It remains still unclear if the behavior of a Harvard morgue manager who allegedly ran a multi-state human remains scheme – “ghoulish” in the words of a Supreme Judicial Court justice considering the case – means that the Ivy League school is also on the hook.
Courts
Posted inCourts
SJC upholds conviction of officer who used evidence room cash to pay mortgage
Against the backdrop of police reportedly availing themselves of forfeited money, the state’s highest court held that criminal penalties were fairly applied in a West Springfield police department case.
Posted inOpinion
Trump’s reckless attack on birthright citizenship
We fought many battles like this during the first Trump administration, and we expect to fight many more still.
Posted inImmigration
Trump citizenship order draws quick lawsuit
President Donald Trump’s executive order attempting to redefine birthright citizenship drew an immediate lawsuit from immigrants’ rights groups, including the ACLU of Massachusetts, and another subsequent complaint from Attorney General Andrea Campbell and more than a dozen of her peers.
Posted inHousing
An MBTA Communities reality check
Days after the SJC ruled on the MBTA Communities Act, proponents consider the way the housing law was pitched and debated. Greg Reibman, president of the Charles River Regional Chamber, and Luc Schuster, executive director of Boston Indicators at the Boston Foundation.
Posted inHousing
SJC says attorney general can enforce MBTA Communities Act, but state must rework regs
The state housing office must re-issue its MBTA Communities law guidelines, after the Supreme Judicial Court held that the attorney general can enforce the sweeping housing law as long as the guidelines are promulgated correctly.
Posted inMedia
The top ten CommonWealth Beacon stories of 2024
ALL ROADS lead to home, or perhaps the nearest T station. Housing and transportation are both issues that roiled policymakers on and off Beacon Hill, as state officials sought to […]
Posted inEducation
US Supreme Court passes on Boston exam school challenge
For the second time this year, the US Supreme Court opted against weighing in on policies that use geographic proxies for race to allow more Black and Latino students to enroll in competitive high schools.
Posted inCourts
SJC tosses warrantless secret video recording
Considering the case of a man secretly recorded by an officer’s cell phone without a warrant, the Supreme Judicial Court concluded that because Boston police made an illegal audio recording, the video captured alongside it should also be kept out of evidence under the wiretap statute.
Posted inCourts
SJC: $70,000 engagement ring must be returned to giver if wedding called off
“We now join the modern trend adopted by the majority of jurisdictions that have considered the issue and retire the concept of fault in this context; where, as here, the planned wedding does not ensue and the engagement is ended, the engagement ring must be returned to the donor regardless of fault,” Justice Dalila Wendlandt wrote for a unanimous court.
Posted inCourts
Tracking cookies doesn’t violate wiretap law, SJC rules
The 1960s-era Wiretap Act prohibits covertly intercepting communications, but the majority of Supreme Judicial Court justices concluded Thursday that use of popular AdTech tools that monitored a Revere resident’s browsing on the New England Baptist Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center websites doesn’t fall under that definition.
Posted inHousing
Lawmakers say they meant for MBTA Communities law to have teeth
“What I found interesting was what the case was not about,” zoning expert and consultant Amy Dain said on The Codcast. “The justices and the lawyers in the courtroom were not debating whether there’s a housing crisis. “
Posted inCourts
Post-Bruen decision, everyone has to be a gun-law historian
The decision has opened almost all aspects of the state’s gun safety law regime to challenge and sent lawyers scrambling for history books. As recent Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decisions have shown, if a policy is not tied to a founding-era law or practice – a so-called historical analogue – it likely will not survive judicial scrutiny.
Posted inHousing
SJC raises questions about MBTA Communities Act penalties
There seemed to be a mixed reception to the arguments on Monday, with some justices inclined to parse legal minutiae that could support a narrow ruling on technical grounds. Others appeared compelled by a broader public policy argument that could allow wide latitude for the state to enforce laws designed to address the crippling housing shortage.
Posted inHousing
20 groups weigh in on MBTA Communities Act case
The key issue in the case is whether Campbell can compel compliance when the MBTA Communities Act statute itself is silent on her enforcement power and specifically mentions the loss of grant funds as the penalty for noncompliance.
Posted inOpinion
AG’s settlement with Uber and Lyft leaves big worker protection issues unresolved
Uber and Lyft got what they most wanted – no admission that their drivers are employees. The attorney general’s office got what they felt they needed – the rideshare companies’ commitment to withdraw a ballot question that would have codified drivers’ status as independent contractors. But the settlement left the larger issue of the role of misclassification in the gig economy unresolved.
Posted inCourts
SJC greenlights electric substation in E. Boston
The Conservation Law Foundation and the Chelsea-based advocacy group Greenroots had argued that the state’s Energy Facilities Siting Board approved the East Boston substation location – across the street from a school — without adequately considering “the equitable distribution of energy and environmental benefits and environmental burdens.”
Posted inOpinion
JD Vance has become a laugh line to some, but his stance on divorce is seriously dangerous
Vance’s long list of what women should not be allowed to control keeps getting longer: their bodies, their reproductive rights, who they marry, whether they have children (or cats) and now, whether they can divorce.
Posted inCourts
In case of $70,000 Tiffany ring, SJC judges fully engaged
Justices at the state’s highest court appear open to doing away with the traditional approach to answering a very niche question: should it matter whose fault it is when an engagement goes sour, even with a $70,000 diamond ring on the line?
Posted inPolitics
SJC clerk race upends usual glide path to the ‘velvet coffin’
Races for obscure elected county positions like the Supreme Judicial Court clerk post that was on Tuesday’s primary ballot are usually low-profile affairs that turn on name recognition, but that narrative was disrupted when the race became a proxy battle over the direction of Boston politics.
Posted inCourts
Does fault matter when an engagement ends?
Getting engaged is complicated, saide Boston Globe romance columnist Meredith Goldstein. “It’s tied to romance, especially now, but also it’s a legal thing. It’s a business contract,” she said. “So I think the minute we begin to enter into that contract, it is a very awkward line to dance down. Is this business? Is this pleasure? And who benefits and whose responsibility is it to keep this going?”
Posted inPolitics
Why do we elect a Supreme Judicial Court clerk anyway? The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.
Why do we elect someone to the obscure, behind-the-scenes administrative post of clerk of the Supreme Judicial Court? The answer starts with the saga of a Black man who escaped slavery in Virginia more than 170 years ago and hoped to find freedom in Boston.
Posted inOpinion
Our judges should reflect the breadth of the legal profession
Attorneys with backgrounds in corporate law or as prosecutors are so overrepresented in Massachusetts courts it should set off alarm bells for anybody who believes in the promise of equal justice in the Commonwealth.
Posted inCourts
High court to decide if covert police recording violates wiretap law
POLICE OFFICERS may be hiding their identity by working undercover, but that doesn’t necessarily give them the right to record suspects covertly. Whether secret cell phone recordings of a drug […]
