Current Legal Events
Continuing Stories Peter Suber, Philosophy Department, Earlham College

Here are the continuing stories we're trying to cover in class and through electronic discussion this semester. They are more or less in the order in which we raised them in class and assigned them to ourselves. I enlarge this list nearly every week during the semester and don't delete stories that have come to a natural end. In addition to these continuing stories, we try to cover legal events that come and go more quickly.

Spring 2000-2001

Spring 1999-2000

• Microsoft anti-trust trial
• Elian Gonzalez custody and repatriation case
• Pinochet extradition
• Jon-Benet Ramsey case
• Tort suits against tobacco companies
• Tort suits against gun manufacturers
• Patrick Naughton case (soliciting sex from a non-existent 13-year-old, virtual child pornography)
• Post-Columbine zero-tolerance cases
• Grandparent visitation rights
• segregating HIV-positive prisoners in Alabama
• L. Lynn Hogue's attempt to have Bill Clinton disbarred
• Francis Mandanici's attempt to have Kenneth Starr punished
• Amadou Diallo killing
• Abner Louima beating
• Lee Magness suit against Russia
• Rampart (Los Angeles police) scandal
• Utah crackdown on polygamy as Olympics approach

Spring 1998-99

• Impeachment and related Clinton issues
• Microsoft anti-trust trial
• Tobacco legislation and litigation
• Olympic bribery scandal, but only the legal issues
• Jack Kevorkian murder trial
• James Byrd, Jr. murder (Jasper, TX, dragging death) case
• Pinochet extradition
• Regulation of the internet
• Wilford Berry execution
• JonBenet Ramsey case
• Matthew Shepard murder trial
• Tort suits against gun manufacturers for negligent marketing
• Ryan Harris (Chicago false arrest) case
• Richard Ashby (Italian gondola cable snapper) trial
• Prayer in Detroit public schools
• Debate on amending the Independent Counsel statute
• Abolishing hereditary seats in the House of Lords
• Ira Einhorn murder and extradition case
• Exoneration of death row inmates, especially in Illinois
• Y2K legal issues, especially liability issues
• Tort suits against the U.S. from the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Nairobi
• New York City ordinance authorizing seizure (civil forfeiture) of cars of drunk drivers
• Intel anti-trust case
• Tort suit by Paducah High School shooting victims
• NCAA use of SAT scores for athletic eligibility
• Constitutionality of the Violence Against Women Act
• Suit against Oliver Stone for a copycat crime inspired by Natural Born Killers
• U.S. execution of foreign nationals, sometimes without notifying the appropriate embassies as required by treaty
• Mike Tyson imprisonment for battery
• Amadou Diallo killing
• Abner Louima beating

This file is an electronic hand-out for the course, Current Legal Events.

Peter Suber, Department of Philosophy, Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana, 47374, U.S.A.
peters@earlham.edu. Copyright © 1999-2001, Peter Suber.