Felony Bail Bonds Sanford – European Court of Justice lays down the law on Kodipocalypse

Source     : The Register News
By             : Andrew Orlowski
Category :  Professional Bail Bonds Sanford ,  Felony Bail Bonds Sanford

European Court of Justice lays down the law on Kodipocalypse

Europe’s highest court has made it easier for member states to halt the sale of media sticks with preloaded pirate streaming links and add-ons. The past few months have seen significant growth in pre-configured streaming boxes or USB sticks. These use the Kodi platform, an open-source player, configured by a vendor with add-ons that enable access to pirate TV services.

The UK has approved realtime blocks by ISPs during popular Premier League games until the end of the English season to gauge the effectiveness of blocking the streams at source. Meanwhile, trading standards officers and police have launched raids on vendors. The European Court of Justice was invited to give its opinion on a Dutch district court case involving a vendor of one player, filmspeler.nl. The court today decreed that the vendor’s actions constituted a “communication to the public”.

This is a peculiar doctrine specific to European law, not found in the Berne Convention, which some of Europe’s top legal experts believe is based on a mistranslation. URLs were deemed not to be a “communication to the public” last September. It’s a cumbersome analog to the idea of secondary liability, which takes into account intent, as it did for Grokster in the US Supreme Court in 2005. But the advantage for legal wonks and lawyers in Europe is that they can continue to evolve the concept for years to come. Only a cynic would suggest that lawyers and legal academics profit from such confusion, so we won’t.

The ECJ decided that: In the present case and having regard, in particular, to the content of the advertising of the multimedia player and to the fact that the main attraction of that player for potential purchasers is the pre-installation of the add-ons concerned, the Court finds that the purchaser of such a player accesses a free and unauthorised off.

Read more here: theregister.co.uk/2017/04/26/ecj_kodi_addons/

Professional Bail Bonds Sanford – Is This the Supreme Court’s Next Big Second Amendment Case?

Source     : Reason News
By             : Damon Root
Category : Professional Bail Bonds Sanford ,  Felony Bail Bonds Sanford

Is This the Supreme Court’s Next Big Second Amendment Case?

Does the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms extend outside the home? Does it cover the right to carry concealed firearms in public? An important case now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court for possible review may provide definitive legal answers. At issue in Peruta v. California is a state law that says conceal-carry permits will only be issued to those persons who have demonstrated to the satisfaction of their local county sheriff that they have a “good cause” for carrying a concealed firearm in public. What counts as a “good cause?” In the words of one San Diego official, “one’s personal safety is not considered good cause.” In effect, the local sheriff has vast discretion to pick and choose who gets a permit and who doesn’t. Because the guidelines are unclear there is a severe risk of arbitrary enforcement. As one previous court ruling on the matter observed, “in California the only way that the typical responsible, law-abiding citizen can carry a weapon in public for the lawful purpose of self-defense is with a concealed-carry permit. And, in San Diego County, that option has been taken off the table.”

A constitutional challenge to this law inevitably followed. But that challenge suffered a major defeat in June 2016 when San Diego’s “good cause” requirement was upheld by a divided 11-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit on the grounds that the Second Amendment offers no protection for gun owners in this area. “Because the Second Amendment does not protect in any degree the right to carry concealed firearms in public,” the 9th Circuit majority said, “any prohibition or restriction a state may choose to impose on concealed carry—including a requirement of ‘good cause,’ however defined—is necessarily allowed by the Amendment.” In January 2017 Edward Peruta and his fellow petitioners asked the U.S. Supreme Court to step in and overturn that 9th Circuit ruling. According to the Court’s docket, their petition has now been considered by the justices in private conferences held on March 24, on March 31, on April 13, and on April 21, but no decision has yet been reached. This Friday, April 28, is the next private conference on the Court’s calendar, and the justices are scheduled to consider the Peruta petition once again.

There are good reasons for the Court to take the case. While the 9th Circuit has endorsed a narrow interpretation of the Second Amendment’s reach outside the home, other federal circuits have arrived at a different interpretation. In its 2012 decision in Moore v. Madigan, for example, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit struck down Illinois’ statewide ban on carrying arms in public on the grounds that it violated the Second Amendment. “One doesn’t need to be a historian to realize that a right to keep and bear arms in the eighteenth century could not rationally have been limited to the home,” the 7th Circuit held. That kind of circuit split is usually enough to get the Supreme Court’s attention. The justices may also be interested in settling a debate about federalism and the role of the federal courts that is lurking in the background of this case. For example, the gun control side insists that state and local officials are best positioned to balance the rights of gun owners against the specific local needs for more stringent firearms regulations. According to this view, federal judges should defer to these sorts of state and local decisions. By contrast, the gun rights side insists that the idea of constitutional liberty is turned on its head when a provision of the Bill of Rights is restricted in one part of the country and respected in another. This view urges the federal courts to consistently enforce the Second Amendment nationwide.

Read more here: reason.com/blog/2017/04/25/is-this-the-supreme-courts-next-big-seco

Felony Bail Bonds Sanford – Supreme Court grants amendment in General Legal Council writ

Source     : Ghana Business News
By             : Agency Press
Category : Professional Bail Bonds Sanford ,  Felony Bail Bonds Sanford

Supreme Court grants amendment in General Legal Council writ

The Supreme Court on Tuesday gave green light to Professor Stephen Kweku Asare a United State based Ghanaian lawyer to amend a writ he had filed against the General Legal Council (GLC). In October 2015, Prof. Asare, the plaintiff proceeded to the apex court over the legality of the modes of admission used by the Ghana School of Law to admit LLB holders into the Professional Law course by the School.

He contended that the number of people who are admitted into Ghana School of Law was woefully small considering the number of people who possessed LLB. At today sitting’s Ms Ofosua Amagyei, counsel for the plaintiff drew the attention of the seven member panel presided over by Mr Justice Jones Dotse that she had filed application for leave to amend their writ.

