Prof. Glazier Files Amicus Brief in Nashiri Military Commission Trial

Professor David Glazier recently filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in the case of Abd al-Rahim Hussein Al Nashiri v. Barack Obama, et. al. 

Excerpt:

Domestic and international law have confined military commission jurisdiction to acts taking place during, and directly related to, an ongoing armed conflict. Acts subject to military commission jurisdiction constitute serious violations of the law of war which have recognized penal sanctions associated with their violations, commonly called “war crimes.”

Abd al-Rahim Hussein Al Nashiri ("Nashiri") is facing military commission trial at the U.S. Naval Station at Guantánamo Bay for three incidents that transpired in or near Yemen between 2000 and 2002: the attempted bombing of the USS The Sullivans on January 3, 2000; and the completed bombings of the USS Cole and the French tanker M/V Limburg on October 12, 2000 and October 6, 2002, respectively.

The military commission seeks to try Nashiri for nine charges defined by the Military Commissions Act of 2009, Pub. L. 111-84 §§ 1801-1807 (2009) ("2009 Act") (codified at 10 U.S.C. §§ 948a, et seq.). While charges based on the attempted attack on the USS The Sullivans and the completed attacks on the USS Cole and French tanker M/V Limburg qualify for federal criminal prosecution by Article III courts, these acts fall outside the recognized scope of an armed conflict, a necessary prerequisite for law of war military commission jurisdiction. As detailed below, the United States was not involved in armed conflict during the timeframe of the earlier incidents, nor does the post-9/11 attack on the Limburg, a French tanker under charter to a Malaysian entity, fall within the scope of any armed conflict. Charges based on these incidents thus cannot constitute “war crimes” and fall outside both the constitutional jurisdiction of the military commissions and the statutory ambit of the 2009 Act which limits the commissions to trying offenses “committed in the context of and associated with hostilities.”

Read the full brief below.

Why Abigail Fisher’s lawsuit is a modern day Trojan Horse

By: Professor Kimberly West-Faulcon
 Originally published on The Grio
 
Today, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in yet another racial affirmative action case involving college admissions. It seems perfectly reasonable for non-lawyers to wonder why these types of cases—cases filed by rejected white applicants alleging a college violated the Constitution by considering race—appear before the Supreme Court so regularly. If I did not teach and write about these cases, I would be left to think that racism against white college applicants is rampant. Why else would the U.S. Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, be hearing so many of these cases? Why else, in the case that will be argued today, would the Supreme Court hear the same case twice? Again, if I did not know all of the specific details of the lawsuit, I would presume that the plaintiff in the case, Abigail Fisher, must have been wronged in some way—why else would she find lawyers and subject herself to the national attention (and ridicule over her less-than-stellar grades and SAT score) that she has endured as people across the nation have debated whether she was indeed qualified to attend the University of Texas at Austin when she applied as a high school student for admission back in 2008.

Loyola Hosts Southern California Business Law Workshop

What is the impact and frequency of recent hedge fund activism? What developments are taking place at the border between public and private markets and companies? Could companies hire CEOs at lower compensation levels by changing their approach to the hiring process? These are some of the questions being discussed today at the Southern California Business Law Workshop hosted at Loyola Law School. Business law scholars from Loyola, USC, UCLA, Pepperdine, Southwestern, UC Irvine, and University of San Diego have gathered to discuss works in progress at the cutting edge of business law and at intersections with other areas of law.

Court to decide principle of one person, one vote

By Professor Jessica Levinson
This is an excerpt from an op-ed published in the Sacramento Bee

A priest, a rabbi and a minister walk into a bar. They each live in a different state Senate district with 100,000 people in each district. There are 80,000 voters in the priest’s district, 50,000 in the rabbi’s district and 20,000 in the minister’s district.

This is not the beginning of a joke, but rather the basis of one of the most important election law cases to hit the U.S. Supreme Court in years.

If two candidates run for state Senate in each district, the priest will have to convince 40,001 of his friends to vote for his preferred candidate. The rabbi, by contrast, will only have to sway 25,001 voters. And the minister has the easiest task; he must only persuade 10,001 voters in order for his preferred candidate to win the election. Put another way, in the priest’s district it takes many more voters to elect the candidate of his choice.

Read the full article here.

