Joe Patrice

1 week ago | abovethelaw.com | Joe Patrice

As Supreme Court season hits fever pitch, we’re joined by Professor Leah Litman, author of Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes, to discuss the nightmare we’re facing. Elena Kagan took the opportunity to humiliate her colleagues last week calling out an arbitrary carve out created to protect their investments. Kagan’s frustration seems to be growing down the stretch, having just eviscerated the government in the birthright citizenship case.

1 week ago | abovethelaw.com | Joe Patrice

This will come as a shock, but the White House can’t just arbitrarily punish law firms for disagreeing with the president. Feel free to pass this message along to Paul Weiss and the crowd. Fresh off the retaliatory order Trump lodged against Jenner & Block getting struck down — which itself came after the Perkins Coie order got kicked to the curb — a judge just struck down the order purporting to punish WilmerHale. It clocks in at a whopping 73 pages, but Judge Richard Leon — a George W.

1 week ago | dealbreaker.com | Joe Patrice

Antonin Scalia earned a reputation for throwing shade at his colleagues. And while we all appreciate the lexical heavy-lifting that brought jiggery-pokery into our lives, his swipes came from a place of combative and often mocking proto-snark. Which we’re all for here at Above the Law! But there’s something next level about Elena Kagan’s professorial “I’m not mad, just disappointed that you’re stupid” style. It burns in a way that all the “pure applesauce” and “argle-bargle” never did.

1 week ago | abovethelaw.com | Joe Patrice

As the current administration flirts with weaponizing the government under the guise of de-weaponizing the government, consider how easy it is for powerful institutions to wreck havoc. There are a lot of ways for the powerful to hurt someone. Generally speaking, institutions constrain the damage they can cause to people who actually, you know, try to kidnap people. But what happens when power jumps the guardrails?

1 week ago | abovethelaw.com | Joe Patrice

On May 16, Butler Snow landed on the unhappy end of a Show Cause order from an Alabama federal judge.