According to her the amendment was minor and it was to put the year 2015 issues in context because the Ghana School of Law had completed with their admission that year and had gone ahead with that of 2016. Mr Kizito Beyuo who represented the GLC and Mrs Dorothy Afriyie Ansah, Chef State Attorney who represented the Attorney General did not oppose to the amendment.

The court therefore gave the plaintiff’s lawyer two days to file the amendment whilst the defendants in the matter were given seven days to respond if any. It therefore adjourned the matter to May 2 stating that it would be taking the memorandum of issues by the parties in court on the said date.

Prof Asare had gone to the Supreme Court to seek a declaration that that GLC’s imposition of entrance examination  and interview requirements for the Professional Law Course violates Articles 11 (7) 297 (d) 23, 296 (a) (b) and 18 (2) of the 1992 Constitution. He is seeking a declaration that that the GLC’s exclusion of persons who have qualified under Regulation 2 of LI 1296 from pursuing the Professional law course violates Article 11 (7) 297 (d), 23, and 296 (a) and (b) of the Constitution. The Plaintiff is also praying the court for an order directed at the GLC to specify within 60 days; alternative places and modes of instructions that would afford all persons meeting the requirement of Regulation 2 of LI 1296 an opportunity to pursue the profession component of legal education, the completion of which entitles them to take the qualifying certificate examinations as determined by the GLC.

Read more here: ghanabusinessnews.com/2017/04/12/supreme-court-grants-amendment-in-general-legal-council-writ/

Professional Bail Bonds Sanford – A despotic Supreme Court does not ensure national security

Source     : Israel National News
By            : Dr. Aviel Sheyin-Stevens
Category : Professional Bail Bonds Sanford ,  Felony Bail Bonds Sanford

A despotic Supreme Court does not ensure national security

The security of a country is the first and most important duty of its government. In advanced democracies, public security is within the exclusive control of the political branches of the government: The legislature legislates on immigration, national defense, security matters, etc., and the executive executes the instructions of the legislature. In Israel, the legislature is not sovereign to legislate, and the executive lacks actual control to execute the instructions of the legislature. The Supreme Court has seized the government’s power to enforce border controls, and to determine policies on immigration, military matters, national defense, public security, etc. The dictum of Aharon Barak, President of the Supreme Court of Israel (1995-2006), that “everything is justiciable”, everything is liable to trial, makes nonsense of the rule of law, as well as Israel’s reputation as a democracy. It renders Israel a judicial despotism. The rules of law that Barak’s judicial opinions created have no counterpart in most democracies: that a court can countermand military orders; that a court can decide “whether to prevent the release of a terrorist within the framework of a political ‘package deal’” and direct the government to move the security wall that keeps suicide bombers from entering Israel; that judges can only be removed by other judges; etc. This is what passes for the rule of law in Israel: arbitrary decrees by unelected officials.

The U.S. is trending towards the Israeli model. Some U.S. district court judges ruled that they had the authority to contravene legally framed executive order issued by President Donald Trump, making themselves the supreme law of the land; judicial despotism. In January 2017, Trump issued an executive order calling for extra vetting of certain foreign nationals seeking entry into the U.S. The order temporarily suspends entry by the nationals of seven Muslim-majority countries: Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen (a reissued order excluded Iraq). It is to last for 90 days, while extra vetting procedures are developed. The judges ruled that the travel ban was not about national security, as the order stated, but “significant and unrebutted evidence of religious animus.” By vetoing the travel ban, the judges were orchestrating a judicial coup against the constitutional authority of the president; they should be impeached immediately. A U.S. immigration law states that the president can by proclamation “suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.” Yet the judges ruled against the travel ban based on their own subjective opinion of a president’s supposedly incorrect attitudes and past statements. Intent is neither an element nor a requirement of that law. The U.S. constitution vests all executive power in the president. Shortly after its adoption, Thomas Jefferson wrote that under the Constitution, “the transaction of business with foreign nations is Executive altogether. It belongs then to the head of that department, except as to such portions of it as are specifically submitted to the Senate. Exceptions are to be construed strictly.” The rare exceptions were such matters as the approval of treaties, which Article II expressly vests in the Senate. There are also Constitutional bases for a congressional role in foreign affairs, such as Congress’s power over international commerce, to declare war, and to establish the qualifications for the naturalization of citizens; however, when Congress legislates in this role, it must do so mindful of what the Supreme Court, in United States v. Curtiss-Wright (1936), described as “the very delicate, plenary and exclusive power of the President as the sole organ of the federal government in the field of international relations – a power which does not require as a basis for its exercise an act of Congress.”

In international matters, if there is a conflict between a presidential policy and a congressional statute, the president’s policy will take precedence in the absence of some clear constitutional commitment of the subject matter to legislative resolution. In addition to the president’s presumptive supremacy in foreign affairs, there is also a settled doctrine of constitutional law: Where it is possible, congressional statutes should be construed in a manner that avoids constitutional conflicts. The national security distinction between Trump’s 2017 order and the objective of a 1965 immigration act makes it necessary not to construe them as contradictory, and principles of constitutional interpretation counsel against doing so. A section of that act, codified in Section 1152(a) of Title 8, U.S. Code, states that “no person shall receive any preference or priority or be discriminated against in the issuance of an immigrant visa because of the person’s race, sex, nationality, place of birth, or place of residence.” The purpose of the anti-discrimination provision was to end the racially and ethnically discriminatory “national origins” immigration practice that favored Western Europe. Trump’s executive order is not about the racial or ethnic composition of the nation or its incoming immigrants. It is an effort to protect national security from a terrorist threat, which Congress has found to have roots in specified Muslim-majority countries. Another issue is that the order is related to the conduct of foreign affairs – a matter of high importance since it involves foreign threats to national security. If there were conflicts here, the president’s clear constitutional authority to protect the U.S. would take precedence over Congress’s purported authority to limit the president’s denial of entry to foreign nationals; however, there is no conflict. The U.S. immigration law mentioned above states in full in Section 1182(f): “Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.” Section 1182(f) authorizes the president to issue temporary bans on the entry of classes of aliens for national security purposes, without revealing his state of mind, or proving that he does not have animus against them.

