News Roundup

There has been an endless parade of relevant news over the past week or so. First, Justice Sonia Sotomayor was confirmed by the Senate and sworn in. This New York Times story about her confirmation gives you the basics if you’ve been living under a rock. Second, I’ve just come back from a week of … Read more

Summary of Probation Reform Bill

The General Assembly has passed several interesting pieces of legislation recently, but none are more consequential than S 920, the probation reform bill signed by Governor Perdue last week. I previously expressed my hope that Jamie Markham, our sentencing and corrections expert, would summarize and analyze the bill, and fortunately for all of us, he’s … Read more

New Blog Feature

The fantastic IT folks here at the School of Government have just added a new feature to the blog: email subscription. Subscribers are notified by email of each new post, and the text of the email includes the first few lines of the post, so that you can get a feel for whether it will … Read more

Do Officers Need More than a Warrant to Search a Computer?

The Ninth Circuit recently decided United States v. Payton, a computer search case that quietly adopts some pretty radical ideas. Based on the lack of comments on my previous computer search posts — here and here –most of you aren’t keenly interested in the application of the Fourth Amendment to emerging technologies, but Payton strikes … Read more

News Roundup

Several recent news stories that may be of interest: 1. Governor Perdue just signed S 920, which makes substantial changes to the probation laws. For example, it requires all probationers to submit to warrantless searches by probation officers, and to a lesser degree, by law enforcement officers. It also clarifies the tolling provisions of the … Read more

Legislative “Fix” for State v. Byrd

Remember State v. Byrd, the case that held that ex parte domestic violence TROs aren’t “protective orders” under Chapter 50B? I blogged about it here, and I highlighted a more detailed summary by John Rubin here. Byrd always seemed like a likely candidate for a legislative “fix,” and in fact, the General Assembly passed, and … Read more

Time Limits on Trials

I’m a little like a broadcaster for a small-market sports team, in that I’m a relentless “homer,” always impressed with the efforts of the School of Government faculty. With that disclaimer in mind, my colleague Michael Crowell has just published a terrific paper, available for free here, about courts’ authority to impose time limits on … Read more

News Roundup

Update: The creator of the barrel monster has had his day in court, and appears to have received some sort of deferred prosecution, as reported here. Original Post: My colleagues have contributed several great posts recently, and I have a couple more ready to go, but there have been several news stories over the past … Read more