Once Nike demonstrated that the covenant encompasses all of Already's allegedly unlawful conduct, it became incumbent on Already to indicate that it engages in or has sufficiently concrete plans to engage in activities that would arguably infringe Nike's trademark yet not be covered by the covenant. But Already failed to do so in the courts below or in this Court. The case is thus moot because the challenged conduct cannot reasonably be expected to recur.

The court heard oral arguments in this case in November after granting certiorari [JURIST reports] in June. The case examined the issue of whether a federal court has Article III [text] jurisdiction over a party's challenge to the validity of a trademark if the owner of the trademark has agreed not to sue the party over alleged infringement. The dispute arose when Nike alleged that several shoes manufactured by Already has infringed upon patented techniques of Nike's "Air Force One" sneaker. When Already filed a counterclaim challenging the validity of Nike's patent, Nike petitioned the court to dismiss its suit against Already as well as Already's counterclaim. Nike then issued a promise to Already that it would not pursue any further action because, as Nike's lawyer explained to the Supreme Court, "Nike concluded that [Already's] activities were no longer significant enough to warrant the cost of litigation." Already still wished to pursue its claim challenging Nike's patent, but Nike argued that since it vowed not to pursue litigation, there was no longer any "case or controversy" as required under Article III of the US Constitution. The district court agreed with Nike, and its decision was subsequently affirmed by the Second Circuit.

The second case heard by the court on Wednesday was Maracich v. Spears [transcript, PDF]. This case raised the question of whether lawyers can use personal information from driver's licenses to obtain clients and if they can delay a lawsuit until they have obtained these clients. The lawyers in the case used South Carolina's Freedom of Information Act to obtain driver information from South Carolina's Department of Motor Vehicles. This aided them in creating a client list to bring several group action suits against car dealerships. The US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled [opinion text] that the lawyers did not violate the Driver's Privacy Protection Act of 1994 (DPPA) [text]. The DPPA generally prohibits the state department of motor vehicles from distributing drivers' personal information, but includes several exceptions, including the "solicitation" and "litigation" exceptions. The "solicitation" exception requires the express consent of drivers, whereas the "litigation" exception does not. Joseph Guerra, appearing for the petitioners, argued that the opposing lawyers were undertaking a solicitation of individuals as potential clients for their own commercial purpose and were not using the information in connection with litigation. Guerra further argued that the primary purpose of the DPPA was to prevent such solicitations, thus all of the exceptions must be read in light of that primary purpose. Justice Elena Kagan appeared skeptical of why all 14 exceptions had to be read in light of the exception which was number 12 on the list. Kagan further questioned why the court should not just read the exceptions as individual parts of a list. Guerra argued that soliciting clients to join a class action lawsuit which had already begun was not "in connection with ... investigation in anticipation of litigation" because in that case the lawyers are acting for their own commercial benefit, not as officers of the court. Several justices questioned that reasoning and repeatedly asked where the basis in the statute was to distinguish between lawyers as commercial actors and lawyers as officers of the court. Paul Clement, appearing for the respondents, argued that the "litigation" exception was extremely broad, authorizing any use of driver information "covering the litigation process from cradle to grave." Roberts stated that the "in connection with ... litigation" language must have some limit, otherwise everything would be covered. Clement responded that it is clear from the litigation history that Congress intended this provision to be broad and that his clients fell within the unconditional "litigation" exception.

Scheindlin's decision is the first federal ruling to find that the "stop-and-frisk" practice is unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment, though the NYPD has recently received a great deal of scrutiny for various allegations of misconduct. In July a report issued by a coalition of legal rights organizations said that the NYPD used excessive force and violated the rights of protesters [JURIST report] who participated in the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York City. Specifically, the report alleged that police frequently used excessive force against protesters indiscriminately, sometimes for no apparent reason. A month prior, a Muslim rights group filed a lawsuit [JURIST report] in the US District Court for the District of New Jersey [official website] seeking to end the department's controversial surveillance program, which allegedly targets individuals based on religious affiliation. JURIST guest columnist Samar Warsi in May questioned the NYPD policies [JURIST comment] stating: "It is vital to be cautious when government officials use glittering generalities such as 'national security' and 'counterterrorism' to legitimize acts and policies in clear contravention of basic constitutional guarantees." In May, following an investigation into the NYPD's surveillance program, New Jersey Attorney General Jeffrey Chiesa concluded that it did not violate the Constitution. In March, NYPD commissioner Raymond Kelly fervently denied [speech; press release] that the surveillance programs were unconstitutional.