This is precisely what Trump did. He cited Section 1182(f), and his executive order mirrored the language of the statute, finding the entry of aliens from these countries at this time “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.”Some people theorized that because Section 1182(f) was enacted in 1952, whereas the non-discrimination provision in Section 1152(a) was enacted in 1965, then the latter must be deemed to have amended the former – thus removing the president’s authority to impose class restrictions based on the foreigners’ country of origin. In 1980, despite the 1965 anti-discrimination statute, President Jimmy Carter barred entry by Iranian nationals after the Ayatollah Khomeini revolution led to the American hostage crisis. The discriminatory treatment of Iranians was rooted in anti-terrorism concerns, and was clearly proper. Trump, like Carter, is properly acting on national security concerns.  Trump’s executive order also relies on an Obama-era provision of immigration law, Section 1187(a)(12), which empowers the executive branch to waive the documentation requirements for certain aliens. In the statute, Congress expressly discriminates based on country of origin. Under this provision, Congress provides that an alien is eligible for the waiver only if he or she has not been present (a) in Iraq or Syria any time after March 1, 2011; (b) in any country whose government is designated by the State Department as “repeatedly provid[ing] support for acts of international terrorism;” or (c) in any country that has been designated by the Department of Homeland Security as a country “of concern.” So, Congress never repealed the president’s statutory power to exclude classes of aliens from entry on national security grounds. Moreover, decades after the 1965 anti-discrimination provision, Congress expressly authorized discrimination on the basis of national origin when concerns over international terrorism are involved. Consequently, by the spurious argument of those that theorized that the latter always amend the former, the 1965 statute must be deemed amended by the much more recent Obama-era statute.

The president has plenary power to decide who may and who may not travel to the U.S. The seven Muslim-majority countries (now six) Trump specified are hotbeds of radical Islam, and pose vetting challenges. The ban has to do with national security, not religion. If he wanted to institute a travel ban against Muslims, he would have included the countries in which more than 85 percent of Muslims live. The U.S. judges are carrying out a judicial coup, having decided that the judiciary, not the executive branch, is in charge of immigration, international relations, national security, etc. Beginning with the Chinese exclusion case of 1889, the Supreme Court has made it clear that “the power of exclusion of foreigners” belongs to the political branches of government: Congress and the president; not to the judiciary. Since then, the president’s authority to exclude foreigners in the public interest has been reaffirmed in various cases, including: INS. v. Aguirre-Aguirre (1999), “(J)udicial deference to the Executive Branch is especially appropriate in the immigration context where officials ‘exercise especially sensitive political functions that implicate questions of foreign relations;’” and United States v. Valenzuela-Bernal (1982), “The power to regulate immigration — an attribute of sovereignty essential to the preservation of any nation — has been entrusted by the Constitution to the political branches of the Federal Government.” Law should govern a nation, as opposed to arbitrary decisions of individual government officials. Since power tends to corrupt, democracies limit the powers of elected officials. The most important limit on their power is their need to stand for election on a regular basis. Voters can replace an elected official with another if an incumbent fails to meet their expectations. Power also corrupts appointed officials just as much as it corrupts elected ones; however, voters have no similar authority over unelected officials who fail them. The public did not appoint them, and they owe it no account for their behavior. The Knesset should determine the matters that courts are empowered to consider, and the disputes that they have the authority to resolve. They should not be policy upon vital matters affecting the nation, such that by their nature should be decided by the political (legislative and executive) branches of the government: defense matters, foreign policy, immigration, governmental spending, public security, the making of treaty, the making of war, etc. Congress should impeach the despotic judges that are appropriating the powers of the commander-in-chief, and overriding the decisions of Congress and the president pertaining to immigration, national defense and public security.

Read more here: israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/20375

Felony Bail Bonds Sanford – Supreme Court Sounds Off on Copyright in Cheerleading Uniform

Source     : The Fashion Law News
By             : Press Release
Category :  Professional Bail Bonds Sanford ,  Felony Bail Bonds Sanford

Supreme Court Sounds Off on Copyright in Cheerleading Uniform

After going before the U.S. Supreme Court in October for oral arguments, Star Athletica v. Varsity Brands, the much-anticipated copyright dispute over cheerleading uniforms, has been decided by the Supreme Court. In holding that the uniforms at issue may, in fact, be protected by copyright law, Justice Clarence Thomas clarified the standard for conceptual separability – the hot issue at play in the case. While the court explicitly refused to “hold that the surface decorations are copyrightable,” stating, “We express no opinion on whether these works are sufficiently original to qualify for copyright protection,” it did set forth the highly-debated test for determining how courts should grapple with the protectability of creative elements of useful articles. Per the court’s decision, the test is as follows: A feature incorporated into the design of a useful article is eligible for copyright protection only if the feature (1) can be perceived as a two- or three-dimensional work of art separate from the useful article, and (2) would qualify as a protectable pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work—either on its own or fixed in some other tangible medium of expression—if it were imagined separately from the useful article into which it is incorporated.  Thomas goes on to write: Applying the proper test here, the surface decorations on the cheerleading uniforms are separable and therefore eligible for copyright protection. First, the decorations can be identified as features having pictorial, graphic, or sculptural qualities. Second, if those decorations were separated from the uniforms and applied in another medium, they would qualify as two-dimensional works of art under §101. Imaginatively removing the decorations from the uniforms and applying them in another medium also would not replicate the uni- form itself.

While the court held that two-dimensional surface decorations will not always be separable, the “artwork” applied to the cheerleader uniforms at issue here did pass the test. Dissenters Justice Breyer and Justice Kennedy “argue that the decorations are ineligible for copyright protection because, when imaginatively extracted, they form a picture of a cheerleading uniform,” according to the opinion.

