I had not structured my career to be a judge. But everyone I knew was going into the government, and I thought if there ever was a time, this would be it. So I apply. Someday, someone should emboss my application, because the application was quite hysterical. I put in every article that I had written calling for access to reproductive technologies to gay people. It was something to behold.Kennedy was at the tail end of his career, and he was determined to put someone like me on the bench. I'm not sure that anyone else would have done that. I'm told (and this isn't confirmed) that when he talked to Bill and Hillary about me, they of course knew me—Hillary and I had been close friends—but they knew me to be that radical friend of theirs from Yale Law School. There had been 24 years in between, but still. And I'm told that what was said was, “She's terrific. But if there's a problem, she's yours.” But Kennedy was really determined.The week before my hearing before the Senate, I had gotten letters from everyone who had ever opposed me. Every prosecutor. I can't remember anyone who had said no. Bill Weld wrote a letter. Bob Mueller, who had opposed me in cases, wrote a letter. But as I think oftentimes happens with women, there was an article in The Boston Herald the day before my hearing, in which the writer compared me to Lorena Bobbitt. Your listeners may not know this, but he said, “Gertner will do to justice, with her gavel, what Lorena did to her husband, with a kitchen knife.” Do we have to explain that any more?DL: They can Google it or ask ChatGPT. I'm old enough to know about Lorena Bobbitt.NG: Right. So it's just at the tail edge of the presentation, that was always what the caricature would be. But Kennedy was masterful. There were numbers of us who were all up at the same time. Everyone else got through except me. I'm told that that article really was the basis for Senator Jesse Helms's opposition to me. And then Senator Kennedy called us one day and said, “Tomorrow you're going to read something, but don't worry, I'll take care of it.” And the Boston Globe headline says, “Kennedy Votes For Helms's School-Prayer Amendment.” And he called us and said, “We'll take care of it in committee.” And then we get a call from him—my husband took the call—Kennedy, affecting Helms's accent, said, ‘Senator, you've got your judge.' We didn't even understand what the hell he said, between his Boston accent and imitating Helms; we had no idea what he said. But that then was confirmed.DL: Are you the managing partner of a boutique or midsize firm? If so, you know that your most important job is attracting and retaining top talent. It's not easy, especially if your benefits don't match up well with those of Biglaw firms or if your HR process feels “small time.” NexFirm has created an onboarding and benefits experience that rivals an Am Law 100 firm, so you can compete for the best talent at a price your firm can afford. Want to learn more? Contact NexFirm at 212-292-1002 or email betterbenefits@nexfirm.com.So turning to your time as a judge, how would you describe that period, in a nutshell? The job did come with certain restrictions. Did you enjoy it, notwithstanding the restrictions?NG: I candidly was not sure that I would last beyond five years, for a couple of reasons. One was, I got on the bench in 1994, when the sentencing guidelines were mandatory, when what we taught you in my sentencing class was not happening, which is that judges would depart from the guidelines and the Sentencing Commission, when enough of us would depart, would begin to change the guidelines, and there'd be a feedback loop. There was no feedback loop. If you departed, you were reversed. And actually the genesis of the book I'm writing now came from this period. As far as I was concerned, I was being unfair. As I later said, my sentences were unfair, unjust, and disproportionate—and there was nothing I could do about it. So I was not sure that I was going to last beyond five years.In addition, there were some high-profile criminal trials going on with lawyers that I knew that I probably would've been a part of if I had been practicing. And I hungered to do that, to go back and be a litigator. The course at Yale Law School that you were a part of saved me. And it saved me because, certainly with respect to the sentencing, it turned what seemed like a formula into an intellectual discussion in which there was wiggle room and the ability to come up with other approaches. In other words, we were taught that this was a formula, and you don't depart from the formula, and that's it. The class came up with creative issues and creative understandings, which made an enormous difference to my judging.So I started to write; I started to write opinions. Even if the opinion says there's nothing I can do about it, I would write opinions in which I say, “I can't depart because of this woman's status as a single mother because the guidelines said only extraordinary family circumstances can justify a departure, and this wasn't extraordinary. That makes no sense.” And I began to write this in my opinions, I began to write this in scholarly writings, and that made all the difference in the world. And sometimes I was reversed, and sometimes I was not. But it enabled me to figure out how to push back against a system which I found to be palpably unfair. So I figured out how to be me in this job—and that was enormously helpful.DL: And I know how much and how deeply you cared about sentencing because of the class in which I actually wound up writing one of my two capstone papers at Yale.NG: To your listeners, I still have that paper.DL: You must be quite a pack rat!NG: I can change the grade at any time….DL: Well, I hope you've enjoyed your time today, Judge, and will keep the grade that way!But let me ask you: now that the guidelines are advisory, do you view that as a step forward from your time on the bench? Perhaps you would still be a judge if they were advisory? I don't know.NG: No, they became advisory in 2005, and I didn't leave until 2011. Yes, that was enormously helpful: you could choose what you thought was a fair sentence, so it's very advisory now. But I don't think I would've stayed longer, because of two reasons.By the time I hit 65, I wanted another act. I wanted another round. I thought I had done all that I could do as a judge, and I wanted to try something different. And Martha Minow of Harvard Law School made me an offer I couldn't refuse, which was to teach at Harvard. So that was one. It also, candidly, was that there was no longevity in my family, and so when I turned 65, I wasn't sure what was going to happen. So I did want to try something new. But I'm still here.DL: Yep—definitely, and very active. I always chuckle when I see “Ret.,” the abbreviation for “retired,” in your email signature, because you do not seem very retired to me. Tell us what you are up to today.NG: Well, first I have this book that I've been writing for several years, called Incomplete Sentences. And so what this book started to be about was the men and women that I sentenced, and how unfair it was, and what I thought we should have done. Then one day I got a message from a man by the name of Darryl Green, and it says, “Is this Nancy Gertner? If it is, I think about you all the time. I hope you're well. I'm well. I'm an iron worker. I have a family. I've written books. You probably don't remember me.” This was a Facebook message. I knew exactly who he was. He was a man who had faced the death penalty in my court, and I acquitted him. And he was then tried in state court, and acquitted again. So I knew exactly who he was, and I decided to write back.So I wrote back and said, “I know who you are. Do you want to meet?” That started a series of meetings that I've had with the men I've sentenced over the course of the 17-year career that I had as a judge. Why has it taken me this long to write? First, because these have been incredibly moving and difficult discussions. Second, because I wanted the book to be honest about what I knew about them and what a difference maybe this information would make. It is extremely difficult, David, to be honest about judging, particularly in these days when judges are parodied. So if I talk about how I wanted to exercise some leniency in a case, I understand that this can be parodied—and I don't want it to be, but I want to be honest.So for example, in one case, there would be cooperators in the case who'd get up and testify that the individual who was charged with only X amount of drugs was actually involved with much more than that. And you knew that if you believed the witness, the sentence would be doubled, even though you thought that didn't make any sense. This was really just mostly how long the cops were on the corner watching the drug deals. It didn't make the guy who was dealing drugs on a bicycle any more culpable than the guy who was doing massive quantities into the country.So I would struggle with, “Do I really believe this man, the witness who's upping the quantity?” And the kinds of exercises I would go through to make sure that I wasn't making a decision because I didn't like the implications of the decision and it was what I was really feeling. So it's not been easy to write, and it's taken me a very long time. The other side of the coin is they're also incredibly honest with me, and sometimes I don't want to know what they're saying. Not like a sociologist who could say, “Oh, that's an interesting fact, I'll put it in.” It's like, “Oh no, I don't want to know that.”DL: Wow. The book sounds amazing; I can't wait to read it. When is it estimated to come out?NG: Well, I'm finishing it probably at the end of this year. I've rewritten it about five times. And my hope would be sometime next year. So yeah, it was organic. It's what I wanted to write from the minute I left the bench. And it covers the guideline period when it was lunacy to follow the guidelines, to a period when it was much more flexible, but the guidelines still disfavored considering things like addiction and trauma and adverse childhood experiences, which really defined many of the people I was sentencing. So it's a cri de cœur, as they say, which has not been easy to write.DL: Speaking of cri de cœurs, and speaking of difficult things, it's difficult to write about judging, but I think we also have alluded already to how difficult it is to engage in judging in 2025. What general thoughts would you have about being a federal judge in 2025? I know you are no longer a federal judge. But if you were still on the bench or when you talk to your former colleagues, what is it like on the ground right now?NG: It's nothing like when I was a judge. In fact, the first thing that happened when I left the bench is I wrote an article in which I said—this is in 2011—that the only pressure I had felt in my 17 years on the bench was to duck, avoid, and evade, waiver, statute of limitations. Well, all of a sudden, you now have judges who at least since January are dealing with emergencies that they can't turn their eyes away from, judges issuing rulings at 1 a.m., judges writing 60-page decisions on an emergency basis, because what the president is doing is literally unprecedented. The courts are being asked to look at issues that have never been addressed before, because no one has ever tried to do the things that he's doing. And they have almost overwhelmingly met the moment. It doesn't matter whether you're ruling for the government or against the government; they are taking these challenges enormously seriously. They're putting in the time.I had two clerks, maybe some judges have three, but it's a prodigious amount of work. Whereas everyone complained about the Trump prosecutions proceeding so slowly, judges have been working expeditiously on these challenges, and under circumstances that I never faced, which is threats the likes of which I have never seen. One judge literally played for me the kinds of voice messages that he got after a decision that he issued. So they're doing it under circumstances that we never had to face. And it's not just the disgruntled public talking; it's also our fellow Yale Law alum, JD Vance, talking about rogue judges. That's a level of delegitimization that I just don't think anyone ever had to deal with before. So they're being challenged in ways that no other judges have, and they are being threatened in a way that no judges have.On the other hand, I wish I were on the bench.DL: Interesting, because I was going to ask you that. If you were to give lower-court judges a grade, to put you back in professor mode, on their performance since January 2025, what grade would you give the lower courts?NG: Oh, I would give them an A. I would give them an A. It doesn't matter which way they have come out: decision after decision has been thoughtful and careful. They put in the time. Again, this is not a commentary on what direction they have gone in, but it's a commentary on meeting the moment. And so now these are judges who are getting emergency orders, emergency cases, in the midst of an already busy docket. It has really been extraordinary. The district courts have; the courts of appeals have. I've left out another court….DL: We'll get to that in a minute. But I'm curious: you were on the District of Massachusetts, which has been a real center of activity because many groups file there. As we're recording this, there is the SNAP benefits, federal food assistance litigation playing out there [before Judge Indira Talwani, with another case before Chief Judge John McConnell of Rhode Island]. So it's really just ground zero for a lot of these challenges. But you alluded to the Supreme Court, and I was going to ask you—even before you did—what grade would you give them?NG: Failed. The debate about the shadow docket, which you write about and I write about, in which Justice Kavanaugh thinks, “we're doing fine making interim orders, and therefore it's okay that there's even a precedential value to our interim orders, and thank you very much district court judges for what you're doing, but we'll be the ones to resolve these issues”—I mean, they're resolving these issues in the most perfunctory manner possible.In the tariff case, for example, which is going to be argued on Wednesday, the Court has expedited briefing and expedited oral argument. They could do that with the emergency docket, but they are preferring to hide behind this very perfunctory decision making. I'm not sure why—maybe to keep their options open? Justice Barrett talks about how if it's going to be a hasty decision, you want to make sure that it's not written in stone. But of course then the cases dealing with independent commissions, in which you are allowing the government, allowing the president, to fire people on independent commissions—these cases are effectively overruling Humphrey's Executor, in the most ridiculous setting. So the Court is not meeting the moment. It was stunning that the Court decided in the birthright-citizenship case to be concerned about nationwide injunctions, when in fact nationwide injunctions had been challenged throughout the Biden administration, and they just decided not to address the issue then.Now, I have a lot to say about Justice Kavanaugh's dressing-down of Judge [William] Young [of the District of Massachusetts]….DL: Or Justice Gorsuch, joined by Justice Kavanaugh.NG: That's right, it was Justice Gorsuch. It was stunningly inappropriate, stunningly inappropriate, undermines the district courts that frankly are doing much better than the Supreme Court in meeting the moment. The whole concept of defying the Supreme Court—defying a Supreme Court order, a three-paragraph, shadow-docket order—is preposterous. So whereas the district courts and the courts of appeals are meeting the moment, I do not think the Supreme Court is. And that's not even going into the merits of the immunity decision, which I think has let loose a lawless presidency that is even more lawless than it might otherwise be. So yes, that failed.DL: I do want to highlight for my readers that in addition to your books and your speaking, you do write quite frequently on these issues in the popular press. I've seen your work in The New York Times and The Boston Globe. I know you're working on a longer essay about the rule of law in the age of Trump, so people should look out for that. Of all the things that you worry about right now when it comes to the rule of law, what worries you the most?NG: I worry that the president will ignore and disobey a Supreme Court order. I think a lot about the judges that are dealing with orders that the government is not obeying, and people are impatient that they're not immediately moving to contempt. And one gets the sense with the lower courts that they are inching up to the moment of contempt, but do not want to get there because it would be a stunning moment when you hold the government in contempt. I think the Supreme Court is doing the same thing. I initially believed that the Supreme Court was withholding an anti-Trump decision, frankly, for fear that he would not obey it, and they were waiting till it mattered. I now am no longer certain of that, because there have been rulings that made no sense as far as I'm concerned. But my point was that they, like the lower courts, were holding back rather than saying, “Government, you must do X,” for fear that the government would say, “Go pound sand.” And that's what I fear, because when that happens, it will be even more of a constitutional crisis than we're in now. It'll be a constitutional confrontation, the likes of which we haven't seen. So that's what I worry about.DL: Picking up on what you just said, here's something that I posed to one of my prior guests, Pam Karlan. Let's say you're right that the Supreme Court doesn't want to draw this line in the sand because of a fear that Trump, being Trump, will cross it. Why is that not prudential? Why is that not the right thing? And why is it not right for the Supreme Court to husband its political capital for the real moment?Say Trump—I know he said lately he's not going to—but say Trump attempts to run for a third term, and some case goes up to the Supreme Court on that basis, and the Court needs to be able to speak in a strong, unified, powerful voice. Or maybe it'll be a birthright-citizenship case, if he says, when they get to the merits of that, “Well, that's really nice that you think that there's such a thing as birthright citizenship, but I don't, and now stop me.” Why is it not wise for the Supreme Court to protect itself, until this moment when it needs to come forward and protect all of us?NG: First, the question is whether that is in fact what they are doing, and as I said, there were two schools of thought on this. One school of thought was that is what they were doing, and particularly doing it in an emergency, fuzzy, not really precedential way, until suddenly you're at the edge of the cliff, and you have to either say taking away birthright citizenship was unconstitutional, or tariffs, you can't do the tariffs the way you want to do the tariffs. I mean, they're husbanding—I like the way you put it, husbanding—their political capital, until that moment. I'm not sure that that's true. I think we'll know that if in fact the decisions that are coming down the pike, they actually decide against Trump—notably the tariff ones, notably birthright citizenship. I'm just not sure that that's true.And besides, David, there are some of these cases they did not have to take. The shadow docket was about where plaintiffs were saying it is an emergency to lay people off or fire people. Irreparable harm is on the plaintiff's side, whereas the government otherwise would just continue to do that which it has been doing. There's no harm to it continuing that. USAID—you don't have a right to dismantle the USAID. The harm is on the side of the dismantling, not having you do that which you have already done and could do through Congress, if you wanted to. They didn't have to take those cases. So your comment about husbanding political capital is a good comment, but those cases could have remained as they were in the district courts with whatever the courts of appeals did, and they could do what previous courts have done, which is wait for the issues to percolate longer.The big one for me, too, is the voting rights case. If they decide the voting rights case in January or February or March, if they rush it through, I will say then it's clear they're in the tank for Trump, because the only reason to get that decision out the door is for the 2026 election. So I want to believe that they are husbanding their political capital, but I'm not sure that if that's true, that we would've seen this pattern. But the proof will be with the voting rights case, with birthright citizenship, with the tariffs.DL: Well, it will be very interesting to see what happens in those cases. But let us now turn to my speed round. These are four questions that are the same for all my guests, and my first question is, what do you like the least about the law? And this can either be the practice of law or law as an abstract system of governance.NG: The practice of law. I do some litigation; I'm in two cases. When I was a judge, I used to laugh at people who said incivility was the most significant problem in the law. I thought there were lots of other more significant problems. I've come now to see how incredibly nasty the practice of law is. So yes—and that is no fun.DL: My second question is, what would you be if you were not a lawyer/judge/retired judge?NG: Musical comedy star, clearly! No question about it.DL: There are some judges—Judge Fred Block in the Eastern District of New York, Judge Jed Rakoff in the Southern District of New York—who do these little musical stylings for their court shows. I don't know if you've ever tried that?NG: We used to do Shakespeare, Shakespeare readings, and I loved that. I am a ham—so absolutely musical comedy or theater.DL: My third question is, how much sleep do you get each night?NG: Six to seven hours now, just because I'm old. Before that, four. Most of my life as a litigator, I never thought I needed sleep. You get into my age, you need sleep. And also you look like hell the next morning, so it's either getting sleep or a facelift.DL: And my last question is, any final words of wisdom, such as career advice or life advice, for my listeners?NG: You have to do what you love. You have to do what you love. The law takes time and is so all-encompassing that you have to do what you love. And I have done what I love from beginning to now, and I wouldn't have it any other way.DL: Well, I have loved catching up with you, Judge, and having you share your thoughts and your story with my listeners. Thank you so much for joining me.NG: You're very welcome, David. Take care.DL: Thanks so much to Judge Gertner for joining me. I look forward to reading her next book, Incomplete Sentences, when it comes out next year.Thanks to NexFirm for sponsoring the Original Jurisdiction podcast. NexFirm has helped many attorneys to leave Biglaw and launch firms of their own. To explore this opportunity, please contact NexFirm at 212-292-1000 or email careerdevelopment@nexfirm.com to learn more.Thanks to Tommy Harron, my sound engineer here at Original Jurisdiction, and thanks to you, my listeners and readers. To connect with me, please email me at davidlat@substack.com, or find me on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, at davidlat, and on Instagram and Threads at davidbenjaminlat.If you enjoyed today's episode, please rate, review, and subscribe. Please subscribe to the Original Jurisdiction newsletter if you don't already, over at davidlat.substack.com. This podcast is free, but it's made possible by paid subscriptions to the newsletter.The next episode should appear on or about Wednesday, November 26. Until then, may your thinking be original and your jurisdiction free of defects. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit davidlat.substack.com/subscribe

