In a Jan. 26 New Yorker article on a recent Amnesty International controversy involving alleged threats on the life of one of its volunteers, Rosa Ehrenreich Brooks discussed the events that led to her resignation from the organization's board of directors. She also explained the blunt procedure by which human rights violations are generally verified:  "You ask, 'Tell me about the time your children were hacked to death in front of you.' And, if the story doesn't make sense, you keep asking probing, obnoxious questions and then you say, 'Thank you and goodbye.'"  In the Jan. 31 Washington Post, she commented on the case of a U.S. citizen captured with Taliban soldiers who was allowed to meet with his attorney for the first time, but with a military observer standing in the room and recording the session. "The Pentagon is saying they're letting him see the lawyer as a favor rather than because he has any right to do so," she noted. "That's pretty troubling." Brooks was also quoted in a Feb. 3 Ottawa Citizen story on "stress and duress" interrogation techniques the United States has been accused of using in the wake of terrorist attacks. She noted that American courts would prohibit these techniques if they were tested under American law, pointing to "circumstances in which these things would be clearly illegal."

George Cohen was quoted in a Feb. 2 Business Week article on the "lawyer loophole" that allows clients to avoid criminal prosecution if their shady deals are approved by an attorney. "All of the financial incentives are for clients to seek out lawyers who give them the advice they want to hear," he said. "And all of the financial incentives are for lawyers to give it." Cohen's testimony before a House Financial Services subcommittee on the SEC's proposed "noisy withdrawal" rule requiring that lawyers disclose when they cut ties with clients they suspect are engaged in fraudulent conduct was discussed in the Feb. 4 Congress Daily and Feb. 5 Dow Jones News Service stories. In the Dow Jones story, he said that the rule would reinforce an attorney's duty to provide only lawful assistance and advice to clients, and "provides lawyers with a last-resort weapon and increased leverage in dealing with a difficult client or one embarked on an unlawful or fraudulent course."

Anne Coughlin was quoted in a Jan. 24 Roanoke Times & World News article on murder charges against a mother and her boyfriend in the death of a 5-year-old boy, even though his body had not been found. She noted that the lack of a body makes the prosecutor's job much tougher, but that proving that a missing person has been murdered is easier when the victim is too young to plan and carry out a voluntary disappearance. "When a child disappears, that's a completely different set of circumstances," she said, "because some human being has an obligation to protect that child and preserve his life and well-being. This is not a case where you can say the boy just up and left." Coughlin also commented in the Feb. 20 Washington Blade on a Virginia sodomy prosecution in the wake of Lawrence v. Texas. She noted that the Virginia court is bound by the Supreme Court's decision and could only uphold a conviction if its case had a factual distinction from the Lawrence case. If what the defendant was proposing to the undercover officer, she said, "was that the two of them have consensual, non-commercial sex, there's no crime under Lawrence. The state has to respect those private activities, whether engaged in by straights or gays."

Earl Dudley was quoted in a Feb. 7 Winston-Salem Journal article about the lack of apologies received by a man released after serving 18 years in prison for a rape he didn't commit. He explained that people in the legal system often have a hard time admitting their mistakes. "Lawyers in general are competitive, and trial lawyers are a particularly competitive subset," he said. "They don't like to lose. If they put someone in jail for a long time, they don't like to admit, 'I had the wrong guy.'" For elected district attorneys, the stakes become even higher. Prosecutors are pressured "to try to identify a prime suspect very early in the investigation, and then to focus the effort on proving that person is guilty rather than taking a more objective and measured view of what the evidence shows. They get invested too early."

In a Jan. 31 Associated Press story on Black History Month, Kim Forde-Mazrui discussed his memories of researching a college paper on Chief Justice Earl Warren. "Reading the accounts of Brown when I was doing this paper became my new moment of inspiration and hope," he said. "For me, what I think Brown means, and probably for others, is seeing black people, and especially black children, as people. It's about seeing past race."

A. E. Dick Howard discussed the process for amending the U.S. Constitution on NPR's All Things Considered Feb. 24. Among his observations, he noted: "I think it's interesting that many of the proposals that have died in Congress, the ones that have not been put to the states for ratification, have revolved around the so-called hot-button social issues, things like abortion or school busing or questions like that. These tend to be lightning-rod issues, and they obviously stroke the passions of a number of people to the point where they want to amend the Constitution to do something about it. But those are the very issues which typically die.  The amendments that have, in fact, been ratified—except for the very important exception of the Bill of Rights themselves and the post-Civil War amendments—the typical amendment is really about structure and process, things like who gets the vote and how people are represented."

In a Feb. 29 Los Angeles Times story on the release of Justice Harry A. Blackmun's papers, John Jeffries commented on the defining role of Roe v. Wade in Blackmun's life. "His career would have been completely different had that opinion been assigned to someone else," he said.

