Rosa Brooks appeared on the May 24 Fox News Network program "The O'Reilly Factor" to discuss legal protections for Guantanamo detainees. Providing such safeguards, she argued, shows "that when we talk about justice and democracy and human rights, that we're not just hypocrites. We show that we're willing to get tough when we have to, but we also show that we care deeply about the rights that we say we care about." Brooks now writes a regular op-ed column for the Los Angeles Times. Her first column, on May 29, discussed the use of torture to obtain information from detainees. "Torture is always a weapon of the weak: It's used by those too clumsy to get information any other way," she wrote. "If we had better human-intelligence agents on the ground, with the cultural skills needed to gain the trust of local populations, we wouldn't need illegal interrogation methods to gain information. And if we got serious about preventing the abuse of detainees, we might find more friends when we look for information." In her June columns, Brooks wrote about breast-feeding activists, John Bolton's views on international law, the International Committee of the Red Cross, summer childcare concerns of working parents, and "extreme tourism" to bizarre or dangerous sites such as Chernobyl or Guantanamo Bay.

Michael Dooley was quoted in a May 26 Daily Press story about a possible conflict of interest in which a Virginia Port Authority panel looking into a company included a member whose business managed property for the company. "This may be the most honest, most scrupulous person in the world," he said. "But it clearly is a conflict of interest, and it seems to be an odd choice." He added that committees and their results are more likely to be above reproach if their members are completely independent.

Thomas Hafemeister was quoted in a May 1 Associated Press story about the imprisonment and execution of mentally ill defendants. Nationwide, 16 percent of prison inmates have a mental illness, compared with about 5 percent of the general population. "We used to take care of them within the mental health system," Hafemeister said. "The criminal justice system has become the system that can't say no."

John Harrison was quoted in a June 16 Roanoke Times & World News story about whether leaving a burned copy of the Quran outside the Islamic Center of Blacksburg might be prosecuted as a hate crime. Noting that proving that an act is a hate crime is not as easy as people outside law enforcement might imagine, Harrison explained that police have to show that the purpose of the act was to intimidate or harass people because of their race, religion, or national origin.

A. E. Dick Howard was quoted in a May 1 Richmond Times-Dispatch article about a Virginia constitutional amendment protecting the right to hunt. "I'm not keen on cluttering the constitution up with social trends," he said. "There's a danger in loading up the Constitution so it begins to sound like a political party's platform." In a June 2 Associated Press story on Chief Justice William Rehnquist, he noted: "His likability has a lot to do with his success as an administrator. There's something of an old shoe quality, a low-key quality about Rehnquist." In a June 5 Richmond Times-Dispatch story about Virginia's law forbidding write-in votes in primary elections, he noted that partisan considerations dictated the prohibition. "The legislators wanted to protect the integrity of the party system," he said. In a June 20 Legal Times article about possible nominees, Howard discussed comparisons between Judge Michael Luttig and Justice Antonin Scalia, saying that "Luttig shuns publicity, and he is very pleasant and steady, with no rough edges—none of the flashes of lightning you get with Scalia." Howard commented in a June 28 Bloomberg News Service article on the latest Supreme Court term that he "would have been readier to paint a portrait of the Rehnquist court with confidence two or three years ago than I would be today. In the most visible and controversial area of the court's work, the cases of the last two or three terms seem to move the court in a more centrist direction."

Michael Klarman was quoted in a June 21 U.S. News & World Report about the trial of Edgar Ray Killen for the 1964 murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. He expressed doubts that prosecutions such as this do much to change racial inequality. "I have mixed feelings because it seems like an easy way to score political points," he said. "What are these same people doing to improve the lives of black people or provide good healthcare and education?"

Paul Lombardo was quoted in a May 6 AP story about a dispute in which a customer who found a severed fingertip in a pint of frozen custard refused to return it so that doctors could attempt to reattach it to the shop worker who had lost it. He noted that the customer's interest in preserving evidence of possible negligence was outweighed by the medical emergency. "The man who lost the finger has the superior claim," he said. In a June 7 C-Ville Weekly story on recovery from drug addiction, Lombardo commented on the increase in prescriptions of potentially addictive painkillers. "In the past, the default position was to be very careful about giving addictive substances," he said. "More recently the pendulum has swung the other way, toward being more proactive about relieving pain." In a June 30 Washington Post article about disputes over whether a research institute had acquired human brains without full consent from family members, Lombardo said "There's a general repulsion to the idea of people taking out organs without permission, and I don't think you have to have any formal training in ethics to understand that that's repellent."

