The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times

The Morning Wrap

Shaping: The New York Times looks at the history of appointments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, concluding that Chief Justice John Roberts has "been quietly reshaping the secret court." Also in the Times today: "Spy Agencies Under Heaviest Scrutiny Since Abuse Scandal of the '70s."

Predicted: "The notion that because the Voting Rights Act had been so tremendously effective we had to stop it didn't make any sense to me," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in an interview with the Associated Press. "And one really could have predicted what was going to happen." The Justice Department yesterday filed papers in San Antonio federal district court in an effort to force Texas to submit to preclearance. Coverage of the new legal strategy here in The Wall Street Journal.

Admitted: From today's Washington Post: "The oil services giant Halliburton agreed Thursday to plead guilty to destroying evidence during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster in 2010, admitting to one count of criminal conduct and agreeing to pay the $200,000 maximum statutory fine, according to the Justice Department." Read the charging documents here.

Charged: Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have initiated a major insider-trading case against SAC Capital. Am Law Litigation Daily has this report. The NYT's Dealbook has this story: "A Relentless Prosecutor's Crowning Case."

In Leak Case, Prosecutors Allowed to Keep Information Secret

A series of unsealed opinions released today in a high-profile leak case in Washington reveal new information about possible defense strategies and also the scope of documents and information prosecutors will be able to keep secret.

Former U.S. Department of State contractor Stephen Jin-Woo Kim is charged with leaking confidential information about North Korea to Fox News reporter James Rosen. Earlier this year, Kim’s attorneys pressed the government to disclose, in discovery, a trove of information. Until today, Kim's motions, along with the government's responses and subsequent court opinions, were sealed.

Kim's requests ranged from intelligence reports and emails from top national security officials about North Korea to documents about other internal leak investigations. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly denied the bulk of Kim's motions, often finding that they were too broad or, having reviewed unredacted versions of the documents at issue, that they were irrelevant to Kim's defense.

Congress Hears Pleas for Stronger Copyright Protections

Members of a U.S. House of Representatives panel saw copyrights through different lenses Thursday.

Donning special glasses, members of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet viewed a 3-D video clip as part of a hearing that featured music, photo, and movie industry representatives, all touting the economic benefits of strong copyrights. Leaders from the Copyright Alliance, Getty Images Inc., the American Society of Media Photographers, Yep Roc Records and Redeye Distribution Inc., and 3-D moviemaker Stereo D LLC said robust copyright protections are vital for their industries' growth and survival in the digital age.

John Lapham, senior vice president and general counsel of Getty Images, said his company faces challenges with copyright infringement online. The media company has technology in place to pursue pirated content, but it isn't enough, according to Lapham. But Congress can help, he said.

Tony West Confirmed As Associate Attorney General

The Senate confirmed Tony West as associate attorney general in a 98-1 vote on Thursday, making permanent his position as third-in-command at the U.S. Department of Justice.

West, who led the DOJ's Civil Division before being named acting associate attorney general in February 2012, easily navigated through his confirmation hearing in part because of the government's record-breaking use of the False Claims Act. Republicans had not called into question West's qualifications, but they had held up his nomination as part of a broader controversy over the government's handling of a federal whistleblower case in St. Paul, Minn.

Before the vote, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said West in the St. Paul case did not stand up against former DOJ attorney Tom Perez, then the head of the Civil Rights Division. Republicans accused Perez, confirmed as Labor secretary last week, of orchestrating an improper quid pro quo arrangement—walking away from a potentially significant whistleblower recovery in exchange to protect a legal theory, used in discrimination cases, from being reviewed at the U.S. Supreme Court.

Supreme Court Urged to Speed Up Financial Disclosures

By Tony Mauro

A group of open-government advocates is calling on the Supreme Court to improve public access to the financial disclosure forms justices fill out every year. Instead of releasing the documents in paper form through the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts on a delayed basis, and only on request, the groups say the court should make them immediately available online.

"We strongly urge the Court to increase its overall transparency by posting the Justices’ financial disclosure forms on its website as soon as they become available each year, beginning with those filed in 2013," the organizations said in a July 23 letter sent to Chief Justice John Roberts Jr.

