Recalibrating expectations on labor camp reform

Stanley Lubman writes for The Wall Street Journal, China Real Time Report, June 28, 2013

Momentum appears to have seeped out of one of the most promising Chinese legal reforms of the year: a widely cheered plan to do away with the country’s arbitrary police detention system…. Recently, for example, Chinese and foreign media alike have published vivid accounts from women prisoners at the Masanjia laojiao camp in Liaoning Province who say they were made to work long hours with little food and were subjected to torture, such as hanging by cuffs, solitary confinement in a tiny room and other cruel restraints for prolonged periods.

New York City has fewer than 1 murder a day

Franklin Zimring quoted in The Wall Street Journal, June 28, 2013 (registration required)

“This is unprecedented in modern urban American history,” he says. While there is no easy answer for why the numbers are going down in New York and other urban areas, he says the murder decline in 2012 and the continuing drop in 2013 were distinct from the period from 1990 through 2009 when a study of his concluded that the NYPD’s policing policies “are the only obvious candidate to take credit for the crime drop.” He adds, “What we have now is good news without a ready explanation.”

Supreme Court gay marriage ruling raises questions for California initiative process

David Carrillo quoted in The Sacramento Bee, June 28, 2013

“People can put whatever they want on the ballot, laws can still get passed and the constitution can still get amended,” said David Carrillo, executive director of the California Constitution Center at UC Berkeley. “What the Proposition 8 ruling means is there’s going to be a much sharper question about who has standing to attack or defend a law.”

Legal experts, activists, SCOTUSBlog weigh in on Supreme Court decisions

Melissa Murray interviewed by NewNowNext, June 27, 2013

“The Defense of Marriage Act affected almost a thousand different federal laws that discussed marriage or made references to wives, spouses, husbands, so the fact that this is no longer constitutional is huge. It means that LGBT couples who are in lawful marriages can be considered spouses … when federal law makes those distinctions on the basis of marriage, so that’s enormous.”

John Roberts, the high court’s chief peacemaker

Jesse Choper quoted in POLITICO, June 27, 2013

“I would be very surprised, and underline the word very, if he were to hold that a prohibition on gay marriage is unconstitutional. If he didn’t join the DOMA case, I don’t think he’s willing to go farther,” said Jesse Choper of the University of California/Berkeley Law School.

Legal scholars say decisions drive gay marriage issue to the states

Jesse Choper quoted in Ventura County Star, June 26, 2013

“We don’t know what the future of gay marriage in the states is,” said Professor Jesse Choper of UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law. We are left with “strong hints,” he said, that if a state is willing to grant gays the right to marry, “then the federal government can’t come in and say, no we’re going to treat them differently.” But the opinions do not address what happens in states where there is no law allowing gays to marry.

What is personally identifiable information (PII)? Finding common ground in the EU and US

Paul Schwartz co-authors article in Concurring Opinions, June 26, 2013

Numerous attempts have been made to bridge the gap between U.S. and E.U. privacy law, but a very large initial hurdle stands in the way. The two bodies of law can’t even agree on the scope of protection let alone the substance of the protections. The scope of protection of privacy laws turns on the definition of “personally identifiable information” (PII). If there is PII, privacy laws apply. If PII is absent, privacy laws do not apply.

Valley Fever yet another obstacle for state prison system

Barry Krisberg quoted in Daily Journal, June 26, 2013 (registration required)

“If I was sitting at the CDCR, I’d be trying to figure out, “OK, I’ve got to move these people someplace in addition to a court order that I’ve got to get all these other things in line, and all of it has to be done by the end of the year,” said Barry Krisberg.

Forty-four years after Stonewall, ‘it’s a whole different world’

Jesse Choper quoted in The Sacramento Bee, June 26, 2013

Jesse Choper, a professor of public law at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, called it part of the “egalitarian revolution” that has been growing in the United States. “There’s a great increase in liberal attitudes, and it’s not just California. And efforts to stop it are being rejected,” said Choper. “It’s just a public attitude: Equality is viewed with much greater sympathy, and not only in race.”

Obama and Congress must fight climate change like they do terrorism

Andrew Guzman writes for The Christian Science Monitor, June 25, 2013

The word “tax” is taboo in this Congress, at least in the House. But a carbon tax should be welcomed because it gets directly at the problem, carbon. It will change behavior—from consumers to businesses—without restrictive or cumbersome regulation. It will reduce the use of fossil fuels, encourage the development of renewables, and generate revenue that can be used to reduce the deficit, fund other programs, or be reimbursed to the public.