To this, Thomas responded: “But this is not a bar to copyright. Just as two-dimensional fine art correlates to the shape of the canvas on which it is painted, two- dimensional applied art correlates to the contours of the article on which it is applied. The only feature of respondents’ cheerleading uniform eligible for a copyright is the two-dimensional applied art on the surface of the uniforms. ” Still yet, Thomas held that Varsity demonstrated that “imaginatively removing the surface decorations from the uniforms and applying them in another medium would not replicate the uniform itself.” He stated, “Failing to protect that art would create an anomaly: It would extend protection to two-dimensional designs that cover a part of a useful article but would not protect the same design if it covered the entire article. The statute does not support that distinction, nor can it be reconciled with the dissent’s recognition that ‘artwork printed on a t-shirt’ could be protected.”

BACKGROUND
The case centers on the lawsuit initially filed by Varsity Brands Inc, the dominant U.S. maker of cheerleader uniforms, accusing its smaller rival, Star Athletica, of infringing on five of its designs. The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee held that Varsity’s uniforms were not protectable, as the design elements could not be conceptually or physically separated from the uniforms. In reversing the court’s decision, the Sixth Circuit court of appeals concluded that the graphics, in fact, could be “identified separately” and were “capable of existing independently” of the uniforms, thereby subjecting them to copyright protection. At issue before the Supreme Court was whether the stripes, zigzags and chevrons characteristic of cheerleader uniforms can be protected by copyright law, as Varsity contended, or are so fundamental to the purpose of the garment that they should not get such legal protection. Without such adornments, a cheerleader uniform might look like any other dress, Star argued. In accordance with U.S. copyright law, design features of a useful article – such as a garment – are only subject to protection if they are “separable” from the product itself. This was – until this case – broken into two sects of “separability” – conceptual and physical – but according to the court’s decision, “we necessarily abandon the distinction between ‘physical’ and ‘conceptual’ separability, which some courts and commentators have adopted based on the Copyright Act’s legislative history.”

RESPONSE AND THE IMPLICATIONS
Jeff Webb, Founder and Chairman of Varsity Brands, stated, “Today’s favorable ruling represents the culmination of years of hard work to protect our original design, and we are of course gratified by the outcome and what it means for our business.  But more fundamentally, we were honored to serve as advocates and fighters for the basic idea that designers everywhere can create excellent work and make investments in their future without fear of having it stolen or copied.” Burton Brillhart, Varsity Brands’ Chief Legal Officer, added, “This was a hard-won case and the outcome would not have been possible without the extraordinary intellect, hard work and advocacy of our broader legal team.”

John Bursch, who represented Star Athletica, told WIPR that his client is “obviously disappointed with the result and believes that Justices Breyer and Kennedy had the better of the argument.” He added that today’s ruling is not the end of the litigation, as the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee must still determine whether the designs are original, and thereby, protected by copyright law. As for whether the decision will actually serve to rid courts of the uncertainty associated with separability, that is still very much up for debate. As noted by Lee Burgunder of IPWatchDog this past fall, “Those engaged with product development eagerly await the decision in this case because there is significant judicial uncertainty about the application of copyrights to useful products. Unfortunately, this case raises rather narrow issues, and the Court will be able to resolve them while skirting the most difficult debates.” He continued on to note: “Those looking for hard-and-fast rules will ultimately feel no more satisfied than observers did after the Court’s decisions with patentable subject matter, such as in Bilski v. Kappos.”

Read more here: thefashionlaw.com/home/supreme-court-says-cheerleader-uniform-is-protectable-by-copyright-law

Professional Bail Bonds Sanford – How an ‘invented’ Supreme Court ruling has rocked the Canadian justice system

Source     : TheStar News
By             : Jacques Gallant – Legal Affairs Reporter
Category : Professional Bail Bonds Sanford ,  Felony Bail Bonds Sanford

How an ‘invented’ Supreme Court ruling has rocked the Canadian justice system

Eric Gottardi had been on his feet for about 10 minutes in front of the nine justices of the Supreme Court of Canada, talking about his client and trial delays, when Justice Michael Moldaver posed a question. The judge, sitting on the nation’s top court since 2011, wanted to know about “drop dead numbers or ceilings.” In other words, just how long should it take to bring an accused to trial? “I said, ‘Having thought about it for two minutes, it’s probably better than what we have right now,’ ” Gottardi, a Vancouver-based lawyer, told the Star in a recent interview. “He said, ‘What do you think about 30 months?’ I said ‘I don’t know, what about 24?’ “So I got the sense they were thinking of doing something creative, but when they came out and did it, it was actually a bit of a surprise, and I still don’t know if the decision is a good one or not.” That decision, released last year, was R v. Jordan, which takes its name from Gottardi’s client, Barrett Jordan, a Surrey, B.C., man who was arrested on drug charges and whose case took four years to get to trial.

PART 2: Scrapping prelims ‘not going to solve’ court delays
PART 3: Defence lawyers ideas for reform being ‘met with silence’

It was good news for Jordan himself, as the top court’s 5-4 decision stayed the charges against him, finding his constitutional right to a trial in a reasonable time, enshrined in section 11 (b) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, had been violated. But a good decision for the country? It depends on who you ask. Along with staying the charges against Jordan, the majority went further and completely revamped the legal framework that guides judges in deciding if a person has been tried within a reasonable time. They implemented new so-called “numerical ceilings” after calling out what they described as a “culture of complacency” in the Canadian justice system.

The five judges found that the period between an accused person’s arrest and the anticipated conclusion of their trial in provincial court should not exceed 18 months, and should not go over 30 months in Superior Court, which handles the most serious crimes such as murder. Once those ceilings have been breached, the delay is considered “presumptively unreasonable” and the case is tossed unless the Crown can prove there are exceptional circumstances, such as the complexity of the case. Delay caused by the defence does not count in the calculation. Already, dozens of cases in Ontario alone have been stayed under the Jordan framework, with the public becoming particularly familiar with the name when an Ottawa judge threw out a first-degree murder charge against ex-soldier Adam Picard, who was accused of killing 28-year-old Fouad Nayel, after it took four years to bring his case to trial.