Google is involved in several different patent disputes with multiple other companies around the world. Last month the ITC ruled [JURIST report] for Apple in patent dispute with Google. In August Motorola Mobility sued [JURIST report] Apple for patent infringement. Last February Apple filed a suit [JURIST report] against Motorola in the US District Court for the Southern District of California [official website] seeking an injunction to stop the company from bringing patent claims against Apple in Germany. That suit was thrown out with prejudice [JURIST report] in June. Apple had brought two separate lawsuits [JURIST report] against Motorola in October of last year alleging that several of Motorola's products infringe six patents owned by Apple.

Very low wages, excessively long hours, the absence of a weekly rest day, risks of physical, mental and sexual abuse and restrictions on freedom of movement are some of the problems that have frequently characterized the working conditions of domestic workers worldwide. These can partly be attributed to gaps in national labour and employment legislation and often reflect discrimination along the lines of sex, race and caste.

Rights of domestic workers has been a controversial issue for years. Last September the Domestic Workers Convention was ratified [JURIST report] by enough countries to qualify to go into force in September 2013. In October 2011 the UN warned Lebanon [JURIST report] specifically that it needed to create more laws to protect rights of domestic workers. In 2010 Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] expressed the same opinion [JURIST report], stating that Lebanon needed to do more to protect domestic workers in its country and prosecute those who violate their rights. HRW also released a statement [JURIST report] in 2008 saying that migrant and domestic workers were facing human rights abuses throughout the Middle East and Asia.

In September a court in Vietnam ordered [JURIST report] bloggers Nguyen Van Hai, alias Dieu Cay, Phan Thanh Hai, alias Anhbasg, and Ta Phong Tan jailed for anti-state propaganda on charges of spreading propaganda to defame the Vietnamese government, in violation of Article 88 of the Criminal Code [text, PDF]. Blogger Nguyen Van Hai was sentenced to 12 years in prison, and Ta Phong Tan was sentenced to 10 years. Phan Thanh Hai pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four years. Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International (AI) [advocacy websites] have called for the writers' release, calling the charges "politically-motivated" [AI report]. In 2011 a Vietnamese appeals court reduced the sentence [JURIST report] of pro-democracy blogger and professor Pham Minh Hoang [blog, in Vietnamese], who had been sentenced [JURIST report] to three years in prison after writing anti-government articles on his blog under his pen name. In August 2011 a Vietnamese appeals court upheld the seven-year sentence of prominent rights lawyer and dissident Cu Huy Ha Vu, convicted in April [JURIST reports] of carrying out anti-state propaganda. In January 2010 a Vietnamese court sentenced [JURIST report] writer and democracy activist Pham Thanh Nghien to four years in prison on charges of spreading anti-state propaganda. The same month, a Vietnamese court convicted four democracy activists [JURIST report] of subversion.

Having joined forces to achieve collectively more evil than he could accomplish alone, Smith tied his fate to that of the group. His individual change of heart (assuming it occurred) could not put the conspiracy genie back in the bottle. We punish him for the havoc wreaked by the unlawful scheme, whether or not he remained actively involved. It is his withdrawal that must be active, and it was his burden to show that.

The court heard oral arguments in this case in November after granting certiorari [JURIST reports] in June. The case involved two individuals who had been sentenced to life in prison for their connections to a large drug ring that has been tied to several murders. The government alleged that the two were members of the drug ring and involved in an ongoing conspiracy to commit a number of crimes with the group. At issue is a jury instruction that allowed jurors to assume that the defendants did not abandon the conspiracy unless the defendants positively demonstrated that this was the case. The jurors convicted the defendants based on the fact that they had been members of the group during a time that was barred by statute of limitations. Because the defendants did not offer sufficient evidence to refute their ongoing participation in the conspiracy, their ongoing participation leading up to the permitted statutory period was assumed.

