Author: TSA Press

There has been much discussion about student loan bailouts recently.  Indeed, some politicians have proposed paying off a certain amount of student debt for every borrower, and other politicians have even proposed completely paying off everyone’s student debt.  Of course, it is unlikely if any of these proposals will ever get passed, since there is not much political will these days to do much of anything.  In addition, many people have already argued that such proposals would be unfair, since many people take scholarships at lower ranked schools or make other sacrifices to reduce their student debt, and this effort would be undermined by a student loan bailout.  Others have also opined about how such proposals would disproportionately affect the wealthy, since individuals with degrees and a higher income potential might realize the most benefits from a bailout.

Along with these points, it is also important to consider the effect that any student loan bailout would have on the legal pubic sector.  As many people know, individuals who work for the government and nonprofits can typically have their student loans forgiven after 10 years.  Many people pursue public sector jobs for the express purpose of obtaining debt forgiveness, and most lawyers know individuals in this situation.  However, if people had their student debt forgiven by the government, they might not have much incentive to work in public interest fields.

For instance, before I started my own law firm, I worked on a case with the most amazing attorney for a municipality that was also being sued in the matter.  Even though my colleague had double the caseload that I had, he brought his “A game” to every brief, argument, deposition, and other activity related to this case.  I remember one time, we were trying to view surveillance files that had been corrupted and were unable to be opened.  In a last-ditch effort, this attorney told me he tried putting the CD of the surveillance files into his Xbox to see if it would somehow work.  As I am sure everyone would agree, this attorney was dedicated!

Years later, I saw this lawyer on a train, and I told him that the firm I was currently working at was looking to hire new associates.  I told my colleague how impressed I was with his work, and I thought my new firm would pay him much more money than he earned as a government lawyer.  This lawyer appreciated my consideration, but he told me that he needed to work in the public sector for at least 10 years to receive debt repayment.  The amount of debt repayment my colleague would receive exceeded the difference in compensation between his current role and the job at my firm.  In addition, my colleague was already well into his 10 years, and he didn’t want to quit working toward debt repayment after all of the effort he had already put into this program.

Without Public Service Loan Forgiveness, my friend would have had few incentives to stay in the public sector.  Some might argue that public sector jobs often afford greater lifestyle benefits and the opportunity to work on matters in ways not possible in private practice.  However, these incentives are not available in a number of public sector roles.  Indeed, my colleague who was employed for a municipality was overworked and underpaid in the public sector, and he could work on the same types of matters at a firm or by starting his own shop.  Of course, some people like to work in the public sector, since they are doing good and serving others.  However, when it comes down to it, there is currently no better incentive to work in public sector roles than the debt forgiveness that is available through Public Service Loan Forgiveness.

Of course, one could argue that it is not fair for lawyers to be shackled to a career simply because they need to pay off student loans.  It could easily be argued that a student loan bailout would empower attorneys to find jobs that bring them fulfillment separate from the need to pay off their student loans.  In fact, it could be argued that a student loan bailout would empower individuals to enter the public sector, since the need to pay student loans might be keeping attorneys from lower-paid jobs in public interest roles.  Ultimately, one positive aspect about a student loan bailout would be that it would allow attorneys and other individuals to pursue passions rather than stay shackled in certain roles.

In any case, I have already seen a number of articles about how a student loan bailout could affect people’s decisions to enter the military, live in certain parts of the country, and make a number of life decisions. However, it is also worth noting that a student loan bailout would have massive implications on the legal public sector.  Since many dedicated attorneys stay in the public sector to receive debt forgiveness, a student loan bailout could impact the legal services provided to governments and nonprofits.

Jordan Rothman is the Managing Attorney of The Rothman Law Firm, a New Jersey and New York litigation boutique. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jrothman@rothmanlawyer.com.

* A divided House of Representatives voted to “strongly condemn[] President Donald Trump’s racist comments” that were recently lodged against four Democratic congresswomen of color “that have legitimized and increased fear and hatred of new Americans and people of color.” [NBC News]

* Plaintiffs in the census citizenship case are seeking sanctions against the Department of Justice for committing “fraud on the court” after allegedly hiding the truth about the case’s origins during trial. This should be interesting, considering the Supreme Court seemed to agree… [Reuters]

* Which Biglaw firms are playing host to 2020 Democratic presidential candidates? Quite a few, actually! From Milbank to Kirkland to Paul Weiss, these politicians are getting cozy with their future lawyers. [American Lawyer]

* Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner has Pennsylvania Supreme Court to declare the death penalty unconstitutional because he claims it’s arbitrary and racially biased. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

* Salary news you can use: If you’ve got a law degree and you work in a compliance role, you can expect to make more money than your colleagues without JDs at each and every stage of your career. [Corporate Counsel]

* Retired Justice John Paul Stevens, the former leader of the liberal wing of the Supreme Court, RIP. [New York Times]

Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

Despite the large number of large-scale projects being announced or tendered over the past years and the recent introduction of a net metering scheme for rooftop solar, Zimbabwe had only 11 MW of installed solar capacity at the end of December 2018, according to the latest statistics released by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).

