The Rape-Happy States of America

I stumbled upon this in the comments section of another blog, did a bit of searching, and found out it is true - in more than half of the American states, a rapist can sue for custody or visitation rights.  31 in fact.

In the wake of Todd Akin's comments about pregnancy rarely resulting from "legitimate rape," lawyer Shauna Prewitt highlights a reality for women in that situation in a column on CNN: In a majority of states, attackers are afforded the same rights as other fathers. 

Prewitt, herself a rape survivor who gave birth to a daughter as a result of her attack, explains that  31 states have no laws that bar rapists from seeking custody or visitation rights. For Prewitt that astounding fact is personal. Her rapist attempted to get custody of her daughter, "but thankfully I got lucky and his visitation rights were terminated," she said, according to a profile of her by The Am Law Daily's Brain Baxter. She added: "I'm not sure I would have made the decision I did had I known I might be tethered to my rapist for the rest of my life."

British Court Calls Anonymous Blog Comments "Pub Talk"

A lot of bloggers have worried about remarks made by "anonymous" commenters on their posts.   The cloak of anonymity does indeed seem to be the refuge of the extremist and that's commonly where you'll find most offensive remarks, some of which may seem libelous.

Britain's High Court had to wade into this very issue in a case involving the often controversial paper, The Daily Mail.   The long and short - a woman complained to a municipal authority about some bum in a park; the municipal authorities found the woman's complaint threatening and added her name to a list of potentially violent people; she sued the authorities and won damages for libel.  The Daily Mail carried a report on the case on its web site and that attracted a couple of "anonymous" comments that the woman found defamatory.  She then sued the paper demanding it disclose the identities of the commenters so she could then sue them.

Madam Justice Sharp dismissed the claim.

"It was fanciful to suggest that a sensible and reasonable reader would understand those comments as being anything more than 'pub talk'.  ...The postings were of two lines and were effectively posted anonymously by members of the public who did not report to have knowledge of the matters they concerned. It is important to put the postings into context as to their meaning and what they were commenting on."

Now this is, of course, a British case and the court there was following, in part, the European Convention on Human Rights.   A Canadian judge might see the same facts differently but the specific finding that most anonymous comments are so much "pub talk" is certainly helpful.

You Poor, Poor Lawyers

We pay a lot of attention to certain victims of the global recession - Third Worlders who are seeing their rise out of poverty dramatically reversed, autoworkers who have to watch as their job security evaporates, the list goes on. But who ever gives a fig about lawyers and the really dire straits befalling them? According to the New York Times, the legal profession is taking a hammering:

The economic downturn is hitting the legal world hard. American Lawyer is calling it “the fire this time” and warning that big firms may be hurtling toward “a paradigm-shifting, blood-in-the-suites” future. The Law Shucks blog has a “layoff tracker,” and it is grim reading. Top firms are rapidly thinning their ranks, and several — including Heller Ehrman, a venerable 500-plus-lawyer firm founded in 1890 — have closed.

The employment pains of the legal elite may not elicit a lot of sympathy in the broader context of the recession, but a lot of hard-working lawyers have been blindsided, including young associates who are suddenly finding themselves with six-figure student-loan debts and no source of income.


Read more of the desperate plight of the legal profession here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/02/opinion/02thu4.html?em

The Foot Connects

Need proof that academics can be as craven as industrialists? Check out this link posted at Foot's:

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn02202009.html