Angelina's leg

I thought this was a funny article.

And my favorite picture:

No more test for the SDFLA

This just came across CM/ECF:



Administrative Order 2012-14 In re: Elimination of Attorney Admissions Examination
Pursuant to Administrative Order 2012-14, the Judges of this Court have decided to eliminate the requirement that an attorney take our examination in order to be admitted as a member of this Courts Bar. Although this information does not apply to current members of our Bar, we are sending this notice in an attempt to receive as broad dissemination as possible. Effective immediately, the attorney admissions examination is discontinued. If you know attorneys who may seek admission to our Bar in the near future, please advise them to monitor our website for updated admissions procedures that will be posted in the near future.

Too bad -- I mean there were really important reasons that lawyers had to memorize the questions and answers that were given before the test.

SDFLA judicial happenings

Judge Jordan was sworn in on Friday so he can begin working on the 11th Circuit.  His formal investiture is coming up.

Magistrate Judge Robin Rosenbaum may be moving up to the district court soon.  Rumor has it that her hearing is this Wednesday.  As of this morning, this link shows that there will be hearings, but does not list who will be heard.  I'm hearing that Rosenbaum will be on this calendar.

The JNC is taking applications for the open district seat (because of Jordan's elevation).  It will be interesting to see how many people apply as state circuit judge John Thornton is the presumed candidate to get the seat because of what occurred before.

“It presumes that the government is going to have a ministry of truth . . . and I just don’t think that’s our tradition."

That was Justice Kennedy in the Stolen Valor case today.  More:

The Supreme Court jousted for an hour Wednesday about whether the First Amendment allows the government to prosecute people for lying about earning military honors, and, if so, what else might be fair game.
Lying about whether your child received a medal? wondered Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.
Holocaust deniers? asked Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
People who lie about extramarital affairs? offered Justice Elena Kagan.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor tried out a personal example: “I take offense when someone I’m dating makes a claim that’s not true.”
***
He seemed to have one sure supporter in Justice Antonin Scalia, whose comments were uniformly protective of the government’s interests.
“When Congress passed this legislation, I assume it did so because it thought that the value of the awards that these courageous members of the armed forces were receiving was being demeaned and diminished” by those who falsely claimed them, Scalia said.
And Verrilli had one clear skeptic in Sotomayor.
“I thought the core of the First Amendment was to protect even against offensive speech,” she said. “You can’t really believe that a war veteran thinks less of the medal that he or she receives because someone’s claiming that they got one.”
But the rest of the court seemed more conflicted. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., for instance, asked Verrilli if the government could criminalize lying about whether one received a high school diploma.

In other news, the 11th Circuit came out with a fascinating opinion today (In re Grand Jury Subpoena Duces Tecum Dated March 25, 2011 USA v. John Doe), creating a Circuit split:

We turn now to the merits of Doe’s appeal. In compelling Doe to produce the unencrypted contents of the hard drives and then in holding him in contempt for failing to do so, the district court concluded that the Government’s use of the unencrypted contents in a prosecution against Doe would not constitute the derivative use of compelled testimony protected by the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. This is so, the court thought, because Doe’s decryption and production of the hard drives would not constitute “testimony.” And although that was the Government’s view as well, the Government nonetheless requested act-of-production immunity.13 The district court granted this request.

For the reasons that follow, we hold that Doe’s decryption and production of the hard drives’ contents would trigger Fifth Amendment protection because it would be testimonial, and that such protection would extend to the Government’s use of the drives’ contents. The district court therefore erred in two respects. First, it erred in concluding that Doe’s act of decryption and production would not constitute testimony. Second, in granting Doe immunity, it erred in limiting his immunity, under 18 U.S.C. §§ 6002 and 6003, to the Government’s use of his act of decryption and production, but allowing the Government derivative use of the evidence such act disclosed.

“Drugs are very harmful. They’re very dangerous.”

That's the governor's argument for random drug testing of all state employees.  Judge Ungaro pounced on this silly argument:

A federal judge in Miami Wednesday cast serious doubts about Gov. Rick Scott’s order requiring thousands of state government employees to undergo a random drug test, suggesting his policy “sweeps too broadly.”
U.S. District Judge Ursula Ungaro peppered a government lawyer with questions about the constitutionality of Scott’s policy, saying she had “trouble understanding the circumstances under which the executive order would be valid."

***

Ungaro said she would soon make up her mind about the legal challenge to Scott’s policy by the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida. The group argues that his order violates the Fourth Amendment rights of state workers because the testing requirement is “suspicionless” and therefore an illegal search and seizure.
“For the consent [to the search] to be valid, it has to be voluntary,” ACLU lawyer Shalini Goel Agarwal argued. “This blanket drug testing is unconstitutional.”
The legal challenge to the governor’s order, which has been placed on hold by Scott himself until the dispute is resolved, centers on whether the state has a constitutional right to require random drug tests of existing public workers and mandatory testing of all new employees. The governor issued his order last March.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/21/2654971/federal-judge-in-miami-will-hear.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/21/2654971/federal-judge-in-miami-will-hear.html#storylink=cpy

 

 

So you wanna be a federal judge?

Hot off the Court's website:

Pursuant to the instructions set forth in the attached letter from Senator Bill Nelson and Senator Marco Rubio, dated February 16, 2012, the Florida Federal Judicial Nominating Commission is now accepting applications for the following position:

• U.S. District Judge, Southern District of Florida

This vacancy was created by the Senate's recent confirmation of U.S. District Judge Adalberto Jordan to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

The revised Rules of Procedure for the Judicial Nominating Commission, dated April 11, 2011, application forms with incorporated instructions, and the names and addresses of the members of the Commission, dated February 14, 2012 are available at the following websites:

1. The Florida Bar (www.floridabar.org)
2. U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida (www.flnd.uscourts.gov)
3. U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida (www.flmd.uscourts.gov)
4. U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida (www.flsd.uscourts.gov)

In addition, these materials may also be obtained from the Commission's Statewide Chair:
John M. Fitzgibbons
The Law Office of John M. Fitzgibbons
707 North Franklin St
Suite 700
Tampa, FL 33602
Telephone: 813-221-8800

Completed applications must be received by the Commission's Statewide Chair and each Commission member in the manner specified by the Rules of Procedure by 5:00pm., Monday, March 26th, 2012. Applicants who are selected by the Commission for personal interviews will be interviewed on Friday, April 27th, 2012 at the Judge's Conference Room, 14th Floor, Wilkie D. Ferguson, Jr. U.S. Courthouse, 400 North Miami Avenue, Miami, Florida. The names of the applicants who are selected for personal interviews with the Commission, as well as the interview times, will be published on each website on or before April 18, 2012.