As reported yesterday, the State of Louisiana has asked the Supreme Court "to revisit its recent decision outlawing the death penalty for people convicted of raping children." Also, the primary author of the filing was Georgetown University law professor Neal Katyal, who previously represented a Guantanamo Bay detainee before the Supreme Court. For more, see Volokh Conspiracy, ABA Journal, New Orleans Times-Picayune, and the Associated Press.
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals threw out "a $550,000 indecency fine against CBS Corp. for the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show that ended with Janet Jackson's breast-baring 'wardrobe malfunction.'" In a 2-1 decision, the Court found that the Federal Communications Commission "acted arbitrarily and capriciously" in issuing the fine for the fleeting image of nudity. You may read the ruling here. The New York Times and Washington Post have more.
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals today affirmed a lower court ruling "that struck down as unconstitutional a 1998 law intended to protect children from sexual material and other objectionable content on the Internet." The decision is "the latest twist in a decade-long legal battle over the Child Online Protection Act." The law, which has yet to come into effect, would "bar Web sites from making harmful content available to minors over the Internet." For more, see Sentencing Law and Policy, Wall Street Journal Blog, and Ars Technica. You can read the ruling here.
Concurring Opinions has an interesting new post entitled: Who is Responsible? The Criminalization of HIV Transmission, which discusses a surge in criminalization of HIV transmission throughout the world. According to the post, many West African countries "have added new statutes on HIV exposure in the past two years," and "there have been high-profile prosecutions in countries as different as Britain and Singapore."
Sentencing Law and Policy directs us to an article discussing "a notable new technology that school[s] are using to try to prevent sex offenders from getting into schools." According to the article, "[t]he device scans a visitor's driver's license to quickly let school personnel know if the visitor is on the national sex offender list."
Recent Comments