Fernandez v. United States | 11/12/25 | Docket #: 24-556 24-556 FERNANDEZ V. UNITED STATES DECISION BELOW: 104 F.4th 420 THE PETITION FOR A WRIT OF CERTIORARI IS GRANTED LIMITED TO THE FOLLOWING QUESTION: WHETHER A COMBINATION OF “ EXTRAORDINARY AND COMPELLING REASONS ” THAT MAY WARRANT A DISCRETIONARY SENTENCE REDUCTION UNDER 18 U. S. C. §3582(c)(1)(A) CAN INCLUDE REASONS THAT MAY ALSO BE ALLEGED AS GROUNDS FOR VACATUR OF A SENTENCE UNDER 28 U. S. C. §2255.   CERT. GRANTED 5/27/2025 QUESTION PRESENTED: Under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A), a district court has broad discretion to reduce the term of imprisonment in any case if it finds that "extraordinary and compelling reasons warrant such a reduction." The sole limitation Congress placed on that discretion is found in 18 U.S.C. § 994(t), which provides that "[r]ehabilitation of the defendant alone shall not be considered an extraordinary and compelling reason." In reversing the district court's grant of compassionate release to Joe Fernandez, the Second Circuit held that it was an abuse of discretion for the court to have considered evidence bearing on Fernandez's potential innocence as well to have found a disparity in sentences between Fernandez and several of his co-defendants who were cooperating witnesses. That decision was contrary to decisions of the First and Ninth Circuits, which have each held that district courts are not restricted with respect to matters they may consider under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A) other than as set forth by Congress. The question presented is: Whether the Second Circuit erred in recognizing extra-textual limitations on what information a court may consider when determining whether there exist extraordinary and compelling reasons warranting a sentence reduction under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1) (A). LOWER COURT CASE NUMBER: 22-3122

