Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

Links We Cannot Resist Dept.

Posted on April 29, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

Birds May Be Behind Exploding German Toads.

Please note that this is filed under “Science” not humor, because it's apparently true.

Posted in Science/Medicine | 2 Comments

.pdf Versions of Official US Reports

Posted on April 29, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

This looks useful!

The Volokh Conspiracy – PDF Copies of the United States Reports: Most lawyers and law students know that that the U.S. Supreme Court website posts slip opinions of recent cases. What you might not know is that as the Court publications unit finalizes its slip opinions and eventually compiles them into bound volumes of the United States Reports, it also makes the entire contents of individual volumes of the United States Reports available as individual .pdf files. The service begins with Volume 502 (October 1991), and currently goes as far as Volume 538 (through May 27, 2003). This means that you can download entire volumes of the U.S. Reports and save them to your hard drive for subsequent searching and use offline — with the correct pagination, italics, appendices, charts, and graphs — all for free. Really cool, at least if you're into that kind of thing.

Posted in Law: Everything Else | 2 Comments

The Clients from Hell

Posted on April 29, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

Clientcopia : Coping with stupid clients is funny in a tragic sort of way.

Law is a service business. So to all the law students reading this blog, I say, Take Notes! Because you too will someday have a Client from Hell.

Posted in Completely Different | 3 Comments

Louis Fisher Slams Detention of US Citizens Without Trial in CRS Report

Posted on April 28, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

Secrecy News 04/28/05 breaks the story of a new report from the Congressional Research Service that disputes the Bush Administration's claim that the President has unlimited authority to detain American citizens in wartime if he deems them to be enemy combatants.

Significantly, “Detention of U.S. Citizens,” Congressional Research Service, April 28, 2005, is by the highly respected Louis Fisher, an authority on constitutional law.

The introduction says that the report is aimed at a core issue raised in the Padilla case:

In 1971, Congress passed legislation to repeal the Emergency Detention Act of 1950 and to enact the following language: “No citizen shall be imprisoned or otherwise detained by the United States except pursuant to an Act of Congress.” The new language, codified at 18 U.S.C. §4001(a), is called the Non-Detention Act. This statutory provision received attention after the 9/11 terrorist attacks when the Administration designated certain U.S. citizens as “enemy combatants” and claimed the right to detain them indefinitely without charging them, bringing them to trial, or giving them access to counsel. In litigation over Yaser Esam Hamdi and Jose Padilla, both designated enemy combatants, the Administration has argued that the Non-Detention Act restricts only imprisonments and detentions by the Attorney General, not by the President or military authorities.

And the conclusion is blunt:

Legislative debate, committee reports, and the political context of 1971 indicate that when Congress enacted Section 4001(a) it intended the statutory language to restrict all detentions by the executive branch, not merely those by the Attorney General. Lawmakers, both supporters and opponents of Section 4001(a), recognized that it would restrict the President and military authorities.

Posted in Civil Liberties | Comments Off on Louis Fisher Slams Detention of US Citizens Without Trial in CRS Report

Blair Publishes Legal Advice On Legality of Iraq Invasion

Posted on April 28, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose re-election campaign has been dogged by charges that he joined the invasion of Iraq in the face of advice by his Attorney General that the invasion would be illegal, has published the final draft of the legal advice sent to his office.

I've only had time to read this very quickly, but here are my preliminary thoughts. I invite corrections and amplifications.

To the extent that Blair may have claimed in the past that the advice told him the invasion was legal, the document reveals a somewhat more equivocal endorsement, more of the form of “maybe” or “good arguable case, might not ultimately convince a tribunal.' But the memo clearly doesn't forbid it.

In domestic UK terms, this may still be damaging, since Blair didn't disclose the existence of the doubts to Parliament, and thus can be accused of lack of candor. In US terms, the memo is pretty middle of the road, and won't make partisans on either side terribly happy.

Posted in Iraq, Law: International Law, UK | 2 Comments

Windows: Even When It’s Easy It Makes Me Grumpy

Posted on April 28, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

The horrible thing about my relationship with MS Windows is that you get so used to believing that so many simple things are unnecessarily hard (today's peeve: those dropdown boxes for directory/drive searches that are too small, and only go down from where it thinks you are). You get so used to doing it the hard way that you stop looking for easy ways, even when they exist (and when you finally find them it just makes you grumpier).

So, thank you Ed Bott for today's seemingly obvious Tip of the day: Instantly maximize any window:

Are you tired of trying to hit the tiny maximize/restore button in the top right corner of a window? There's an easier alternative: Double-click anywhere on the title bar. The entire title bar acts as an oversized toggle. Double-click to maximize the window; double-click again to restore the original window size.

I suppose that should teach me for smugly looking at so many of the past tips and saying “Well, of course, everyone knows that. But in fact, what I mostly feel is irritation: why wasn't this more obvious?

Posted in Software | 8 Comments