"This policy change will make it much easier for interested citizens to access the Justices’ financial information, promoting public confidence in the federal government in general, and in the Supreme Court in particular," according to the letter. "As the highest court in the nation, the Supreme Court would also serve as a powerful model of transparency and openness for the rest of the judiciary—both state and federal."

In making the request, the organizations noted that the president, vice president and members of Congress post their financial disclosures online quickly. "Indeed, the U.S. House and Senate even provide searchable databases containing this information," the letter states.

Verbal Abuse is 'Good Cause' to Quit, D.C. Court Says

When Maria Alvarado worked as a laundry manager at Imperial Valet Services Inc., she was subjected to frequent verbal abuse from her employer, according to testimony she gave after she quit. Her boss, she said, would call her "stupid," "a piece of crap" and other names.

After warning the supervisor not to treat her that way, Alvarado quit. Imperial challenged her request for unemployment compensation benefits, arguing she voluntarily left her job without good cause. After an administrative law judge found in Alvarado's favor, Imperial appealed.

Today, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals sided with Alvarado, finding that an employee who quit because of verbal abuse could make a claim that they left for good cause and apply for benefits. Judge Kathryn Oberly, writing for the three-judge panel, said that although employers had a right to correct employees in a "reasonable manner," employees were not required to put up with "undue verbal abuse."

D.C. Superior Court Senior Judges Up for Review

Three District of Columbia Superior Court judges are up for review, including two senior judges eligible for reappointment and one retiring judge seeking senior status.

The D.C. Commission on Judicial Disabilities and Tenure announced today that it was reviewing the recent performance of senior judges Bruce Mencher and Susan Winfield, and retiring Judge Natalia Combs Greene, who has asked to be a senior judge.

The commission, which evaluates all local judges up for reappointment, is asking for public comment on the three judges by September 5. Unlike associate judges, who serve 15-year terms, senior judges are reviewed every four years, or every two years after age 74.

Justice Dept. to Fight Texas Over Voting Rights Act

The U.S. Department of Justice will take on Texas in the first major voting rights enforcement action since a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June that gutted a key anti-discrimination provision of the historic law.

Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. announced today that the Justice Department would use another section of the Voting Rights Act to ask a federal judge to "bail in" Texas to a requirement called preclearance. The move, if successful, would require Texas to seek Justice Department or judicial approve before making certain electoral changes.

"This is the Department's first action to protect voting rights following the Shelby County decision, but it will not be our last," Holder said at the National Urban League annual conference in Philadelphia this morning. "Even as Congress considers updates to the Voting Rights Act in light of the Court’s ruling, we plan, in the meantime, to fully utilize the law's remaining sections to ensure that the voting rights of all American citizens are protected."

The Morning Wrap

'Crime and Punishment': National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden on Wednesday received some clothes and a copy of "Crime and Punishment," but not a way out of the transit zone of Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, The New York Times reports. "He plans to study Russia's culture," said Antatoly Kucherena, a Russian lawyer assisting Snowden with his asylum request. "He wanted to see Russia and what we talked about with him today, I gave him books."

NSA Proposal: The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday rejected a plan that would have restricted the NSA's power to gather call records and metadata on telephone customers in the United States, Politico reports.

Budget Autonomy: A House committee on Wednesday cleared legislation that would give D.C. some budget autonomy, The Washington Post reports. The bill would allow the city to spend its own taxpayer money if Congress doesn't approve the city's budget at the start of the fiscal year. It also lets D.C. establish its own fiscal calendar.

Chamber of Commerce Spent $19M on Lobbying in Q2

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its affiliated organizations doled out about $19.1 million on advocacy efforts during the past three months, spending roughly $2.3 million more than it did in the previous quarter, according to second-quarter lobbying reports filed with Congress as late as this week.

From April 1 to June 30, the world's largest business federation deployed more than 100 lobbyists to work on hundreds of bills and other matters for it and its Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness, Institute for Legal Reform, and Global Intellectual Property Center. The Chamber's lobbying fell under dozens of categories and business sectors, including banking, telecommunications, and intellectual property.

But Blair Latoff Holmes, a Chamber spokeswoman, said immigration was among the leading issues for the group during the past three months. The organization pushed for the U.S. Senate's latest immigration reform bill, which was passed last month, and is working to help move similar legislation in the House of Representatives.