Congrats to TChris for his win in a Wisconsin Appeals Court this week. A sad case, but a good outcome.

Police who videotaped a man having sex with his comatose wife in her nursing home room violated his constitutional rights, an appeals court ruled Thursday.

David W. Johnson, 59, had an expectation to privacy when he visited his wife, a stroke victim, at Divine Savior Nursing Home in Portage, the District 4 Court of Appeals ruled. Therefore, police violated his Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches when they installed a hidden video camera in the room, the court said.

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mcjoan reviews James Piffner's "Power Play":

James P. Pfiffner's book Power Play: The Bush Presidency and the Constitution, succinctly and convincingly lays out the historical backdrop for the development of our system of government, based on the rule of law, and just as convincingly presents his argument that the Bush administration has put that very system on a precipice. . . . Pfiffner argues that, in pursuing an agenda developed by Cheney, Addington, Yoo, Bybee and others, Bush "abrogated the rule of law by taking actions not authorized by law and sometimes directly against the law."

No kidding. A WaPo article yesterday detailed how Cheney and his henchman David Addington perverted the Constitution:

Yet another reason why I believe Cass Sunstein is unfit to serve in an Obama Administration, his "defense" of Roe:

Those who seek to preserve the right to choose ought to be prepared to make some distinctions. As it was written in 1973, Roe v. Wade was far from a model of legal reasoning, and conservatives have been correct to criticize it. The court failed to root the abortion right in either the text of the Constitution or its own precedents.

This is nonsense in my opinion, particularly Sunstein's statement that Roe was not rooted in the text of the Constitution and the Supreme Court's precedents (Roe particularly followed Griswold to its logical conclusion.) Sunstein is entitled to his opinion, but he is not entitled to serve in a Democratic Administration or to be a Supreme Court appointee of a Democratic President. More . .

For lawyers and reporters on legal events, meet Lexis Web. It's a free search engine of legal stuff, but it also gives you the last five years of case law free, through lexisone.com. It's like a google search engine for law, with the added benefit you can access huge amounts of material free, including the last five yars of caselaw.

No sign up required for the search engine. If you do have a lexis account, and you want to do research in greater detail, you can log in right in from your search results.

Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the right . . . to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

First Amendent to the US Constitution

In Jeralyn's post below, she discusses a Newsweek article that discusses 2005 (when Sarah Palin was the Mayor of Wasilla a private citizen) statements made by the Alaska family court judge handling the divorce and custody dispute between Palin's sister and her ex-brother in law Morgan Wooten. While Jeralyn and other bloggers see this as a strong indictment against Palin, I was struck by the actions of the judge. Some points stand out for me. First was the judge's inflammatory use of the phrase "emotional child abuse" due to complaints by the Palin family to the government about the conduct of Wooten, an Alaska state trooper. Second was the court's admonition to the Palin family to stop their complaints to the government about Wooten.

While the issue of speech from family members to children has been the subject of family court orders (and even these restrictions are not uncontroversial, see, e.g. Eugene Volokh on the issue), it is new to my experience to see a judge in any setting order a non-party to cease and desist from "petitioning the government for redress." I'll explain my concerns in more detail on the flip side.

Earlier this week, Adam Liptak wrote about the downside of allowing opposing litigants to select their own paid experts to render opinions as trial witnesses. He discussed the Australian concept of "hot tubbing," where the litigants' experts "testify together at trial — discussing the case, asking each other questions, responding to inquiries from the judge and the lawyers, finding common ground and sharpening the open issues," and the practice prevalent in Europe, where "expert witnesses are selected by judges and are meant to be neutral and independent."

In criminal cases, as Radley Balko and Roger Koppl discussed in a Slate article yesterday, experts who are paid "charlatans are only half the story." [More ...]

You think you have a difficult client? Check this out.

Anderson attorney Thomas Hamer said that he and his client had gone to a Social Security disability hearing in Indianapolis and they were returning to the Madison County Jail when Hudson suddenly jumped into the back seat and held a knife to his throat. It was not clear where Hudson got the knife.

Hamer told The Herald Bulletin that Hudson forced him to drive to a cemetery, where he bound Hamer's hands behind his back with a belt.

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232 years ago today, the Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, issued a Declaration of Independence:

AdamB announced his law panel for Netroots Nation and it is an impressive one. But one thing stuck out for me in his announcement - the bio of Cass Sunstein:

One of America's foremost legal scholars, Cass Sunstein is a professor at Harvard Law School and a visiting professor at The University of Chicago Law School, and serves as an advisor to Obama for America.

Cass Sunstein is an advisor for Obama for America? That is extremely troubling as Cass Sunstein holds views that I believe should be anathema to most progressives. For example, Sunstein supported John Roberts for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court:

The Roberts nomination is not welcomed by those who object to the rightward drift of the federal courts or believe that Justice O'Connor's successor should be no more conservative than she. . . . But at this point in our history, the most serious danger lies in the rise of conservative judicial activism. . . For those who are concerned about that kind of activism on the Supreme Court, opposition to the apparently cautious Judge Roberts seems especially odd at this stage. . .

I wonder if Sunstein still agrees with that. More importantly, what does Obama think of that view. More . . .

Gay marriage can not be prohibited in California:

The California Supreme Court has overturned a ban on gay marriage, paving the way for California to become the second state where gay and lesbian residents can marry. The justices released the 4-3 decision Thursday, saying that domestic partnerships are not a good enough substitute for marriage in an opinion written by Chief Justice Ron George.

Here is the opinion (PDF). Kevin Drum has more on an initiative being proposed to amend the California Constitution to allow such a prohibition.

Kevin Drum does not understand discusses what the anti-Kelo forces want:

Three years ago, . . .Kelo v. New London [was decided.] . . . Here in California, though, nobody seems to have the horse sense to get it right. Two years ago the lunatic brigade offered up Proposition 90, which not only restricted eminent domain but also tried to enshrine a longtime wet dream of the property rights movement: demanding government compensation for any restriction on land use. . . .Prop 90 failed. Big surprise. But not by much: if its supporters had just offered a clean eminent domain initiative, it might have won.

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The Supreme court has upheld Indiana's Voter ID law:

The Supreme Court has ruled that states can require voters to produce photo identification without violating their constitutional rights. The decision validates Republican-inspired voter ID laws. The court vote 6-3 to uphold Indiana's strict photo ID requirement. Democrats and civil rights groups say the law would deter poor, older and minority voters from casting ballots.

Opinion here (PDF). More . . .