The US Department of Justice announced Wednesday that, pursuant to a plea agreement with a defendant convicted of conspiring to import, market and sell circumvention devices known as modification (or "mod") chips in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it had seized his website which had formerly carried news on new pirated releases by illegal software piracy groups. Read the DOJ press release, and visit www.iSONEWS.com, which now carries information about the case against the defendant, general information about copyright infringement and the criminal prosecution of individuals engaged in online piracy, and links to the website of the Department of Justice's Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, www.cybercrime.gov.

In re: Boston Herald (February 25, US 1st Circuit Court of Appeals). A panel of the Court ruled 2-1 that there is no right of access under either the First Amendment or the common law to documents submitted by a criminal defendant to show financial eligibility for government funding for a portion of his attorneys' fees and legal expenses under the Criminal Justice Act (CJA), 18 U.S.C. § 3006A (2000): "No federal court of appeals, to our knowledge, has considered whether there is a right of access to the narrow category of documents at issue here.... A constitutionally-based right of access to otherwise private personal financial data of one's own and one's family imposes a high price on the exercise of one's constitutional right to obtain counsel if in financial need. Our system of justice cherishes "the principle that defendants are not to be avoidably discriminated against because of their indigency." Holden v. United States, 393 F.2d 276, 278 (1st Cir. 1968). But a strict disclosure requirement could well discourage eligible defendants from availing themselves of their right to counsel by forcing them to choose between privacy and CJA assistance -- a choice that other defendants do not face."

Attorney General John Ashcroft Wednesday announced indictments against four individuals who had illegally tranferred to Iraq funds solicited in the name of the Help The Needy organization contrary to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The Attorney General said "As President Bush leads an international coalition to end Saddam Hussein's tyranny and support for terror, the Justice Department will see that individuals within our borders cannot undermine these efforts." A second indictment was announced against a University of Idaho graduate student and citizen of Saudi Arabia, who was being charged with fraudulently obtaining student visas and making false statements on visa applications and related paperwork. The second indictment also alleged that he had maintained websites that had promoted terrorism through suicide bombings and using airplanes as weapons. Read the DOJ press release; review the Iraq fund transfer indictment and the student visa and terrorist website indictment[PDF] (both from FindLaw).

After passing the Arkansas Senate by 26-3, a bill that would have allowed federal judges, US bankruptcy judges and magistrate judges in the Eastern and Western Districts of Arkansas to carry concealed handguns providing they had taken a handgun safety training course failed narrowly in the Arkansas House Wednesday by a vote of 42-47. Read the bill[PDF].

The US Secretary of Education's Commission on Opportunity in Athletics issued its Final Report on Title IX Wednesday. Read a statement by Education Secretary Rod Paige and the full text of the report, entitled Open to All: Title IX at 30.

The President of the University of South Florida announced Wednesday that the University had fired Sami Al-Arian, a USF Professor of Computer Science who was recently indicted[PDF] on charges of supporting terrorists. Read the official statement by USF President July Genshaft, a memo to the USF community, and the actual letter of termination[PDF]. The United Faculty of Florida, the faculty union that had defended Al-Arian in his ongoing contract dispute with USF, is providing updates on his case.

In handwritten pleadings unsealed Wednesday by US District Judge Leonie Brinkema and available here in scanned photos, suspected terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui expressed a wish to torture Attorney General John Ashcroft[PDF] and asked for a larger cell to inspect discovery documents[PDF].

Statements and press releases reacting to Wednesday's Supreme Court ruling in Scheidler v. NOW (denying that abortion clinic protests are a form of extortion or racketeering) are now available from Operation Rescue, the National Organization of Women, Planned Parenthood, the Center for Reproductive Rights, the National Abortion Federation and Concerned Women for America.

Today Eric Muller of the University North Carolina Law School is thinking about the apparently-forgotten prosecution of suspected terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui. Lawrence Solum of Loyola Law School Los Angeles reflects on procedural fairness and class actions in light of Dow Chemical v. Stephenson, the Agent Orange class action case argued today before the US Supreme Court. Tung Yin of the University of Iowa College of Law wonders whether Iraqi co-operation with volunteer human shields would violate international law. Meanwhile, Eugene Volokh at UCLA School of Law has published some of the responses he received to a query about electronic submissions to law reviews.

The American Lung Association Wednesday released its 2002 survey of State Legislated Actions on Tobacco Issues (SLATI), detailing new state laws on smokefree air, youth access, tobacco taxes and public health spending. The survey is available online.

