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Ed. Note: Welcome to our daily feature Trivia Question of the Day!

How many U.S. senators have been expelled from Congress? The expulsion of all but one of the senators on this ignominious list came in 1861 and 1862 for supporting the Confederate rebellion.

Hint: William K. Sebastian’s expulsion was posthumously reversed in 1877, but you should still count him for purposes of this question.

See the answer on the next page.

Once, I attended a business function as the only woman among many men. This was not, however, an unusual occurrence; as a female general counsel, I had faced many interesting situations.

On this occasion, a man came up to me and asked me who I was with. I regarded him for a second, took a rather dramatic sip of my water, and brushed my hair back a little, really savoring it. I imagined myself in a James Bond movie and said, “Sir, tonight I am unsupervised. Imagine all the damage I can do.”

Perhaps that might have been a little undiplomatic, but there was some built-up frustration in that area — he was just the person unfortunate enough to place the last straw on the camel’s back. Fortunately, there’s more to the story because it was also the incident that pushed me to do a little research on the issue.

In my research, I found that very few Fortune 500 companies had any female representation on their boards. Instead of getting outraged, though, I took that same fire that I could have used for anger and lit a passion inside me instead. I took it upon myself to bring this issue to light, and, for several months, I tweeted and shared satirical posts calling out Fortune 500 companies for having no female representation.

The response exceeded my expectations, with my actions garnering momentum. Before I knew it, something of a small movement had started to form.

All of this was great, but one of the biggest disappointments of our time is that we have given people so many platforms while achieving little progress. Social media gives everyone a voice, one which might resonate with people, but a voice can’t enforce change until the words take paper form. Not just any kind of paper either; I’m talking about laws.

Within the span of a few months, that passionate fire within me had remolded me from a lawyer into a lobbyist. I took on drafting and pushing for California Bill 826, focused on equal opportunity and promotion within corporate boards for different races and genders.

You see, real change is structured change. Changing the law changes the baseline. Before the bill was even passed, Fortune 500 companies were already becoming early adopters of the idea behind it, with several women joining their companies’ executive staff.

That’s not even the best part. While those were the immediate effects, there was an unexpected one that followed — one that is more overall beautiful. I started getting feedback, from graduates and girls preparing to go to college, that their dreams had changed. That they started to see themselves as lawyers, CEOs, board members, and more.

Young women fresh out of school told me about their plans to make it to the board room, telling me exactly how they were going to get there. It was quite moving.

That’s the real beauty of law — it doesn’t just challenge hierarchies and social complexes, it also tears down the inferiority complexes in the minds of 16-year-old girls.

It moves the horizon closer, expanding its reach and granting people more room to dream while removing space between them and their dreams.

That is why the law is the director of dreams. It tears down obstacles and opens the door between dreams and reality. You can hear more about this in this Legally Speaking Podcast, Forbes Features Miniseries with Robert Hanna.

What laws will make structural changes that move the horizon closer in 2021?

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Olga V. Mack is the CEO of Parley Pro, a next-generation contract management company that has pioneered online negotiation technology. Olga embraces legal innovation and had dedicated her career to improving and shaping the future of law. She is convinced that the legal profession will emerge even stronger, more resilient, and more inclusive than before by embracing technology. Olga is also an award-winning general counsel, operations professional, startup advisor, public speaker, adjunct professor, and entrepreneur. She founded the Women Serve on Boards movement that advocates for women to participate on corporate boards of Fortune 500 companies. She authored Get on Board: Earning Your Ticket to a Corporate Board Seat and Fundamentals of Smart Contract Security. You can follow Olga on Twitter @olgavmack.

As we’ve seen, lots of people are bravely departing the Trump train with almost a whole fortnight to go. Larry Kudlow, however, will loyally remain on board until the bitter end. Not literally, of course: He’s getting some well-earned, taxpayer-funded R&R in these Final Days.

After the events of last week, the political fates of Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz will forever be intertwined. The pair of senators have superficial similarities in their resumes — each attended an elite law school on their way to becoming Republican senators — but their personal quest for power and acclaim has cemented the duo.