Why Law Firms Are Moving to the Cloud

Why Law Firms Are Moving to the Cloud

Clio

SCOTUSblog has confirmed the sad news, on Twitter:

Justice Steven served on the Supreme Court until 2010, when he was succeeded by Justice Elena Kagan.

For lawyers, Stevens will be best known for writing the opinion in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council. Writing for a unanimous court, Stevens wrote what would come to be viewed as the proper deference courts should give to the statutory interpretation of administrative agencies, like the Environmental Protection Agency. It is a key pillar of modern constitutional law, so of course it’s something that Justice Neil Gorsuch evidently wants to tear down.

For non-lawyers, Stevens will be best known for his scathing dissent in Bush v. Gore. When the Supreme Court, along partisan lines, decided to choose the President of the United States, Stevens called a thing a thing:

The [majority opinion] can only lend credence to the most cynical appraisal of the work of judges throughout the land. It is confidence in the men and women who administer the judicial system that is the true backbone of the rule of law. Time will one day heal the wound to that confidence that will be inflicted by today’s decision. One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year’s Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.

Though he retired in 2010, under a not insignificant amount of pressure that then 90-year-old Justice might not survive should President Obama lose his bid for re-election and end up being replaced by a Republican President, Stevens still had a lot left in the tank. His latest book: The Making of a Justice: Reflections on My First 94 Years, was published in May of this year.

Now that everybody knows that retired Justice Stevens is not the same person as current Justice Stephen Breyer, we can all reflect on the life and career of the man.

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and a contributor at The Nation. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

In totally unsurprising news, Attorney General and Trump Bather William Barr declined to bring charges against Daniel Pantaleo, the NYPD officer who choked Eric Garner to death in broad daylight.

To come to this conclusion, Barr had to overrule the recommendation of the Civil Rights division at the Department of Justice, according to two DOJ officials.

Again, none of this is actually surprising. America is a racist country and, within her borders, it is more or less legal for cops to murder black people, so long as that murder is not somewhat obviously premeditated. The prosecutors that Barr went with said that they couldn’t prove the case that Officer Pantaleo “willfully” intended to choke the life out of Garner. Even though Pantaleo placed Garner in an illegal choke-hold, a move banned SINCE 1993 precisely because it leads to death.

Saying you can’t prove an officer strangled another man on purpose even when you have video showing the officer using an illegal strangulation move is like saying you can’t prove gravity exists as you throw black people off a plane, because you can’t see them hit the ground.

But Barr angering his white supremacist president and his white supremacist supporters by prosecuting an officer who merely killed a nonwhite person was never going to happen. Barr can’t even stand up for the rule of law when the Supreme Court orders him to. There was no chance he was going to seek justice on behalf of a black person in America.

In related news, James Alex Fields, the man who killed white woman Heather Hyer, was sentenced to a second life sentence in Virginia today. The judge called Fields’s actions, “an act of terror.”

NYPD officer in Eric Garner’s chokehold death won’t face federal charges [NBC News]

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and a contributor at The Nation. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

According to the ABA, what state massively expanded its roster of attorneys, with a whopping 62 percent more attorneys in the 2019 ABA National Lawyer Population Survey over 2018’s numbers?

Hint: As you might imagine, it takes a smaller state to see a boost that big.

See the answer on the next page.

We refuse to share the silence of most of the Republican caucus in Congress, whose timidity in the face of this abhorrent behavior reflects the debased politics of the day. We add our voices to those who condemn the President’s ignorant racist nature and urge all citizens of whatever party to join us in rejecting a politics of division that is an affront to the rule of law.

— Checks and Balances, an organization of conservative and libertarian lawyers, in a statement released in response to Donald Trump telling a group of minority congresswomen to go back to their own countries… even though they were absolutely born in the United States. It should shock no one that George Conway has signed on, but some other conservative legal luminaries also joined the statement.

The full statement from Checks and Balances (and the full list of signatories) can be found on the next page.

