A recent pair of cases out of the European Union have provided new insight into the reach of the EU’s regulation of the internet. Both cases revolve around whether an EU member state’s court can order an internet company to take down or de-list information online and whether that power extends beyond the EU.
The term ombudsman has been around for nearly 300 years in Scandinavia and since the 1960s in the United States, so why do many of us still not know what it means? The ABA Dispute Resolution Section Ombuds Committee is working to change that with the second celebration of Ombuds Day on Thursday, Oct. 10.
The U.S. Supreme Court has several blockbuster cases in its new term—on gay and transgender rights, federal immigration enforcement and gun regulation. But before it gets to any of those, the court on the first day of the term will take up two criminal law cases raising significant questions, even though only a handful of states are affected by each.
States remain split on whether a prosecutor’s ethical duties for disclosures in a criminal case should extend beyond their constitutional obligations set by the U.S. Supreme Court. Most recently, the Tennessee Supreme Court vacated a formal ethics opinion that determined a prosecutor’s ethical duties were more expansive than those required under the Supreme Court’s decision in Brady v. Maryland in 1963.
“To me, this represented one of the toughest problems, but absolutely something that was worthwhile to invest a career in, because if we do this right, we are going to open the door for so many other things,” says Casey Trupin, the director of youth homelessness at the Raikes Foundation, a Seattle-based nonprofit organization.
This year, the cities of San Francisco, Somerville, Massachusetts, and Oakland, California, all banned the government’s use of facial recognition technology as a larger legislative package overseeing police surveillance technology. Now, a few other states are looking to, at a minimum, press pause on the police use of this technology.
The country has come a long way, said U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and that’s what keeps her optimistic for the future. “It can be hard to do anything as a loner, but if you get together with like-minded people, you can be a force for change,” Ginsburg said at a discussion Monday at the University of Chicago.