You’ll recall, even before the coup attempt turned violent, they were busy trying to subvert the will of the people by leading the effort to object to the electoral college… a move that was scorned by fellow alums of Harvard and Yale Law. But that wasn’t the end of Hawley’s and Cruz’s petition problems — another one is make the rounds.

The latest legal industry petition was drafted by Yale Law School students and it’s seeking the disbarment of Hawley and Cruz. The petition went live on January 8th, and already some big names, including Senator Russ Feingold, former chief White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter, Harvard Law Professors Laurence Tribe and Michael Klarman, retired U.S. Court of Appeals Judge H. Lee Sarokin, and prominent activist Valarie Kaur, have signed on. As Chandini Jha, a Yale Law student involved in drafting the petition, said, the senators actions run contrary to upholding the rule of law:

“During my legal ethics class, we learned that no lawyer should commit criminal actions that reflect adversely on their honesty or trustworthiness, or engage in dishonest, fraudulent, or deceptive actions. In attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election by fanning false claims of voter fraud and inciting an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, that’s precisely what Senators Hawley and Cruz have done. Nobody is above the ethical rules, even members of the United States Senate.”

The petition goes on to link Hawley’s and Cruz’s actions to the violence at the Capitol:

Senators Hawley and Cruz directly incited the January 6th insurrection, repeating dangerous and unsubstantiated statements regarding the election and abetting the lawless behavior of President Trump. A violent mob attacked the U.S. Capitol. Five people have died. The nation and the world watched as rioters took over the very halls and chambers that embody our democracy. Yet after the violence and terror of the day’s events, Senators Hawley and Cruz still chose to stand in the chamber of the U.S. Senate and persist in their baseless objections to the will of the people.

It remains to be seen whether disbarment will be one of the consequences the senators face.

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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

Parler, the social media microblogging app for users to connect and share thoughts on interests ranging from sports to ethnic cleansing, received word over the weekend that Amazon Web Services would suspend hosting services effective last night. After scrambling to find an alternative host and failing to find any other web services provider keen on tying their brand name to the burgeoning home of the 1,000-character Reich, Parler did what any red-blooded American would do and filed a lawsuit.

In a complaint filed this morning in the Western District of Washington, Parler seeks a temporary restraining order to force Amazon to put the app back up as well as damages based on breach of contract, tortious interference, and, most astoundingly, violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act!

The contract claims are straightforward. AWS and Parler agreed to a contract that requires a 30-day notice to allow the other party to cure a material breach. Without reading the deal, it’s hard to say whether or not Parler has a point here. Technically, AWS has only suspended Parler and it’s likely that their argument will be that it has the right to do so for 30 days until satisfied that Parler has cured the breach. One hopes that AWS has lawyers who thought this through when drafting the boilerplate deal. Meanwhile, the tortious interference claim is based on the theory that AWS has muddied Parler’s contractual relationship with all the militia members it signed up.

It’s not clear what Parler’s endgame is here. AWS could give them another 30 days and then boot them and the company would be right back where it is now. GoDaddy isn’t going to change its mind about getting into bed with Parler based on a one-month reprieve.

But it’s the antitrust claim that wins all the prizes for novelty. Contractual claims were obvious, but this is truly a chef’s kiss level of creative lawyering:

32. Less than a month ago, AWS and Parler’s competitor, Twitter, entered into a multi-year deal. Late Friday evening, Twitter banned President Trump from using its platform, thereby driving enormous numbers of its users to Parler. Twenty-four hours later, AWS announced it would indefinitely suspend Parler’s account.

33. AWS’s reasons for doing so are not consistent with its treatment of Twitter, indicating a desire to harm Parler.

34. By suspending Parler’s account, AWS will remove from the market a surging player, severely restraining commerce in the microblogging services market.

Ten points to Slytherin.

