Monthly Archives: May 2012

Very Nice

Florida Supreme Court Adopts Recommendations By Miami Law Students:

In a recent opinion regarding children’s appearances in dependency court proceedings, the Florida Supreme Court adopted parts of a proposed amendment to the Florida Rules of Juvenile Procedure that was written by two law students from the University of Miami.

The students, Melissa Rossman and Caitlin Saladrigas, members of the law school’s Children & Youth Law Clinic, prepared a brief in which they commented on rules proposed by the Florida Bar Juvenile Rules Committee. In the brief, Rossman and Saladrigas laid out the constitutional, statutory, human rights, therapeutic jurisprudence, and public-policy reasons for mandating that children appear in their own dependency court proceedings.

The court adopted a rule requiring state dependency court judges to ensure that children be given an opportunity to appear and be heard in such hearings. Although the court did not adopt the precise language proposed on behalf of the clinic and three other child-advocacy organizations, the adopted amendment incorporates many of the suggestions made in the law students’ brief. Justice Barbara Pariente’s concurring opinion echoes several policy arguments in the brief that favor strengthening a child’s right to be present and heard in dependency proceedings.

Rossman, a third-year student, and Saladrigas, who graduated from the School of Law last year, worked on the brief with the director of the Children & Youth Law Clinic, Bernard P. Perlmutter, and in conjunction with Florida’s Children First, a statewide legal aid program that fights for the legal rights of at-risk children; Florida Youth SHINE, a youth-run, peer-driven organization working to change the culture of Florida’s foster care system; and Legal Aid Service of Broward County, which provides free legal advice, representation, and education to the disadvantaged of Broward County.

Bravo!

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New Romney Campaign Theme Song Now in Beta

I have to admit that this is pretty good: Candidate for New Romney Campaign Song. Personally, I think it has legs. But I guess the cautious folks on Team Romney will be seeing how it plays in key markets, and if it doesn’t work out, then I suppose we’ll get something else.

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At Cardozo’s “Anonymity and Identity in the Information Age”

I’m in New York for Cardozo Law’s Anonymity and Identity in the Information Age, speaking on the war on online anonymity.

It’s a great program, and I’m on the first panel so then I get to relax and enjoy the event.

Travelling here yesterday I learned two things: First that putting your boarding pass on your electronic device instead of a phone is not a smart move. The person in front of me at the TSA line was not able to have his boarding pass on his iPad read by the TSA screener’s machine. And at the gate, the person in front of me in the boarding queue was not able to have her boarding pass on her smart phone read by the gate agent’s scanner.

Second thing I learned, from the French person sitting next to me on the plane, is that a lot of French people with money are investing in Belgium (!) as a form of tax evasion. Apparently, if you buy an asset there you don’t have to pay tax on the appreciation if you hold it 5-7 years. Thus, among other things, there’s a property boom going on with appreciations of as much as 5% per year. (Bubble, anyone?) It wasn’t clear to me if this was legal tax avoidance, or a classic French fiddle, but my interlocutor seemed to think there was an awful lot of it going on.

Incidentally, last night I saw Venus in Fur. Highly recommended. It has three Tony Award nominations. The play is clever — arch at points, but fun and brainy at the same time — and I think that Nina Arianda in particular has to be a very strong contender for her spectacular performance.

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