Manning's case has engendered a great deal of controversy. In November the judge overseeing the case accepted a partial guilty plea offered by Manning [JURIST reports] earlier in the month. In August JURIST guest columnist Philip Cave argued that the lack of transparency [JURIST comment] in Manning's case undermines the validity of the eventual verdict. In June Lind ordered the prosecution to submit to her a number of files that were allegedly withheld from the defense during discovery [JURIST report]. Earlier in June Lind denied a motion [JURIST report] to dismiss eight of the 22 charges against Manning after his defense had argued they were unconstitutionally vague. In May UN Special Rapporteur on torture Juan Mendez accused the US government of cruel and inhuman treatment [JURIST report] of Manning. The US military court referred Manning's case for court-martial in February after a US Army panel of experts declared Manning competent to stand trial [JURIST reports] last April.

More than 250,000 immigrant motorists on our roads today have not passed a driving test, which presents a dangerous risk to other drivers. Illinois roads will be safer if we ensure every driver learns the rules of the road and is trained to drive safely. Not only will Senate Bill 957 save lives, it will save Illinois motorists $46 million a year in insurance premiums by making sure every driver is properly insured.

In October California Governor Jerry Brown signed [JURIST report] a similar bill [AB 2189, PDF] that will allow some immigrants who came to the US as children to obtain state driver's licenses if they qualify for a new federal work permit program. In essence, the law directed California's Department of Motor Vehicles to issue driver's licenses to people who do not have a social security number but can prove they are authorized to be in the US under federal law. In contrast, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer [official website] recently issued an executive order [JURIST report] that instructs state agencies not to provide driver's licenses and other public benefits to undocumented immigrants who have gained the right to work under the new federal program. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) [advocacy website] has filed a lawsuit challenging the order [JURIST report].

A three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit dismissed the claims [JURIST report] against CACI International Inc. and L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. [opinions, PDF] in September 2011, holding that federal law protecting civilian contractors acting under the control of the US military in a combat situation preempted the plaintiffs' tort claims based in state law. US military personnel have also been accused of torturing detainees at Abu Ghraib prison. Army Spc. Charles Graner [JURIST news archive], the convicted ringleader of abuses committed at the prison, was released [JURIST report] last August for good behavior after serving more than six-and-a-half years of his 10-year sentence. Graner was convicted [JURIST report] in 2005 of conspiracy, assault, maltreating prisoners, dereliction of duty and committing indecent acts and received the longest sentence of the six others involved in the abuses. In June, the DOJ initiated a grand jury investigation [JURIST report] into the torture and death of a detainee at Abu Ghraib. Manadel Al-Jamadi was captured [JURIST report] by US Navy SEALs in 2003 and held in Abu Ghraib as a "ghost detainee," or unregistered prisoner, for his suspected involvement in the bombing of a Red Cross center in Baghdad that killed 12 people. The US military has never revealed the exact circumstances of his death, which was ruled a homicide [JURIST report]. Reports show he died while suspended by his wrists, which were handcuffed behind his back.

In Delia v. EMA [transcript, PDF] the court heard arguments on whether NC Gen. Stat. § 108A-57 is preempted by the Medicaid Act's anti-lien provision, 42 USC §§ 1396a(a)(25), 1396k(a) [texts], as it was understood in Arkansas Department of Health & Human Services v. Ahlborn [opinion text]. States have a right to recover Medicaid benefits. The North Carolina statute automatically takes a one-third interest in any settlement or judgment from a tort as reimbursement, unless that would exceed one-third of what a person has received in Medicaid benefits. However, one-third of minor EMA's tort recovery is much greater than the Medicaid funds she has used. An attorney for the Department of Heath and Human Services for North Carolina [official website] argued that the statute gives the state a right to tort proceeds before the plaintiff has them, thus overriding a jury verdict or stipulation between parties. The attorney for EMA argued that since the statute ignores the facts of an individual case by applying a set proportion to a settlement, it violates Ahlborn.