Unpacking this claim, Parler alleges that Twitter had a trending Tweet threatening violence against Mike Pence over the weekend, and therefore argues that Amazon’s decision to punish Parler but not Twitter revealed a business interest in protecting the giant blue bird. From there, the complaint jumps to the conclusion that Twitter faced the mass defection of thousands of users to Parler and used its power to protect its preferred partner. It’s unclear why AWS would care which service someone used, since it was getting paid by both platforms, and shutting down Parler only risks users departing for platforms like Gab or Rumble that are not — as far as I can tell — AWS customers. So if this is a monopolistic effort, it would seem to be a bad one.

Yet somehow, in all of this, a platform based on giving voice to white grievance and Confederate nostalgia turning to a Sherman brother for deliverance rings out as that special dose of irony I personally needed to get me through another day of 2021 nonsense.

(Full complaint on the next page.)

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Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

Can we go a half day with the impeachment and a half day getting my people nominated and confirmed in the Senate as well as moving on the [coronavirus stimulus] package? I haven’t gotten an answer from the Parliamentarian yet.

— President-elect Joe Biden, explaining during a news conference that he’d like to find ways to advance his administration’s agenda while Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial is ongoing. Biden said he’d already spoken to House and Senate Democrats about whether it would be possible to “bifurcate” their business.

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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.

Change is constant in the legal profession. Even during an unprecedented pandemic, lawyers are expected to keep up with an evolving legal landscape as they deepen their practice, define their career goals, and deliver for clients. That’s where Practising Law Institute (PLI) comes in. For over eighty years, PLI has provided training and resources for lawyers at all stages of their careers. Craig Miller, PLI’s Interim President, provides an inside look at how the organization that practically invented CLE is responding to unprecedented times.

How did PLI come to be?

Imagine yourself a young lawyer in 1933. It’s the height of the Great Depression. FDR has just been sworn in as President and the first one hundred days of New Deal legislation occurs. Massive changes to the legal and regulatory landscape are underway, impacting banking, securities, agriculture, energy, and so much more. Court challenges will ensue. Overseas, Germany’s newly appointed Chancellor is Adolf Hitler.

That’s a blistering rate of change for lawyers to keep up with. Our founder, Harold P. Seligson, saw the need for those in the profession to keep learning long after they earned their JDs. And that’s a need we continue to meet to this day.

We do this by offering over 10,000 hours of accredited continuing legal and other education programs in a variety of formats; by publishing over 100 titles each year through our PLI Press publishing division; and through other initiatives such as our online One-Hour Briefings and our podcasts on pro bono and securities law.

How has PLI adapted to serve customers during the COVID-19 pandemic?

For an octogenarian organization, PLI has always been quite progressive when it comes to serving our customers. Well before the pandemic, we saw that people needed more flexibility to attend our programs online and on their own schedules, so we have been producing live webcasts and online on-demand programming for years now. These capabilities have kept our CLE programs going seamlessly while everyone is remote. On the publishing side, because we knew that customers were unable to access books at their offices, we extended access to PLI PLUS so they could use these publications online.

Getting timely information to our customers – and the legal market as a whole – is always central to our mission. As soon as the pandemic materialized, our team worked relentlessly to provide essential COVID-19-related content and make it easily discoverable on our website. I am also proud to note that PLI published the first in-depth book on the pandemic’s legal issues.

These days, lawyers who simply need to earn CLE credits have many options. What makes PLI different?

We’re a nonprofit, membership-based organization, so our business model is unique. Because we have such a strong reputation, we’re fortunate to attract a stellar volunteer faculty from preeminent law firms, corporate legal departments, law schools, the bench, the government, and more. They share our goal of strengthening the profession and the rule of law.

Pro bono is at the heart of our mission and we strongly believe in supporting practitioners who work to ensure access to justice. Our Members not only benefit from the wide array of programs we offer, but also help support the training that other lawyers and nonprofit groups use to advocate effectively for pro bono clients like disabled veterans, victims of natural disasters, and the indigent.

Our Members are a community – they come to us for more than just CLE credits, and we take our responsibility to them very seriously.

How can smaller law firms and individual practitioners take advantage of your offerings?

