accountability

  • Judges Advised to Restrict Clerks From Seeking Political Jobs

    Federal judges should prevent their law clerks from seeking employment with political organizations while they remain part of the court system to protect the judiciary’s independence, according to new ethical guidance. The U.S. Judicial Conference’s Committee on Codes of Conduct issued the guidance on Thursday, offering an election-year update to an advisory opinion on permissible…

  • Academic Publishers Face Class Action Over ‘Peer Review’ Pay, Other Restrictions

    A University of California, Los Angeles neuroscience professor, Lucina Uddin, has sued six major academic journal publishers, alleging they violated antitrust laws by prohibiting simultaneous submissions to multiple journals and refusing to compensate scholars for peer review services. Uddin filed the proposed class-action lawsuit in Brooklyn federal court on Thursday against Elsevier, John Wiley &…

  • Brazil Top Court Lifts Starlink, X Account Freeze After $3M Transfer

    Brazil’s Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes lifted freezes on Starlink and X bank accounts after transferring 18.35 million reais ($3.3 million) from those accounts to the national treasury. The court issued this lift after determining that the transferred amount satisfied the fines X owed to Brazil, resulting from a dispute between Elon Musk and…

  • Harvey Weinstein Hit With New Criminal Charges

    Harvey Weinstein faces new criminal charges as Manhattan prosecutors prepare to retry him following the reversal of his rape conviction. In 2020, a jury in Manhattan convicted Weinstein, 72, of rape, but the New York Court of Appeals overturned the conviction in April, ruling that the judge improperly allowed testimony from accusers not formally involved…

  • North Dakota Judge Overturns State Abortion Ban

    On Thursday, a North Dakota state court judge overturned the state’s near-total abortion ban, allowing abortion to become legal in the state for the first time in over a year. Judge Bruce Romanick in Bismarck ruled that the state constitution protects women’s right to abortion before fetal viability, supporting abortion providers who challenged the ban.…

  • Missouri Supreme Court Rules Abortion Rights Measure Will be on State Ballot

    Missouri’s top court ruled on Tuesday that voters will decide on a proposed abortion rights amendment in November, potentially restoring legal abortion in the state for the first time in over two years. The measure, which allows abortion rights in Missouri until fetal viability, will appear on the November ballot after organizers gathered more than…

  • Labor Department’s In-House Anti-Bias Cases Unconstitutional, Lawsuit Claims

    ABM Industry Groups has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Labor, claiming the agency’s administrative proceedings for enforcing anti-discrimination requirements on federal contractors are unconstitutional. The janitorial services company filed the complaint in Houston federal court on Monday, arguing that these in-house proceedings violate its constitutional right to a jury trial. ABM also…

  • Supreme Court’s Kagan Says Emergency Docket Does Not Lead to Court’s Best Work

    Justice Elena Kagan expressed concern that the U.S. Supreme Court spends too much time rushing through cases on its emergency docket, commonly known as the “shadow docket.” During an hour-long interview at New York University’s law school on Monday, Kagan stated, “I don’t think we do our best work in this way,” referring to the…

  • Ex-Biden Special Counsel Joins Law Firm Kramer Levin

    Richard Sauber, the White House special counsel who represented President Joe Biden during the investigation into his handling of classified documents, has joined Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel as a partner, the firm announced Monday. Sauber will work from the firm’s Washington, D.C. office, where he will advise individuals and organizations facing investigations by Congress…

  • Google Aimed to Control Web Ad Tech, Prosecutor Says as Trial Begins

    Alphabet’s Google sought to dominate all aspects of online advertising technology by controlling both competitors and customers, according to a Justice Department prosecutor as the tech giant’s latest antitrust trial began in Alexandria, Virginia, on Monday. Prosecutors argue that Google has maintained control over the infrastructure that finances the flow of news and information across…