Criminal Procedure: Was Sam Bankman-Fried's conviction and $11B fine for fraud associated with #FTX fundamentally unfair? - Argued: Tue, 04 Nov 2025 8:52:59 EDT

Sam Bankman-Fried BioSnap a weekly updated Biography.Sam Bankman-Fried has been back at the center of crypto headlines over the past few days, sparking fresh controversy and chatter far beyond the courtroom. On his X account, Sam has published a new statement—alongside a longer 14 to 15-page document—boldly claiming that FTX was never actually insolvent. He insists the real issue was a liquidity crunch triggered by a classic bank run, not fraud or financial mismanagement. According to Sam, when FTX collapsed in November 2022, the exchange held $25 billion in assets against $8 billion in withdrawal demands, and if the panic had been weathered, customers and creditors could have been made whole. He blames his legal and bankruptcy teams led by John J. Ray III for forcing FTX into Chapter 11, mishandling and prematurely liquidating assets, and burning as much as $138 billion in value through discounted sales and legal fees. The estate's actions, he says, decimated the business and have been misrepresented to the public. Coinpaper notes that Sam repeats claims he was barred from fully presenting in court, arguing his prosecution ignored these key points.This narrative is not just coming from Sam directly—his mother, Barbara Fried, a Stanford Law professor, has gone public as well, circulating a 64-page “liquidity crisis” manifesto and attacking the trial judge and the Department of Justice for bias, all in a sprawling PR-and-legal campaign ahead of his upcoming November 4 appeal. CoinEdition frames this as a well-coordinated push to rebrand Sam from a disgraced CEO to a misunderstood financial whiz, with his family's media offensive suggesting the collapse was engineered by external parties for profit and reputational damage control.This new round of public statements and legal maneuvering comes on the eve of the Second Circuit appeal, which has attracted extensive media coverage, live podcast panels, and debate across both mainstream financial outlets and crypto Twitter. The move has reignited polarizing community debates—on X, critics and blockchain sleuths like ZachXBT are already blasting Sam for repeating what they see as discredited excuses and shifting central blame onto others. According to AInvest, the FTX bankruptcy estate continues to dispute Sam's calculations, pointing out that even after repayment efforts, many creditors are dealing with substantial losses, and that the physical value of repayments—despite some headlines citing “120% returns”—depends on semantics and market valuation.Headlines this weekend revolve around themes of “Was FTX Ever Insolvent?”, “SBF's PR Blitz Before His Make-or-Break Appeal,” and “$138 Billion Lost: SBF Blames Lawyers, Not Fraud.” Nothing in recent filings or public records supports his assertion that customer funds could have been entirely restored, and the bankruptcy court, along with the Justice Department, maintains its view that FTX's undoing was the result of secret backdoor maneuvering, extensive fraud, and reckless self-dealing—a view that led directly to Sam's 25-year prison sentence. For now he remains in prison, with his mother and legal team orchestrating this last-ditch campaign, and the crypto world watching what happens in court on November 4. The social and biographical impact of these latest events could be significant if the appeal gains traction, but as of now, even as Sam dominates headlines and drives debate, the legal establishment isn't budging.Get the best deals https://amzn.to/3ODvOtaThis content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI

John is joined by Jeffrey Toobin, celebrated author and legal analyst, who reflects on his extensive career in law and legal journalism.  First, Jeffrey describes his legal background, including his clerkship on the Second Circuit which led to his years working for the Independent Counsel investigating the Iran Contra scandal (which led to his first book, Opening Arguments) and his years as an Assistant US Attorney.  He also describes his years writing for the New Yorker and covering the OJ Simpson trial which led to his second book, The Run of His Life.  Jeffrey then explains the writing process that has allowed him to complete nine books so far, including his strategy of writing about topics that have not been covered extensively by other authors, his absolute commitment to write 1,250 words per day for the project he is working on, and his habit of beginning to write each chapter in the middle and only writing the opening of the chapter later.  John and Jeffrey then discuss why books on trials are so popular, including how trials are “perfect dramatic stages” and good trial lawyers are experts in both emphasizing the dramatic elements in stories and making issues interesting and meaningful to non-lawyers.  Finally, John and Jeffrey discuss their favorite books about trial lawyers and personal insights into the most unforgettable lawyers Jeffrey has met including Johnnie Cochran, Barry Scheck, F. Lee Bailey and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.Podcast Link: Law-disrupted.fmHost: John B. Quinn Producer: Alexis HydeMusic and Editing by: Alexander Rossi

In December 2023, Judge Loretta Preska of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ordered a massive unsealing of Jeffrey Epstein–related documents from the Ghislaine Maxwell defamation case. These files, long kept under seal, contained names of associates, depositions, and exhibits that had been hidden for years. Preska ruled that the public interest outweighed any remaining privacy concerns, emphasizing that secrecy was no longer justified except for information identifying minor victims. The decision paved the way for one of the largest Epstein document releases yet—revealing hundreds of pages that shed light on how Epstein and Maxwell operated their network and who may have been connected to it.The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit later affirmed the underlying principle behind Preska's ruling, upholding that the presumption of public access applies to judicial records in Epstein-related litigation. This affirmation followed the precedent set in Brown v. Maxwell (2019), where the court found that lower courts must provide a “particularized review” before keeping such documents sealed. By affirming the transparency mandate, the Second Circuit reinforced the public's right to know and ensured that future attempts to hide materials related to Epstein's crimes would face steep judicial resistance. Together, these rulings represent a rare and decisive push toward accountability in a case long plagued by secrecy and institutional protection.to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.com

Ghislaine Maxwell's appeal originated from her conviction in December 2021 for facilitating the sexual abuse of underage girls by Jeffrey Epstein. After being found guilty on five of six counts and sentenced in June 2022 to 20 years in prison, her legal team sought to overturn the conviction largely by arguing that a 2007 non-prosecution agreement (NPA) made between Epstein and federal prosecutors in Florida should have shielded her from being prosecuted in New York. They contended that the language in the NPA (“the United States … will not institute any criminal charges against any potential co-conspirators of Epstein”) prevented her prosecution as a co-conspirator.However, her appeal ultimately failed. On September 17 2024 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the conviction, finding the Florida NPA did not bind the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York. It also held the indictment was timely under the statute of limitationsto contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.com

