Federal Courts
Alien Tort Statute
August 27, 2009 04:40 PM Filed in: Federal
Courts |
International
Law
Today’s Wall Street
Journal has an interesting article about the Alien Tort
Statute, 28 USC 1350, an “arcane law” dating from
1789. (I have to admit, I wasn’t familiar with
it.) According to the article, the statute “has
been used often in recent years to sue major
companies for alleged complicity in crimes
overseas, including torture and murder. Defendants
need only to have regular business contacts with
the U.S. to be vulnerable to lawsuits.”
Here’s the Second Circuit opinion to
which the article refers, for a little more
background.
0 Comments
RECAP update
August 25, 2009 10:22 PM Filed in: Federal
Courts |
Public
Records | Technology
| Intellectual
Property
This item suggests that some caution may be
warranted in using RECAP, the Firefox plug-in
referenced in the August 17, 2009 post, below.
RECAP and PACER
August 17, 2009 08:17 AM Filed in: Federal
Courts |
Public
Records | Technology
| Intellectual
Property
The ABA Journal has an
interesting article about a clever new Firefox
browser plug-in called RECAP, which is intended to expand
access to federal court documents. RECAP
duplicates documents that are accessed through
the PACER website and stores them in a free public
archive. PACER, in contrast, charges eight cents
per page. The “Watch RECAP in Action” video
here shows how it works. It will be
interesting to see how this project progresses and
whether any challenges will be raised. TechCrunch
has a brief discussion of some of the
issues here. As one of the commenters to the
TechCrunch piece points out, one issue is the
inadvertent publication of confidential
information, if a document is subject to a
protective order. I note also that RECAP’s
terms of use purport to shift risk to the
user, and that RECAP’s “About” page raises some questions as to the
legality of RECAP.