The Morning Wrap

Considering the Commissions: U.S. District Judge James Robertson will consider this morning whether the first Guantanamo Bay war crimes trial may go ahead as planned, The Associated Press reports. Salim Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden, is scheduled for trial on Monday, but his lawyers say he should be able to challenge the legality of the system in federal court first.

Personnel Feelings: In early 2003, then Attorney General John Ashcroft tangled with the White House over its pick to run the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which provided the legal justification for warrantless wiretapping and detainee interrogations, The Washington Post reports. Ashcroft submitted a list of names — which included Paul Clement, who would later serve as Solicitor General, Brett Kavanaugh, now a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit — to the White House, but it was dismissed in favor of John Yoo, a onetime OLC deputy who had worked closely with Gonzales and vice presidential adviser David Addington. Ashcroft refused Yoo, and the parties settled on Jack L. Goldsmith, a Defense Department lawyer then on leave from a teaching post at the University of Chicago Law School.

Trial Juries: With little forewarning, South Korea took its first steps this year toward adopting a jury system, The New York Times reports. The jurors play an advisory role for now. The nation’s Supreme Court is to decide which aspects to keep after a trial period of several years. Legal experts tell the Times that the juries, advisory or not, have led to a higher rate of acquittals.

Picking Plaintiffs: A federal judge in New York shot down a proposed co-lead plaintiff for the Monster Worldwide Inc. securities fraud class action, saying the representative knew nothing about the case, the New York Law Journal reports. U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff said the Steamship Trade Association International Longshoremen's Pension Fund (STA-ILA) was "simply the willing pawn of counsel" because it "has no interest in, genuine knowledge of, and/or meaningful involvement in this case."