Richard Bonnie was quoted in a Jan. 7 Washington Post article about a new report suggesting that a man charged with killing an 8-year-old boy may be competent to stand trial, contradicting earlier evaluations. Although second opinions are common in medicine, Bonnie noted that "the experts usually agree" on competency issues. In a Jan. 24 Philadelphia Inquirer story about proposals to require parolees to use naltrexone, a drug that blocks the effect of opiates such as heroin and OxyContin, Bonnie noted that there was no legal reason not to make it a condition of parole or probation. "The important thing is that offenders have a choice," he said, "even if the alternative is jail." Bonnie commented on adults' role in encouraging underage drinking in the Feb. 20 New York Times. "It's clear that even though adults are aware of the issues of under-age drinking on a certain level, they are not aware of its magnitude and its seriousness," he said. "This is an endemic problem."

Rosa Brooks appeared on the Fox News Network's O'Reilly Factor on Feb. 18, discussing a new ACLU report on prisoner torture and abuse by U.S. military personnel. "Any abuses committed by U.S. troops or any other U.S. personnel hurt us because they help the cause of terrorist recruitment, and they make us look bad," she said. "Let's be clear that any of these abuses that are occurring are not just violations of some kind of international law. They are federal crimes under the War Crimes Act."

Risa Goluboff was quoted in a Jan. 12 Cincinnati Enquirer article about the small percentage of civil rights cases that are actually prosecuted, due in part to the requirement of proof that suspects "willfully intended" to deprive their victims of constitutionally protected rights. "You have to prove the person's state of mind," she said. "It's pretty difficult to do."

In a Feb. 25 Washington Post story about a court ruling that a federal prosecutor could not compel production of reporters' telephone records, John Harrison noted that the decision's stance stressing reporters' rights over prosecutors' powers "is the minority position" among most judges. "The more common position is there's nothing special about reporters," he said.

A. E. Dick Howard discussed Jerry Falwell's new faith-based law school in the Jan. 16 Richmond Times-Dispatch, saying "We have a couple of hundred law schools and I think it's healthy and useful that you look at law from a religious perspective. It enlarges the dialogue. It tests the secular assumptions on which most of our law schools operate." In the Jan. 27 New York Sun, Howard noted that potential Supreme Court nominee J. Harvie Wilkinson "is conservative, but most people would say he is more moderately conservative. It would not surprise me to see him voting with and reasoning along the lines of O'Connor and Kennedy, as opposed to Scalia and Thomas." In a Feb. 12 Associated Press story on the proposed amendment to the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom to allow prayer and proselytizing in any public venue, including classrooms, Howard said "There seems to be a crescendo of trying to solve every social problem by amending something into the constitution. I am very uncomfortable with that. What you do when you put it in the constitution is you elevate it beyond the course of normal political life." He commented further on the amendment in the Feb. 17 Washington Post, saying that Jefferson worked the language very carefully and may not have approved of the proposed changes. "He thought government and religion occupied separate spheres and one ought not to interfere with the other," he said.

Douglas Leslie was quoted in a Feb. 17 Cox News Service story about the possible use of replacement players by the National Hockey League. "They could now, I think, consistent with the labor laws, start hiring replacement players and put on a hockey season," he said. He added that the 24 U.S.-based teams would have no problem using foreign players as replacement workers, but that provincial labor laws favoring unions could greatly complicate matters for the six Canadian NHL teams.

In a Jan. 12 Voice of America story about a court decision stripping a man of his U.S. citizenship because of crimes he committed while his naturalization paperwork was being processed, David Martin said that the case gives government prosecutors more ammunition in their prosecution of criminals, but that de-naturalization cases are extremely complex and will only affect a very small portion of the migrant population. "For the government, the burden of proof is very difficult by design," he said. "The Supreme Court has held that the Constitution requires the government to carry a heavy burden of proof if they are going to take away citizenship." In a Jan. 12 Miami Herald story about the same case, Martin said he did not think the government would have the inclination or resources to go after every allegation of bad moral character.