Loyola Law School Hosts Commemoration of Nuremberg Trials

The Center for the Study of Law & Genocide at Loyola Law School, Los Angeles will hold a symposium commemorating the 70th anniversary of the start of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal on Friday, Nov. 20 from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. It is the only U.S. event to livestream the commemoration proceedings from Nuremberg, Germany and will include remarks from noted genocide authorities and Benjamin B. Ferencz, the last-living Nuremberg prosecutor.

PROGRAM

• Opening Remarks: Hon. Stefan Biedermann, Deputy Consul General, Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany
•  “Nuremberg: How the Impossible Trial Was Made Possible”: Prof. Michael Bazyler, Professor of Law and The 1939 Society Scholar in Holocaust and Human Rights Studies, Dale E. Fowler School of Law Chapman University 
• "Nuremberg and History: Discovering the Six Million": Prof. Michael Berenbaum, Professor of Jewish Studies and Director, Sigi Ziering Institute: Exploring the Ethical and Religious Implications of the Holocaust American Jewish University  
• "The Propaganda Defendants at Nuremberg": Prof. Gregory Gordon, Associate Dean (Development/External Relations) Director, PhD-MPhil Programme, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Faculty of Law 
• "Nuremberg and Guantanamo: Shaming the Legacy of Nuremberg": Prof. David Glazier, Loyola Law School, Former U.S. Navy Warfare Officer and Renowned Law of War Expert 
• "The Nuremberg Trials and Civil Justice for Survivors": Rabbi Stan Levy, Founding National Director, Bet Tzedek Holocaust Survivors Justice Network 
• "Nuremberg: One Judge’s Perspective": Judge Rolf Treu ’74: California Superior Court, Los Angeles County 
• Moderator: Prof. Stan Goldman ’75, Director, Center for the Study of Law and Genocide, Loyola Law School

The cost of ‘quality of life’ policing: Thousands of young black men coerced to plead guilty to crimes they didn’t commit

By Professor Alexandra Natapoff

This commentary originally appeared on The Washington Post

At their inaugural debate, the Democratic presidential candidates finally agreed that black lives matter. If they mean it, they should take a stand against a common but overlooked way that our criminal system devalues black lives: convicting African American men of minor crimes that they did not commit.

These wrongful convictions are largely byproducts of “order maintenance” or “quality-of-life” policing, in which police arrest large numbers of young black men on baseless charges. Baltimore police, for example, are under court-ordered monitoring for making baseless quality-of-life arrests. As described by one former officer, police tell young men to move along, then arrest them for loitering when they don’t. Maryland courts have already explained that this police practice is illegal: people who are merely standing on the street, even those ordered to move along, are not actually “loitering,” which the city ordinance defines as “to interfere with, impede or hinder the free passage of pedestrian or vehicular traffic” after having been warned to desist.

Read the full article here.

 

Loyola Law School to Host Symposium On Corporate Rights and Political Spending

Loyola Law School, Los Angeles and Free Speech for People will host the symposium “Corporations, the Constitution, and Democracy” featuring a slate of prominent corporate, constitutional and election-law scholars and a keynote address by the Hon. Leo E. Strine, Jr., chief justice of the Delaware Supreme Court. The event will be held on Friday, Nov. 20 from 12-4:30 p.m. on Loyola’s downtown LA campus.

The panel “The Future of Corporate Constitutional Rights Litigation and Theory,” will feature Margaret M. Blair, Vanderbilt Law School; Erwin Cherminsky, UC Irvine School of Law; Sarah Haan, University of Idaho College of Law; James D. Nelson, University of Houston Law Center; Anne Tucker, Georgia State University College of Law; and Adam Winkler, UCLA School of Law. The panel “Democracy, Corporations and Money in Politics” will include Jeff Clements, Free Speech for People; Richard L. Hasen, UC Irvine School of Law; Michael S. Kang, Emory University School of Law; Jessica Levinson, Loyola Law School; and Michele Sutter, Money Out Voters In.

Chief Justice Strine, a preeminent corporate law jurist, will deliver the keynote address, “Corporate Power Ratchet: The Courts’ Role in Eroding ‘We the People’s’ Ability to Constrain Our Corporate Creations.” Closing remarks will come from John Bonifaz, Free Speech for People, and Elizabeth Pollman, Loyola Law School. The afternoon will conclude with a reception.

“The event brings together top scholars and legal activists to discuss two of the biggest controversies of our time: corporate personhood and money in politics,” said Pollman, conference organizer. “Speakers will address these topics from practical and theoretical perspectives and offer ways to rethink both campaign finance and the constitutional rights of corporations.”