A Department of Justice report issued Wednesday concludes that the US Immigration and Naturalization Service is "ineffective" at removing illegal aliens coming from states designated as sponsoring terrorist activity - including Iraq, Libya, North Korea and Sudan - who have been ordered removed from the US but who had not been formally detained. Of a 2001 sample of 470 such nondetained aliens subject to deportation orders, the INS removed only 6%. Review the full report[PDF].

New and interesting papers available on SSRN Wednesday include:

Economic Analysis of the General Structure of the Law
by Stephen Shavell of Harvard Law School.
This is a chapter from Shavell's forthcoming book Foundations of Economic Analysis of Law (Harvard University Press, 2003). From the Abstract: "In this chapter, I consider basic features of the legal system, including whether the law directly constrains behavior or channels it by the threat of sanctions, and whether the law is brought into play by private legal action or involves public enforcement. I investigate the conditions under which one or another structure of law will be socially desirable, and I then discuss tort, contract, criminal law, and several other areas of law in the light of the analysis of the optimal structure of the law."

Breaking news from DC Supreme Court litigators Goldstein & Howe: "Today the Court handed down the opinion in Scheidler v. NOW, No. 01-1118, reversing the Seventh Circuit opinion below [which had favored NOW]. The majority opinion was written by Chief Justice Rehnquist." The Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University provides background on Scheidler, which had pitted anti-abortion groups against NOW in a legal battle over whether abortion clinic protests constitute racketeering and extortion. Opinion and details to follow.

UPDATE: The full text of Scheidler is now available from the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School. Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote the Opinion, with a Concurrence by Justice Ginsburg and a Dissent by Justice Stevens. Goldstein & Howe provide a summary.

From Justice Steven's dissent: "The term 'extortion' as defined in the Hobbs Act refers to 'the obtaining of property from another.' 18 U.S. C. §1951(b)(2). The Court's murky opinion seems to hold that this phrase covers nothing more than the acquisition of tangible property. No other federal court has ever construed this statute so narrowly. For decades federal judges have uniformly given the term 'property' an expansive construction that encompasses the intangible right to exercise exclusive control over the lawful use of business assets. The right to serve customers or to solicit new business is thus a protected property right. The use of violence or threats of violence to persuade the owner of a business to surrender control of such an intangible right is an appropriation of control embraced by the term 'obtaining.' That is the commonsense reading of the statute that other federal judges have consistently and wisely embraced in numerous cases that the Court does not discuss or even cite. Recognizing this settled definition of property, as I believe one must, the conclusion that petitioners obtained this property from respondents is amply supported by the evidence in the record."

The Death Penalty Clinic at UC Berkeley School of Law is being credited with filing two amicus briefs that helped Thomas Miller-El, a black Texas death row inmate, convince the US Supreme Court Tuesday that his claim of racial bias in the jury selection for his murder trial was due a hearing. Boalt Hall has the briefs and more.

At Stanford Law School Tuesday, four black federal and state judges discussed the politicization of the judiciary. The Stanford Daily reports.

Jack Valenti, President of the Motion Picture Association of America, denouced online file-swapping Monday in delivering the Meredith and Kip Frey Lecture in Intellectual Property at Duke Law School. The Duke Chronicle has more. Duke Law recorded the event and JURIST expects to have online video available Thursday.

The Ohio General Assembly will soon be voting on the 14th Amendment after a group of law students led by University of Cincinnati Law School professor Jack Chin discovered that the state, generally counted as one of the thirty that had ratified the Amendment when it took effect in 1868, had in fact rescinded its ratification again before the Amendment was proclaimed. The University of Cincinnati News Record has more.

The US Supreme Court hears arguments Wednesday in Roell v. Withrow (consent to assignment of jurisdiction - read backgrounders and predictions from DC appellate litigators Goldstein & Howe and Sam Heldman) and Dow Chemical Co. v. Stevenson (Agent Orange liability - more from Goldstein & Howe and Sam Heldman). On Dow Chemical, see also Agent Orange Heads to the Supreme Court, a JURIST Forum column by Jay Tidmarsh of Notre Dame Law School, who served as lead counsel for the United States in the Agent Orange litigation between 1987 and 1989.

On February 26, 1924, Adolf Hitler and several others were put on trial for treason in Munich in connection with an attempted putsch. Learn more about the Munich (or "Beer Hall") Putsch and the subsequent trial of Hitler and his associates.