In criminal trials, a defendant is judged by people who weren’t there, didn’t see what happened, and usually have little experience with the type of crime involved. What jury could resist testimony from someone who can definitively say that the defendant was guilty of the crime because they committed the crime together? The accomplice can …
In FOIA attorney fee cases, courts have created a false dichotomy between those requests for information that are in the public interest and those that further a private commercial interest, except those private commercial interests represented by mainstream media. This distinction fails to consider that the commercial frequently becomes political. For example, look at what …
Meeting the “public benefit” standard in FOIA attorney fees cases. Read More »
The Congressional Research Service tees up the immigration issues facing Congress with a balanced report on the debates surrounding various issues. From the summary: The number of foreign-born people residing in the United States is at the highest level in U.S. history and has reached a proportion of the U.S. population—12.5%—not seen since the early …
I have just started looking into FOIA Attorney Fees, and one thing I had found curious is that even though the statutory provision for attorney fees for FOIA applicants has fewer criteria than other provisions, such as EAJA, the courts have applied additional criteria to FOIA attorney fees, making an application MORE difficult. I wrote …
Judge Randolph’s Concurrence in Burka v US Dept. of Health and Human Services Read More »
Although the statute for attorney fee awards in Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) cases has fewer conditions on such awards than the statutes for attorney fee awards in the Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA), courts have imposed their own conditions on FOIA attorney fees that are stricter than those for EAJA. In this post, I …
On January 27, Noah Clements was honored with the Florida Bar President’s Pro Bono Service Award for the out-of-state division. Many thanks to Sidley Austin for the opportunities.
