Category: Legal News

The US Supreme Court [official website] granted certiorari in 11 cases [order list, PDF] on Thursday.

Dalmazzi v. United States [cert. petition, PDF] Cox v. United States [docket], and Ortiz v. United States[cert. petition, PDF] are three cases that will be consolidated and will be given one hour each for oral argument. These cases deal with whether active-duty military officers can serve on the Court of Military Commissions Review (CMCR). The petitioners were members of the Air Force who were convicted [SCOTUSblog report] of different crimes in a military court. They are appealing their convictions on the grounds that only members of the military can preside over a military court, and the judges in the petitioners’ cases were civilians because of their CMCR position.

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A dispute over a $75 speeding ticket has climbed through the levels of Iowa’s court system, reaching the lofty heights of the Iowa Supreme Court for oral arguments.

Marla Leaf got a speeding ticket because a camera allegedly caught her driving 68 mph in a 55-mph zone on an interstate freeway through the city of Cedar Rapids in February 2015.

It’s not typical for the state’s top court to hear small-claims cases. But in her case against the city of Cedar Rapids, Leaf argues that her constitutional rights and state law were violated because the city delegated police powers to the private company that maintains the speed cameras.

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In the first federal court ruling (PDF) concerning attempts by city and state jurisdictions to regulate the use of drones, a judge denied a requirement by a city near Boston regarding local registration and significant bans on where and how low they can fly.

The law giving the Federal Aviation Administration responsibility for regulating the use of drones, while allowing some non-federal say over their use, preempts the city of Newton from requiring registration beyond the agency’s own such requirement; from banning flights below 400 feet; and from requiring an owners’ permission before flying over public or private property. Newton’s requirement that drones can’t fly below 400 feet clashes with FAA rules which say drones must be operated below an altitude of 400 feet from the ground or a structure.

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While in 2011 the “case of the macaque[monkey] selfie” went viral on wordwide social networks, recent exchanges between the Luxembourg Federation of Authors and Composers (Fédération Luxembourgeoise des Auteurs et Compositeurs), the Association of Authors, Composers and Musical Publishers’ Successor Advisory Committee (Commission Consultative des Ayants Droits de la Société des Auteurs, Compositeurs et Editeurs Musicaux or SACEM’s CCAD) and the Culture Ministry in 2017 push us to ask ourselves about the possibility of an algorithm being a copyright holder for its creations, and thus becoming a member of an association for authors and composers.

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For some time a crazed individual online has claimed that I have some sort of relationship with leagle.com. This is untrue. I do not now nor have I ever had any relationship with that web site.

Out of curiosity, I looked up some court records and it appears as though the owner’s name really is (or at one time was) Don Johnson. You can read more about regarding leagle.com’s ownership by browsing the criminal case filed against an individual who allegedly tried to hack the site to take down unflattering information that he didn’t want on the internet, courtesy of courtlistener.com: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/7470470/united-states-v-jahanrakhshan/

For instance, see here: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/7470470/80/united-states-v-jahanrakhshan/