The Crown has appealed the Picard decision, seeking clarity on how to properly evaluate delay in so-called “transitional cases,” meaning cases that were already in the system before the release of the Jordan decision. “A presumptive ceiling is required in order to give meaningful direction to the state on its constitutional obligations and to those who play an important role in ensuring that the trial concludes within a reasonable time,” Moldaver, along with Justices Andromache Karakatsanis and Russell Brown, wrote for the majority. “It is also intended to provide some assurance to accused persons, to victims and their families, to witnesses, and to the public that s. 11(b) is not a hollow promise.”

Almost anyone who regularly toils in courthouses across Ontario — judges, prosecutors and defence lawyers — would say that despite previous rulings on delays from the Supreme Court and judicial warnings from lower courts, successive federal and provincial governments have failed to properly resource the justice system in a way that would ensure its fairness and efficiency. “It is time for our senior levels of government to commit to a strategy that will ensure that these constitutionally guaranteed objectives are met,” Judge Peter Wright of the Ontario Court of Justice wrote in a decision in January 2010, staying drug charges due to delay. “Government has had more than 20 years to improve upon the systemic deficiencies which continue to erode the constitutional rights protected by s. 11(b) of our Charter — for the benefit of persons charged and for our society alike. Yet the situation only grows worse by the day.”

So Jordan was, in principle, a necessary jolt to the system, legal observers say. The resulting stay of charges, particularly in the Picard case, has in turn incensed the public, which has pushed politicians into action. “If victims are mad at anybody, they should not be mad at the courts, they should be mad at governments, which have consistently made business decisions to underfund the system in the expectations that judges will let them off the hook,” said lawyer Frank Addario, who represented Ontario’s Criminal Lawyers’ Association as an intervener in the Jordan case. “All the Supreme Court of Canada has done is say that when you continually violate the constitution, we’re obliged to give the defendant a remedy. It’s not a reward. It’s a remedy for a past violation . . . It’s easy to avoid if you don’t make the business decision to violate the right to a speedy trial.” In the aftermath of Jordan, provincial governments have poured millions of dollars into beefing up the justice system. In Ontario, Attorney General Yasir Naqvi announced that the government would appoint 13 new judges to the Ontario Court of Justice and 32 new Crown prosecutors, among other changes, though critics say that still falls short of what is needed. Naqvi is also pleading with federal Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould to fill the 11 judicial vacancies in the under-resourced Superior Court.

He told the Star that he’s hearing more and more stories of it taking much longer now to schedule civil and family matters in Superior Court — cases which do not carry the same constitutional right for a trial in a reasonable time. “All because resources are being diverted to deal with criminal matters in response to Jordan timelines,” Naqvi said. “The issue has a domino effect. As much as we are focused on the criminal justice system, we also have a responsibility to civil and family law. That’s why I feel it’s even more imperative that we find an expedited way of filling those vacancies.” Jordan’s lawyers, along with the Criminal Lawyers’ Association and others, had asked the Supreme Court to “recalibrate” the rather flexible legal analysis around delay, arguing that far too often cases were still going to trial despite having spent years in the system. And while the court certainly did proceed to recalibrate, they also came up with their own numbers: 18 and 30. Therein lies the problem, experts say, not to mention the four Supreme Court judges who did not agree with Moldaver and company. None of the lawyers proposed those numbers. None of the lawyers were asked for submissions on those numbers. “They invented them,” Addario said of the numerical ceilings. The majority explained that they reached the new framework after conducting a “qualitative review” of almost every reported decision on delay from appeal courts in the last 10 years, and many rulings from trial courts. “By reading these cases with the new framework in mind, we were able to get a rough sense of how the new framework would have played out in some past cases,” the majority wrote. “Indeed, we note that in the seminal case of Askov, the delay was in the range of 30 months, as it was in Godin some 19 years later, and in both cases, this court found the delays to be unreasonable.” he now-retired Justice Thomas Cromwell, writing for the minority, which included Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, pulled no punches in calling out the majority for swooping in with the new numbers without any debate. (The minority also concluded that in Jordan’s case, specifically, the delay was unreasonable and they agreed his charges should be stayed.)

Cromwell said he “fundamentally” disagreed with the approach of the majority, calling it “both unwarranted and unwise.” “Based on the limited evidence in the record, the presumptive time periods proposed by my colleagues are unlikely to improve the pace at which the vast majority of cases move through the system while risking judicial stays in potentially thousands of cases,” he wrote. “One of the themes that appears throughout the court’s jurisprudence on the right to be tried within a reasonable time is that reasonableness cannot be judicially defined with precision or captured by a number. The proposed ceilings are deeply inconsistent with this constant in our jurisprudence.” The focal point of Cromwell’s reasons is that determining whether an accused has been tried within a reasonable time is “inherently case-specific,” and should take into account a balancing of several factors, including society’s interests in bringing a case to trial, especially when a very serious offence has been committed.

Read more here: thestar.com/news/gta/2017/03/19/how-an-invented-supreme-court-ruling-has-rocked-the-canadian-justice-system.html

Felony Bail Bonds Sanford – Law restricting protests during Supreme Court proceedings is upheld

Source     : Washington Post News
By             : Robert Barnes
Category : Professional Bail Bonds Sanford ,  Felony Bail Bonds Sanford

Law restricting protests during Supreme Court proceedings is upheld

The words “harangue” and “oratory” may not roll off the tongue the way they used to, a federal appeals court acknowledged Friday. But their meanings are clear enough to let anyone know that they cannot interrupt the proceedings of the Supreme Court by making speeches. A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said that a lower court was wrong to find the words so vague as to cast doubt on a law that outlaws protests at the Supreme Court. At issue is a decades-old statute that states, “It is unlawful to discharge a firearm, firework or explosive, set fire to a combustible, make a harangue or oration, or utter loud, threatening, or abusive language in the Supreme Court building or grounds.”

