Orient Lodge

Former U.S. Senator, Former Presidential Candidate and Author Gary Hart addressed a group of lawyers, legislators, candidates and activists this afternoon at the offices of Shipman and Goodwin in downtown Hartford this afternoon. Prior to Sen. Hart’s presentation, people gathered, shared sandwiches and discussions about the legislative session that has just ended. Folks more often seen wearing T-Shirts supporting one candidate or another put on their suits to join the discussion.

The event was sponsored by The Connecticut Lawyer Chapter of the American Constitution Society and the Council for a Livable World.

Sen. Hart started off by acknowledging that the priorities for a new administration would be a long and complex agenda, and he chose to focus on two key themes, security and the restoration of constitutional government in our county. The next president should start off his or her administration with a televised speech to the nation about the importance of our constitution and the checks and balances it is supposed to afford us. The next president should talk about why an independent judiciary is so important and about the dangers of the unitary executive theory that has been espoused by members of the current administration.

From May 20th through May 23rd, the 18th annual Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference will take place in New Haven. This year’s topic is Technology Policy ’08. Early bird registration ends today, so if you are thinking of attending and haven’t signed up yet, today would be a great day to sign up.

In addition, “The Yale Journal of Law & Technology (YJoLT) is seeking essay-length submissions concerning the technology policy platform of the new American presidential administration.” The deadline for the entries is May 5th, and details can be found on the YJoLT Essay Contest

More information can be found at the CFP 2008 Main Page as well as many other sites they list, such as their Facebook Group and their blog. On their blog they have a post entitled Bloggers Wanted. If you are a blogger and planning on attending, please let the organizers know.

It looks like a great conference and I look forward to attending as much of it as possible.

Over time, the Avery Doninger case has evolved from a draconian overreaction by narcissistically injured petty school bureaucrats to a discussion of the school district making poor use of taxpayers’ money by missing important teachable moments and wasting money on a lawsuit they should have avoided. On Tuesday, the important underlying issues of Free Speech, especially as it relates to the Internet took center stage as the case was heard before the Second Circuit of Appeals.

As a quick summary, last April, Avery Doninger, who was then Class Secretary of the Junior Class wrote a post on LiveJournal one evening at home where she used a derogatory phrase to describe members of the school administration based on their handling of a concern she and others were organizing at her school. The school administration responded by saying she could not run for re-election as Class Secretary and by refusing to honor the results of the election where she won as a write-in candidate. Avery and her mother have sued the school for violating her freedom of speech.

Yesterday, I went to the U.S. Second Circuit to observe the oral arguments in the Doninger case. However, before we got to those arguments, there were several other cases being addressed. It is useful to look at these cases a little to get some background for the Doninger case. In my reflections about the courtroom, I observed that there were two busts at the entrance to the courtroom. One was of Learned Hand, and the other was of Henry Friendly. Judge Hand is noted for his cases involving freedom of speech. However, that is not all that the court hears. Judge Friendly is noted for his expertise in Securities Law and that was part of the mix.

The first case seemed a bit arcane and, at least to me, uninteresting. I’m sure that it was interesting to people with a vested interest. As best as I could make out, it is continued legal wrangling about Computer Associations and a Special Litigation Committee that they set up to investigate Charles Wang, founder of Computer Associates, of fraudulent accounting. Key issues seemed to be whether or not cases were filed in a timely fashion by the right people or legal entities.

This was followed by questioning about several motions. A representative of the National Labor Review Board appeared by the judges to discuss the wording of some document. There was a long complicated discussion about some company in Brazil and trademark issues. A lot of people were very interested in this case and left after the arguments. There was another trademark case. Both of these seemed to be about who would be permitted, or not to permitted to take which legal actions, when and where. Like the Computer Associates case, this is probably really important to some people, but I didn’t see anything important coming out of the cases.

Then, there were two cases where sentence reductions were argued. One case centered around ‘robotic incantations’. The key issue seemed to be whether or not the judge in assigning the sentence properly considered all the factors, or simply rubberstamped the sentence. In another case, a repeat offender was given 96 months for possessing 50 grams of crack cocaine, even though he had worked with the government and worn a wire. In this case, one judge expressed concern about the prosecutors being draconian and pursing ‘vindictive prosecution’. I wondered if this would be a foreshadowing of the Doninger case, where people have asserted that the school administration was draconian and vindictive.