This Day in Legal History: Black TuesdayOn October 29, 1929, the United States experienced one of the most catastrophic financial events in its history—Black Tuesday, the climax of the stock market crash that helped trigger the Great Depression. While primarily remembered as an economic crisis, this day also had profound and lasting legal consequences that reshaped American financial regulation and the federal government's role in the economy.In the immediate aftermath, the lack of oversight and rampant speculation that had fueled the 1920s bull market came under intense scrutiny. The legal system responded in the 1930s with a suite of landmark legislative reforms designed to stabilize financial markets and restore public confidence. Chief among these were the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, which established mandatory disclosure requirements for public companies and created the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to enforce federal securities laws.These laws introduced the legal principle that corporations owe a duty of candor to investors and that misleading or fraudulent statements can be subject to civil and criminal penalties. They also laid the foundation for modern financial regulation, including rules governing insider trading, market manipulation, and fiduciary duties of brokers and advisors.The legal legacy of October 29, 1929, is thus not limited to market losses but includes the birth of a federal regulatory framework that continues to govern securities markets today. It marked a turning point where the federal government took a permanent role in policing Wall Street and protecting investors through statutory and administrative mechanisms.The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit will hear Argentina's appeal of a $16.1 billion judgment related to its 2012 expropriation of oil company YPF. The judgment, issued by U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska in 2023, awarded $14.39 billion to Petersen Energia Inversora and $1.71 billion to Eton Park Capital Management, former minority shareholders of YPF. They claimed Argentina violated contractual obligations by failing to make a tender offer when it nationalized 51% of YPF from Spanish energy firm Repsol.Argentina argues the case should not be heard in a U.S. court, citing sovereign immunity, misapplication of Argentine law, and the principle of international comity. It also contends the damages are vastly overstated—amounting to 45% of its 2024 national budget. The litigation has been financially backed by Burford Capital, which could receive a large payout if the appeal fails.The appeal arrives as President Javier Milei, a libertarian reformer, works to stabilize Argentina's economy with austerity measures, having recently achieved a rare budget surplus. Meanwhile, Argentina is also separately appealing a court order to hand over YPF shares, an order currently on hold. The U.S. government has not taken a stance on the appeal but opposed the share turnover, citing foreign policy risks.Argentina to ask US appeals court to overturn $16.1 billion YPF judgment | ReutersA federal judge ruled that Bilal Essayli was unlawfully appointed as acting U.S. attorney for California's Central District, which includes Los Angeles. U.S. District Judge J. Michael Seabright found that Essayli's continued service beyond the 120-day interim period allowed by law was improper since he had neither been nominated by the president nor confirmed by the Senate. This decision disqualifies him from serving in the acting role but allows him to remain as first assistant U.S. attorney.The ruling does not dismiss three criminal indictments issued during Essayli's tenure, as they were signed by other prosecutors and no due process violations were found. Still, the judgment raises concerns about leadership stability in the largest federal judicial district in the country, serving roughly 19 million people.Essayli's appointment was part of a broader pattern under the Trump administration of bypassing Senate confirmation for key prosecutorial roles. A similar ruling recently invalidated the acting U.S. attorney appointment in Nevada, and another decision in New Jersey blocked Alina Habba, a Trump ally, from participating in prosecutions. These appointments are now under appeal.Judge disqualifies ‘acting' US attorney in California | ReutersThe celebrity video platform Cameo filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against OpenAI in a California federal court, accusing it of unlawfully using the name “Cameo” for a new feature in its Sora video generation app. Cameo claims that OpenAI's use of the term for AI-generated virtual likenesses causes brand confusion and threatens the distinctiveness of its trademark.OpenAI launched Sora as a standalone app in late September, and its feature—also named “Cameo”—lets users create AI-generated videos that can include virtual celebrities. Cameo argues this directly competes with its own service, where users pay real celebrities for personalized video messages. The company pointed to examples of AI-generated videos featuring public figures like Mark Cuban and Jake Paul, claiming this puts OpenAI in head-to-head competition with their business model.Cameo said it attempted to resolve the issue privately, but OpenAI declined to change the feature's name. OpenAI responded that it disagrees with the lawsuit, arguing no one can monopolize a generic term like “cameo.”The lawsuit seeks financial damages and a court injunction to stop OpenAI from using the name “Cameo.”OpenAI sued for trademark infringement over Sora's ‘Cameo' feature | ReutersTexas has hired the law firm Keller Postman—which previously secured a $1.4 billion settlement from Meta—to lead a new lawsuit alleging that Tylenol use during pregnancy increases the risk of autism in children. Filed in Panola County, the suit accuses Johnson & Johnson and Kenvue, Tylenol's current owner, of misleading consumers by marketing the drug to pregnant women despite knowing potential developmental risks tied to its active ingredient, acetaminophen.Ashley Keller, a senior partner at the firm, said the case will be handled on a contingency basis, meaning Texas pays only if it wins, similar to prior deals with Meta and Google. The firm's effective hourly rate under that model can reach $3,780, though its total fees are capped at 11% of any recovery. Keller defended the state's approach, saying the firm invests heavily and shares the litigation risk with Texas.The lawsuit builds on ongoing national litigation over acetaminophen and childhood developmental disorders, though courts have previously rejected similar claims. A 2024 federal ruling in New York dismissed related cases after expert testimony linking acetaminophen to ADHD was excluded. Texas' case, however, is distinct because it focuses on state-level claims of deceptive trade practices and fraudulent transfer, alleging J&J unlawfully moved Tylenol liabilities to Kenvue.Texas Returns to Keller Postman to Link Tylenol to Child Autism This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

Comment on the Show by Sending Mark a Text Message.Tom Hayes v. UBS, Connecticut Superior Court case filed on October 27, 2025 seeking $400 Million (Read Complaint HERE): A tiny shift in an interest rate can move oceans of money. We follow that ripple to its breaking point, tracing how Tom Hayes became the public face of LIBOR manipulation, then—years later—won full vindication in both the United States and the United Kingdom. Along the way, we unpack the documents, emails, and internal spreadsheets that allegedly turned “commercially aware” rate submissions into an institutional practice, and the crisis‑era pivot that recast one trader as the perfect fall guy.We set the stage with a clear explanation of LIBOR's design, why a bank's submissions sit within a plausible range, and how that nuance became the hinge of subsequent court decisions. Then we walk through the complaint's central claims: that UBS policy told staff to consider the bank's trading positions, that management tracked exposures and directed desired outcomes, and that the bank later secured a non‑prosecution agreement by advancing a narrative of isolated misconduct. The result, according to the lawsuit, was a devastating chain reaction—selective disclosures, missing spreadsheets, and a jury instruction that erased the difference between choosing within a legitimate range and committing fraud.Hayes' convictions collapsed after the U.S. Second Circuit and the UK Supreme Court clarified that profit‑motivated choices are not criminal if the submitted rate stays within a genuine range of estimated borrowing costs. With legal ground restored, Hayes now sues UBS for malicious prosecution and indemnification, seeking at least $400 million in damages. We examine the stakes: lifetime earnings lost, health and family fallout, and the broader question of who should bear responsibility when corporate incentives steer behavior and later demand a scapegoat.If you care about financial regulation, corporate accountability, and how legal narratives are built and unbuilt, this story matters. Listen, share your take, and help us bring more people into the conversation. If this resonated, subscribe, leave a review, and tell a friend what surprised you most. If you enjoyed this episode of the Employee Survival Guide please like us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. We would really appreciate if you could leave a review of this podcast on your favorite podcast player such as Apple Podcasts. Leaving a review will inform other listeners you found the content on this podcast is important in the area of employment law in the United States. For more information, please contact our employment attorneys at Carey & Associates, P.C. at 203-255-4150, www.capclaw.com.Disclaimer: For educational use only, not intended to be legal advice.

Ghislaine Maxwell's appeal originated from her conviction in December 2021 for facilitating the sexual abuse of underage girls by Jeffrey Epstein. After being found guilty on five of six counts and sentenced in June 2022 to 20 years in prison, her legal team sought to overturn the conviction largely by arguing that a 2007 non-prosecution agreement (NPA) made between Epstein and federal prosecutors in Florida should have shielded her from being prosecuted in New York. They contended that the language in the NPA (“the United States … will not institute any criminal charges against any potential co-conspirators of Epstein”) prevented her prosecution as a co-conspirator.However, her appeal ultimately failed. On September 17 2024 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the conviction, finding the Florida NPA did not bind the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York. It also held the indictment was timely under the statute of limitationsto contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-moscow-murders-and-more--5852883/support.

In December 2023, Judge Loretta Preska of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ordered a massive unsealing of Jeffrey Epstein–related documents from the Ghislaine Maxwell defamation case. These files, long kept under seal, contained names of associates, depositions, and exhibits that had been hidden for years. Preska ruled that the public interest outweighed any remaining privacy concerns, emphasizing that secrecy was no longer justified except for information identifying minor victims. The decision paved the way for one of the largest Epstein document releases yet—revealing hundreds of pages that shed light on how Epstein and Maxwell operated their network and who may have been connected to it.The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit later affirmed the underlying principle behind Preska's ruling, upholding that the presumption of public access applies to judicial records in Epstein-related litigation. This affirmation followed the precedent set in Brown v. Maxwell (2019), where the court found that lower courts must provide a “particularized review” before keeping such documents sealed. By affirming the transparency mandate, the Second Circuit reinforced the public's right to know and ensured that future attempts to hide materials related to Epstein's crimes would face steep judicial resistance. Together, these rulings represent a rare and decisive push toward accountability in a case long plagued by secrecy and institutional protection.to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-moscow-murders-and-more--5852883/support.

