Category: News Feeds

Monday 8 June 2020 marked day 71 of the national lockdown declared by President Emmerson Mnangagwa and has been in place since 30 March 2020.  The Ministry of Health and Child Care reported an increase in the number of confirmed cases increased to two hundred and eighty-seven (287). The number of cumulative tests done stood at fifty-three thousand six hundred and sixty-eight (53 668). Of these, fifty-three thousand three hundred and eighty-one (53 381) were negative. The number of recoveries increased to forty-six (46) and the death toll remains at four (4).   All the 5 new cases are reported to be people who recently returned from South Africa.

2.0       Methodology
Information contained in this report is derived from the following Forum Members:

• Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP)
• Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA)
• Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR)
• Counselling Services Unit (CSU)
• Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights (ZADHR)
• Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (ZimRights)

6.0  Conclusion
The Forum is concerned with the growing number of citizens defying the lockdown at a time when confirmed COVID-19 cases are on the increase. The Forum, therefore, urges community members to abide by lockdown regulations relating to social distance and the wearing of masks.

Transport challenges have become the greatest risk factor for the spread of COVID-19 within and across cities. The Forum would like to reiterate its calls for the government to facilitate adequate transportation for the commuting public.

The Forum also urges government to effectively manage isolation and quarantine centres with the number of infections on the rise.   Without proper management, isolation centres may become the epicentre of infections.

Post published in: Featured

The proposed amendments are of a fundamental and far-reaching nature interfering with the choice of the citizens who participated in a referendum which birthed the Constitution of 2013 and discarded the Lancaster House Constitution which came into operation on 18 April 1980. The proposed amendments follow the first amendment to the 2013 Constitution which came into effect on 7 September 2017, giving the President powers to unilaterally appoint the Chief Justice, Deputy Chief Justice and Judge President of the High Court.  If the Bill were to pass through, the government would have amended the Constitution twice within a period of just over six years. The Constitution as the supreme law of the land must not be unnecessarily amended.

Amongst other changes, the omnibus Bill proposes the following

1.     Sweeping changes to allow the President to unilaterally appoint and remove the Vice President(s) outside a popular mandate;

2.     Giving the President more powers in the appointment and extension of tenure of judges of superior courts in a way that takes away transparency;

3.     Extending the women’s quarter system and creating additional 10 seats for the youths instead of the government fully implementing the equality clause in section 56 of the Constitution;

4.     Limiting the powers of the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission by placing some of its functions in the hands of a Public Protector appointed solely by the President burdening the fiscus through unnecessary duplication of institutions;

5.     Cutting on parliamentary oversight over agreements entered into by the executive with foreign organizations and companies in a way that interferes with transparency;

6.     Extending Presidential powers in the appointment and removal of the Prosecutor-General and

7.     Extending executive representation by unelected officials in Cabinet increasing burden on the fiscus, among others.

Read the full petition HERE

The running theme in the proposed amendments is cutting back on checks and balances and separation of powers. Furthermore, some of the proposed amendments are interfering with provisions that have not been tested yet. The Forum calls for the implementation of the Constitution and says no to tinkering with it.

Post published in: Featured

This is to ensure that citizens are not exposed to COVID-19 and that citizens’ voices are heard and respected during the Public Hearings on the proposed but absolutely unnecessary  Constitutional  Amendment No. 2.

The Public Hearings on Constitutional Amendment Bill No2 were initially scheduled to take place from 29 March to 3 April but were suspended together with all parliamentary activities from 18 March to 5 May 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Parliament of Zimbabwe must ensure that Covid-19 preventative measures are in place before any public hearings commence. It is strange that the public hearings are resuming at a time when the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) has suspended all electoral activities citing Covid-19 regulations.

Some of the key Covid-19 measures announced by the government which have a huge effect on citizens’ contributions to this process include maintaining social distance at all times, wearing face masks outdoors, limiting unnecessary travel and travel restrictions locally and between towns and cities, except for those providing essential services, and a ban on gatherings of more than 50 people.

The Coalition takes this opportunity to highlight that the civil society and other pro-democracy forces have said NO to Constitutional Amendment Bill No2 for what it is, a mockery to democracy, a recipe for disaster and a violation of the principle of separation of powers.