David Martin wrote an op-ed piece for the Jan. 11 Washington Post, in which he criticized President Bush's plan for legalizing millions of currently undocumented immigrants. The plan, he wrote, "would lead to stunningly broad changes for our laws and our labor market, without being candid about its real-world effects and operations—much less about how to address them. This lack of seriousness verges on the irresponsible." He also discussed the logistical challenges of the plan the same day in the Los Angeles Times, saying "The scale of this is such that it could swamp any real chance of building an effective immigration system." Among other articles quoting Martin was a Feb. 20 Newark Star-Ledger article about deportation of illegal immigrants who cannot then testify in criminal investigations of employers' labor practices. In the wake of recent cases ending in dismissal or acquittal, prosecutors are now attempting to avoid prematurely deporting witnesses who could provide evidence for either side. "The immigration authorities are going to want to remove as many as possible," he said, "but everyone having been burned in these earlier examples, they will want to make them fully available to defendants."

Jennifer Mnookin wrote an op-ed piece in the Feb. 2 Boston Globe on the credibility of fingerprint evidence. "Courts must be hesitant to admit fingerprints as evidence," she wrote, "until there is better information about how often mistaken identifications are made.  . . . The present dearth of information on mistakes —either from incompetence or ‘honest' error— is simply inexcusable."

In a Feb. 27 Chicago Daily Law Bulletin on the death of Norval Morris, former dean of the University of Chicago Law School, John Monahan commented on Morris's contribution to his own career, saying "He was very quick to praise and very slow to take personal credit," and to the law generally. "He brought social science into criminal law, and in many ways he also brought criminal law to the social sciences," he explained. "He managed to bridge the un-bridgeable worlds."

In the Jan. 12 National Law Journal, Robert O'Neil said that he was troubled by a recent court decision that seemed to call into question a university's right to make statements endorsing values like openness, civility and racial tolerance. "The court may be chilling the capacity of school administrators to encourage civility," he said. O'Neil wrote in the Jan. 16 Chronicle of Higher Education on academic freedom and controversial statements posted on faculty members' websites. "It might be wise," he noted, "for a university to consider creating a clearer separation between the intensely personal blog and the pedagogical portion of the Web page." In a Feb. 5 Associated Press story on hearings on whether an Islamic cleric accused of concealing ties to anti-Israel terrorist groups can continue to lead prayer services at his mosque, O'Neil said the involvement of courts in church disputes "is probably the single most complex and confusing area" in First Amendment law. In the Feb. 11 Des Moines Register, he discussed a federal grand jury's demand for information about a Drake University student group involved in an anti-war conference. "Whatever the government's need for information, however substantial and legitimate it may be, they should not resort to such measure as intrusive to free expression and association," he said.

James Ryan wrote an op-ed piece in the Jan. 21 Richmond Times-Dispatch urging the passage of two education bills in the Virginia General Assembly. Arguing against the automatic denial of high school diplomas to students who have not passed standardized SOL tests, he noted:  "If we knew that passing the SOL tests was absolutely necessary to function in higher education or in the workplace, it might make sense to deny diplomas immediately. But we have zero evidence that these tests are related to future success as a student or an employee." On the other hand, he added, "we know a great deal about the importance of a high school diploma. Mounds of social science data demonstrate that receiving a high school diploma is absolutely essential to economic security." In the Jan. 25 Washington Post, he commented on the likelihood of lawsuits over the Virginia SOL program. "If it turns out that the percentages are low but the kids who fail are disproportionately poor and disproportionately minority," he said, "then it will create more controversy." The same day in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Ryan commented on the unforeseen consequences of 2002's No Child Left Behind legislation. The point of the bill was to raise academic standards by setting severe penalties for schools that do not meet those standards, yet it allows the states to develop the tests and to decide what the passing score will be. "That creates incentives for states to dumb down the tests," he said, which in effect lowers academic standards for everyone.

Robert Scott was quoted in a Feb. 15 Chicago Tribune story about the employment of several former ABA officials by unaccredited law schools in recent years. Contending that such cozy relations raise the appearance of a conflict of interest, he said "It's unseemly. One would like to think that the accreditation issues were totally divorced from any consideration that might influence the outcome."

Stephen Smith was quoted in a Feb. 9 National Law Journal article on ineffective assistance of counsel claims after the Supreme Court's decision last summer in Wiggins v. Smith, in which a defense lawyer's failure to investigate and present mitigating evidence about the defendant at sentencing was deemed a violation of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel. "The Supreme Court may be getting a little wiser in finding ways to correct unfairness in the death penalty," he said. "Instead of imposing rules that were doomed to failure, the court is ratcheting up the standards of representation."