The negative presumption of the press as an overweening and demanding group found its way into a recent Ninth Circuit opinion on access to public filings. In fact, the request from Courthouse News has been both moderate and flexible over time, as the author testified on cross-examination in a federal courtroom.
Read moreCNS has at extraordinary cost sought to enforce traditional forms of press access to new court filings. That same form of access, apparently unbeknownst to some jurists, is what the federal courts themselves enforce in the electronic age.
Read moreWhen the press says an e-inbox would return traditional press access to new court filings, it raises some doubt. A judge might ask, so how does all this work.
Read moreAs a series of judicial opinions lifts the fog of pretext, it becomes apparent that court clerks can put in place an electronic inbox that functions precisely as the old wood box on the clerk’s counter used to work, allowing reporters to see new court filings the day they are received.
Read moreUnder oath, in the witness chair, I had to explain one of the most subtle notions about the news: that it soon vanishes.
Read moreA sweeping opinion saying the press is entitled under the First Amendment to see new civil complaints on the day they are filed was based on a four-day trial that included testimony on the tradition of access in American courts.
Read moreHas the arrival of electronic technology in America’s courts brought sunshine or shade? A federal judge asked me about it during a four-day trial.
Read moreFriendships to refresh, holiday rituals to observe, every year lately I go back to Portland during the Christmas holidays. I go to check in.
Read moreThe weeks and months I spent in Denmark came back over me. The hours spent with Isaac’s father in a café called “Bankeråt,” or Bankrupt, over tangy holiday beer. The ebb and flow of good conversation.
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The new version of the old Great Game is being played between a former Soviet intelligence officer and a former TV entertainer. Ukraine is a piece in that game.
Read moreThe airport itself remains a portrait of world humanity with faces of all hues and characteristics standing outside the terminal, freshly arrived from distant lands and now searching for a way out of the airport. They are often maneuvering huge suitcases stacked high on carts. Within the chaos, trains of airline attendants, perfectly coiffed, trim, in matching uniforms, smoothly, quickly weave their way.
Read moreWhat is happening to the DOJ. And why it is not more talked about.
Read moreThe media’s daily concentration on the president’s tactics and language, his tweets and his rallies, leads to the death of overarching analysis. In that bright orange glow, the strategic and methodical undoing of social legislation stays in the shadows.
Read moreEntering a courtroom has always seemed a bit like walking through the doors of a theatre. There are actors who take their positions and say their lines. A director sits up high. A kind of Greek chorus comments on the action with a verdict.
Read morePittsburgh has a different feel than any of the other American cities I have gone to in the course of building a news service. It is old, yet modern, busy but not too much, hip but not overly so. It is a steel city that lost its steel but found its way.
Read moreAccomplishing chrysalis in reverse, the court in Youngstown was caught at the moment it was metamorphosing from a traditional box-on-the-counter paper access court to a delayed access efiling court, a terrible sight to behold.
Read moreJust like the drink it holds, the flagon is emblematic of Ishigaki, as the islanders are considered according to themselves to be too laid back to get much accomplished. They drink and talk and play music, especially the samisen, a three-stringed instrument that has evolved from a 13th century Chinese ancestor.
Read moreThe hike was over steep and smooth volcanic outcropping and on for a couple miles to where a set of footholds in a smooth face allowed the nimble to climb into the slot canyon. I had seen plenty of pictures of the glorious red sandstone rendered by desert rainstorms over thousands of years into ovals and curving, liquid shapes.
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