Our membership model is designed for firms of any size, location or practice area. Privileged Members get unlimited access to our CLE programs and learning resources for an annual fee. Our team handles all credit and compliance matters upfront and helps you monitor CLE credits and deadlines through our popular My Credit Tracker tool. For solo practitioners, we also offer Individual Memberships, which afford all of the above for a reasonable flat annual fee.

Many firms of all sizes also take advantage of our PLI PLUS online research database, which provides unlimited access to our full collection of treatises, course handbooks, legal forms, program transcripts, journals and answer books.

In addition, 501(c)(3) organizations that meet criteria can gain Pro Bono Privileged Memberships, and scholarship applications are available to others seeking training.

Finally – what’s with the funny spelling of “practising”?

It’s not the style now, but the spelling was much more common in the ‘30s! I see it as a nod to the long and proud history of our organization – we always strive to innovate and grow, but we stay true to our roots and to our mission.

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Practising Law Institute is a nonprofit learning organization dedicated to keeping attorneys and other professionals at the forefront of knowledge and expertise. PLI is chartered by the Regents of the University of the State of New York and was founded in 1933 by Harold P. Seligson. The organization provides the highest quality, accredited, continuing legal and professional education programs in a variety of formats which are delivered by more than 4,000 volunteer faculty including prominent lawyers, judges, investment bankers, accountants, corporate counsel, and U.S. and international government regulators. PLI publishes a comprehensive library of Treatises, Course Handbooks, Answer Books and Journals also available through the PLI PLUS online platform. The essence of PLI’s mission is its commitment to the pro bono community. View PLI’s upcoming live webcasts here.

As the House moves toward impeachment, there’s another opportunity for attorneys to debase themselves for the sake of 15 minutes of constitutional infamy and, as predictably as the majestic salmon returns upstream to its natal river, Alan Dershowitz has jumped to the head of that line. The Harvard Law legend turned headache told the Boston Herald that he’s pumped about the opportunity to engage in another charade of a trial to fig leaf a nakedly political Senate vote:

Dershowitz, a Harvard Law School professor emeritus and celebrity lawyer who was part of Trump’s legal team during his first U.S. Senate impeachment trial, told the Herald he’s up for defending the president again.

“I would do it,” Dershowitz said. “I think his speech was protected by the First Amendment.”

And the feeling is apparently mutual! Donald Trump is reportedly eyeing Dershowitz and Rudy Giuliani to defend him before the Senate in a buddy comedy about two once-lauded attorneys teaming up for one last score. What misadventures will these two get up to!?

That is, of course, if there is an impeachment trial, which Dershowitz is adamant cannot happen:

Dershowitz added that “the Constitution specifically says the president shall be removed from office upon impeachment.” He said that because it does not say “the former president,” the Senate’s “jurisdiction is limited to a sitting president,” barring the possibility of a trial.

This is poppycock based on a deliberately superficial reading of the text. As Professor Michael Gerhardt explains in Just Security:

The Constitution provides that the President “shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors,” but it says nothing about the timing of when the impeachment and trial may take place. That omission makes sense, since presidents – and any other impeachable officials – could commit impeachable offenses at any time while they are in office, including in their last months or days in their positions.  It certainly makes no sense for presidents who commit misconduct late in their terms, or perhaps not discovered until late in their terms, to be immune from the one process the Constitution allows for barring them from serving in any other federal office or from receiving any federal pensions.

Dershowitz cabins his willingness to go down the red pill rabbit hole once again in the high-minded rhetoric of defending the First Amendment. To his mind, nothing Trump said to a rowdy crowd of rioters who cheered on efforts to kidnap the governor of Michigan, invade state capitols, and spent the last couple of weeks openly discussing an effort to kill Mike Pence, could have possibly amounted to incitement.

Whether telling an angry mob to go to the Capitol and “fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country any more” after your lawyer told them to engage in “trial by combat” meets the Brandenburg test is certainly a question. Was the speech “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action,” and was the speech “likely to incite or produce such action”? It’s hard to say it wasn’t.

But that’s not really relevant to an impeachment.