Anup Malani was quoted in a May 3 BestWire story on a proposed asbestos compensation trust fund that discussed his research on how the joint-and-several liability standard in mass torts has had the effect of driving companies into bankruptcy. Reallocating liabilities from a bankrupt firm to its co-defendants helps create a bankruptcy "contagion" that sparked more bankruptcies. The alternative Malani and a colleague propose is a joint-and-several standard that eliminates reallocation but raises the priority of tort claims to be equal or even greater than secured creditors. "If you have reallocation, then the person who pays is the co-defendant," Malani said. "With super-priority and no reallocation, the people who pay are the secured creditors of the original company. The idea is that secured creditors are better able to bear the risk of a defendant going bankrupt than codefendants, and this would also eliminate bankruptcy contagion."

Daniel Meador discussed recent transformations in the Supreme Court in a May 30 National Law Journal article. "The justices' backgrounds are strikingly less diverse now than at any time in the past," he wrote. "Seven of the current justices came to the court from a seat on a U.S. court of appeals. One came from a state appellate court. No current justice ever served in Congress or in the president's cabinet or was governor of a state." He argued that the Supreme Court's "distinctive role as final authoritative interpreter of the federal Constitution and acts of Congress . . . calls for an unusual degree of wisdom and statesmanship based, among other things, on the collective life experiences of the nine justices. The task is likely to be most soundly performed when those experiences are broad and varied." In the June 27 Legal Times, Meador wrote that presidents should work closely with the Senate on judicial nominations: "Consultation is the oil that eases executive-legislative tensions and often leads to results that could not otherwise be attained. . . . Consultation over judicial nominations is so commonsensical and so obviously in the public interest, as well as constitutionally mandated, that it is difficult to understand why it is not pursued more vigorously by the current administration."

John Norton Moore was quoted in a June 29 Reuters story about an attempt by Italian prosecutors to extradite persons involved in a 2003 CIA abduction of a Muslim cleric in Milan. While neither the Bush administration nor the Italian government is likely to support extradition, given the national security aspects of the case, Moore said that "it does show the importance of dealing with terrorists in ways that are broadly supported around the world."

Thomas Nachbar was quoted in a June 30 Cavalier Daily story about the Supreme Court's Grokster decision ruling against file-sharing firms. "For companies who want to make money off of marketing to copyright infringers, this is bad news," he said. "For those who want to just do file-sharing, it may be good news. The court is much more interested in looking for people who are seeking infringement than squelching technology."

Robert O'Neil's remarks as commencement speaker at Piedmont Virginia Community College were quoted in the May 14 Daily Progress. He urged the graduates to give back to their communities and to the college, and noted that Thomas Jefferson would be "delighted" at the college's goal of becoming a "wireless enclave." A May 29 Richmond Times-Dispatch story quoted O'Neil's e-mailed comments on a candidate's arrest for campaigning at a shopping center. While Virginia doesn't recognize shopping centers as public forums, some other states do. "Especially where political advocacy is involved, there has always seemed to me much merit in such an approach," he wrote.

Daniel Ortiz was quoted in a May 29 Roanoke Times & World News article about a federal court ruling under which small wineries may lose their privilege of selling directly to grocery stories, restaurants and wine shops. The decision came as part of a larger lawsuit on interstate shipment of wine and exclusive sale of Virginia wines in state-run ABC stores. Ortiz, who represents the plaintiffs in the case, said "We think self-distribution is wonderful; we just don't think it should be limited to Virginia wineries."

Kent Sinclair was quoted in a May 12 Roanoke Times & World News article about a dispute over who will serve as Floyd County commonwealth's attorney while the incumbent is deployed to Iraq in the Army Reserve. When the Circuit Judge appointed someone other than the person chosen by the commonwealth's attorney, a petition was filed before the Virginia Supreme Court arguing that he had exceeded his jurisdiction. Noting that nine out of 10 such petitions against judges are denied, Sinclair said that a successful petition would have to show that he "had gone on a rampage beyond the authorized jurisdiction."

Timothy Wu was quoted in a May 7 Toronto Globe and Mail article about Philadelphia's public wireless system. "This is the 21st-century infrastructure," he said. "Cities are in competition and the city that provides the most attractive public services is going to attract the most residents and the most investment." In a June 4 Washington Post article about a file-sharing pioneer who has turned to free Internet calling, Wu called him a "regime changer. He makes happen what economists predict would happen" when technology overtakes existing business models. In the June 28 Wall Street Journal, Wu was quoted in two articles about the Supreme Court's ruling that cable-TV companies need not share their high-speed Internet connections with rivals. He called the decision a "mixed bag for consumers," saying that it could increase the temptation by cable and telephone providers to limit access to certain applications. "The court's decision increases the pressure and the need for congressional network neutrality rules—rules designed to ensure that consumers can reach any Internet content they want and use any application they want and attach any device they want," he said.