Ghislaine Maxwell's appeal originated from her conviction in December 2021 for facilitating the sexual abuse of underage girls by Jeffrey Epstein. After being found guilty on five of six counts and sentenced in June 2022 to 20 years in prison, her legal team sought to overturn the conviction largely by arguing that a 2007 non-prosecution agreement (NPA) made between Epstein and federal prosecutors in Florida should have shielded her from being prosecuted in New York. They contended that the language in the NPA (“the United States … will not institute any criminal charges against any potential co-conspirators of Epstein”) prevented her prosecution as a co-conspirator.However, her appeal ultimately failed. On September 17 2024 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the conviction, finding the Florida NPA did not bind the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York. It also held the indictment was timely under the statute of limitationsto contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-epstein-chronicles--5003294/support.

In December 2023, Judge Loretta Preska of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ordered a massive unsealing of Jeffrey Epstein–related documents from the Ghislaine Maxwell defamation case. These files, long kept under seal, contained names of associates, depositions, and exhibits that had been hidden for years. Preska ruled that the public interest outweighed any remaining privacy concerns, emphasizing that secrecy was no longer justified except for information identifying minor victims. The decision paved the way for one of the largest Epstein document releases yet—revealing hundreds of pages that shed light on how Epstein and Maxwell operated their network and who may have been connected to it.The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit later affirmed the underlying principle behind Preska's ruling, upholding that the presumption of public access applies to judicial records in Epstein-related litigation. This affirmation followed the precedent set in Brown v. Maxwell (2019), where the court found that lower courts must provide a “particularized review” before keeping such documents sealed. By affirming the transparency mandate, the Second Circuit reinforced the public's right to know and ensured that future attempts to hide materials related to Epstein's crimes would face steep judicial resistance. Together, these rulings represent a rare and decisive push toward accountability in a case long plagued by secrecy and institutional protection.to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-epstein-chronicles--5003294/support.

Contributing writer Jake Fogleman and I discuss the ways in which the federal government's ongoing shutdown is impacting key functions that gun-rights advocates care about, drawing fresh criticism of the Trump administration. We also talk about a recent ruling out of the Second Circuit where a three-judge panel of all Trump-appointed judges ruled that ammunition sales aren't protected by the Second Amendment.

Ghislaine Maxwell's efforts to secure a retrial faced daunting legal obstacles from the start. One central hurdle was proving that a significant procedural or constitutional error occurred during her original trial—mere disagreement with the result isn't enough on appeal. Her team advanced arguments such as a juror failing to disclose a history of sexual abuse (which Maxwell's lawyers claimed influenced deliberations) and prosecutorial overreach in applying “conscious avoidance” instructions to the jury. But trial judges largely rejected those arguments, and appellate courts are historically very deferential to trial-level rulings on admissibility, jury selection, and instructional issues.On appeal to the Second Circuit, Ghislaine Maxwell challenged multiple elements of her conviction. Among her central arguments was that Jeffrey Epstein's 2007 non-prosecution agreement (NPA) with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida included a clause protecting co-conspirators, and that it should have shielded her from prosecution in New York. She contended that because the NPA referred broadly to “the United States” (rather than naming a specific district), it was intended to bind all federal prosecutors, not just those in Florida. She also raised claims about the statute of limitations, alleged juror nondisclosure, potential constructive amendment of her indictment, and that her sentence was not procedurally reasonable.The Second Circuit rejected all those arguments and affirmed the conviction. It held that the NPA did not bind the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York, reasoning that unless an agreement “affirmatively shows” an intent to bind beyond its district, it is limited to the district in which it was made. The court also determined that the indictment was timely, that no abuse of discretion occurred in handling jury or procedural questions, and that Maxwell's sentence was lawful under the relevant standards.to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-epstein-chronicles--5003294/support.

In October 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Maxwell's appeal aimed at overturning her 2021 conviction for helping Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse minors. The appeal argued that Maxwell should have been protected from prosecution under a 2007 non-prosecution agreement (NPA) that had been made with Epstein — Maxwell's legal team claimed that the government's promise in that deal extended to co-conspirators like her, across jurisdictions. But lower courts (including the Second Circuit) rejected that argument, and the DOJ urged the high court not to take the case, saying the NPA did not cover Maxwell's prosecution in New York. The Supreme Court's denial (without explanation) means the conviction stands and Maxwell's 20-year sentence remains intact.Maxwell's plea of “but the deal should protect me” now lies in ashes. The refusal by the Supreme Court sends a message: the serious, prolonged, documented role she played in trafficking and grooming minors for Epstein can't be overwritten by legal technicalities or bargains made behind closed doors. Her efforts to invoke immunity through someone else's deal were flatly dismissed, underscoring that privilege and high-social standing won't shield her from full accountability for her actions.to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.com

When Congress amended the Civil Rights Act in 1976, it directed federal courts to use judicial discretion to award “reasonable attorney’s fees” to a prevailing party. Yet when state actors are found in violation of the nation’s civil rights laws, what is “reasonable” often means that civil rights attorneys take a reduced fee award. Because of this, states are emboldened to enact and enforce more unconstitutional laws and the pattern repeats.Mere days following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, the New York Assembly enacted new legislation allowing secular businesses to permit customers to carry concealed weapons on their property, but refusing to afford sensitive locations, like churches, the same choice. His Tabernacle Church in Elmira, New York filed suit under the Civil Rights Act claiming the new law violated its First and Second Amendment rights. It prevailed both in district court and at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.When the matter returned to the district court, the State of New York claimed the church’s attorneys were entitled to just 16% of the fees requested in their application. Judge John R. Sinatra, Jr. of the Western District of New York rejected New York’s arguments, awarding 100% of the requested fees, concluding that the Civil Rights Act “encourages lawyers taking meritorious cases like this one” but to engage in “[p]erennial ‘haircuts’” in fee awards would “discourage well qualified counsel.”Join the Federalist Society for a discussion on the importance of courts awarding appropriate attorney’s fees in civil rights litigation.Featuring:Erin E. Murphy, Partner, Clement & Murphy, PLLC(Moderator) Jeremy G. Dys, Senior Counsel, First Liberty

In October 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Maxwell's appeal aimed at overturning her 2021 conviction for helping Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse minors. The appeal argued that Maxwell should have been protected from prosecution under a 2007 non-prosecution agreement (NPA) that had been made with Epstein — Maxwell's legal team claimed that the government's promise in that deal extended to co-conspirators like her, across jurisdictions. But lower courts (including the Second Circuit) rejected that argument, and the DOJ urged the high court not to take the case, saying the NPA did not cover Maxwell's prosecution in New York. The Supreme Court's denial (without explanation) means the conviction stands and Maxwell's 20-year sentence remains intact.Maxwell's plea of “but the deal should protect me” now lies in ashes. The refusal by the Supreme Court sends a message: the serious, prolonged, documented role she played in trafficking and grooming minors for Epstein can't be overwritten by legal technicalities or bargains made behind closed doors. Her efforts to invoke immunity through someone else's deal were flatly dismissed, underscoring that privilege and high-social standing won't shield her from full accountability for her actions.to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-moscow-murders-and-more--5852883/support.

In October 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Maxwell's appeal aimed at overturning her 2021 conviction for helping Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse minors. The appeal argued that Maxwell should have been protected from prosecution under a 2007 non-prosecution agreement (NPA) that had been made with Epstein — Maxwell's legal team claimed that the government's promise in that deal extended to co-conspirators like her, across jurisdictions. But lower courts (including the Second Circuit) rejected that argument, and the DOJ urged the high court not to take the case, saying the NPA did not cover Maxwell's prosecution in New York. The Supreme Court's denial (without explanation) means the conviction stands and Maxwell's 20-year sentence remains intact.Maxwell's plea of “but the deal should protect me” now lies in ashes. The refusal by the Supreme Court sends a message: the serious, prolonged, documented role she played in trafficking and grooming minors for Epstein can't be overwritten by legal technicalities or bargains made behind closed doors. Her efforts to invoke immunity through someone else's deal were flatly dismissed, underscoring that privilege and high-social standing won't shield her from full accountability for her actions.to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-epstein-chronicles--5003294/support.

