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Full-Text Articles in Law
Where Did My Privilege Go? Congress And Its Discretion To Ignore The Attorney-Client Privilege, Don Berthiaume, Jeffrey Ansley
Where Did My Privilege Go? Congress And Its Discretion To Ignore The Attorney-Client Privilege, Don Berthiaume, Jeffrey Ansley
Don R Berthiaume
“The right to counsel is too important to be passed over for prosecutorial convenience or executive branch whimsy. It has been engrained in American jurisprudence since the 18th century when the Bill of Rights was adopted... However, the right to counsel is largely ineffective unless the confidential communications made by a client to his or her lawyer are protected by law.”[1] So said Senator Arlen Specter on February 13, 2009, just seven months before Congress chose to ignore the very privilege he lauded. Why then, if the right to counsel is as important as Senator Specter articulated, does Congress maintain …
Skilling: More Blind Monks Examining The Elephant, Julie R. O'Sullivan
Skilling: More Blind Monks Examining The Elephant, Julie R. O'Sullivan
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Most academics and practitioners with whom the author has discussed the result in Skilling v. United States believe that it is a sensible decision. That is, the Supreme Court did the best it could to limit the reach of 18 U.S.C. § 1346, which all nine justices apparently believed—correctly—was, on its face, unconstitutionally vague. Congress responded quickly and with little consideration with the supremely under-defined § 1346. In the over twenty years since the statute's enactment, the Courts of Appeals have been unable to come up with any unified limiting principles to contain its reach. The Skilling Court, evidently reluctant …