Rachael Dickson's law review article argues the USPTO's Trademark ID Manual, a list of pre-approved goods and services descriptions, systematically disadvantages applicants offering lawful but socially disfavored products or services. She says missing entries force costly custom descriptions and delays for categories such as gender-affirming care and cannabis.
Caroline De Cock argues that human-rights doctrine separating absolute freedom of thought from limited expression no longer fits human-AI interaction. She proposes a 'forum interstitiale,' an intermediate zone to protect thinking, saying U.S. courts and privilege debates focus on the machine, not what the user is doing.
The American Legal Technology Awards at Suffolk Law School focused on the theme “ask why” and recognized work expanding legal self-help, access to justice, AI-assisted practice, and court outreach. Honorees included Frontline Justice, OpenLaws, Lagniappe Law Lab, Austin’s mobile court team, and Techtivist.
Speculation among judicial conservatives suggests Justices Thomas and Alito could retire if Democrats take the Senate, letting a Republican lame-duck majority confirm successors before January 3, 2027. The analysis weighs that strategic timing against the justices’ likely concerns about tenure, legacy and the Court’s reputation.
An anonymous Weil Gotshal associate criticized firm leadership as it winds down, alleging that management used insider information to negotiate with other firms and often left associates behind. The associate said headhunters made more than 100 LinkedIn requests in two days, and staff were told salary and benefits would last 90 days.
The Fifth Circuit has ordered an en banc rehearing in the challenge to Texas H.B. 18. A panel majority held that Section 230 preempts the law's monitoring and filtering requirement for social media platforms, while Judge James Ho dissented from that analysis.
July bar exam pass rates declined in California and several other large jurisdictions, with California recording a 48.3% pass rate among 7,942 takers, its lowest summer result in five years. National MBE averages also fell, and 35 of 42 reporting jurisdictions saw lower rates.
Judge Myong J. Joun of the federal district court in Massachusetts granted summary judgment to Harvard, dismissing Francesca Gino's breach-of-contract and gender-discrimination claims arising from the revocation of her tenure after a research-misconduct finding.
The article says Jonathan Turley misquoted Joseph Welch's 1954 Army-McCarthy line while criticizing Democrats over Alaska's Senate race. It argues Alaska's ranked-choice system would not let a decoy Dan Sullivan split votes, and notes the other Sullivan denied conversations with Mary Peltola's campaign.
The Supreme Court declined the Trump administration’s request to intervene in a California ballot dispute, issuing an unsigned order with no noted dissents. The administration had sought to require California to segregate ballots it identified as likely from noncitizens pending verification, after lower courts rejected emergency relief.
Reports by a Vanderbilt researcher examining AI regulation in 12 countries find governments often rely on national security or anti-state propaganda laws, not new AI statutes, to influence chatbot answers. Examples include India’s Gemini case, Turkish court blocks on Grok and EU rules with cross-border effects.
Techdirt has assembled a tool listing the proposed amicus briefs in the consolidated OpenAI and Microsoft copyright litigation, grouped by whether they back the defendants, plaintiffs or neither side and paired with short argument summaries. It also notes the docket had almost 2,500 entries.
The Supreme Court will hear six arguments over five days in January, including a challenge to Florida's use of six-person juries and a religious zoning dispute involving a Catholic church in northern Kentucky.
Olga V. Mack offers legal leaders a framework for deciding whether to build, buy, integrate or defer AI tools, focusing on maintenance ownership, measurable value and dependencies. She recommends assigning responsibility and setting a review date before vendor deals fix data, authority and cost.
Chief Judge Sharon Gleason dismissed the Justice Department's Alaska election lawsuit without leave to amend, finding the U.S. failed Article III redressability because the requested relief would compromise ballot secrecy. The DOJ appealed to the Ninth Circuit.
The Supreme Court will hear argument in a Texas capital case over whether Dexter Johnson may file a second federal habeas application under AEDPA. His Atkins intellectual-disability claim cites a newer diagnostic manual, while Texas argues it does not rest on a new constitutional rule.
DOL finalized a rule requiring pharmacy benefit managers to disclose fees and compensation to self-insured employers, including rebates and spread-pricing details, and allowing audits. It projects up to $22 billion in lower drug costs over a decade, praised by employer and pharmacy groups but criticized by a PBM group.
A federal court in Pennsylvania granted reconsideration of an order requiring a protest organizer to apologize to a school board member's daughter, finding the First Amendment barred compelled speech absent a clear waiver. The judge said the settlement's apology term was never finalized because it depended on resolving other issues.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court reversed Basile Outlaw's direct criminal contempt conviction, finding that his vulgar remark to Philadelphia Judge Roxanne E. Covington caused only a transient courtroom delay and did not significantly obstruct justice under the state Crimes Code.
A federal judge in Arizona rejected a procedural challenge to a Gila County Personnel Commission ruling that upheld a legal secretary's firing over a Facebook post saying "Rot in Hell Charlie Kirk." The commission found the post disrupted the county attorney's office and rejected the employee's First Amendment claim.
