Sports Labor Law

This might provide a nice short break for anyone who is now studying for the bar but finding it impossible to stop thinking about law--even while taking a break to watch baseball highlights.

David Cone testified at Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation hearings last week (transcript here) and he also happened to throw out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium yesterday (a still-devastating curve). Cone was invited to testify on Sotomayor's behalf because he was a representative of the Major League Baseball Players Association when Sotomayor resolved baseball's most recent major labor dispute, in 1994. Here, Prof. Ilya Somin from George Mason, who also testified Thursday, mentions that Cone was a successful litigant who was testifying on behalf of a judge who made a decision in his favor.

In fact, the Supreme Court recently granted cert. in American Needle v. National Football League, which could significantly change labor relations in American professional sports, and some see Sotomayor as a potential disruption to the NFL's apparent plan to obtain antitrust exemption for all major sports leagues through that case. (Good analysis of the case is here from a practical perspective, and here from a legal perspective.)



Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Sotomayor's Student Days

Law students and faculty might gain some special insight in to the personality and background of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor by taking a look at some events and writings from her student days at Princeton University and Yale Law School. Check out Princeton's press release with a link to images and documents chronicling her undergraduate interests and achievements.
Yale Law School's announcement links to a special Law Journal page and her student Note published in the Yale Law Journal, "Statehood and the Equal Footing Doctrine: The Case for Puerto Rican Seabed Rights."



Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Souter Replacement Speculation

With the announcement that Justice Souter will be retiring at the end of the current term, the game of Supreme Court nomination speculation is in full gear.

The Blog of Legal Times lists all of the likely candidates, and some others are listed in the comments.

The National Law Journal lists most of the same likely candidates.

In this article, The New York Times lists the ages of some likely candidates.

In addition to birthdates, the Washington Post gives short biographies of the likely candidates.

And Brian Leiter is running a poll (including the obvious candidates and some that are listed for fun), where many of the voters will probably be law professors.

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

The New President and the Courts

It is now just a few days after the election, and people are already speculating about what changes President-Elect Obama will bring to the federal judiciary with his court appointments. Of course, most lawyers are curious to see who Obama will appoint if any justices step down from the Supreme Court, but as these National Law Journal and AP articles point out, Obama will immediately have fourteen circuit court seats to fill and about four dozen total federal court openings to fill. This could move a number of courts from having more Republican-appointed judges to having more Democratic-appointed judges. Although, as people know, it can sometimes be hard to predict what a judge will do once he or she is given a lifetime appointment.



Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

New Supreme Court Term

The Supreme Court began its new term last Monday. This term it will hear cases on a number of issues, including FCC fines for "fleeting expletives," the question of whether patients can sue drug companies over drugs that are regulated by the FDA, and, in Iqbal v. Ashcroft, whether high level officials are immune from being sued if they are alleged to have condoned constitutional violations. (The fact that Javaid Iqbal used to be a cable guy on Long Island gives this one some local interest).

The Legal Information Institute's previews of this term's cases can be seen here. And SCOTUSblog offers weekly updates showing the daily goings on at the Court.



Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

The Onion on Convoluted Legal Wranglings

There was a funny article in The Onion last week about Mets third baseman David Wright appealing a check swing call to the Supreme Court. It is funny because umpires and judges have some things in common (as PrawfsBlawg points out, Chief Justice Roberts has analogized his Court to a crew of umpires), because spending years waiting for a ball-strike call exemplifies how out of sync the timing of our courts can be with real life, because a check swing involves the sort of subjective test courts like to examine at length, and because it quotes John Kruk explaining originalist interpretation.

However, although the article says that the fake case had a "convoluted" procedural history, it involved no remands, interlocutory appeals, etc. In fact, it somehow managed to skip multiple levels of the state and federal courts--just look at the chart below. (Of course, National League umpires working at Shea are not actually a court of first instance in the New York State Unified Court System.)


[Courts written in gray were skipped.]








Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat