By Adam Rich

If the debate leading up to passage of health care reform was notably light in its consideration of constitutional authority, the mainstream media has been equally dismissive of the legal challenges quickly filed by a handful of state attorneys general (see here, here, and here).

One notable exception is Georgetown Law Professor Randy E. Barnett’s op-ed that appeared in the March 21 edition of the Washington Post. Particularly intriguing is Barnett’s critique of the “individual mandate,” which requires citizens to buy health insurance. “[N]ever before has [Congress] used its commerce power to mandate that an individual person engage in an economic transaction with a private company,” Barnett writes. “[T]he individual mandate extends the commerce clause’s power beyond economic activity, to economic inactivity. That is unprecedented.”
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By Ted Wills

In the “Rants and Raves” section of Craiglist, an anonymous poster recently left this less- than-rave review of accountant Leo Kehoe:

“CPA FRAUD ALERT! (BEWARE OF CROOK) Watch out for this fraudulent scumbag! … He will botch up your tax returns and forget to submit them. He has been associated with TAX EVATION and falsifying records . . . Warn everyone you know!”

Less than pleased, Kehoe filed a $4 million defamation suit in Queens County against both Craigslist and the anonymous author.  The NY media ate it up, with the NY Post, the NY Daily News, and Gothamist focusing on Craigslist being sued, and trumpeting this angle with headlines such as “Queens accountant sues Craigslist for allowing poster to insult him.” The stories, which emphasize the millions in requested damages, leave the reader with the impression that Mr. Kehoe has a fighting chance to, in the words of the Post, “even the balance sheet” with Craigslist.  However, all three of these media accounts ignore the likelihood that Kehoe’s lawsuit has virtually no chance of succeeding against Craiglist—and may even invite sanctions against his attorney.

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By Ted Wills

The New York Times Magazine’s resident ethicist, Randy Cohen, recently gave some legal advice about an employment contract between parents and a babysitter. “As an ethical and (as I, a nonlawyer, understand it) a legal matter, the oral agreement she made constitutes a contract, albeit unwritten.” Mr. Cohen is not a lawyer, but I am a law student and he would be pleased to know that his legal conclusion is almost correct.

Mr. Cohen was responding to a letter from a concerned father  in Tacoma, Washington. When they originally negotiated the terms of the babysitting agreement, the father and his wife insisted that the babysitter  commit to baby-sit two days a week until the end of the school year. She agreed, though nothing was put in writing. Then the father lost his job and no longer needed the babysitter. The father wanted to lay the babysitter off. His wife felt that they must pay the babysitter through the end of the school year. The husband wrote to Mr. Cohen asking his advice, quoted above.

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By LASIS Staff

The American Film Institute has named it the second best courtroom genre film of all time by the American Film Institute (first place: To Kill a Mockingbird). It garnered three Academy Award Nominations in 1958 (it lost all three to Bridge on the River Kwai). But to the disaffected ethnic youths who work with Avi Brisman, the film is “just another movie with too many white guys.” That’s their initial verdict, anyway. And then…

Last week New York Law School’s Program in Law in Journalism presented symposium “The Media and Criminal Law: Fact, Fiction, and Reality TV” which featured panels and presentations about the convergence of the media and criminal law. Mr. Brisman, a panelist at the event, is a graduate student in anthropology at Emory University studying “the interface of legal/political anthropology, criminology, and the sociology of law and punishment” and as part of his studies, he’s shown Twelve Angry Men to groups of adolescents he works with.

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By Adam Rich

Scanning a local family court docket recently, reporter Bill McClellan of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch noticed that a couple with the first names “Allison” and “Yvette” were petitioning for a no-contest divorce.  He was intrigued. Missouri, you see, doesn’t recognize same-sex marriage.  So how would Missourian Judge Smith be able to grant the couple a divorce?

McClellan’s anticipated fireworks were a dud: “Allison” turned out to be a man. The column’s anti-climactic ending offered LASIS the chance to investigate the underlying question unresolved;  it turns out there may be no easy answer. McClellan is only the latest in a growing group — including judges, academics, and elected officials — struggling to untangle what amounts to a controversial conflict of laws problem.
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