Tony Mauro and Marcia Coyle bring us a look at the Chicago gun case that will be heard this fall in the U.S. Supreme Court. In McDonald v. Chicago, the Court examines whether the right to carry a firearm applies against state and local gun restrictions as well as federal. The case, a sequel to last year's D.C. v. Heller, could intensify a debate about the best way to apply or incorporate rights embodied in the U.S. Constitution to states, Mauro and Coyle write.
The Hot List. Check out the eighth annual National Law Journal Plaintiffs' Hot List. Readers nominated firms in the United States that did, in the words of assistant managing editor Michael Moline, "exemplary, cutting-edge work" on the plaintiffs' side between the summer of 2008 and the summer of 2009. Among the highlights, reporter Jeff Jeffrey explores Milberg LLP's bounce back following a federal indictment in 2005. Click here for the full list.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has hired Washington lobbyist A. Elizabeth Jones to help the church navigate a bureaucratic quagmire in Italy, reporter Carrie Levine writes. Jones, a former high-level State Department employee and ambassador to Kazakhstan, is now an executive vice president at APCO Worldwide. The church is fighting for legal status in Italy. The push, Levine writes, is the first time a lobbyist has registered with the federal government on behalf of the church.
Jordan Weissmann and Tony Mauro write about a sexual harassment suit filed against George Mason University School of Law. Kyndra Rotunda, director of a legal assistance clinic for military service members, filed suit against George Mason University, law school Dean Daniel Polsby and Joseph Zengerle. The suit, filed in the the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, last month survived a motion to dismiss. The defendants have denied all allegations of wrongdoing.
Chief Judge Paul Michel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit sits down with reporter Sheri Qualters to talk about, among other things, encouraging lawyers to seek full-court review of thorny issues in older case law. "What is missing is bolder approaches," Michel told The National Law Journal. "Lawyers assume that somehow we have a direct pipeline to God and they assume that it's settled forever [when we make a decision], but it isn't. It may need to be revisited."
Reporter Amanda Bronstad examines the move among some firms outside California to jump into the world of entertainment law, breaking through barriers that have frustrated more than one East Coast firm's ambition to go Hollywood. Most top law firms based outside California have shied away from launching entertainment practices, Bronstad writes. "The firm doesn't matter as much as the lawyers there," General Counsel David Friedman of Summit Entertainment LLC told the NLJ.
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