Notable Quotes, Sept.-Oct. 2006

Richard Bonnie was quoted in several articles about Virginia's new commission to reform the state's mental health laws, which he was appointed to chair. In the Sept. 2 Richmond Times-Dispatch, for example, he said that proposed revisions to state laws will be in hand for the 2008 legislature. "The overarching question is how the law can be used most effectively to help people get the care they need and to avoid the suffering that can occur if they do not," he said. "I think this is going to be unprecedented in many ways in that all the branches of state government will be involved and all the constituencies." In the 10/13 Richmond Times-Dispatch, he noted that the reform movement will be dedicated to "using the law more effectively to serve the needs of people with mental illness while protecting their rights and respecting the interests of their families and communities."

In a Sept. 24 Houston Chronicle article about financial exploitation of the elderly, Thomas Hafemeister commented that the issue has not been well-studied but that more cases are being seen in part because the aging baby-boomer generation has more assets to be exploited. Hafemeister discussed the commission to reform Virginia's mental health laws in the Oct. 24 Roanoke Times. "Mental health services have received growing attention in recent years because of a series of reports that document problems in the system, as well as a number of widely publicized tragic events that have been attributed to a lack of needed services," he said. "There is an emerging consensus that we need to reform mental health law both in Virginia and across the country."

A. E. Dick Howard was quoted in a Oct. 10 Roanoke Times article about the marriage amendment on the Virginia ballot. "There are so many areas that this amendment might sweep up—contract law, wills, medical directives, domestic violence—there is quite a list," he said. "Ultimately, it is for a judge and the lawyers to tell us what it means." Howard was also the subject of an extensive interview about the amendment in the Oct. 31 C-Ville Weekly. "The people of Virginia are properly concerned with the status of marriage and I have no objection to their making that judgment through the statute book," he said. But he argued that it was "a mistake to put social policy in the Constitution. It's a confusion of the fundamental difference between constitutions and statutes." A constitution's bill of rights "protects free speech, it protects free exercise of religion, it protects us from illegal searches and seizures, and any number of other rights. It doesn't regulate conduct among individuals," he explained. "This amendment is not in the spirit of the Bill of Rights. It doesn't seem to reflect a healthy picture of what Virginia ought to be."

Edmund Kitch was quoted in a Sept. 14 Richmond Times-Dispatch article about the renaming options of Randolph-Macon Woman's College now that it has decided to accept male students. The name "Randolph-Macon College" is already taken, and a new name too similar to that could set the stage for a legal dispute. "It is a gray area as to whether something is confusingly similar or not," he said. "If they used 'Randolph-Macon' together with something else, maybe that would work. The cleanest solution would be to use an entirely new name."

Linda Malone was quoted in a Sept. 19 Council on Foreign Relations Backgrounder on the Geneva Conventions and proposed legislation on military interrogations. She explained that intelligence gleaned from torture or other forms of coercion has little value. "Nothing is accomplished because it doesn't produce reliable testimony," she said. "In fact, it actually does more damage than good."

In a Sept. 8 Chicago Tribune article about whether the rights of a 7-year-old boy born in the U.S. would be violated if his mother is forced to return to Mexico, David Martin said he would be surprised if a judge agrees with the boy's claim. "Some people's knee-jerk reaction is that you can't force a U.S.-citizen child to live somewhere else," he said. "This isn't really forcing him. Technically, they aren't deporting the child."

In a Sept. 5 Washington Post story about the murder of a Maryland psychiatrist by one of his patients, John Monahan noted that people with mental disorders have a "modestly higher rate of violence" than the rest of the population. "But only very rarely do people with mental disorder commit lethal violence," he said.

Robert O'Neil commented in a Sept. 11 U.S. News & World Report article about a BYU physics professor placed on paid leave for his 9/11 conspiracy theories. He noted that the decision marks a departure from traditional standards of intellectual freedom, and that university faculty are generally punished for making bizarre claims only when such claims relate to their area of expertise and suggest a lack of competence in their chosen field. In the Sept. 27 Columbia Missourian, O'Neil expressed optimism about the academic climate in the U.S. "I think the situation is much less threatening or intrusive than most of us would have feared in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks," he said. In the Oct. 12 Washington Times, O'Neil commented on a defamation judgment based on online postings calling the plaintiff a "crook" and a "fraud." Typically, he said, "using nasty labels and epithets, such as 'crook,' would not be viewed as sufficiently factual in nature as to constitute defamation. Such pejorative terms are fairly freely and widely used in the informal environment which characterizes blogs, bulletin boards and message boards."