John Norton Moore was quoted in a Jan. 24 Bergen County, N.J. Record article about lawsuits against charities, banks or governments that fund terrorism—lawsuits designed not just to win money for their clients but to bankrupt terrorism. "I believe this has some of the greatest potential of virtually any of the tools we're looking at to add very serious deterrence to terrorists," he said.

Jeffrey O'Connell was quoted in a Jan. 8 National Journal article about congressional efforts to pass a medical-malpractice liability law that caps non-economic damage awards for plaintiffs. The article examined a California law with a $250,000 limit in damages for pain, suffering, emotional distress, or mental anguish. "It seems quite clear that the premium rises in California have been less than in other states," he said. "But it's been at a real cost to injured claimants. With caps, you're weighing in on one side and not the other." In a Jan. 29 National Journal article on tort reform, O'Connell said, "This seems to me to miss a great opportunity to change this very wasteful system and pay people who really need it relatively promptly for real losses." The article explained O'Connell's early-offer proposal, under which a doctor or other tort defendant could limit the risk of a huge pain-and-suffering award by offering at the outset to reimburse the plaintiff for any otherwise uncompensated medical costs and lost wages.

Robert O'Neil was quoted in a Jan. 23 Madison, Wis. Capital Times article about the University of Wisconsin's race-based grants. "I agree that a race-conscious policy ought not be permanent," he said. "On the other hand, I don't think the time has come yet for ending it. There's still a severe under-representation of qualified non-white students due to a variety of circumstances not of their own making. At least for now, that requires some explicit recognition of race as the factor which has caused that gap." O'Neil discussed the state of academic freedom on the Feb. 9 NPR program Talk of the Nation. "In my view, the role of higher education is to challenge students and to take views that they may have brought from home or their communities and put those views to the test," he said. "You don't disparage a student's view, you don't humiliate a student, you don't exploit students, but simply challenging them and forcing them to see things differently. That's really what higher education is all about." In a Feb. 11 Associated Press story about academic freedom, O'Neil noted that challenges to American professors today are mild compared with the attacks academics suffered during the anti-Communist investigations in the 1950s, "when people were so fearful they didn't speak out."

In a Jan. 9 Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star article about a 2004 Virginia law that limits the ability of same-sex couples to secure legal recognition of their relationships, Daniel Ortiz said the law's failure to restrict its focus to privileges and obligations exclusive to marriage could prohibit arrangements such as medical directives and business partnerships between any family members of the same gender. "I don't think [the bill sponsor] wanted to start gumming up the way traditional families handle their affairs. But in the interest of reaching every possible thing that could dignify a same-sex relationship, I don't think he was aware of how broad a brush he was painting with." Ortiz also commented in a Jan. 26 Associated Press story about a proposed Virginia constitutional ban on gay marriage, saying a provision barring the state or its localities from recognizing any arrangements that approximate the legal privileges of marriage could preclude the General Assembly from enacting a law to allow civil partners to receive insurance benefits.

A Feb. 7 Daily Progress article about a read-in promoting African-American heritage reported that Mildred Robinson read from her late husband Armstead's book "Bitter Fruits of Bondage," about the fall of the South during the Civil War. "What you write may have a historical significance," she told the audience.

A Jan. 19 San Francisco Recorder story about fund-raising efforts by the new dean of UC Berkeley's Boalt School of Law quoted Robert Scott on the financial freedom U.Va. had achieved by reliance on its nonprofit foundation and tuition increases. "There was a little resistance" to higher tuition, he said. "But when there's no state support, there's no justification for low tuition. The students understood."

In a San Jose Mercury News story about the possibility of the Oakland A's moving to San Jose, G. Edward White explained the history of baseball's territorial protection, saying "It was understood somebody wouldn't come into an area and compete." But he noted that the territorial principle "isn't a rule of law, it isn't a response to a legal decision, it's just a practice, so changes from the practice, exceptions from the practice, could always be negotiated by owners and people seeking to become owners."

Timothy Wu was quoted in a Jan. 20 Toronto Globe and Mail article about the effects of wireless high-speed Internet access on the traditional telephone and cable industries. "The long story of telecommunications evolution is better technology somehow getting to the users and slowly replacing the other," he said. "That's how it happens."