An impeachment does not require that a president take an action that would otherwise result in criminal conviction. The overwhelming balance of constitutional scholarship — which Dershowitz admits — concludes that a “crime” is unnecessary for convicting and removing an officer under the impeachment provision. The fact that Trump’s actions were at least, for lack of a better term, incitement-esque is enough for the Senate to convict him. And, importantly, to strip him of his post-presidential perks or his ability to hold future office.

Despite this, Dershowitz is working overtime in the media to craft the false narrative that an impeachment presents a unique danger to constitutional order. As he told Fox News:

The professor said that impeaching a president for his words would set a precedent that was not envisioned by the framers of the Constitution.

“It would lie around like a loaded weapon ready to be used by either party against the other party,” he said, “and that’s not what impeachment or the 25th Amendment were intended to be.”

A memory from law school that still resonates with me involves a student who balked at the professor’s hypothetical citing a slippery slope of imagined consequences prompting the professor to say, “That’s great, but let’s say the slippery slope ends exactly where I said it did and you try actually answering the question.”

Maybe we can all agree to hold the line on this impeachment at “sending an armed mob to try and hang the Vice President” and if it ever comes up again, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Alan Dershowitz says he would defend Trump in another impeachment trial [Boston Herald]
Dershowitz calls Trump impeachment a ‘loaded weapon’ that would be ‘so dangerous to the Constitution’ [Fox News]

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Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

Hoo boy. We’re all still trying to unpack what happened last Wednesday when right-wing fanatics launched an assault on the Capitol. Participants are being identified, consequences are being had and arrests are being made.

January 6th will now be known as a dark day in our history. As I’ve said before, there’s plenty of blame to go around, and it’s important to know exactly who did what. Like how Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, expressed her “LOVE” to the demonstrators just a few hours before the violent insurrection began. (Days later she amended the post to add “[Note: written before violence in US Capitol].”)

Over at Slate, Mark Joseph Stern details Ginni Thomas’s support of the rioters. Ginni has long been active politically (and she has no problem hiring controversial right wingers known for saying “I HATE BLACK PEOPLE”). She currently runs a conservative advocacy group, and from the very beginning of Trump’s term, she’s been looking to organize around his agenda.

As Stern points out, despite the brazen political advocacy of his wife, Clarence Thomas has never recused himself in any of the cases surrounding issues she’s involved with, and has reaped the benefits of supporting Trump.

In turn, Trump has rewarded Thomas with an extraordinary amount of access to the Oval Office. Her advocacy group Groundswell got an audience with the president in early 2019. According to the New York Times, the meeting was arranged after Clarence and Ginni Thomas had dinner with the Trumps. (Clarence Thomas and Trump appear to be quite friendly: The justice took his clerks to meet with the president in the Oval Office at least once; Ginni attended as well.) At the White House, Groundswell’s members lobbied Trump against transgender service in the military, which he already prohibited in 2017. The ban took effect in 2019, around the time of Groundswell’s meeting, after the Supreme Court lifted lower court orders blocking it by a 5–4 vote. (Clarence Thomas did not recuse himself from the case; he has never recused from any case because of his wife’s lobbying activities.) The New York Times also reported that Ginni Thomas compiled lists of federal employees whom she deemed insufficiently loyal to the president. She sent her lists to Trump, urging him to fire the disloyal employees, though he seems to have largely ignored her. He has, however, stacked his administration with former Thomas clerks.

But this is nothing new — remember there are no hard and fast rules about recusal on SCOTUS; indeed, Thomas refused to recuse himself on the ACA case despite Ginni’s vocal opposition to, and work on defeating, the law.

What Ginni actually did was bad enough, but there’s also a rumor circulating on social media that Ginni Thomas funded some 80+ buses to get rioters to the Capitol. Rumors, however, are far from 100 percent accurate. And indeed this one appears false (as also sleuthed by Mark Joseph Stern) though based on a combination of her former association with Turning Point USA (she once served on their advisory council) and Charlie Kirk’s claim that that group and a related one sent 80+ buses to the Capitol.

Though she didn’t directly pay for people to attend, her support of their actions still speaks volumes.

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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).