Sean “Diddy” Combs' legal team has filed notice of appeal following his conviction on two federal counts of transporting individuals for prostitution under the Mann Act. His attorneys argue that the verdict was inconsistent with the sentencing, claiming the judge improperly considered conduct the jury had rejected — particularly allegations of coercion — to impose a harsher penalty. The defense contends this violated Diddy's constitutional right to a fair trial and effectively turned the judge into a “13th juror,” overriding the jury's findings. They are seeking either a full reversal of the conviction or a new trial.The appeal will also challenge several procedural rulings from the eight-week trial, including evidentiary decisions and jury instructions the defense claims were prejudicial. Diddy was sentenced to 50 months in federal prison and fined $500,000 — far less than the 11 years prosecutors had sought, but still viewed by his team as excessive given the acquittals on other charges. The appellate process will now move to the Second Circuit, where his attorneys plan to argue that the sentencing exceeded the lawful scope of the jury's verdict and that key testimony was improperly admitted.to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.com

Sean “Diddy” Combs' legal team has filed notice of appeal following his conviction on two federal counts of transporting individuals for prostitution under the Mann Act. His attorneys argue that the verdict was inconsistent with the sentencing, claiming the judge improperly considered conduct the jury had rejected — particularly allegations of coercion — to impose a harsher penalty. The defense contends this violated Diddy's constitutional right to a fair trial and effectively turned the judge into a “13th juror,” overriding the jury's findings. They are seeking either a full reversal of the conviction or a new trial.The appeal will also challenge several procedural rulings from the eight-week trial, including evidentiary decisions and jury instructions the defense claims were prejudicial. Diddy was sentenced to 50 months in federal prison and fined $500,000 — far less than the 11 years prosecutors had sought, but still viewed by his team as excessive given the acquittals on other charges. The appellate process will now move to the Second Circuit, where his attorneys plan to argue that the sentencing exceeded the lawful scope of the jury's verdict and that key testimony was improperly admitted.to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-epstein-chronicles--5003294/support.

Sean “Diddy” Combs' legal team has filed notice of appeal following his conviction on two federal counts of transporting individuals for prostitution under the Mann Act. His attorneys argue that the verdict was inconsistent with the sentencing, claiming the judge improperly considered conduct the jury had rejected — particularly allegations of coercion — to impose a harsher penalty. The defense contends this violated Diddy's constitutional right to a fair trial and effectively turned the judge into a “13th juror,” overriding the jury's findings. They are seeking either a full reversal of the conviction or a new trial.The appeal will also challenge several procedural rulings from the eight-week trial, including evidentiary decisions and jury instructions the defense claims were prejudicial. Diddy was sentenced to 50 months in federal prison and fined $500,000 — far less than the 11 years prosecutors had sought, but still viewed by his team as excessive given the acquittals on other charges. The appellate process will now move to the Second Circuit, where his attorneys plan to argue that the sentencing exceeded the lawful scope of the jury's verdict and that key testimony was improperly admitted.to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-moscow-murders-and-more--5852883/support.

Free Speech: May a visa holder object on free speech grounds to the Secretary of State's revocation of their visa? - Argued: Tue, 30 Sep 2025 20:38:58 EDT

Free Speech: May a visa holder object on free speech grounds to the Secretary of State's revocation of their visa? - Argued: Tue, 30 Sep 2025 20:33:48 EDT

It's Friday, October 3, 2025, and the legal drama swirling around Donald Trump is at a fever pitch once again. For listeners who have been following every twist and turn, the past few days have been loaded with developments across federal courtrooms, appellate panels, and even the Supreme Court. Let's jump right to the heart of the matter.Earlier this week, a major story unfolded as the Supreme Court formally consolidated two headline cases involving Donald Trump—one titled “Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, et al., Petitioners v. V.O.S. Selections, Inc., et al.” The Court granted a motion to expedite these cases, fast-tracking them for oral argument the first week of November this year. The eyes of the country, political analysts included, are already zeroing in on November 5, when those arguments will hit center stage in the nation's highest court.These Supreme Court cases aren't happening in isolation. They stem from recent decisions by the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and also from the ongoing legal battles over claims tied to presidential immunity, Trump's 2020 election interference allegations, and disputes over the appointment and funding of Special Counsel Jack Smith. The litigation landscape is as broad as ever—with criminal indictments, civil fraud appeals, and constitutional questions all converging.Just days ago, the Supreme Court declined to take immediate action on Trump's unusual request regarding firing a sitting Fed governor. This non-decision keeps the issue simmering, hinting at possible future conflicts over the extent of presidential power—a subject at the core of Trump's legal defense in several other cases.Meanwhile, in federal courts, new briefs and motions are flooding in. Trump's legal team is vigorously pushing arguments about presidential immunity and contesting the legitimacy of Special Counsel Jack Smith's appointment. These questions fuel both legal debate and political intrigue, as deadlines for briefs and responses keep stacking up on the master calendar. For example, Trump's next major opening brief in his Second Circuit appeal regarding the New York case is due October 14.Political allies and opponents alike are watching, as each court ruling has ripple effects on Trump's standing, campaign ambitions, and broader constitutional precedents. What's especially dramatic now is that deadlines for amicus curiae briefs and oral arguments across several circuits are colliding with arguments in the Supreme Court—a rare, high-octane moment in legal history.Every day seems to bring a new motion, a fresh appeal, or another layer to these battles. From consolidating appeals in the New York civil fraud case to new filings aimed at Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's prosecution, Trump's legal calendar looks more crowded than ever.To all those tuning in, thank you for sticking with this intricate, high-stakes story. Join me again next week as these cases unfold and fresh developments emerge. This has been a Quiet Please production. For more, check out Quiet Please Dot A I.Some great Deals https://amzn.to/49SJ3QsFor more check out http://www.quietplease.aiThis content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI

In this second episode of Ogletree Deakins' new podcast series Litigation Lens, Michael Nail (Greenville) is joined by Fiona Ong (Baltimore) and Sarah Zucco (New York) to discuss a recent Second Circuit decision that clarifies employers' obligations to provide reasonable accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)—even when an employee can technically perform essential job functions without them. The speakers unpack the facts of a case involving a New York teacher's request for accommodations due to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), explain the court's rejection of a “necessity-only” standard, and offer practical tips for navigating the fact-intensive, multi-jurisdictional landscape of disability accommodation law.

It's been a whirlwind few days in the world of U.S. courtrooms, and Donald Trump remains firmly at the center of the storm. Nearly every headline I've caught since the middle of the week has opened with the latest twist in Trump's sprawling legal calendar—a saga stretching from New York streets to Washington, D.C. federal offices, and onward to Florida's district courts. You'd think by now folks might slow down, but the cases keep coming at a dizzying pace.Right now, listeners, several major cases demand Trump's attention. The stakes are extraordinary—not just for him personally, but for the American judicial system. According to Just Security, Trump's legal schedule for fall and winter has been crowded with deadlines and appeals. On October 24, Trump is due to submit a request to dismiss one of the most talked-about cases: the D.C. Election Interference prosecution. His lawyers argue the indictment should be tossed based on the Appointments and Appropriations Clauses, naming Special Counsel Jack Smith's appointment and funding as suspect. The following day, October 25, Trump's legal team faces the federal government in Florida, defending Judge Aileen Cannon's earlier move to dismiss the classified documents case over similar concerns about Special Counsel Smith's legitimacy.That's not all. Late last month Trump tried—unsuccessfully—to move his Manhattan criminal case, led by District Attorney Alvin Bragg, to federal court. Judge Alvin Hellerstein wasn't convinced, rejecting Trump's request and delivering a setback. The push for federal jurisdiction continues, with Trump appealing to the Second Circuit, his opening brief now due October 14.Meanwhile, in Georgia, Trump is linked to broader appeals as his co-defendants challenge the fairness of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis's role. All oral arguments are scheduled together, making Atlanta another courtroom buzzing with activity.But possibly the most significant legal moment this summer came in Washington, D.C. The Supreme Court vacated the D.C. Circuit's ruling that had previously denied Trump's presidential immunity argument. This sent the whole affair back to Judge Tanya Chutkan in the district court, where all pretrial deadlines are on pause until late October, a move that will shape the next pivotal months of proceedings.Experts like Max Yoeli at Chatham House warn that these intertwining court battles could be a prelude to a constitutional crisis if the judiciary cannot effectively check Trump's actions—especially with appeals mounting and deadlines extended whenever a new wrinkle appears.Thank you for tuning in. Come back next week for more and remember, this has been a Quiet Please production. For more, check out Quiet Please Dot A I.Some great Deals https://amzn.to/49SJ3QsFor more check out http://www.quietplease.aiThis content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI

Contracts: Are insurers liable when gun sellers face liability for trafficking in ghost gun parts? - Argued: Wed, 17 Sep 2025 11:29:29 EDT

All fifty states mandate certain vaccinations for schoolchildren. Forty-six of them allow religious exemptions. New York once did as well, maintaining such exemptions for more than half a century before eliminating them in 2019. Medical exemptions remain.Members of the Amish community now challenge New York’s policy, claiming that opposition to vaccines is integral to their “traditional way of life,” as recognized in Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972). The Petitioners include three Amish parents, one representing all Amish and Mennonites in New York, as well as three Amish schools—funded by and serving Amish communities on Amish land. In 2022, the state charged these schools with violating its vaccination law and levied $118,000 in penalties.The Petitioners defended themselves by filing a Section 1983 action in federal court, raising an as-applied challenge under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The district court dismissed the case, and the Second Circuit affirmed under Employment Division v. Smith’s rational basis framework. The Petitioners are seeking Supreme Court review.Featuring:Robert M. Overing, Deputy Solicitor General, Alabama Office of the Attorney General(Moderator) Hon. Sean D. Jordan, Judge, United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas

