Congratulations to Aaron Greenspan and the Center for Information Technology Policy, and the winners of the recent Grants (Ka-Ping Yee, Filippo Valsorda, and Alessio Palmero Aprosio), for expanding this great tool to Chrome. Download it here.
Congratulations to Aaron Greenspan and the Center for Information Technology Policy, and the winners of the recent Grants (Ka-Ping Yee, Filippo Valsorda, and Alessio Palmero Aprosio), for expanding this great tool to Chrome. Download it here.
This story is really messed up.
But even before Goodman’s March 2012 criminal trial began, controversy had already erupted over a Miami-Dade circuit judge’s September 2011 decision to finalize Goodman’s adoption of his girlfriend Heather Anne Hutchins. Goodman at the time was simultaneously fighting criminal charges in the Feb. 2010 death of Scott Wilson, a wrongful death suit from Wilson’s family, and a dispute in Delaware over the management of a trust fund established for Goodman’s two children with his ex-wife Carroll.
It was the last of these issues that Goodman’s legal team said was the impetus for Goodman to make the rare move to adopt his girlfriend, giving her immediate access to $5 million from the trust and promising future payouts totalling nearly $12 million. The move ended up drawing national attention both from people who suspected Goodman was trying raid his children’s trust and others who thought it strange that Goodman would adopt his lover as a daughter.
The 3rd District Court of Appeal in its 9-page ruling on the matter Wednesday said Goodman — now fighting a DUI manslaughter conviction and 16-year prison sentence — deliberately kept news of Hutchins’ adoption from his ex-wife and the Wilsons until January 2012, when it was too late for anyone to contest it. The appeals panel called the move a fraud, and Senior Judge Alan R. Schwartz individually blasted Goodman in a concurring opinion.
“Even if the motivation and the means for securing it were not so reprehensible, I believe…the adoption of a paramour is so contrary to the beneficent purposes of such an action that no such judgment can ever be sustained,” Schwartz wrote.
Scott Smith, the civil attorney for Wilson’s father William, said the language in this appellate decision was particularly harsh.
It looks like there will be a Prop 8 movie. Line-waiting customer Rob Reiner will direct. So, that poses the obvious question. Who will play each Justice?
Depending on how we use history, originalist arguments can point in more than one direction. But that is also true of doctrinal arguments. They aren’t always more determinative, especially at the Supreme Court level. So the big takeaway is that originalism may shape the way that judges argue about the Constitution, but it doesn’t relieve judges of the need to exercise judgment. The reason we hire judges is to judge.
A very interesting interview with Jack on originalism and same-sex marriage.
Update: The last quoted sentence reminded me of something I wrote in The Constitutionality of Social Cost, with respect to how the Second Amendment should be understood in the future:
With regard to how courts should develop the right, I do not hold the key. Judges will invariably do what judges do.
What a shame. I was really looking forward to the judicial benchslap.
Now, we’ve learned Trump filed documents in L.A. County Superior Court on March 29 to dismiss the case … but a rep for “The Apprentice” star says it doesn’t mean the war is over.
“The lawsuit was temporarily withdrawn to be amended and refiled at a later date,” says Michael Cohen (Trump’s Executive Vice President and Special Counsel).
As for when Trump plans to refile the suit … that question is still unanswered.