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www.theverge.com/2020/2/14/21137580/apple-store-retail-employees-search-california-supreme-court
California court says Apple Store workers must be paid for time spent waiting to be searched
theverge.com
Employees could wait up to 45 minutes after their shift for a manager to search them."...those who say “it could never happen in America” need only consider Easterbrook’s holding, which is so elementary that the very fact that he put it in writing underscores how dangerous Barr’s defiance is: “The Attorney General, the Secretary, and the Board ... are not free to disregard our mandate in the very case making the decision.”
"The question looming over the presidency today is not what the law says, but what happens when the executive branch violates established law. As we saw with the impeachment debacle, without consequences, laws lose their force and become optional. In remanding the Baez-Sanchez case for a second time, Easterbrook insisted that the immigration judge’s waiver decision remains “in force,” and that “[t]he Executive Branch must honor that decision.”
www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/02/12/a-conservative-judge-draws-a-line-in-the-sand-with-trum...
Opinion | A Conservative Judge Draws a Line in the Sand With the Trump Administration
politico.com
Outraged the attorney general had ignored a court order, he authors a blistering opinion rebuking William Barr for overstepping his constitutional authority.
What a great legacy the Trump administration is leaving the US: Nobody has to abide by laws if the President himself doesn't have to. I'm so glad I don't have young children in the house anymore to try and explain why they can't behave like the leader of the free world. Pathetic. I hope he dies a violent, lingering death.
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library.nclc.org
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How the Environmental Lawyer Who Won a Massive Judgment Against Chevron Lost Everything
theintercept.com
Steven Donziger won a multibillion-dollar judgment against Chevron in Ecuador. The company sued him in New York, and now he’s under house arrest."Hina Shamsi, director of the National Security Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, says the Trump administration's justifications for killing Soleimani are, so far, unconvincing.
"The very limited circumstances in which use of force might be permitted under either domestic or international law quite simply haven't been met here," Shamsi told CNN....
"US officials have rejected the characterization of his killing as an assassination. That's hardly a surprise because assassinations have been illegal under US federal law since 1981. But people have still been assassinated, and the government has not always been considered in violation of the law. This is, in part, because US law does not define "assassinations" with precision, and there are other laws that administrations have used to justify their actions....
"But targeted killings are permitted under international law in only very narrow circumstances, and some legal experts are skeptical that the White House's justification for the strike -- offered without evidence at the time of writing -- meets those standards....
"Agnes Callamard, UN Special Rapporteur on Extra-Judicial Executions, says targeted killings are permitted under international law but only under very strict conditions. The self-defense argument is only valid if there is evidence of an imminent armed attack, she told CNN, and it has to be proportionate to the threat.
"Callamard, who carried out the UN's investigation into the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, said the international law on self-defense was also evolving, calling it both "controversial" and "difficult." For every case in which the law is cited, "we must demand transparency and accountability," Callamard said.
Callamard told CNN that were an armed conflict between the US and Iran already underway, the laws of war would apply -- and Soleimani might therefore be a legitimate target. There would not need to be a formal declaration of war. But to most experts the evidence for an existing armed conflict between the two states is scant. On the contrary, they have been fighting a common enemy in the form of ISIS in places like Iraq....
"Karen Greenberg, director of the Center on National Security at Fordham University Law School, said the Obama administration used the 'imminence' argument in unprecedented and expansive ways in targeting al-Awlaki, and traces of that approach are evident now in the Trump administration's justifications of killing Soleimani.
But she says the Soleimani case is very different. "You can't take aim at an official inside a government and say that is not a war," she told CNN. The administration has "crossed a threshold, and the significance of that cannot be overstated....."
""What happened with the War on Terror is that we had mission creep beyond what the initial authorization was, but it does not extend to here," Greenberg said. Greenberg believes the system is broken. "There has to be some kind of authorization for this war, and it can't be our continually-expanding-without-oversight drone policy that has guided us for the last ten years."
Was the US killing of Qasem Soleimani legal?
cnn.com
In the hours and days after Qasem Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike, his demise was described in various terms: President Donald Trump said he had been "terminated"; other US officials talked about a "targeted killing" and "lethal action."