The Coalition notes that even after civil society and other pro-democracy forces have urged the government to stop the Constitutional Amendment Bill No2 and build consensus among the people of Zimbabwe, the government is hell-bent on using the COVID19 for autocratic overreach.

The Constitutional Amendment Bill No2 seeks to amend 28 provisions of which 20 of them are election-related. The next general election is in 2023, why is the government in such a hurry to amend the constitution to the extent of doing it under the cover of devastating pandemic?. The amendment does not in any way make our democracy better. Why are we in a race back to our past? This act by parliament is a recipe for disaster and a mockery to democracy even by Zimbabwe’s standards.

We, therefore, reiterate our call that no amendments should take place without implementing fully the 2013 Constitution. In light of the proposed Public Hearings and the objections by the CiZC and other pro-democracy forces and citizens, we urge Parliament to review the proposed public hearings dates until the following is addressed and or guaranteed:-

1. Ensure that citizens participation is guaranteed considering the current lockdown measures which limit movement especially those not providing essential services.
2. Clearly outline safety measures to reduce the spread of Covid-19 during all outreach activities
3. Ensure that all key stakeholders including civil society organisations are considered providers of essential services to allow them to conduct outreach activities to educate citizens on the proposed constitutional amendments before the proposed public hearings

Post published in: Featured

Flatten the Research Curve

Flatten the Research Curve

Wolters Kluwer

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

According to Pre-Law Magazine’s Best Schools For Practical Training, which law school provides the best practical training?

Hint: The ranking focused on a number of “key practical training offerings” including clinics, externships, simulation courses, pro bono hours, and moot trial participation.

See the answer on the next page.

As law firms struggle to demonstrate to clients and their own attorneys that they take societal ills seriously, Kathryn’s starting to notice some patterns in the statements getting released. Meanwhile, Joe is covering the state bar exams, where many are continuing to insist on shoving hundreds of people into small rooms in July and making applicants sign away their rights for the privilege of exposing themselves to disease.

Thanks to Logikcull for sponsoring.

And be sure to check out our Special Reports podcast, the ATL COVID Cast, discussing the unexpected ways that the outbreak will change the legal landscape.

Michael Avenatti is out of jail right now due to the outbreak of COVID-19, but that doesn’t mean he’s out of the woods. The attorney who dominated the news in 2018 is now facing a slew of federal charges related to alleged embezzling and he’s already been convicted on extortion charges and things may have just gotten worse for him because federal prosecutors in the case proceeding against him in California have informed the judge that they think Avenatti violated the terms of his release and they want some answers.

The terms of his release barred Avenatti from having any access to the internet, presumably to prevent him from being able to get into any mischief online. But that’s just a useful canard — he can’t use the internet because he couldn’t use it in jail and in facing the unprecedented challenges of the pandemic, prosecutors are hoping to replicate captivity in any way possible. That includes holding Avenatti without access to the 21st century.

But he’s got his own defense to look after so there’s a carve-out in his original terms:

Although defendant may not possess, use, or access any internet-enabled digital devices, this Order does not preclude defendant’s legal counsel from emailing legal documents to defendant’s third-party custodian, Jay Manheimer, so that defendant’s third-party custodian can print them for defendant to review. Defendant may also access and use an internet-enabled digital device while in the presence of defendant’s legal counsel, solely for the purpose of preparing his defense in this case and in the two pending prosecutions in the Southern District of New York (“SDNY”), United States v. Avenatti, No. 1:19-cr-373-PGG (SDNY), and United States v. Avenatti, No. 1:19-cr-374-JMF (SDNY).

Prosecutors cry foul that the metadata of a number of recent filings in the case show Jay Manheimer as the author, suggesting Avenatti has been writing documents in his own defense. They even point to a recent conference where Avenatti knew what the filings said as proof that he couldn’t possibly have just read them.

The horror!

This all assumes his counsel wasn’t present while Avenatti and he worked on these documents in compliance with the agreement. If counsel wasn’t present, using a computer that one assumes could reach the internet is certainly a violation of the terms of the release, but if the purpose of this provision was to limit Avenatti’s access to the internet, typing up his own defense filings doesn’t seem to implicate the purpose of the restriction.