Prison overcrowding is a common problem across the globe. In August the Colombia Ministry of Justice announced a new initiative [JURIST report] to solve the problem of overcrowding in the nation's prisons. In June UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Kyung-wha Kang [official profile] urged the government of Malawi [JURIST report] to address the problem of prison overcrowding and improve the human rights condition in the country. That month Burundi announced that it would also release prisoners to solve overcrowding problems [JURIST report]. In April South Africa announced that it will issue pardons [JURIST report] to 35,000 offenders in order to ease prison overcrowding. In February Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] called for the reduction of overcrowding [JURIST report] to improve poor prison conditions in Latin America following a prison fire in Honduras, which killed more than 300 inmates and injured dozens more. In August 2011, Venezuela announced its plan to reduce its prison population [JURIST report] by 40 percent. A controversial clemency law introduced in Italy that reduced some prison sentences by three years to cut down on jail overcrowding faced criticism [JURIST report] in August 2006 after some released prisoners returned to lives of crime. Prisons in the US are facing similar problems. In May 2011 the US Supreme Court [official website] ruled [JURIST report in Brown v. Plata [Cornell LII backgrounder; JURIST report] to uphold an order requiring California to release up to 46,000 prisoners to address the problem of prison overcrowding.

Both Gonzales and Carter argued at length in their briefs and at oral argument that district courts have the equitable power to stay proceedings when they determine that habeas petitioners are mentally incompetent. Neither petitioner disputes that "[d]istrict courts ... ordinarily have authority to issue stays, where such a stay would be a proper exercise of discretion." Similarly, both petitioners agree that "AEDPA does not deprive district courts of [this] authority." Petitioners and respondents disagree, however, about the types of situations in which a stay would be appropriate and about the permissible duration of a competency-based stay. We do not presume that district courts need unsolicited advice from us on how to manage their dockets. Rather, the decision to grant a stay, like the decision to grant an evidentiary hearing, is "generally left to the sound discretion of district courts." For purposes of resolving these cases, it is unnecessary to determine the precise contours of the district court’s discretion to issue stays. We address only its outer limits.

Rees involved a convicted murderer who attempted to withdraw his petition for certiorari from the Supreme Court, which his attorney, in good conscience, could not do. A psychiatrist then declared Rees mentally incompetent. The court retained jurisdiction by a stay [order text] until the federal district court could make a report on Melvin Rees' competency. Rees died in prison in 1995. The court then dismissed [order text] certiorari in a brief order.

The NRDC and Baykeeper urge that the Court of Appeals reached the right result, albeit for the wrong reason. The monitoring system proposed by the District and written into its permit showed numerous instances in which water-quality standards were exceeded. Under the permit's terms, the NRDC and Baykeeper maintain, the exceedances detected at the instream monitoring stations are by themselves sufficient to establish the District's liability under the CWA for its upstream discharges. This argument failed below. It is not embraced within, or even touched by, the narrow question on which we granted certiorari. We therefore do not address, and indicate no opinion on, the issue the NRDC and Baykeeper seek to substitute for the question we took up for review.

JURIST Guest Columnist Roderick Walston recently considered the case [JURIST comment]. "The Ninth Circuit's reasoning is troubling. Since the CWA prohibits the 'discharge' of pollutants into waterways from a 'point source,' the location of the point source that is the original source of the pollution is vital in determining the applicability of the CWA and whether a discharger has violated it. The CWA prohibits only the original discharge of pollutants into the waterways from a point source, and it does not prohibit another discharge of the same pollutants in the same waterway. As the Court held in an earlier case [opinion], there has been no 'addition' of a pollutant to 'the waters of the US' within the meaning of the CWA unless the waters from which a pollutant has been conveyed are 'meaningfully distinct.' Since the character of the Los Angeles and San Gabriel rivers are not different above and below the monitoring stations and the downstream outfalls, these segments of the river are not 'meaningfully distinct' within the meaning of the Court's decision in Miccosukee Tribe, and there has been no 'addition; of a pollutant to 'the waters of the US' simply because the pollutants passed through these facilities.'"