The other interesting case was of an asylum seeker. The person had fled from China after being a supporter of the Falong Gong. The representative of the immigration service argued that since we did not know why the police ripped the shirt off of the asylum seeker or why they came to his house, we cannot assume it is because of persecution. As I listened to him, I thought of our responses to genocide. Would he have said the same thing about not knowing why Hitler’s S.S. agents coming to the door of a person who has spoken sympathetically of Jewish people. I was disgusted by the performance of the representative of the immigration service.

This case was perhaps the closest to having meaning for me. One of the things that Avery has been focusing during the time when she has been deprived of being Class Secretary is genocide issues. She has testified before the Education Committee in Hartford about teaching genocide awareness. We do need to think more about how we deal with genocide, with political persecution, as well as the simplest forms that it takes in our schools, bullying.

All of this sets the background for the oral arguments in the Doninger case.

What a day!

10:40 PM. I am finally home after a very long day. Today, I went in to hear oral arguments about the Avery Doninger case at the Second Circuit. My father-in-law had spoken with me beforehand about what a beautiful courtroom it is. I agree, and a description of the courtroom deserves a blog post of its own.

There were three judges hearing the arguments on several different cases. The judges probably deserve their own blog post as well, as do the other cases. However, I was there to observe the Doninger case. The judges spent a lot of time hearing the other cases, often going over the allotted time for each case, and so the Doninger case didn’t start until about 3:45. Each side was to receive ten minutes for their oral arguments, and before Jon Schoenhorn, who was representing the Doningers got a chance to launch into his prepared remarks, the judges started peppering him with questions about Hazelwood.

Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier (doc. #: 86-836) was a case that addressed the issue, “To what extent, consistent with the First Amendment, may educators exercise editorial control over the contents of a high school newspaper produced as part of the school’s journalism curriculum?” It seemed a strange place to start, especially if there were only going to be twenty minutes for arguments. However, the questions went on and on from there. Nearly two hours later, the court adjourned.

The court does not allow you to bring cellphones into the courtroom, especially phones like mine that can be used to take pictures, so I left my cellphone with the U.S. Marshals. When I picked up my cellphone, I received several text messages from Kim about the building collapse that disrupted MetroNorth trains for several hours.

Even though the trains were supposed to be running again by the time the court adjourned, I figured that the train schedules, and the backlog of commuters would make the train trip back particularly complicated, so I went to dinner with the Doningers and Attorney Schoenhorn. Even after dinner, the trains were still not fully back on schedule and I rode a crowded train combining the 8:04 and the 8:07 train.

So now, I am home. I’ve taken a little time to write initial comments. I will head off to bed, and then write up more details about the court, the judges, the other cases, and the two hours of oral arguments of the Doninger case tomorrow morning when I’m not so tired.

While it was a long day, it was also a wonderful day. I am glad I got a chance to go see the case continue to unfold, and I urge everyone to pay closer attention to the judicial processes in our country.

That is how Merriam-Websters defines “currency” and provides an interesting framework for understanding the issues of currency in Second Life. Beyond currency, we need to think about what it is based on and how it is transmitted, all of this will can help put the latest decision by Linden Lab about banking into perspective.

As is often the case, some of the most interesting discussions at conferences and symposia take place away from the main panels, and for me, the same happened at
the Symposium on Reputation Economies in Cyberspace. During lunch I found about the Knight Foundation grant to Yale Law School to ‘Train the
Next Generation's Leading Legal Journalists’. While the grant was announced last May, this was the first I heard of it, and was pleased to get more details.

Some of the goals of the program are to study law and media, to promote interactions between lawyers and journalists, to provide opportunities for journalists to teach at Yale Law and to prepare law students for careers in media.

Well, it is finally online. For those of you who enjoy reading legal briefs filed in The U.S. Court of Appeals won’t want to miss this one:
The Reply Brief of the Plaintiff-Appellant in the Avery Doninger case.

Now, normally, I would not recommend reading legal briefs as a form of relaxing entertainment on a Sunday afternoon a few weeks before Christmas, but this brief is fun to read; either that, or I need to get out more.