Judge Janice Rogers Brown, writing for a unanimous three-judge panel, said that in context the wording was clear enough that a group of protesters at an April 1, 2015, oral argument should have known that they could not stand up and start making statements. “It is true, as their dictionary definitions show, that ‘harangue’ and ‘oration’ can cover different facets of public speeches — ‘orations’ can include formal speeches, while ‘harangues’ can include angry or vehement speeches,” Brown wrote. “But we are interpreting a statute, not restating a dictionary.”

At the 2015 incident, a string of protesters rose to speak after the courtroom full of spectators had been admonished to remain silent as the oral argument proceeded. “We rise to demand democracy,” said Belinda Rodriguez. After she was removed, Matthew Kresling stood up: “Money is not speech. One person, one vote!” Another demanded the court overturn its campaign finance decision in Citizens United v. FEC. They were charged with violating the statute against protests in the Supreme Court building, but last year U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper agreed with them that the language about harangues and oratory was unconstitutionally vague. “Congress has not defined these words, nor has their meaning ‘evolved over the years from repeated adjudications,’ ” Cooper wrote. (But he rejected the same vagueness challenge to the word “loud.”)

In Friday’s ruling, however, Brown said the meaning was clear: “By employing two words that cover public speeches of myriad forms within a statute focused on the Supreme Court’s building and grounds, Congress’s use of ‘harangue’ and ‘oration’ indicates these terms are meant to cover any form of public speeches that tend to disrupt the Supreme Court’s operations.” She was joined in the decision by U.S. circuit judges Sri Srinivasan and Stephen F. Williams. Those latter two judges were also on a unanimous D.C. Circuit panel last year that upheld a related law that restricted protesters from the Supreme Court’s plaza. Demonstrations are allowed on the sidewalks that surround the court.

Read More : washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/law-restricting-protests-during-supreme-court-proceedings-is-upheld/2017/03/03/dc29f800-0040-11e7-99b4-9e613afeb09f_story.html?utm_term=.3f4a2403aca9

Professional Bail Bonds Sanford – Did the Supreme Court Base a Ruling on a Myth?

Source      : NewYork Times News
By              : ADAM LIPTAK
Category  : Professional Bail Bonds Sanford ,  Felony Bail Bonds Sanford

Did the Supreme Court Base a Ruling on a Myth

Last week at the Supreme Court, a lawyer made what seemed like an unremarkable point about registered sex offenders. “This court has recognized that they have a high rate of recidivism and are very likely to do this again,” said the lawyer, Robert C. Montgomery, who was defending a North Carolina statute that bars sex offenders from using Facebook, Twitter and other social media services. The Supreme Court has indeed said the risk that sex offenders will commit new crimes is “frightening and high.” That phrase, in a 2003 decision upholding Alaska’s sex offender registration law, has been exceptionally influential. It has appeared in more than 100 lower-court opinions, and it has helped justify laws that effectively banish registered sex offenders from many aspects of everyday life. But there is vanishingly little evidence for the Supreme Court’s assertion that convicted sex offenders commit new offenses at very high rates. The story behind the notion, it turns out, starts with a throwaway line in a glossy magazine.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s majority opinion in the 2003 case, Smith v. Doe, cited one of his own earlier opinions for support, and that opinion did include a startling statistic. “The rate of recidivism of untreated offenders has been estimated to be as high as 80 percent,” Justice Kennedy wrote in the earlier case, McKune v. Lile. He cited what seemed to be a good source for the statistic: “A Practitioner’s Guide to Treating the Incarcerated Male Sex Offender,” published in 1988 by the Justice Department. The guide, a compendium of papers from outside experts, is 231 pages long, and it contains lots of statistics on sex offender recidivism rates. Many of them were in the single digits, some a little higher. Only one source claimed an 80 percent rate, and the guide itself said that number might be exaggerated. The source of the 80 percent figure was a 1986 article in Psychology Today, a magazine written for a general audience. The article was about a counseling program run by the authors, and they made a statement that could be good for business. “Most untreated sex offenders released from prison go on to commit more offenses — indeed, as many as 80 percent do,” the article said, without evidence or elaboration.

That’s it. The basis for much of American jurisprudence and legislation about sex offenders was rooted in an offhand and unsupported statement in a mass-market magazine, not a peer-reviewed journal. “Unfortunately,” Melissa Hamilton wrote in a new article in The Boston College Law Review, “the Supreme Court’s scientifically dubious guidance on the actual risk of recidivism that sex offenders pose has been unquestionably repeated by almost all other lower courts that have upheld the public safety need for targeted sex offender restrictions.”The most detailed examination of how all of this came to pass was in a 2015 article in Constitutional Commentary by Ira Mark Ellman and Tara Ellman, who were harshly critical of the Supreme Court. “Its endorsement has transformed random opinions by self-interested nonexperts into definitive studies offered to justify law and policy, while real studies by real scientists go unnoticed,” the authors wrote. “The court’s casual approach to the facts of sex offender re-offense rates is far more frightening than the rates themselves.” There are many ways to calculate recidivism rates, and they vary depending on a host of distinctions. A 2014 Justice Department report found, for instance, that sex offenders generally have low overall recidivism rates for crimes. But they are more likely to commit additional sex offenses than other criminals.

In the three years after release from prison, 1.3 percent of people convicted of other kinds of crimes were arrested for sex offenses, compared to 5.3 percent of sex offenders. Those findings are broadly consistent with seven reports in various states, which found that people convicted of sex crimes committed new sex offenses at rates of 1.7 percent to 5.7 percent in time periods ranging from three to 10 years.  The Justice Department report said the risk of new sex offenses by convicted sex offenders rises over time, reaching 27 percent over 20 years. That number is significant, but it is nothing like 80 percent. Perhaps it is sufficient to warrant harsh sex offender registry laws, but judges and lawmakers would have been better served by basing their judgments on the best available data.