Given that the biggest complaint prosecutors have in the case is Avenatti dragging down discovery and blaming it on lack of access to the materials due to the terms of his release. Just give him a computer and let him get on with his defense. If he can draft his filings faster with a computer that would seem to be in everyone’s interests.

A day after prosecutors filed 33 pages describing in pearl-clutching detail their concern that Avenatti may have touched a keyboard to write something on a local drive and demanding an inquiry, Judge James Selna nipped this whole thing in the bud with a straightforward set of amended conditions:

To ensure that defendant is able to review the discovery in this matter and the other pending prosecutions involving defendant in the Southern District of New York, defendant may use and possess a computer so long as the computer’s ability to access the internet has been disabled and remains disabled.

Software will be applied to ensure that the computer doesn’t reach the outside world.

Judge Selna refrained from writing in bold, “see how easy that was, now shut up,” and we all appreciate the restraint that must have taken.

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.

[A]s I look at the quickly changing opinions, I can’t help but wonder whether the General Counsels of America’s top companies, Black and white, are listening. Do they finally get the necessity for big change in the legal profession to calibrate the scales? Will they finally step up to the plate and aggressively address the inequalities or will they refrain to the convenient, easy and usual by endorsing another letter fecklessly decrying the lack of diversity on their matters, without more.

Will these self-described supporters of diversity and opportunity in the profession finally step-up and engage in meaningful efforts to address the lack of accessibility to meaningful work, business and opportunities for Black and other minority lawyers? Or will they simply fall back on the same old explanation that they are expecting the law firms that they use to self-regulate and do more to diversify and provide professional opportunities to Black people; notwithstanding the absurdity of that proposition. Will they again provide my people of color scraps and meaningless amounts of work or will they step up and offer real and lasting change?

— Donald Prophete, a partner at Constangy, Brooks, Smith & Prophete, in a moving essay published at Corporate Counsel, where he calls for general counsels to stop relying on law firms to moove the needle on diversity and do some of the work themselves by offering meaningful work to people of color. “[I]t’s true that no Black lawyer has ever died from asphyxiation from a literal knee on his neck in one of the law firms’ ivory towers. At least not to my knowledge,” he writes. “However, I can provide a list a mile long of able lawyers whose careers have been asphyxiated by the knee on the neck of lack of opportunity to good work, good files, objective measurement and access to the same business opportunities as their white counterparts.”

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.

Imagine sitting down to take your crim law final, and about halfway through you find out the professor gave the wrong exam. That finals nightmare scenario is all too real for some law students.

As reported by Legal Cheek, that’s exactly what happened to final-year law students at the University of Oxford. What takes it to next level f-up is that halfway through that the exam they were told it was the wrong one, as students have complained:

“Not only that the faculty could be so monumentally stupid as to have given us the wrong paper in the first place, but also to send us an incoherent email about it halfway through the exam, and fail to apologise for the mistake”.

And it isn’t the first law exam mistake this term at Oxford. During the land law final there was a problem with the instructions. Before the test began, they were told to answer four questions including at least one problem question. But when they got the exam it said to answer two problem questions. Oh, and only some of the students were even notified about the snafu, as students in the class have complained:

“It’s disappointing but not unprecedented that an exam should contain a typo. What is shocking is that the fact of the mistake wasn’t immediately communicated to everyone taking the exam and clear instructions given about whether to follow the conventions or the exam. That is what would have been done in an in-person, invigilated exam.”

Another noted:

“It is even more surprising that only some candidates were told that there would be no penalty for breaching the exam rubric. Forcing students to work out, in the middle of an exam, whether they should ‘break’ the rules to perform best, while only some are told that there will be no consequences for doing so, ironically raises some interesting jurisprudential questions about obedience to law. I would have preferred to deal with those in the jurisprudence paper, rather than in the land paper.”

In both instances, students impacted were told to fill out a self-assessment of mitigating circumstances form. A spokesperson for the University of Oxford said:

“We will not comment on individual papers while the exam process is ongoing. However, the University has always had process in place so errors can be flagged in the conduct of exams. This process has been adjusted for this year’s open-book exams and communicated to all students sitting these exams. Exam boards will take any errors into consideration when finalising marks.

Definitely a bad sign for remote exams.

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).