The Supreme Court used the shadow docket to legalize racial profiling, although only Justice Kavanaugh was dumb enough to admit it out loud. It also overturned Humphrey's Executor, but this time even Kav wouldn't cop to it. Meanwhile at the White House, Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought discovers ONE WEIRD trick to steal Congress's power of the purse. And the Second Circuit confirms, Alina Habba is still very bad at her job.   Links:   White House Prayer Executive Order https://www.whitehouse.gov/america250/america-prays/   SCOTUS Shadow Docket Order Trump v. Slaughter https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/090825zr_4f15.pdf   Second Circuit Order Carroll v. Trump 1 https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ca2.e508a4b2-feae-4592-a6dc-d30f9ed35bb6/gov.uscourts.ca2.e508a4b2-feae-4592-a6dc-d30f9ed35bb6.134.1_1.pdf   SCOTUS Docket Trump v. Vasquez Perdomo https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/docketfiles/html/public/25a169.html   White House “pocket rescission” announcement (Aug. 29, 2025) https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/2025/08/historic-pocket-rescission-package-eliminates-woke-weaponized-and-wasteful-spending/   AIDS Vaccine Coalition v. State https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.277333/gov.uscourts.dcd.277333.145.0_4.pdf   Show Links: https://www.lawandchaospod.com/ BlueSky: @LawAndChaosPod Threads: @LawAndChaosPod Twitter: @LawAndChaosPod  

This episode is particularly important. We are in a time where women's rights over their bodily autonomy are being threatened and denied. Scott Ruskay-Kidd is an expert on fetal personhood law and debates and joins us to discuss the history and relevance of the term “fetal personhood” in today's society.We hope you gain as much from this episode as we did. We understand this may be a sensitive issue for many people; we ask that you listen with an open mind. About Scott Ruskay-Kidd:Scott Ruskay-Kidd is a Lecturer-in-Law at Columbia Law School, where he teaches about gender and sexuality law, among other things.  Scott previously was a Senior Attorney for Judicial Strategy at the Center for Reproductive Rights, where he led the amicus brief strategy in the last successful defense of the constitutional right to abortion in the U.S. Supreme Court. Beforehand, Scott practiced commercial litigation at Kramer Levin LLP and Debevoise & Plimpton LLP.  Scott began his career as a judicial clerk in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.  Scott is a graduate of Harvard College and Columbia Law School.About the Show:There's a Word For That! is a weekly podcast that centers around a different word or expression each episode. Host Suzanne Dressler believes in pushing the envelope to explore why and how we use words and the ways this impacts our lives. With a diverse assortment of intelligent, creative, and exciting guests, TAWFT! will force you to analyze and consider words in an entirely original and eye-opening way. Even better? NOTHING is off-limits.Where to Find Me:InstagramTwitterFacebook

I'm tuning in just after one of the most dramatic stretches in recent American political history, as the legal storm surrounding former President Donald Trump's court trials hits new highs. Let's jump right in—the courtroom battles featuring Trump have been exploding across national headlines, from Washington D.C. to California and beyond.Over the past few days, the nation's attention has been gripped by a federal judge's ruling out in California. California Attorney General Rob Bonta confirmed that President Trump's deployment of federalized California National Guard troops and Marines for civilian law enforcement in Los Angeles was in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, that foundational law limiting the military's role on our soil. According to Bonta, the District Court not only found Trump's actions unlawful, but also permanently blocked the administration from engaging in similar behavior in future, whether for arrests, riot control, or evidence gathering. The judge's order is stayed only until September 12th, making this a pivotal moment for executive reach and civil liberties.Meanwhile, the legal calendars covering Trump's trials have become almost as tangled as the cases themselves. After the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in on Trump's presidential immunity claims in early August, the D.C. Circuit Court handed jurisdiction back to Judge Tanya Chutkan. However, the most recent scheduling order—coming just this week—has paused all pretrial deadlines until late October, essentially putting everything on hold in the Washington election subversion case. With time ticking away under the Speedy Trial Act, legal experts say this delay throws uncertainty over the proceedings, especially as appeals and procedural wrangling continue.It's not just criminal matters. On the civil side, Trump's legal team is still grappling with the fallout from previous verdicts, notably those involving E. Jean Carroll's defamation suits. The appeals are underway at the Second Circuit, but movement has slowed as defense attorneys look for openings in the appeals process. These cases, filed back in 2020 and 2022, have been persistent thorns in Trump's side, flaring up anew with each ruling.Also in the mix is the Democratic National Committee's lawsuit, challenging Trump's use of Executive Order 14215 to sway the Federal Election Commission. The U.S. District Court in D.C. dismissed the challenge earlier this summer, citing a lack of concrete injury. Still, with the FEC's independence on the line, insiders expect the issue to resurface as the end of election season nears.With Trump back in office, there's no shortage of Supreme Court petitions—over four dozen right now—ranging from immigration to telemarketing, tax laws, and challenges to federal policy moves dating back years. The administration is wielding the emergency docket as a powerful tool, regularly pressing to overturn lower court decisions and keep executive power front and center.So, as the clock moves forward, these cases are more than just legal drama—they're signposts of where America's institutions stand and how the rule of law will look in a rapidly shifting political landscape. Thanks for tuning in. Join me again next week for another Quiet Please production. For more, check out Quiet Please Dot A I.Some great Deals https://amzn.to/49SJ3QsFor more check out http://www.quietplease.ai

In his ruling dated April 27, 2017, Judge Sweet denied Maxwell's motion for summary judgment, concluding that the case could not be dismissed before trial because there were triable issues of material fact—meaning that reasonable jurors could differ on key factual elements required to resolve the defamation claims. Additionally, he held that the pre‑litigation privilege Maxwell invoked (a legal shield often applied to internal or preliminary communications before a lawsuit is filed) did not apply to bar the claim. Consequently, the motion could not succeed as a matter of law. Judge Sweet also directed the parties to submit a proposed redacted version of the opinion consistent with the protective order or to notify the court if no redactions were necessary, emphasizing the sensitive nature of the materials involvedThis decision ensured that Maxwell's defamation case would proceed, allowing for full adjudication of disputable facts rather than prematurely ending the litigation. Moreover, although the summary judgment denial was itself sealed under protective orders—primarily due to concerns about privacy and confidentiality—the Second Circuit later determined that such judicial records should generally be accessible to the public, underscoring the importance of transparency in decisions impacting public interest; the appellate court directed review and unsealing of summary judgment materials following a careful balance of privacy interests.to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comsource:Epstein-Docs.pdf (documentcloud.org)

In his ruling dated April 27, 2017, Judge Sweet denied Maxwell's motion for summary judgment, concluding that the case could not be dismissed before trial because there were triable issues of material fact—meaning that reasonable jurors could differ on key factual elements required to resolve the defamation claims. Additionally, he held that the pre‑litigation privilege Maxwell invoked (a legal shield often applied to internal or preliminary communications before a lawsuit is filed) did not apply to bar the claim. Consequently, the motion could not succeed as a matter of law. Judge Sweet also directed the parties to submit a proposed redacted version of the opinion consistent with the protective order or to notify the court if no redactions were necessary, emphasizing the sensitive nature of the materials involvedThis decision ensured that Maxwell's defamation case would proceed, allowing for full adjudication of disputable facts rather than prematurely ending the litigation. Moreover, although the summary judgment denial was itself sealed under protective orders—primarily due to concerns about privacy and confidentiality—the Second Circuit later determined that such judicial records should generally be accessible to the public, underscoring the importance of transparency in decisions impacting public interest; the appellate court directed review and unsealing of summary judgment materials following a careful balance of privacy interests.to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comsource:Epstein-Docs.pdf (documentcloud.org)

In his ruling dated April 27, 2017, Judge Sweet denied Maxwell's motion for summary judgment, concluding that the case could not be dismissed before trial because there were triable issues of material fact—meaning that reasonable jurors could differ on key factual elements required to resolve the defamation claims. Additionally, he held that the pre‑litigation privilege Maxwell invoked (a legal shield often applied to internal or preliminary communications before a lawsuit is filed) did not apply to bar the claim. Consequently, the motion could not succeed as a matter of law. Judge Sweet also directed the parties to submit a proposed redacted version of the opinion consistent with the protective order or to notify the court if no redactions were necessary, emphasizing the sensitive nature of the materials involvedThis decision ensured that Maxwell's defamation case would proceed, allowing for full adjudication of disputable facts rather than prematurely ending the litigation. Moreover, although the summary judgment denial was itself sealed under protective orders—primarily due to concerns about privacy and confidentiality—the Second Circuit later determined that such judicial records should generally be accessible to the public, underscoring the importance of transparency in decisions impacting public interest; the appellate court directed review and unsealing of summary judgment materials following a careful balance of privacy interests.to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comsource:Epstein-Docs.pdf (documentcloud.org)

In his ruling dated April 27, 2017, Judge Sweet denied Maxwell's motion for summary judgment, concluding that the case could not be dismissed before trial because there were triable issues of material fact—meaning that reasonable jurors could differ on key factual elements required to resolve the defamation claims. Additionally, he held that the pre‑litigation privilege Maxwell invoked (a legal shield often applied to internal or preliminary communications before a lawsuit is filed) did not apply to bar the claim. Consequently, the motion could not succeed as a matter of law. Judge Sweet also directed the parties to submit a proposed redacted version of the opinion consistent with the protective order or to notify the court if no redactions were necessary, emphasizing the sensitive nature of the materials involvedThis decision ensured that Maxwell's defamation case would proceed, allowing for full adjudication of disputable facts rather than prematurely ending the litigation. Moreover, although the summary judgment denial was itself sealed under protective orders—primarily due to concerns about privacy and confidentiality—the Second Circuit later determined that such judicial records should generally be accessible to the public, underscoring the importance of transparency in decisions impacting public interest; the appellate court directed review and unsealing of summary judgment materials following a careful balance of privacy interests.to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comsource:Epstein-Docs.pdf (documentcloud.org)Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-epstein-chronicles--5003294/support.