Lower courts generally accept what the Supreme Court says. That is true not only about the law but also about facts subject to independent verification. Last year, though, the federal appeals court in Cincinnati gently suggested that the Supreme Court had taken a wrong turn in its 2003 decision in Smith v. Doe. Judge Alice M. Batchelder, writing for a unanimous three-judge panel, described “the significant doubt cast by recent empirical studies on the pronouncement in Smith that ‘the risk of recidivism posed by sex offenders is “frightening and high.’” The appeals court struck down a particularly strict Michigan sex-offender law as a violation of the Constitution’s ex post facto clause, saying it retroactively imposed punishment on people who had committed offenses before the law was enacted. The state has asked the Supreme Court to consider the case, Does v. Snyder, No. 16-768. The first paragraph of its petition says that the risk of recidivism “remains ‘frightening and high.’” The constitutional question in the case is interesting and substantial. And hearing the case would allow the court to consider more fully its casual assertion that sex offenders are especially dangerous.

Read More : nytimes.com/2017/03/06/us/politics/supreme-court-repeat-sex-offenders.html?_r=0

Felony Bail Bonds Sanford – Supreme Court blocks abortion-wait law

Source     : Orlando Sentinel News
By             : Gray Rohrer – Contact Reporter
Category :  Professional Bail Bonds Sanford ,  Felony Bail Bonds Sanford

Supreme Court blocks abortion-wait law

The Florida Supreme Court on Thursday blocked a law requiring women to wait 24 hours and visit the doctor twice before getting an abortion. “Today, we make clear, in Florida, any law that implicates the fundamental right of privacy, regardless of the activity, is subject to strict scrutiny and is presumptively unconstitutional,” the ruling states. The opinion, written by Justice Barbara Pariente in a 4-2 decision, upholds a temporary hold on the law that had been imposed by a trial court judge in 2015.

The law, passed over the objections of abortion rights activists, was immediately challenged in court by a clinic called the Bread and Roses Women’s Health Center in Gainesville, which was joined by the American Civil Liberties Union. “The court’s decision resoundingly confirms what Floridians already knew — politicians have no business interfering with a woman’s private health care decisions, including the decision to have an abortion,” said Julia Kaye, the ACLU attorney who argued the case in court. John Stemberger, president of the Florida Family Policy Council, an Orlando-based conservative advocacy group, slammed the ruling as judicial activism.  “This is an irreversible, life-changing decision, which has physical, emotional and psychological consequences, and to have a 24-hour waiting period to make sure a woman knows what she’s doing is not a substantial burden,” he said.

Justice Charles Canady wrote a dissent, saying the law doesn’t harm the right to privacy. “This Court has no evidence before it that a twenty-four hour waiting period is a significant restriction on the right to abortion,” Canady wrote. There are 26 other states that require a waiting period before receiving an abortion, some with waits of up to 72 hours, according to a report issued last year by the Guttmacher Institute, which tracks abortion laws. Courts in other states have upheld such laws, but Florida’s Constitution includes a more expansive right to privacy. Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion, relies on privacy rights.

Rep. Jennifer Sullivan, R-Mount Dora, sponsored the bill, which includes exceptions for rape, incest, domestic abuse or human trafficking. Sullivan didn’t return a call seeking comment, but earlier said the bill would “empower women to reflect on that decision” when it passed the House in 2015. Thursday’s ruling, which blocked the law but sent it back to an appeal court for further review, was the latest setback for anti-abortion advocates. A federal court judge issued a permanent injunction last year against a law that would have required increased reporting requirements for abortion clinics and ended public funding for non-abortion services at Planned Parenthood. But the fight over abortion laws in Florida isn’t over. Republican lawmakers are pushing bills for the session that starts next month that would allow women who receive abortions to sue their doctors for “emotional distress” and ban abortions after the point at which a fetus can feel pain, or after 20 weeks. Nancy Abudu, legal director for the ACLU of Florida, hailed Thursday’s ruling, but acknowledged the slew of anti-abortion bills again this year. “Even though we’ve won this battle, the real war, in terms of protecting a woman’s right to choose, is far from over,” Abudu told News Service of Florida. “So far, we’re seeing some victories. We wish this would signal to the Legislature that they need to focus on other things.”

Read More : reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-immigration-guidelines-idUSKBN15W0DU

Professional Bail Bonds Sanford – SCOTUS for law students: Predicting Supreme Court justices

Source    : Scotus Blog News
By            : Stephen Wermiel
Category : Professional Bail Bonds Sanford ,  Felony Bail Bonds Sanford

SCOTUS for law students: Predicting Supreme Court justices

The nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch has moved into a phase that is unique to the Supreme Court confirmation process: trying to predict how a justice will vote on particular issues and cases in the future. This predictive process may occur in two phases. The first is well underway – vast amounts of commentary and analysis about how Gorsuch may handle everything from employment-law cases to white-collar-crime issues. The second phase will take place in just over a month, when the 20 members of the Senate Judiciary Committee try to figure out what kind of questions to ask the nominee that will actually shed any light on his views. The stakes are enormous. Liberals hope to ascertain just how conservative Gorsuch really is, and some want to find a way to block his confirmation if their worst fears prove to be true. Conservatives want to be certain that he is genuinely conservative, cut from the mold of Justice Antonin Scalia, whose death a year ago created the vacancy that President Donald Trump has nominated Gorsuch to fill. For liberals the struggle is in some ways a full dress rehearsal for the fight over the next vacancy that occurs on the Supreme Court after this one is filled. The conventional wisdom is that Gorsuch will simply restore the court to the balance that existed when Scalia was still on the bench: four solid conservatives, four liberals and Justice Anthony Kennedy in the middle, often deciding the outcome in close cases. If the next vacancy is created by the departure of any of the three oldest justices – Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 83; Kennedy, 80; or Stephen Breyer, 78 – then the appointment of a conservative would dramatically tip the balance on the court. For conservatives the current struggle is also in part to lay the foundation for the fight over the next vacancy. However, it is also part of a prolonged effort to be sure that the nominees of Republican presidents are genuine conservatives. Conservatives value highly the need for reliable predictions because they believe they have been burned by a series of nominees by Republican presidents who turned out to be disappointingly moderate justices, including Harry Blackmun and Lewis Powell (appointed by Richard Nixon); John Paul Stevens (Gerald Ford); Sandra Day O’Connor and Kennedy (Ronald Reagan); and David Souter (George H.W. Bush). “No more Souters,” is a frequent battle cry for conservatives today.

