October 2003
Reading Around
U.S. Supreme Court laterals into the Internet age
Though declining repeated calls for televising their proceedings, the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court nevertheless tape-record oral arguments each term. The tapes, deposited with the National Archives, have been available to anyone who could go there to hear them. A few major arguments have been available to the larger public since the publication of Peter Irons's and Stephanie Guitton's tape-and-book combination, May It Please the Court: Transcripts of 23 Live Recordings of Landmark Cases Argued Before the Supreme Court (The New Press, 1993).
According to an August report in The New York Times, Northwestern University political science professor Jerry Goldman has gone a giant step further. In June he started releasing oral arguments on the Internet, having converted them to MP3 format. About 6,000 hours of arguments have been recorded since 1955; Goldman is releasing recordings of major cases on his website, www.oyez.org, and compiling others for sale in CD form. The Oyez project hopes to have a full catalogue completed by 2007. Oyez.org is a website devoted to information about the court, its members, its history, and its decisions.
Bobblemania hits the Supremes
An online law magazine has teamed up with a Seattle company to produce the first U.S. Supreme Court bobblehead doll, of Chief Justice William Rehnquist. George Mason University law professor Ross Davies, who revived the long-defunct law-humor magazine The Green Bag in 1997, says he and his colleagues on the magazine always dreamed of creating a Rehn-quist bobblehead, and earlier this year they sprang for it, producing an edition of 1,000 for subscribers and friends.
To produce the 7.5-inch, one-pound dolls, Davies turned to Seattle's Alexander Global Promotions, which has turned out more than 4,000 different bobbleheads over the last four years, including the famed Seattle Mariners Ichiro model. Working from photos and consulting with Davies about things like the right color for the U.S. Reports volume Rehnquist holds, Alexander produced the run for about $10,000.
Davies told Findlaw.com he managed to get the first doll to Chief Justice Rehn-quist through an unnamed intermediary. The chief justice's reaction? "He laughed a lot."
The long arm of the law
Don't mess with Western District U.S. Attorney John McKay. In August, McKay's office, working with the FBI and personnel at Microsoft Corporation, traced a second-wave version of the Blaster computer worm to an 18-year-old in Hopkins, Minnesota, and filed criminal charges against him in federal court in Seattle.
Jeffrey Parsons was accused of intentionally causing, and trying to cause, damage to a protected computer in violation of Title 18, U.S. Code, Sections 1030(a)(5) (A)(i), 1030(a)(5)(B)(i), 1030(b), and 1030(c) (4)(A), and Section 2. This variant infected at least 7,000 individual Internet users' computers, turned those computers into drones that attacked or attempted to attack Microsoft and, in particular, its website www.windowsupdate.com. Parsons could face 10 years in prison and a quarter-million-dollar fine. A Minnesota federal judge barred Parsons from Internet access and confined him under house arrest.
The case was investigated by the Washington Cyber Task Force, which includes local law enforcement in the Western
District of Washington, the Seattle Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Seattle Division of the U.S. Secret Service.
Parsons was scheduled to make his first court appearance in Seattle September 17.
Court upholds reorganization of public-defender agency
Division I of the Court of Appeals upheld a King County Superior Court order allowing a receiver to remove and replace the board and management of a Seattle public-defender agency in a decision filed August 25.
A 2002 King County contract compliance audit found that Northwest Defenders Association (NDA), based in Seattle, hadn't had an active board of directors since 1995. The last set resigned one by one and was never replaced. A new board was quickly appointed, but the county found NDA had established a for-profit law firm and leased more-expensive office space without prior approval, and filed suit seeking either a writ of quo warranto or a receivership to put a new board in place. The complaint also alleged breach of contract and violations of the Nonprofit Corporations Act (Ch.24.03 RCW), and asked for a declaratory judgment on whether the corporation's new board could enter into contracts.
The trial court granted the receivership; NDA argued unsuccessfully that the receivership laws didn't empower a receiver to replace management. The Court of Appeals found that "where a corporation serving a vital public interest has allowed its board of directors to become defunct, empowering a receiver to reconstitute the leadership of the corporation was within the scope of the receiver's statutory powers," noting that NDA's assets needed preserving to ensure they were devoted to the service of the public. King County Dept. of Community & Human Servs. v. N.W. Defenders, No. 51159-9-I (Becker, Cox and Baker, jj.).
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