Trump’s legal woes …
This week Donald Trump asked the judge overseeing his criminal case on charges stemming from hush money paid to a porn star to delay the trial until the U.S. Supreme Court finishes reviewing his claim of presidential immunity in a separate case … The judge in Donald Trump’s Georgia election subversion trial dismissed three criminal counts against the former U.S. president and three others against co-defendants … Prosecutors in Trump’s hush money case said they would not oppose a 30-day delay in the trial, set to begin on March 25, after the Republican presidential candidate said late disclosure of evidence was hurting his preparation … A federal judge denied Trump’s request to dismiss a criminal case that charges him with illegally holding on to classified documents after leaving the White House … Read more on how Donald Trump’s trial dates overlap with his 2024 election campaign.
‘Judge shopping’ …
The U.S. federal judiciary adopted a new policy aimed at curtailing “judge shopping” … Two conservative federal appeals court judges criticized judicial policymakers for adopting the new rule … Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell pushed the federal judiciary to rethink a new policy … The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said business and banking groups judge-shopped for a credit fee lawsuit … A Trump-appointed Louisiana federal judge has “no problem” with random case assignment.
TikTok’s troubles …
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would give TikTok’s Chinese owner ByteDance about six months to divest the U.S. assets of the short-video app, or face a ban … Legal experts said opponents of the bill would set up a showdown with the social media company over the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment free speech protections … A number of U.S. senators want the chamber to take its time in deciding whether to back the House of Representatives bill … Read more on what is next for the bill … Italy’s competition watchdog has fined three units of TikTok at about $11 million in total over content checks.
Law schools …
Here are the U.S. law schools with the lowest and highest bar pass rates in 2023 … More than 79% of U.S. law school graduates who took the bar exam for the first time in 2023 passed, but longstanding disparities continued … Meanwhile, offer rates to law students interviewing for a Big Law summer associate position last year were the lowest since 2012 … And it seems that even President Joe Biden struggled with professors’ dreaded “cold calls” when he was a law student.
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Does the creation of a “fake park” justify the government seizure of private land slated for an unpopular commercial use? Two 2nd Circuit judges ruled on Wednesday that even though the developers of a hardware store plausibly alleged that the Town of Southold dreamed up the idea of a passive-use park as a pretext for seizing their land and blocking their store, it’s not the job of federal courts to scrutinize the motives of legislatures that appropriate land for public use – including the creation of a park. In a fiery dissent, a third judge said his colleagues had created a split with several state supreme courts. Alison Frankel has the story.
Check out other recent pieces from our columnists: Alison Frankel and Jenna Greene
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Additional Writing by Renuka Rath.
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