President Joe Biden is pardoning thousands of people who were convicted of use and simple possession of marijuana on federal lands and in the District of Columbia and granting clemency to 11 people serving what the White House called “disproportionately long” sentences for nonviolent drug offenses, Zeke Miller reports for the Associated Press. The pardon builds on his categorical pardon issued just before the 2022 midterm elections that made thousands convicted of simple possession on federal lands eligible for … Read the rest
My new favorite Gen AI search engine, Perplexity, now can communicate by voice with the user. It is like having a conversation with the world’s smartest computer assistant, and has replaced Google Search as my first legal research stopping point. In addition, it serves as a complete voice assistant no matter what I am doing. Want to hear about the nearest gas station, restaurant, or sight seeing opportunity when traveling? Just ask Perplexity. It feels like the future; and, not
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The Supreme Court on Friday afternoon declined a request from Stephen Bannon, who served as an aide to former President Donald Trump, to delay the start of his four-month prison sentence while he asks the Supreme Court to review his case.
Bannon is scheduled to report to prison on Monday, July 1.
After failing to respond to a congressional subpoena, Bannon was convicted of contempt of Congress in November 2021. The House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 … Read the rest
Federal and state courts reported a combined 13 percent decrease in authorized wiretaps in 2023, compared with 2022, according to the Judiciary’s 2023 Wiretap Report. Arrests in cases involving electronic surveillance increased, while convictions decreased.
Judiciary News – United States Courts… Read the rest
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The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that a federal anti-bribery law does not make it a crime for state and local officials to accept a gratuity for acts that they have already taken. Writing for a six-justice majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh explained that state and local governments already regulate gifts to officials, and so the federal law “does not supplement those state and local rules by subjecting 19 million state and local officials to up to 10 years in … Read the rest
After the results of the European elections, where the presidential political party lost a significant number of seats at the European Parliament, the president of the French Republic Emmanuel Macron decided to dissolve the National Assembly. This dissolution was effected by the presidential “Decree of June 9, 2024 dissolving the National Assembly“, which was published in the Official Journal of the French Republic on June 10, 2024.
At the time of the dissolution, several projects and proposals of laws … Read the rest
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Each weekday, we select a short list of news articles, commentary, and other noteworthy links related to the Supreme Court. Here’s the Monday morning read:
- Supreme Court to weigh state restrictions on gender-affirming care for youths (Lawrence Hurley, NBC News)
- U.S. Supreme Court blocks the state’s Rio Grande water deal with New Mexico (Alejandra Martinez & Berenice Garcia, The Texas Tribune)
- Is Trump shielded from criminal charges as an ex-president? A nation awaits word from Supreme Court (Mark Sherman,
Rising numbers of women in England are experiencing domestic abuse at Christmas, with Refuge, the leading support service in England, saying that calls and contacts to the national domestic abuse helpline in 2023 were still far higher than pre-pandemic, with 171,490 calls in the year ending March 2023, Rachel Hall reports for The Guardian. The charity is warning that Christmas, when there are always more incidents of domestic abuse, presents specific challenges such as social isolation and increased costs … Read the rest