María Echaveste Clarifies Sotomayor’s Remarks

CNN The Situation Room, July 14, 2009 Host Wolf Blitzer
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0907/14/cnr.04.html

“But what’s really bothersome is … this notion that by exploring—by being proud of who you are, your diverse background, that somehow you’re supposed to leave that behind. And as I’ve said earlier, no justice does that. But what she was very clear about was that—in that very same speech—she said, I, as a judge, have to make sure that I’m not inculcating the biases or prejudices when I’m making the decision. And that’s what we expect from all of our justices.”

María Echaveste Sees Attorney General as Nation’s Top Legal Watchdog

CNN The Situation Room, July 13, 2009 Host Wolf Blitzer
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0907/13/sitroom.02.html

“The attorney general, as we’ve learned over the years, is really the attorney for the country, not solely the president’s attorney general. And that means that he has an obligation if the facts warrant it to ensure that no laws were broken by high ranking officials. I think, in this situation, what we need to understand and what he may have to do is: what are the obligations the CIA had to inform Congress? And then, if there was an obligation, why wasn’t it done?”

Rachel Moran Downplays Sonia Sotomayor’s Controversial Remarks

Los Angeles Times, July 12, 2009 by David G. Savage and James Oliphant
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-sotomayor-hearings12-2009jul12,0,7594234.story

Rachel F. Moran has known Sotomayor since their days as students at Yale Law School. She invited the judge to speak at UC Berkeley in 2001, at a conference on the shortage of Latinos on the bench. It was there that Sotomayor spoke of her hope that a wise Latina would make better decisions as a judge. “I was caught off guard by all the attention this has received,” Moran said recently. “People are affected by their background and experience. Her claim was not that your individual perspective is better or worse, but that you reach better outcomes when multiple perspectives are represented. That’s why we have nine people [on the Supreme Court] reviewing decisions.”

Stephen Sugarman Praises Retiring Public Defender David Coleman

Contra Costa Times, July 10, 2009 by Malaika Fraley
http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_12811905?source=most_emailed

As the top public defender, Coleman is proud of recruiting and maintaining a diverse staff of lawyers (60 percent women and 25 percent nonwhite) with distinguished academic records despite funding shocks to the office. Under Coleman’s leadership, the office is known for providing first-class legal representation for indigent defendants and as a great place to work, said Professor Stephen Sugarman, of UC Berkeley School of Law.

Eric Stover and Laurel Fletcher Publish Guantanamo Book, a Resource for Scholars

The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 10, 2009 by Jennifer Howard
http://chronicle.com/cgi-bin/printable.cgi?article=http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i41/41a00103.htm

That book, The Guantánamo Effect: Exposing the Consequences of U.S. Detention and Interrogation Practices, by Laurel E. Fletcher and Eric Stover, draws on a two-year study of more than 60 former Guantánamo detainees, and includes some interviews with lawyers and other personnel involved in those cases. Ms. Fletcher, a professor of law at Berkeley, directs the International Human Rights Law Clinic there; Mr. Stover, an adjunct professor of law and public health, is faculty director of Berkeley’s Center for Human Rights.

Ethan Leib Opposes Criminal Sanctions Linked to Family Status

The New York Times Freakonomics, July 9, 2009 by Jennifer Collins, Ethan J. Leib, and Dan Markel
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/09/family-values-and-the-law-a-guest-post/

To crudely sum up our various conclusions, we basically claim that the state should exercise substantial caution and indeed hostility to most attempts to distribute these benefits or burdens based on one’s family status. This is a controversial stance, but we conclude that in many circumstances there are simply too many costs to the criminal justice system when it gives special treatment based on one’s family ties or responsibilities.

Jacob Hacker Thinks Public Health Care Option is Inevitable

The Wall Street Journal, July 9, 2009 by Editorial Board
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124709618142215031.html#printMode

Jacob Hacker, now a professor of political science at Berkeley, came up with the intellectual architecture for the public option when he was a graduate student in the 1990s. “Someone once said to me, ‘This is a Trojan horse for single payer,’ and I said, ‘Well, it’s not a Trojan horse, right? It’s just right there,'” Mr. Hacker explained in a speech last year. “I’m telling you, we’re going to get there, over time, slowly.”

Jesse Choper Says Bill to OK Out-of-State Gay Marriages is Legit

The Recorder, July 9, 2009 by Mike McKee
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202432100661&Calif_Bill_Would_OK_OutofState_Gay_Marriages

Jesse Choper, a constitutional law expert at UC-Berkeley School of Law, said that would seem reasonable. “If the Legislature wants to say that same-sex marriages performed legally outside the state of California shall be recognized in California, then it would seem that’s a fair statute to pass,” he said. “The California Supreme Court can always come back and say, no, by constitutional amendment they are not valid anymore.”

Alan Auerbach Warns of Staggering U.S. Long-Term Fiscal Debt

-Los Angeles Times, July 8, 2009 by Alan J. Auerbach and William G. Gale
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-auerbach8-2009jul08,0,7586160.story

Most economists accept the need to put aside concerns about fiscal balance as we address the recession. But soon enough we will face pressure to shift our focus from the short-term economic problem to our longer-term fiscal problem. And, unfortunately, poor policy choices in the past combined with the enormity of the recession make the second problem worse and reduce the time we will have to deal with it.

-The New York Times, July 8, 2009 by Peter S. Goodman
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/08/business/economy/08deficit.html?_r=1

“The budget outlook at every horizon is troubling,” declared Alan J. Auerbach, a finance expert at the University of California, Berkeley, and William G. Gale, an economist at the Brookings Institution, in a recent paper. “The fiscal year 2009 budget is enormous; the 10-year projection is clearly unsustainable; and the long-term outlook is dire and increasingly urgent.”

-KCBS-AM, July 13, 2009 by Rebecca Corral
http://www.kcbs.com/pages/4794528.php

“If we were running a deficit like this in good times, it would be a catastrophe, really. But we’ve got other problems to worry about in the very short term…. We will have very big spending cuts and very big tax increases, and we will have them perhaps in the not-too-distant future or else the bad things that happen when countries accumulate unchecked national debt will happen to us, such as inflation, the very sharp decline of the dollar, increases in interest rates.”

Christopher Edley Helps Draft Alternative Tax Reform Plan for the 21st Century Commission

-The Sacramento Bee, July 7, 2009 by Dan Walters
http://www.sacbee.com/walters/story/2005044.html

Keeley and Boalt Hall School of Law Dean Christopher Edley Jr. are drafting the blue plan for presentation to the commission next week in a direct challenge to Parsky, who has been pushing his vision of tax reform very hard.

-Calbuzz, July 13, 2009 by Jerry Roberts and Phil Trounstine
http://www.calbuzz.com/2009/07/red-blue-clash-emerges-in-21st-century-commission/

After the elements of that idea—which became known as the Red Plan—were well-publicized and thoroughly examined by the commission’s staff, the liberal wing on the commission, led by Keeley and Christopher Edley, dean of the Boalt Hall School of Law, came forth with an alternate Blue Plan.

-California Progress Report, July 15, 2009 by Peter Schrag
http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/2009/07/flat_taxers_on.html

The Keeley proposal, which is supported in large part by Commission member Chris Edley, the dean of Boalt Hall Law School, would also create a split property tax roll which, while leaving residential property taxes and assessments untouched, would provide for annual reassessment of commercial property.