A USA Today story raises the issue about whether divorce records should be public or private. The article has a good discussion of the law of divorce record confidentiality, and it has examples of several cases where reporters obtained divorce records of celebrities and politicians in order to glean juicy bits of gossip. One of the most interesting cases involves Republican U.S. Senate candidate Jack Ryan, who ran in Illinois in 2004:
Eric Goldman has a very interesting post about the cease and desist (C&D) letter that Jennifer Aniston’s attorneys sent to the paparazzi who took her photograph. The letter is posted on The Smoking Gun website. The letter states several times that it is to remain confidential, and it has this language:
From ZDNET:
About 30,000 airline passengers have discovered since last November that their names were mistakenly matched with those appearing on federal watch lists, a transportation security official said Tuesday.
Jim Kennedy, director of the Transportation Security Administration’s redress office, revealed the errors at a quarterly meeting convened here by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee.
Jennifer Aniston is suing a paparazzi who took nude photos of her. In a complaint filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, Aniston claims that Peter Brandt took topless photographs of her from a significant distance from her home. He used a high-powered telephoto lens to photograph her at her home. Aniston’s lawyers claim the photos were taken from over a mile away, but Brandt claims that this would be “impossible . . . unless you have something from NASA.”
Here’s a selection of headlines for stories about the Texas court’s recent decision throwing out the conspiracy charge against Tom DeLay but retaining the money laundering charges. But by these headlines, it appears that there were two very different results in the case:
So much for concurring opinions . . . I’ve been attacked by not only one co-blogger, but two. Earlier on, I posted a critique of the court’s decision upholding the NYC subway searching policy against a Fourth Amendment challenge.
The gloves are off. Dave Hoffman has lodged another challenge to my position, and I want to take a quick moment to defend myself.
I believe that Dave mischaracterizes my arguments in several places and exaggerates some of my claims. So I’ll attempt to clear up any confusion as to my positions and try to defend my turf.
In a recently issued opinion, Judge Berman of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York upheld New York’s subway searching policy. Back in July, New York began randomly searching people’s bags at NYC subways. I criticized the policy:
The recent story in the WSJ that Kathleen Sullivan (law, Stanford) failed the Bar Exam raises anew whether the exam ought to be abolished. Before discussing this issue, I must note that I found the story to be a bit sensationalistic for the WSJ, as its main purpose seemed to be to mock Kathleen Sullivan. I was interviewed by the reporter of the story a few days ago because of my blog posts earlier this year (here, here, and here) arguing that Bar Exam should be abolished.
I’ve discussed Internet shaming in a series of posts, most recently in a post about a shaming incident carried out against a business. The post sparked a thought-provoking discussion in the comments. Adam wrote: “What exactly is ‘mob justice’ on the internet? A crowd of people waving web browsers? Angry bloggers complaining about poor service?”