Judges and Judiciary
'Summerlin' Will Let Court Overturn Unconstitutional Sentences
By Carlos A. Singer
Forum Column - By Carlos A. Singer - Before the law reduced the case of Summerlin v. Stewart, 341 F.3d 1082 (9th Cir. 2...
Constitutional Law
Same-Sex Unions Will Join Other Constitutional Freedoms
By Stephen F. Rohde
Forum Column - By Stephen F. Rohde - From the founding of our nation, despite bigotry and prejudice, the trajectory of our soc...
Constitutional Law
First Amendment Doesn't Prohibit Nudity or Profanities
By Erwin Chemerinsky
Forum Column - By Erwin Chemerinsky - Was anyone hurt in the slightest way by the exposure of Janet Jackson's breast for two s...
Family, Alternative Dispute Resolution
Avoiding Three Pitfalls of Family-Law Mediations
By Franklin R. Garfield
Focus Column - Family Law - By Franklin R. Garfield - There are three primary reasons why the mediation of a family-law case m...
Judges and Judiciary
Justice Crosby Leaves Legacy of Friendship, Insight, Wit
By Arthur Gilbert
I was walking down the street talking to Justice Tom Crosby a few days ago. He was his usual self, railing about a case with w...
Forum Column - By Erwin Chemerinsky - California's initiative process has been the subject of scrutiny in recent years because...
U.S. Supreme Court
'Bazzle' Confounds Arbitration Agreements and Class Actions
By Aashish Y. Desai
The somewhat turbulent relationship between class actions and arbitration agreements just got more complicated, thanks in larg...
Forum Column - By Stephen F. Rohde - If the state of California had had its way yesterday, Kevin Cooper would have been execut...
Few comparisons highlight our government's bias in favor of the wealthy more than that between the phasing out of the estate t...
Family
'Benson' Opens a Door to Oral Agreements for Transmutation
By Mitchell A. Jacobs
Focus Column - Family Law - By Mitchell A. Jacobs and David L. Marcus - On Dec. 23, the Court of Appeal opened a door to the e...
Government
Is Los Angeles' City Attorney Qualified? Of Course He Is
By Erwin Chemerinsky
Forum Column - By Erwin Chemerinsky - An obscure provision of the Los Angeles City Charter is causing enormous controversy and...
Forum Column - By Erwin Chemerinsky - How many individuals did the federal government arrest and detain after Sept. 11? How ma...
One challenge that the United States faces in seeding liberal democracy in Iraq is defining what speech and thought will be fr...
Forum Column - By David A. Lash - Adoption Day is to courts what maternity wards are to hospitals. No jail, no juries, no deat...
Forum Column - By Erwin Chemerinsky - The historic decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in Goodridge v. Dep...
I missed the opening of the Los Angeles County Law Library on Dec. 14, 1953. They wouldn't let me out of Le Conte Junior High ...
Family
Parents Can't Submit Issue of Child Support to Binding ADR
By Mitchell A. Jacobs
Focus Column - Family Law - By Mitchell A. Jacobs and Robert Burch - In re Marriage of Bereznak, 110 Cal.App.4th 1062 (...
Forum Column - By Erwin Chemerinsky - Since January 2001, the U.S. government has held 600 individuals as prisoners at a milit...
Insurance
Accepting Tender of Defense Allows Insurer to Control Fate of Litigation
By Rex Heeseman
In several respects, the leading case of Hamilton v. Maryland Casualty Co., 27 Cal.4th 718 (2002), demonstrates the val...
Family, Alternative Dispute Resolution
ADR Buzzwords Create Unrealistic Expectations for Divorcing Parties
By Franklin R. Garfield
Focus Column - Family Law - By Franklin R. Garfield - Buzzwords are a pervasive feature of most verbal landscapes. Every disci...
Intellectual Property, Constitutional Law
Bill Encourages States to Waive Immunity in IP Cases
By Stuart Meyer
The U.S. Constitution sets forth a federal system of sovereign states. It is common for states, through their universities and...
Forum Column - By Erwin Chemerinsky - Slowly, insidiously, the courthouse doors are being closed to litigants. One way this is...
A neighbor told me about a TV reality show he saw last week: "They showed you a real court with as many members as a football ...
Proposition 54, the so-called Racial Privacy Initiative, is based on the misguided notion that ignorance is better than knowle...
Government
Recall Delay by Court Prevents Violation of Equal Protection Clause
By Erwin Chemerinsky
Forum Column - By Erwin Chemerinsky - In ordering a delay of the recall election in Southwest Voter Registration Education ...
Forum Column - By David A. Lash - In the 2000 presidential election, Vice President Al Gore got half a million more votes than...
Insurance
'MacKinnon' Case May Change How Courts Interpret Insurance Contracts
By Rex Heeseman
MacKinnon v. Truck Insurance Exchange , 2003 DJDAR 9112 (Cal. Aug. 14, 2003), addressed the scope of the standard pollution ex...
Appellate Practice
'Palmer' Clarifies Valid Written Notice of an Entry of Judgment
By James C. Martin , Benjamin G. Shatz
Focus Column - Appellate Law - By James C. Martin and Benjamin G. Shatz - Properly calendaring judgment-notwithstanding-the-ve...
Forum Column - By Erwin Chemerinsky - Every law student learns that the outcome of constitutional cases concerning individual ...
Criminal
'Mean Justice' Agenda Leads To Ethical, Fiscal Dead End
By Robert L. Bastian Jr.
"Mean Justice" is the title of a book by Edward Humes about prosecutorial misconduct in Bakersfield. But it also is an apt des...