Daniel Ortiz was quoted in a Sept. 18 Virginia Lawyers Weekly story about a Virginia Court of Appeals ruling on the direct shipment of wine to consumers, a case in which he represented the plaintiffs. He noted that direct shipments were now allowed with some restrictions and said this was "better than it was before." Ortiz was also quoted in a Oct. 10 Roanoke Times article about the proposed Virginia constitutional amendment on marriage. Should it pass, he predicted that it wouldn't be long before legal agreements between unmarried couples are challenged. For instance, a relative could try invalidating a power of attorney in court, saying it duplicates the rights of marriage. "You can't predict ahead of time how the courts are going to interpret," he said. "It's very unclear. It all depends on judicial interpretation."

George Rutherglen was quoted in a Sept. 8 Newport News Daily Press article about settlement negotiations in a lawsuit by a fired Hampton city manager. He explained that neither party would discuss the matter in the press because secrecy during the final stages of negotiations is crucial. "It certainly appears that something is getting worked out," he said. "But we'll just have to wait and see."

Richard Schragger wrote a commentary for the Sept. 20 issue of Slate, discussing the difference in perspectives between President Bush's civilian lawyers, who "have been willing, if not eager, to jettison the Geneva Conventions and the basic norms of due process,"and military lawyers, who "have largely opposed abandoning these rules and protocols." He went on to explain that "the Geneva Conventions are so honored by military lawyers because they protect our own troops' humanity. The conventions prevent higher-ups from ordering subordinates to engage in repugnant acts, and they offer soldiers on the ground some basis for differentiating legal acts of killing and destruction from criminal acts of killing and destruction." Schragger also co-wrote a commentary for the Oct. 8 Washington Post about Congress's reliance on judicial review to determine the constitutionality of its enactments. "There is some irony in this congressional willingness to see the Supreme Court as a kind of constitutional chambermaid -- an entity that exists to clean up after Congress smashes the room," he wrote. "Members of Congress take the same oath as Supreme Court justices do, after all. . . . Lawmakers should take their constitutional obligations seriously. And if they do not take their own obligations seriously, then they have no right to criticize the judicial branch when it does."

Christopher Sprigman was quoted in several articles about proposals to provide copyright protection to fashion designs. The Sept. 11 Wall Street Journal discussed his forthcoming Virginia Law Review article arguing that copying drives the fashion cognoscenti to search out newer looks and that Congress should protect industries only when piracy stymies, rather than encourages, innovation. In a Sept. 15 ABC News story, Sprigman noted that a fashion copyright would be detrimental to all, with one exception. "I think it's a bad idea for the designers," he said. "I think it's a bad idea for the public, I think it's a bad idea for retailers. I think it's a bad idea for everyone except lawyers, for whom it's a great idea." Sprigman was also quoted in a Oct. 14 Roanoke Times article about a trademark infringement lawsuit by the jewelry company Cartier against the owner of a local limousine company. Even though it could be a challenging case for Cartier to litigate, Sprigman said, the reality is that it may never make it to trial. "The hard and somewhat depressing answer is that people lack the means to defend themselves," he said. "So for this guy to vindicate what he thinks are his rights is going to be beyond his means."

Robert Turner wrote a commentary for the Sept. 11 Legal Times arguing that President Bush did not overstep his constitutional authority in ordering domestic wiretapping. "Our greatest need in matters of national security," he wrote, "is a return to our most important law, the Constitution, which gives the president a great deal of authority over foreign intelligence and the nation's external relations that Congress cannot lawfully usurp." In a Oct. 12 Riverside, California Press-Enterprise article about an al-Qaida spokesman who has become the first American to be charged with treason in more than 50 years, Turner said that federal prosecutors must establish that the man has not renounced his American citizenship to a U.S. official and that they also will have to find him. "It's possible we will apprehend him in a raid, but we have been looking for Osama bin Laden since 2001 without success, and I don't think we are going to try him in absentia," he said.

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