Today's episode of the Consumer Finance Monitor podcast is centered around a novel and thought-provoking article by David Horton, a professor of law at the University of California, Davis. The article, titled "Do Arbitrators Follow the Law? Evidence from Clause Construction," dives into the intriguing question of whether arbitrators render decisions that align with judicial rulings. Horton explores the longstanding debate on arbitration's adherence to legal standards, focusing on whether arbitrators have followed the Supreme Court's 2019 decision in Lamps Plus, Inc. v. Varela (2019) that class-wide arbitration is not permitted when an arbitration clause is silent or ambiguous on the matter.  The podcast episode explores the ramifications of Horton's finding that in about 27% of the arbitrations studied, the arbitrators did not follow Lamps Plus.  Horton interprets that finding as suggesting that a significant minority of arbitrators may be motivated by financial considerations in allowing a class arbitration to proceed, notwithstanding Lamps Plus, because it is more lucrative for them than an individual arbitration.    Mark Levin, Senior Counsel at Ballard Spahr, also joins the program. Mark interprets Horton's findings differently, emphasizing that in his view Horton's data strongly supports the conclusion that arbitration is not lawless since an overwhelming majority of the arbitrators (73%) did follow Lamps Plus.  Mark also dismisses Horton's suggestion that some arbitrators' rulings may be swayed by financial considerations as pure speculation.  On the contrary, he observes, the fact that some arbitrators have not strictly followed Lamps Plus does not show they were not following the law since the issue of clause construction has a lengthy complex history and prominent courts such as the Second Circuit have themselves found reasons for distinguishing Lamps Plus.    Consumer Finance Monitor is hosted by Alan Kaplinsky, Senior Counsel at Ballard Spahr, and the founder and former chair of the firm's Consumer Financial Services Group. We encourage listeners to subscribe to the podcast on their preferred platform for weekly insights into developments in the consumer finance industry.

 In its brief, the U.S. government argues that Maxwell received a fair trial in the Southern District of New York, that the evidence against her was overwhelming, and that any alleged errors raised by her defense do not warrant reversal. The prosecution maintains that witness testimony, corroborating records, and other evidence firmly established Maxwell's role in facilitating and participating in Jeffrey Epstein's sexual abuse of minors. They emphasize that the district court properly handled jury selection, evidentiary rulings, and sentencing, and that Maxwell's claims of prejudice or legal error are unfounded.The government's filing further contends that Maxwell's constitutional rights were respected throughout the proceedings, and that the trial judge acted within the bounds of discretion in all key rulings. It dismisses arguments that the jury was improperly influenced or that Maxwell was denied a fair opportunity to defend herself, stating that these claims misrepresent the trial record. The brief concludes by urging the Second Circuit to affirm Maxwell's conviction in its entirety, citing the strength of the government's case and the fairness of the process that led to the verdict.to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comsource:gov.uscourts.ca2.57831.79.0_1.pdf (courtlistener.com)

 In its brief, the U.S. government argues that Maxwell received a fair trial in the Southern District of New York, that the evidence against her was overwhelming, and that any alleged errors raised by her defense do not warrant reversal. The prosecution maintains that witness testimony, corroborating records, and other evidence firmly established Maxwell's role in facilitating and participating in Jeffrey Epstein's sexual abuse of minors. They emphasize that the district court properly handled jury selection, evidentiary rulings, and sentencing, and that Maxwell's claims of prejudice or legal error are unfounded.The government's filing further contends that Maxwell's constitutional rights were respected throughout the proceedings, and that the trial judge acted within the bounds of discretion in all key rulings. It dismisses arguments that the jury was improperly influenced or that Maxwell was denied a fair opportunity to defend herself, stating that these claims misrepresent the trial record. The brief concludes by urging the Second Circuit to affirm Maxwell's conviction in its entirety, citing the strength of the government's case and the fairness of the process that led to the verdict.to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comsource:gov.uscourts.ca2.57831.79.0_1.pdf (courtlistener.com)

 In its brief, the U.S. government argues that Maxwell received a fair trial in the Southern District of New York, that the evidence against her was overwhelming, and that any alleged errors raised by her defense do not warrant reversal. The prosecution maintains that witness testimony, corroborating records, and other evidence firmly established Maxwell's role in facilitating and participating in Jeffrey Epstein's sexual abuse of minors. They emphasize that the district court properly handled jury selection, evidentiary rulings, and sentencing, and that Maxwell's claims of prejudice or legal error are unfounded.The government's filing further contends that Maxwell's constitutional rights were respected throughout the proceedings, and that the trial judge acted within the bounds of discretion in all key rulings. It dismisses arguments that the jury was improperly influenced or that Maxwell was denied a fair opportunity to defend herself, stating that these claims misrepresent the trial record. The brief concludes by urging the Second Circuit to affirm Maxwell's conviction in its entirety, citing the strength of the government's case and the fairness of the process that led to the verdict.to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comsource:gov.uscourts.ca2.57831.79.0_1.pdf (courtlistener.com)

 In its brief, the U.S. government argues that Maxwell received a fair trial in the Southern District of New York, that the evidence against her was overwhelming, and that any alleged errors raised by her defense do not warrant reversal. The prosecution maintains that witness testimony, corroborating records, and other evidence firmly established Maxwell's role in facilitating and participating in Jeffrey Epstein's sexual abuse of minors. They emphasize that the district court properly handled jury selection, evidentiary rulings, and sentencing, and that Maxwell's claims of prejudice or legal error are unfounded.The government's filing further contends that Maxwell's constitutional rights were respected throughout the proceedings, and that the trial judge acted within the bounds of discretion in all key rulings. It dismisses arguments that the jury was improperly influenced or that Maxwell was denied a fair opportunity to defend herself, stating that these claims misrepresent the trial record. The brief concludes by urging the Second Circuit to affirm Maxwell's conviction in its entirety, citing the strength of the government's case and the fairness of the process that led to the verdict.to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comsource:gov.uscourts.ca2.57831.79.0_1.pdf (courtlistener.com)

 In its brief, the U.S. government argues that Maxwell received a fair trial in the Southern District of New York, that the evidence against her was overwhelming, and that any alleged errors raised by her defense do not warrant reversal. The prosecution maintains that witness testimony, corroborating records, and other evidence firmly established Maxwell's role in facilitating and participating in Jeffrey Epstein's sexual abuse of minors. They emphasize that the district court properly handled jury selection, evidentiary rulings, and sentencing, and that Maxwell's claims of prejudice or legal error are unfounded.The government's filing further contends that Maxwell's constitutional rights were respected throughout the proceedings, and that the trial judge acted within the bounds of discretion in all key rulings. It dismisses arguments that the jury was improperly influenced or that Maxwell was denied a fair opportunity to defend herself, stating that these claims misrepresent the trial record. The brief concludes by urging the Second Circuit to affirm Maxwell's conviction in its entirety, citing the strength of the government's case and the fairness of the process that led to the verdict.to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comsource:gov.uscourts.ca2.57831.79.0_1.pdf (courtlistener.com)

Sarah Isgur and David French discuss Alina Habba's removal as U.S. attorney pick and the one consistent position of the Trump administration: We get to do what we want. —Scrutinizing the Vacancies Reform Act—Friendly vs. hostile U.S. Senates—Good luck to the criminals in the Northern District of New Jersey—Listener question: change the vesting clause?—Second Circuit issues decision on remand for Nat'l Rifle Ass'n of Am. v. Vullo.—If you're going to charge a conspiracy, there better be a conspiracy—Critical race theory curriculum—Poisonous fruit of the Garcetti tree—Who has rights over blood spots? ⁠ This episode is brought to you by Burford Capital, the leading global finance firm focused on law. Burford helps companies and law firms unlock the value of their legal assets. With a $7.2 billion portfolio and listings on the NYSE and LSE, Burford provides capital to finance high-value commercial litigation and arbitration—without adding cost, risk, or giving up control. Clients include Fortune 500 companies and Am Law 100 firms, who turn to Burford to pursue strong claims, manage legal costs, and accelerate recoveries. Learn more at ⁠burfordcapital.com/ao⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices