Franklin Zimring quoted by Newsreview.com, June 29, 2017
According to Franklin Zimring … law enforcement agencies “almost always” recommend criminal charges against survivors of police shootings, he wrote in an email. Zimring couldn’t point to “a systematic study” showing the pattern, but agreed with Katz that cops and prosecutors have financial and political incentives to “threaten pretty severe penalties to push back on civil damages.”
Katerina Linos co-writes for The Washington Post, June 28, 2017
Unlike presidents or members of Congress, justices do not speak directly to the public. … Therefore, the messages used by media, and television news in particular, have tremendous ability to shape how Americans respond to the Supreme Court. And media outlets tend to be far more deferential in reporting on court decisions than when reporting on Congress or the presidency. They often treat a court decision as the final word, rather than the beginning of a debate.
Alexa Koenig quoted by East Bay Times, June 27, 2017
In the last decade or so, there’s been a proliferation of smartphones, said Alexa Koenig, executive director of Berkeley’s Human Rights Center and co-manager of the school’s investigations lab. That lets everyone be a human rights investigator but it also creates space for lots of misinformation and a need for what has come to be known as digital verification.
Erwin Chemerinsky writes for Los Angeles Times, June 26, 2017
Three different lawsuits have been filed against President Trump. … Trump’s position is that the federal courts can hear none of these suits because no one has “standing” to sue him for these constitutional violations. But that can’t be right: It cannot be that the president can violate the Constitution with impunity and no court has the authority to hold him accountable.
Erwin Chemerinsky writes for The Sacramento Bee, June 26, 2017
Neil Gorsuch replacing Antonin Scalia largely restored the court’s ideological balance to what it was before Scalia’s death. But President Trump replacing Kennedy with a conservative in the Gorsuch or Scalia mold will create the most conservative court that there has been since the mid-1930s.
Robert Cole, Jesse Choper, and Charles Weisselberg quoted by California Magazine, June 22, 2017
“Even if Trump is impeached and removed from office, you end up with President Pence,” says Cole, “and most Democrats would probably not consider that an improvement. … The Democrats should be concentrating on 2018, identifying the districts where they have a chance, and developing a positive program that engages voters. Simply being against Trump isn’t enough.”
“In fact, the only thing I see so far that could tip the scale would be if substantial evidence emerged showing he knew the Russians were working to influence the election in his favor,” says Choper. “That could either force him to resign or convince the House to impeach and the Senate to convict. Other than that—it just seems unlikely to me.”
“There has been considerable debate about whether a sitting president can be charged with criminal offenses,” says Weisselberg. “Many argue the Constitution implicitly provides impeachment as the sole process for removing a serving president. However, a president who resigns or is removed from office can then be criminally prosecuted.”
Ira Ellman quoted by The Washington Post, June 21, 2017
Ira Ellman … wrote a detailed examination of the 80 percent figure. He wrote: “The label ‘sex offender’ triggers fear, and disgust as well. Both responses breed beliefs that do not yield easily to facts. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has fed the fear. It’s become the ‘go to’ source that courts and politicians rely upon for ‘facts’ about sex offender recidivism rates that aren’t true.”
Erwin Chemerinsky quoted by The Washington Post, June 14, 2017
“When the president refuses to reveal which benefits he is receiving — much less obtain congressional consent before accepting them — he robs these members of their ability to perform their constitutional role,” Chemerinsky said. “Congressional lawmakers . . . have a duty to preserve the constitutional order in the only way they can: by asking the courts to make the President obey the law.”
Franklin Zimring quoted by KTVU-TV, June 14, 2017
“The number of handguns out there has gone up in the civilian population. … As long as ownership and availability are very high, the capacity of those laws to stand between handguns and people that want to acquire them is quite limited,” Zimring said.
Erwin Chemerinsky quoted by Think Progress, June 13, 2017
“Mandamus of this sort is truly extraordinary and rarely granted,” Erwin Chemerinsky, a constitutional law expert and soon-to-be dean of Berkeley Law, told ThinkProgress via email. “The strong presumption in federal courts, reaffirmed by the Supreme Court as recently as yesterday, is that appellate courts don’t get involved until the trial court proceedings are completed.”