Moritz Legal Information Blog

Naturally, the big news today is oral argument in Hollingsworth v. Perry , the Proposition 8 case.  But the Court also issued an opinion in the interesting case of Florida v. Jardines , involving a drug-sniffing police dog. SCOTUSblog has a great deal of coverage of today's oral argument, including two recaps , the transcript , and pictures from the court .

The lawyer-client relationship is unique. An attorney may be the only person the client feels he or she can trust in an adversarial proceeding. However, while you may learn the law and how to think like a lawyer in law school, you may feel ill-equipped to deal with the interpersonal aspect of working with clients. Combine this with your ethical obligations and the whole panoply of skills, emotions, psychology, and ethics can be confounding. Two recent examples of criminal defendants' in-court behavior brings an attorney's obligations to the forefront: T.J. Lane, recently convicted of killing several of his classmates, wore a t-shirt that said "killer" to his sentencing.  Penelope Soto gestured offensively at a judge during her arraignment and insulted him. What is or was the role of the attorney in these situations? How do you work with your client, act in his or her best interest, and maintain a working relationship with them so you can help them help themsel

Mike Gmoser, the prosecutor in Butler County, Ohio , issued an indictment of adorable groundhog Punxsutawney Phil. A search of the Butler County Clerk's Office website did not turn up the case file, but the indictment itself can be found here . Dispatch Washington Post

In "why can't this sort of thing happen to me" news, a bowl bought for three dollars at a garage sale sold at auction for 2.2 million dollars.  Turns out the Chinese bowl is one thousand years old, a product of the Northern Song Dynasty and the only other one like it is housed at the British Museum. NBC Los Angeles Times BBC

Looking for a Supreme Court case with deep relevance for law students? Look no further: "The U.S. Supreme Court has sided with a former California grad student who purchased books cheaply overseas and then resold them on eBay for a profit" says the ABA Journal . Read the opinion here  and analysis here . An economic analysis of the case was written by our own Professor Rub and can be found here .

In 2010, a Chicago attorney purchased the domain name www.popefrancis.com  "since it gave the then-nonexistent pope the name of one of his favorite saints." Only recently, the Catholic Church appointed a new pope who took the name Francis, and the attorney is hoping to donate the domain name to the Church. My first thought: what's the state of trademark rights and domain names? I studied it in law school, but that was a few years back. Enter the American Law Reports (ALR), a handy secondary source that provides extensive detail on unique subjects. While not entirely comprehensive, if your subject is in the ALR, you'll find everything you need. We have the ALR in the library , and it's also available on Westlaw and Lexis . If you're curious about trademark law and domain names, check out Lanham Act Infringement Actions in Internet and Website Context .

Ever wonder just how accurate police sketches are? Well, it depends, but one source says a police sketch can increase apprehension of a suspect by up to 15 percent. Those are not great odds, and it might be particularly troublesome if your client is arrested based on an awful sketch . Consequently, you may want to challenge the admissibility of eye-witness testimony from which the sketch was drawn. To learn more about the admissibility of evidence, and forensic evidence in particular, search the library catalog for these subjects: Forensic Sciences Evidence Admissible Evidence