[Ed. Note: The Nation is running a story, “Donald Trump and the Plot to Take Over the Courts” I wrote about Donald Trump’s and Mitch McConnell’s stacking of the federal judiciary. I profile several odious Trump judges. One of those profiles is reprinted, with permission, below. Check out the full piece on thenation.com.]

Don R. Willett
Position: Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals
Age: 53
Hostile to: Civil rights, federal laws, gun regulations

It makes sense that our Twitter president would nominate a Twitter judge. Nearly every story about Texas Judge Don Willett mentions his Twitter feed, mainly because he has one and it’s exceedingly rare for a judge to have any kind of presence on social media. Unlike Trump, Willett has tended to cop an “aww, shucks” Twitter persona, praising his mother and presenting himself as an affable, God-loving family man.

Hidden among the dad jokes and puppy pictures, however, you’ll find a meaner streak that exemplifies his judicial opinions. In one tweet, Willett, a fierce opponent of marriage equality, joked that he could “support recognizing a constitutional right to marry bacon.” In another, he called a transgender woman allowed to play on a girls’ softball team “A-Rod.” Apparently, he’s another cis-dude bro who thinks the transgender-equality movement is just another ruse for people who want to cheat at high school sports.

Since Willett was confirmed to the Fifth Circuit in 2017, his Twitter feed has fallen silent, and we have only his record and his decisions to go on. That record is anything but kind. He previously served on the Texas Supreme Court, and none other than religious-right leader James Dobson of Focus on the Family called Willett the “most conservative” judge on the court—a claim he proudly repeated in a campaign ad.

Touting yourself as the most conservative judge on a court in Texas is like boasting about being the most violent member of your street gang. It’s a terrifying thing to be proud of, even to other members of the gang. But Willett wasn’t fronting; in decision after decision, he backed up his boast.

Prior to the Supreme Court’s decision protecting same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges, Willett refused to extend full faith and credit to same-sex marriages performed in other states. He dissented from an opinion that allowed a same-sex couple to be divorced in Texas. After Obergefell, he did everything he could to delay the implementation of same-sex marriage in Texas by lodging purely procedural objections. He ruled, again post-Obergefell, that the spouses of public workers in same-sex marriages can’t receive employment benefits through their partner.

Even before Willett became a Texas judge, his personal agenda was well documented. He worked for George W. Bush when Bush was governor of Texas. As director of research and special projects, Willett wrote a memo about a proclamation that Bush was set to issue honoring the Texas Federation of Business and Professional Women. That memo leaked. In it, Willett wrote in part:

I resist the proclamation’s talk of “glass ceilings,” pay equity (an allegation that some studies debunk), the need to place kids in the care of rented strangers, sexual discrimination/harassment, and the need generally for better “working conditions” for women (read: more government).

Yes, the man who puts the mention of glass ceilings and better working conditions for women in scare quotes is now a federal judge who may strike down federal laws that seek to ameliorate inequities he thinks have been debunked. And he might someday be a Supreme Court justice. Willett’s name was floated by some hard-core conservatives as a possible nominee when Justice Anthony Kennedy retired. Willett never made the short list for the spot, which eventually went to Brett Kavanaugh, possibly because that old Twitter feed of his included a few disparaging remarks about Trump. (Willett, like many of the GOP faithful, was against Trump before he was for him.)

But on the Fifth Circuit, Willett has done what he could to stay in Trump’s good graces. He wrote a blistering dissent in a Second Amendment case, lamenting that the amendment was “scorned as fringe.” If Willett considered the number of bodies annually sacrificed to the Moloch that is the Second Amendment, he might see why others hold his position in such scorn. But gunmongering is a position that gets the Trump people riled up.

Most important for Trump, Willett was one of two judges behind a controversial ruling in Collins v. Mnuchin for the Fifth Circuit holding that the president could fire the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The FHFA is a minor agency, but the way Willett and his fellow judge described the agency made it sound as if the FHFA were similar in structure to the Federal Reserve. By creating this connection, the decision could someday provide a useful precedent for Trump to dismiss the head of the Federal Reserve if the country’s central bank doesn’t do what Trump wants on interest rates.

Explaining the ruling, ThinkProgress justice editor Ian Millhiser wrote that the Collins decision “is a potential recipe for economic and political disaster—a central banking system subject to the whims of Trump’s reelection campaign.”

That’s the kind of decision the people who read Trump his bedtime stories will notice.

Most people are better humans in real life than they appear to be on Twitter. Willett is the opposite. Twitter is where he went to appear friendly and reasonable. His judicial opinions are where he trolls to own the libs.

Read the full story on The Nation.