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Compassionate release, guided by 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A), allows a district court to reduce a previously imposed criminal sentence if "extraordinary and compelling reasons" warrant a reduction. Congress delegated the task of describing what constitutes an extraordinary and compelling reason to the U.S. Sentencing Commission. Following the passage of the First Step Act of 2018, most circuit courts held the Commission's policy statement describing extraordinary and compelling reasons inapplicable, and that until the Commission updated its policy statement, courts enjoyed the discretion to determine what circumstances justify compassionate release. Many have celebrated this newfound discretion and its potential to expand individuals' ability to receive compassionate release. However, judicial discretion, though valuable in many ways, inevitably leads to disagreement and disparity. Perhaps unsurprisingly, circuit courts have disagreed on whether certain circumstances could, as a matter of law, justify a grant of compassionate release, causing geographic disparity in individuals' ability to receive compassion. In April 2023, the Commission updated its policy statement and included a catchall provision codifying judicial discretion and, unless the Commission acts, the disparity that discretion invites. This Comment argues that for judicial discretion to improve compassionate release, the Commission must take an active role in overseeing judicial discretion so that compassionate release can enjoy the benefits of that discretion without accepting the disparity discretion often creates. Specifically, it argues the Commission, through its statutory authority to describe what should be considered an extraordinary and compelling reason, can resolve current and future circuit splits over what constitutes an extraordinary and compelling reason by promulgating amended policy statements expressly including, or excluding, the disputed circumstance in its description of extraordinary and compelling reasons. In doing so, the Commission would effectively erase circuit courts' contrary interpretations of extraordinary and compelling reasons and thereby end the regional "droughts of compassion" the current approach to judicial discretion allows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on Kevin Spacey's manipulative rhetoric in the YouTube video he posted on Christmas Eve in 2018 when he was facing a felony sexual assault charge in Nantucket District Court in USA. Drawing upon the notion of "double deixis" used for the second-person pronoun, this article questions the extent to which Spacey's use of the first-person pronoun could be called "doubly deictic". The findings show that Spacey's strategic use of deixis allows him to blur identities and conflate fictional and real worlds. Not only is he using deixis in a way that hampers easy interpretation and complicates cognitive projection but he assigns his audience an awkward double positioning (as fans and citizens). The article also tries to elucidate the complex effects of Spacey's manipulation on viewers. It suggests an addition to the notion of "double consciousness" that malfunctions here, as a "third consciousness" seems to be imposed onto the audience. This may explain why certain viewers are likely to experience some "cognitive dissonance" while watching this video that the media has defined as "creepy". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since Chinese courts issued a spate of anti-suit injunctions ("ASIs") in licensing disputes between holders of standard-essential patents ("SEPs") and implementers, there have been growing concerns about the weaponization of ASIs in the global SEP licensing battles on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory ("FRAND") terms. This Essay will discuss how the aggressive use of ASIs by Chinese courts, along with their assertion of jurisdiction to set global licensing rates at abnormally low levels, contributes to this concern. It is not helpful, however, to cast the ASIs in purely geopolitical terms. More than anything else, ASIs are being used to gain an advantage in licensing negotiations, and they may perversely play a positive role in facilitating the settlement of FRAND disputes. Instead of trying to curb the use of ASIs per se, more attention needs to be paid to solving the forum shopping problem in global FRAND litigation that leads to the issuance of ASIs in the first place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using an original data set of around 70,000 civil rights cases heard by nearly 200 judges, we study the effect of presidential appointments to federal district courts. We provide the first causal estimates of whether lawsuits end differently depending on their assignment to either a Democratic or a Republican appointed judge. We show Republican appointees cause fewer settlements and more dismissals, favoring defendants by around 5 percentage points. We estimate a similarly sized effect for a sample of civil rights appeals heard in the Ninth Circuit, raising questions about the conventional wisdom that politics matters more at higher levels of the judicial hierarchy. We also find that the effect in district courts has increased over time. For cases filed during the Obama presidency, Republican appointees caused pro-defendant outcomes in 7.4% more cases than Democratic appointees. Our results suggest that district courts are an important—although neglected—subject of research for political scientists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moreover, defendants may claim that a plaintiff should not be entitled to the full measure of its lost profit even where the breach occurred before the onset of the pandemic by attempting to prove that the long-term effects of the pandemic will permanently impair future profitability. To be entitled to lost profits, the loss must have been caused by the underlying breach rather than some other cause or source of harm.[10] Lost profit damages will only be available to a plaintiff if that plaintiff can prove that the lost profits flowed consequentially from the claimed breach. The COVID-19 pandemic initially had a devastating impact on business worldwide, and franchised businesses and franchisors in the United States were not spared. For a claim that accrued during the pandemic, a plaintiff must articulate how the defendant's conduct caused a separate loss of profits distinct from the harms caused by the pandemic. [Extracted from the article]

On September 22, 2020, President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 13950: Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping. This order stopped federal agencies, federal grant recipients, and government contractors from conducting training in the workplace that involves "stereotyping" or "scapegoating" based on sex or race, specifically banning discussions of critical race theory and white privilege. The United States District Court for the Northern District of California issued a preliminary injunction on December 22, 2020, banning the enforcement of the order, and, on January 20, 2021, President Joe Biden, during his first day in office, revoked the order. However, this did not signify the end of Executive Order 13950's importance. While this executive order is atypical because it utilizes government procurement as a vehicle to enact socially conservative policies, it continues the troubling trend of presidents using executive orders to regulate government contractors. This Note will first analyze three problems with the defunct executive order: (1) the executive order was bad policy; (2) it violated the United States Constitution; and (3) most importantly, the executive order itself is the wrong mechanism to enact social change and regulate government contractors. Second, this Note will explain that the rise and fall of Executive Order 13950 exemplifies the turbulent nature of regulating government contractors through executive orders. Instead of relying on such orders, government officials should regulate labor and employment requirements on government contractors through legislation because such measures are longer lasting, give interested parties the opportunity for input, and undergo more deliberate considerations before enactment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the effect of the use of tolling orders by the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on the due process rights of aggrieved landowners in natural gas pipeline eminent domain proceedings. Topics discussed include the procedures for the district court preliminary injunctions and approach of the FERC to rehearing applications, tendency of the orders to undermine the legitimacy of the system, and possible solutions of district courts and FERC to the issue.

The article discusses the U.S. District court case brought by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) against academic researchers with ties to China—and the government lost. The District Judge Thomas Varlan acquitted Anming Hu, a former University of Tennessee, Knoxville engineering professor, of lying to National Aeronautics and Space Administration about his funding ties to institutions in China.