The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times

Roberts Warns of Impact of Budget Cuts on Judiciary

UPDATED AT 8:14 p.m.

In his annual year-end report on the federal judiciary, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. on Tuesday warned that continued severe budget cuts would result in courtroom layoffs, trial delays and a “deepening threat to public safety at courts around the country.”

Perpetuating “a hard freeze at the sequester level,” Roberts said, would extend an emergency $15-per-hour rate reduction for private lawyers representing indigent criminal defendants, and reduced security for court personnel. It would also “pose a genuine threat to public safety” by postponing criminal trials, while delays on the civil side would mean “commercial uncertainty, lost opportunities and unvindicated rights.”

Roberts said he would have preferred to focus on other matters in his annual report, but “the budget remains the single most important issue facing the courts.” The entire federal judiciary accounts for just two-tenths of one percent of total federal outlays, he noted, but the cuts imposed by sequestration have severely hampered court operations.

Sotomayor Will Count Down to New Year in Times Square

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s voice may be the last you hear in 2013. The Bronx native has agreed to press the button that starts the descent of the New Year’s Eve ball in New York’s Times Square, and to lead the televised final 60-second countdown to 2014 tonight.

“Justice Sotomayor is an inspiration to many, and it is a privilege to welcome her to our celebration to ring in 2014,” Times Square Alliance President Tim Tompkins said in announcing the news. “Who better to join us in the crossroads of the world than one of New York’s own?”

“We are honored to have Justice Sotomayor join us as our special guest this year to lead the 60-second countdown to the New Year,” added Jeffrey Straus, president of Countdown Entertainment, which represents the owners of One Times Square. “She is an inspiration to everyone determined to achieve their dreams in 2014.”

The justice’s recent predecessors in the role include Lady Gaga and the Rockettes. Sotomayor’s assignment is a first for a Supreme Court justice, though other justices have played prominent parts in similar events. In 2005, Justice Antonin Scalia, another New York native, served as grand marshal for the city’s Columbus Day Parade. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, since retired, was the grand marshal of the Rose Bowl Parade in Pasadena in January 2006, a year after Mickey Mouse served in that role.

Senators Call for Hearing over Target Data Breach

Following the revelation this month about Target Corp.'s data breach, Democratic Sens. Mark Warner of Virginia and Robert Menendez of New Jersey plan to put companies' fraud and identity theft-prevention practices under the microscope.

Warner and Menendez on Monday urged the Senate Banking Committee to hold a hearing on whether businesses are doing enough to protect consumer data and if stronger cybersecurity standards are needed. The senators wrote in a letter to panel Chairman Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) that "consumers’ interests must come first."

"With our economy and financial sector becoming increasingly information-based and data-reliant, consumers depend on the companies and financial service providers with whom they do business to protect their sensitive information," the senators wrote. "As companies collect, store, and process ever-greater quantities of consumer data, they—and our regulators—must become even more vigilant against breaches and improper use."

The Morning Wrap

Indigent Defense: The University of Chicago Law School and Northwestern University School of Law will join forces with Gideon's Promise—an Atlanta nonprofit that trains and advocates for public defenders throughout the South—to pay for graduates to work on indigent legal defense for up to a year, The National Law Journal reports.

Apple Antitrust: Washington lawyer Michael Bromwich, who is monitoring Apple Inc.'s compliance with antitrust laws after the electronic book price conspiracy, tells a judge that he has been largely cut of from top executives at the tech giant, the Associated Press reports.

Rare Dolls: "They are some of the rarest bobblehead dolls ever produced. They're released erratically. They're given away for free, not sold. And if you get a certificate to claim one, you have to redeem it at a Washington law office. The limited edition bobbleheads of Supreme Court justices are the work of law professor Ross Davies," The Associated Press reports.

Obama Trails Bush in Shaping Federal Judiciary

President Barack Obama lags behind George W. Bush when it comes to leaving his imprint on the nation's federal courts of appeals, a Brookings Institution report has found.

Last year brought heightened contentiousness to the circuit confirmation process—particularly involving Obama's three nominees to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. That fight led Democrats to change Senate rules and prevent the minority the right to block judicial nominations (except for the U.S. Supreme Court).

In the shadow of that political battle, however, the federal courts still have more judicial vacancies now than at the beginning of the Obama administration, according to a year-end roundup by Russell Wheeler, a Brookings fellow who studies the nominations process.

Yelp Signs Up to Lobby

Yelp Inc. has joined the Washington lobbying community, registering its first lobbyist with Congress.

The business review website has deployed its public policy official, Laurent Crenshaw, to advocate on intellectual property and telecommunications issues, among other matters, according to lobbying registration paperwork filed with Congress last week.

Yelp notes in the filing that it's particularly interested in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act; Communications Decency Act provisions that shield websites from liability for content their users post online; pending patent lawsuit reform legislation; and the possible introduction of federal legislation to block strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs) that are designed to quiet critics through the threat of costly litigation.

This Week in The National Law Journal

2013... Oh, You: 2013 was the year that made the legal, judicial and political scenarios in "The Good Wife," "Homeland" or "House of Cards" look, well, plausible. It's the Year In Review edition for this New Year's Eve Eve.

Supreme Court: Monumental rulings on civil and voting rights in 2013 are helping to define the Roberts Court for some time to come, Marcia Coyle and Tony Mauro write.

Legal Biz: Some firms got hitched; others were left standing at the altar. Plus, John Edwards returned to the practice. A survey of 2013's notable business developments, Andrew Ramonas writes.

The Morning Wrap

Lawful: A federal judge in New York ruled Friday that the Nation Security Agency's gathering of information about all telephone calls placed in, to and from the United States is lawful, the New York Law Journal reports. U.S. District Judge William Pauley III concluded in American Civil Liberties Union v. Clapper that the NSA's telephony metadata program is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment, given the "horrific" consequences of international terrorism as shown on Sept. 11, 2001.

Dismissed: A federal judge in New Orleans has thrown out nearly all remaining lawsuits against the federal government for damages that resulted from levees and floodwalls that failed during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, The Times-Picayune reports.

Signing Up: More than 1 million people have signed up for health insurance through the troubled Healthcare.gov, The Associated Press reports.

FTC Approves Three Mergers With Conditions

The Federal Trade Commission will end the year with a bang, requiring divestitures to approve three pending mergers, including Fidelity National Financial Inc.'s $2.9 billion purchase of Lender Processing Services Inc.

The agency also put conditions on a $1.4 billion funeral home merger that triggered concerns from Washington's Jewish community, and forced supermarket chain Albertson's to sell a pair of stores in Texas.

The FTC in a 3 to 1 vote approved Fidelity’s purchase of Lender Processing Services Inc. on Tuesday , but required the mortgage servicer to divest databases used by abstractors, title insurers and others to determine the title status of property in nine Oregon counties.

Ex-Lobbyist Wants 'Trial Penalty' Document Unsealed

A former lobbyist caught up in Jack Abramoff scandal has asked a federal judge to unseal government records to shed light on the "trial penalty"—the premium the government seeks to extract from defendants who exercise their right to trial instead of taking a plea offer.

Kevin Ring, sentenced earlier to 20 months in prison, has asked the federal district court in Washington to release portions of a government PowerPoint presentation given to him as part of pre-indictment dealings in 2008.

Back then, the government required the document to be kept secret, presumably to protect the secrecy of the government's then-continuing investigation into the Abramoff matter, according to Ring's attorneys, Andrew Wise and Timothy O'Toole of Miller & Chevalier in Washington.