With that understanding of what is at stake, let us turn to the fascination, perhaps even obsession, with predicting the behavior of Supreme Court nominees. In just over two weeks since the nomination of Gorsuch was announced, hundreds of thousands of words have already been written trying to predict what impact he will have on particular legal fields or how he may approach specific issues. This commentary covers a wide range of perspectives, sometimes seemingly contradictory. First, there are the statistical analyses. For example, The Washington Post ran a column earlier this week by two political science professors who studied Gorsuch’s decisions on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in cases that were later reviewed by the Supreme Court. Their conclusion was that “Gorsuch may be more conservative than Justice Clarence Thomas.” But a day earlier, the blog Empirical SCOTUS analyzed the language in opinions written by Gorsuch and ran its conclusions under the headline: “Scaling Judge Gorsuch’s Opinions: Hints of a Possible Centrist.” When Gorsuch was nominated, The New York Times displayed a chart, based on an analysis by several other professors, tha showed him as more conservative than both Scalia and Justice Samuel Alito but less conservative than Thomas. Then there is the widest imaginable array of predictive analyses of specific legal issue areas. These range from a Scientific American blog analysis finding it “difficult to draw any firm conclusions” on Gorsuch and environmental law to a suggestion at Crain’s Cleveland Business that Gorsuch shows “a consistent reluctance to second-guess employer decisions.” An Associated Press analysis says he has been sympathetic to free speech claims but also supportive of religious groups in suits against the government. Another blog attempted with little success to discern how Gorsuch would view white-collar-crime cases. Many of these analyses are inconclusive because there are too few cases to evaluate and because as a federal appeals court judge, Gorsuch was constrained by existing precedents. It is difficult to glean much from this commentary. And when the scene shifts to the Senate Judiciary Committee, senators will confront the challenge of how to get any accurate, predictive measure of this Supreme Court nominee. If the past is any guide, it will not be easy. When Joe Biden was still a senator from Delaware, he referred to the Supreme Court confirmation process as “Kabuki theater.” This is because it resembles an odd dance in which senators try to elicit useful information from nominees who, in turn, try hard not to tell the Senate anything useful.

The dilemma is that most nominees to the Supreme Court feel that they cannot answer any questions that may commit them to specific positions or to views on particular cases. If they do, then they may have to recuse themselves from participation on those issues or cases when they come before the Supreme Court. Our judicial system, the prism of a nomination clarifies, turns on the idea that justices must approach each case with an open mind, committed to considering the specific facts and legal arguments for that dispute without preconceived notions. Sparring over the merits of this approach has already begun among senators. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) calls this the “Ginsburg standard” after a statement made by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg during her confirmation process. “No hints, no forecasts, no previews – that is what has become known as the Ginsburg standard,” McConnell said recently in a Senate speech. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has a different view. After he met privately with Gorsuch, Schumer wrote, “Judge Gorsuch must be far more specific in his answers to straightforward questions about his judicial philosophy and opinions on previous cases. He owes it to the American people to provide an inkling of what kind of justice he would be.”

Are there questions senators may ask and nominees may answer that will have any genuine predictive value? The answer is unclear. Some legal scholars have suggested that senators question nominees specifically about how they view past cases decided by the Supreme Court. This, they argue, would provide insight into the nominees’ thinking but would run less risk of creating conflicts for them as justices. Perhaps, but during his confirmation hearing in 1986, Scalia declined to discuss any cases, famously refusing even to answer questions about Marbury v. Madison, the 1803 landmark decision that laid the groundwork for judicial review. Some nominees have been more willing to discuss some past cases to a limited extent; almost all nominees discuss Brown v. Board of Education, for example. Other lines of questioning are possible. Senators often ask about legal doctrines and tools: How much deference should courts show to the elected branches of government? What role should legislative history play in judicial interpretation? Does a nominee believe in the existence of implied rights in the Constitution, like privacy? What role does international law play in U.S. courts? Although these questions do not involve commitments on specific cases, nominees will still sometimes refuse to answer them because to do so may force them to outline particular approaches to deciding cases. Recent nominees have generally been willing to answer these questions but often in circumspect ways that do not reveal much about the way they would approach particular issues. The frustrating result for the senators is that nominees often resort to less-than-insightful platitudes, like the oft-quoted declaration by Chief Justice John Roberts that judges are just like baseball umpires, calling balls and strikes, but not pitching or batting. Judging by the commentary, Gorsuch will confront this dilemma most clearly over his expressed doubts about the important Chevron doctrine, a Supreme Court rule that says courts should defer to reasonable federal-agency interpretations of laws they administer. Adopted in 1984 in Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., the rule has been much debated and heavily criticized by Gorsuch. Senators will pummel him with questions about what he has said and written about it. But if he is to hear cases as a justice on how to apply the Chevron doctrine or whether to overrule it, will he say he has to refrain from discussing it in any more detail than he already has, or will he feel obligated to explain his position? This is how the hearings for Gorsuch will likely play out in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Between now and March 20, when the hearings begin, it is a safe bet that the senators and their staff will work hard to map out questions that will try to make the hearings more productive, whether their goal is accurate prediction of the nominee’s likely rulings or just a better understanding of what makes him tick.

Read More : scotusblog.com/2017/02/scotus-law-students-predicting-supreme-court-justices/