More like this please. Judge Rakoff shows bank regulators how it's done!

The Supreme Court has it figured out. Corporations are persons, so they need to be able to own people, just like people own corporations. But they can't be held accountable, and neither can their humans.

An important new filing by military JAG defense counsel in the Military Commission proceeding USA v. KSM, et al. challenges the validity of the 2006 MCA, which has been passed in revised form by the Senate as part of its FY 2010 Defense Authorization Act.

The refrain from Washington has been that we need to look forward and not investigate credible allegations of wrongdoing. Such an approach has become something of a Beltway tradition, but this time it looks especially perverse. For more on pruning back executive power see Pruning Shears.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals today rejected the appeal by Philip Morris that the company has a first amendment right to sell its killer products wherever it pleases. San Francisco's law preventing pharmacies, seen by consumers as retail establishments that sell things that are good for you, from selling tobacco must now withstand another challenge from the pharmacy retail industry itself.

Pillars at SCOTUS via David Paul Ohmer. The full transcript from yesterday's Citizens United arguments has been released by SCOTUS. SCOTUSblog has links to both the transcript and the tape of oral argument, made available from PBS Newshour. Depending on the outcome of the case, there could be a reversal of laws which sought to balance speech rights against a compelling interest to prevent public corruption that go all the

The Citizens United case will be re-argued today before SCOTUS. As Robert Barnes put it, this is yet another test of stare decisis in a period where that hallowed doctrine has been repeatedly tested since Justice Roberts took the helm. And, more precisely, it "raises new ones about the boldness of a court that has moved to the right with the addition of Roberts and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr."

The last brief has just been filed in support of summary judgment in al-Haramain v. Obama. The critical states secrets case of the Bush/Cheney era is now set to be argued and decided by the court.

This is supposed to be a bipartisan occasion, there's no point in arguing over who tortured who.

Civil liberties extremists felt they had reason to celebrate when Barack Obama was elected President. It now appears that those celebrations were not justified.