First Amendment Fiasco – Student Speech Confusion
From The Legal Intelligencer:
Lawyers were scratching their heads on Thursday over a federal appellate court's seemingly conflicting rulings in a pair of closely watched student-speech cases that both involve high school students who were suspended for creating fake MySpace pages on their home computers to ridicule their principals.
Although the cases appeared at first glance to raise nearly identical legal questions about the limits on a school's power to discipline students for off-campus speech, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the student in Layshock ...
New York Times: Pornography and an Issue of Restitution
From Wednesday's New York Times:
When Amy was a little girl, her uncle made her famous in the worst way: as a star in the netherworld of child pornography. Photographs and videos known as “the Misty series” depicting her abuse have circulated on the Internet for more than 10 years, and often turn up in the collections of those arrested for possession of illegal images.
Now, with the help of an inventive lawyer, the young woman known as Amy — her real name has been withheld in court to prevent harassment — is fighting back.
Read the complete story ...
Wrongful Death of Children in Foster Care
The first law review article on the topic of wrongful death of children in foster care has just been published. It is co-authored by Daniel Pollack, Professor at the School of Social Work at Yeshiva University in New York City and a frequent expert witness in child welfare lawsuits, and Gary Popham, Jr., an attorney in Arizona. For a PDF of the article please contact Professor Pollack.
For more articles on ChildLaw by Professor Pollack click here.
The Third Circuit’s Sexting Skeptics
More coverage and an update from the Legal Intelligencier on Friday's first ever federal appeals court hearing on sexing as child pornography:
As the nation's first case involving criminal prosecutions of teenagers for "sexting" made its way to a federal appeals court in Philadelphia, all three judges seemed skeptical of the prosecutor's claim that child pornography laws are violated when a teen transmits a nude image of herself.
The three 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges also appeared poised to declare that former Wyoming County District Attorney George ...
Sexting Goes to Court – Miller v. Skumanick
This just in from the Legal Intelligencier:
A federal appeals court on Friday takes up the growing practice of "sexting" — in which teenagers transmit nude and semi-nude photos of themselves and others by phone — as the judges tackle the vexing question of whether such images can be deemed child pornography.
The appeal in Miller v. Skumanick stems from a civil rights suit brought by three Wyoming County girls against then-District Attorney George Skumanick Jr. alleging that he violated their First Amendment rights with his threat of a child pornography ...
Masha Allen’s Celebrated Adoption – what went wrong?
Last month, Cambria County, Pennsylvania terminated the parental rights of one of the most celebrated adoptive parents of the last decade, Faith Allen. Russian orphan Masha Allen, who was a victim of sex trafficking when she was five years old, first came to public attention through a story in the Pittsburg Post-Gazette and later appeared on ABC Primetime, Nancy Grace and Oprah. Masha's story was also featured in the LATimes, Washington Times, and WESH news in Orlando. In 2006, Senator John Kerry passed a major piece of federal legislation in her name, Masha’s Law. ...
Restitution for Child Pornography Victims – what the government must do
Thanks to Professor Paul Cassell for this post on The Volokh Conspiracy involving one of my cases:
Yesterday U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz of the District of Minnesota issued an interesting order regarding a restitution application in a child pornography case. In his order, found here, Judge Schiltz chastises the government for failing to pursue restitution for child pornography cases in his district, even though Congress has made restitution mandatory in such cases. Judge Schiltz wrote:
This Court has recently handled a number of other child-pornography cases ...