LEGAL

Florida Supreme Court hears gun law challenge amid national debate over restrictions

The law being challenged is part of a decades-old “preemption” law approved by the Florida Legislature that prohibits local governments at the city or county level to pass measures stricter than those at the state level. The case the state Supreme Court is weighing will not affect the underlying 1987 preemption law.

“This is a legislative fire hose to put out a birthday candle,” said Edward G. Guedes, an attorney representing the plaintiffs trying to overturn the law.

The state’s high court considered the legal fight in the aftermath of a spate of mass shootings across the country, including one last month in Uvalde, Texas school that left 19 elementary students and two teachers dead, and another in Buffalo, N.Y. that claimed 10 lives. Those shootings and others spurred lawmakers across the country to again fight over how to restrict firearms in the country.

The Florida law was initially overturned in Leon County Circuit Court, but last year the 1st District Court of Appeals overturned that lower court ruling, which prompted Democratic Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, who is also running for governor, and 30 local governments to appeal the decision to the Florida Supreme Court.

“We should be talking

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June 18, 2022 by LEGAL

Senators reach a bipartisan deal on gun safety legislation : NPR
Senators have reached a deal on gun control legislation.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Senators have reached a deal on gun control legislation.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

A bipartisan group of Senate negotiators say they have reached a deal on a package of safety and gun-related measures narrowly focused on preventing future shootings similar to the one in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 children and two teachers were killed in their school.

The proposal, which has not been written into legislative text, includes money to encourage states to pass and implement so-called “red flag” laws to remove guns from potentially dangerous people, money for school safety and mental health resources, expanded background checks for gun purchases for people between the ages of 18 and 21 and penalties for illegal straw purchases by convicted criminals.

The agreement has the support of at least 20 senators who worked closely over the past several weeks to find the areas of common ground that could pass the closely divided Senate. The group includes 10 Republicans, meaning a final bill could potentially garner the 60 votes necessary to overcome a filibuster.

The negotiators called it a “commonsense” proposal that would reduce the threat of violence across the country.

“Our plan increases needed mental health resources, improves school safety and support for students, and helps ensure dangerous criminals

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June 17, 2022 by LEGAL

Why Major Companies Are Outsourcing Legal Solutions

city-g491968b92_1920More legal departments are looking to outside talents to bolster their ranks and grow their business. Wolters Kluwer’s new survey of 100 legal executives shows that 93% of legal or compliance departments have outsourced work in the last three years.

And these are more than just smaller companies: The respondents came from entities making more than $500 million in revenue, with the increase most prevalent among institutions with $1 billion-$4 billion in annual revenue.

Why are even institution-sized firms pulling in external experts? And what duties are those hires performing?

Why Now? 

As the survey responses show, outsourcing legal solutions solves multiple problems for legal departments.

One: It eases workflow, allowing companies to redistribute workload to dedicated experts, thereby freeing their in-house counsel to manage and tackle larger, more complex aspects of their project.

Two: On-demand in-house counsel keep the budget down without sacrificing quality. As Wolters Kluwer found, GCs anticipate a 25% increase in workflow, but 88% anticipate needing to trim their budgets. On-demand solutions let them do both.

Third, hiring on-demand counsel for bespoke solutions allows companies to grow their business without burning out their staff. Plus, it lets legal departments test new methods that keep

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June 16, 2022 by LEGAL

Knesset debate over Civil Law in Israel threatens protections on settlers

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HEBRON, West Bank — Noam Arnon and Issa Amro live within a few blocks of each other in the center of this biblical city, but they live under two different sets of laws. Amro, along with Hebron’s other 200,000 Palestinian residents, is subject to military law imposed by the occupying Israeli forces. Soldiers can, and have, entered his house and body-searched him on the streets without warrant or warning.

Arnon and the other 800 residents of an Israeli settlement in Hebron’s Old City live under Israeli civil law, enjoying the same protections against warrantless searches, the arrest of minors and other police powers as their countrymen living in Israel. “Israeli law must apply here,” said Arnon, who believes that Jews have a biblical and historical claim to these ancient lands. “Hebron is more Israeli than Tel Aviv.”

But the decades-old system in which Israel extends its legal code to its citizens settling in the Palestinian territories is suddenly imperiled. Lawmakers in Jerusalem are deadlocked on renewing the arrangement in a schism that could dissolve the unusual two-tiered legal system and subject the West Bank’s Israelis to the same martial law as their Palestinian neighbors.

It

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June 15, 2022 by LEGAL

What would it mean if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade

The draft is not final and could undergo significant changes before the court’s formal opinion is released. In the meantime, however, CNN readers have asked hundreds of questions about what a reversal of the Supreme Court’s abortion rights precedents would mean and how it will affect access to the procedure.

We’re reading as many as we can and answering some of the most popular questions here.

Is the Supreme Court actually overturning the law or merely saying the decision belongs with each state’s law?

The Supreme Court, if it adopts the draft opinion, will be overturning previous court precedent that preempted state laws banning abortion before the fetus is viable, a point around 23 weeks into the pregnancy. In overturning the Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood decisions, the Supreme Court would be allowing states to pursue bans and other restrictions on pre-viability abortion.

However, such a ruling will not have the effect of banning abortion nationwide. According to the logic expressed in the draft decision (and with the caveat that it can still be changed before the final opinion comes out), the question of abortion policy would then go to state and local lawmakers — and potentially
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June 13, 2022 by LEGAL
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