I will be on vacation next week, starting in a “town of firsts” in its province: the first capital, where the first library was established, birthplace of the Law Society of Upper Canada, home of first newspaper, and site of the oldest golf course. More information upon my return!

Court Extends Time to Opt Out of Google Settlement by Four Months
Follow up to Authors, Publishers, and Google Reach Landmark Settlement, from the Authors Guild: "The court overseeing Authors Guild v. Google extended the time for authors and publishers to opt out of the settlement by four months, to September 4th (Judge Chin's order). The fairness hearing will be on October 7th."
New York Times: "The Justice Department has begun an inquiry into the antitrust implications of Google’s settlement with authors and publishers over its Google Book Search service..."

Justice David Souter to retire from Supreme Court in June Souter has never made his dislike for Washington a secret, once telling acquaintances that he had "the world's best job in the world's worst city." When the court finishes its work for the summer, he quickly departs for his beloved New Hampshire. He has been on the court since 1990, when he was an obscure federal appeals court judge until President George Bush tapped him. http://www.freep.com/article/20090501/NEWS07/905010491/Justice+Souter+to+retire+from+Supreme+Court

It's official: Chrysler has filed for Chapter 11 in Gotham. Judge Arthur Gonzalez, who oversaw the Enron bankruptcy, will preside over the matter. (Click here for a copy of the company's petition.) Bankruptcy venue is a heated topic. Critics say that public companies file so often in New York and Delaware, because judges there are more apt to give debtors what they want, even if workers and creditors are the worse for it. But many lawyers counter that New York and Delaware are popular venues, because the judges there are experienced in handling mega cases and bankruptcy law is highly evolved; thus, the argument goes, outcomes are more predictable in Manhattan and Wilmington. Click here and here for statistics from BankruptcyData.com, which show just how much power is wielded by the two Chap. 11 hotspots.
Few Supreme Court opinions have riled up the masses in recent years like 2005's Kelo v. City of New London. In the Kelo ruling, the court held that governments can take property for the purpose of promoting “economic development,” a broader justification than the court had previously allowed for a “taking” under the Fifth Amendment. Rudy Giuliani slammed the ruling. And a group shortly after the ruling came down proposed “taking” the farmhouse of Justice David Souter, who signed onto the majority opinion. In the years following, more than 40 states passed laws aimed at limiting the power of so-called “eminent domain,” including measures to remove “economic development” as a justification for seizing property. Click here for a story out today by the WSJ's Nathan Koppel.
Rick Hasen, an election-law specialist at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and author of the Election Law Blog confirms that a switch in party is not actionable. “There are other countries where if you switch parties, you might lose your seat in parliament, but not here,” he said. “Here, you can switch teams.” Hasen said that no binding contract is created when a voter casts a ballot. The spark of this idea, Hasen told us, can be found in a speech that Edmund Burke gave to the Electors of Bristol in 1774. Quoth Burke: [A]uthoritative instructions, mandates issued, which a member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgment and conscience; these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole order and tenor of our constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court picked up Burke's language in a 2001 case called Cook v. Gralike. WSJ Law Blog April 30, 2009

prosopagnosia (pros-uh-pag-NO-see-uh)
noun: Inability to recognize familiar faces
From Greek prosopon (face, mask), from pros- (near) + opon (face), from ops (eye) + agnosia (ignorance). Ultimately from the Indo-European root gno- (to know) that is also the source of know, recognize, acquaint, ignore, diagnosis, notice, and normal.
A.Word.A.Day

May 1 is May Day, a holiday with its roots in the fertility celebrations of pre-Christian Europe. At Oxford University, otherwise intelligent young scholars jump off the Magdalen Bridge into a section of the Cherwell River that is two feet deep. At St. Andrews in Scotland, students gather on the beach the night before May Day, build bonfires, and then at sunrise they run into the very cold North Sea, some of them without any clothes on. There are bonfires and revelry in rural Germany. And there's hula dancing to the "May Day is Lei Day" song in Hawaii. In Minneapolis, there's the May Day Parade that marches south down Bloomington Avenue. It's organized by the In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre, now in its 35th year and attracting about 35,000 people. May Day is also Labor Day for much of the world, a day to commemorate the economic and social improvements of workers, like the eight-hour workday. It evolved from the 1886 Haymarket Square riots, so in the United States, President Cleveland moved Labor Day to September to disassociate it with the radical left. In 1958, U.S. Congress under Eisenhower proclaimed May 1 "Loyalty Day" and also "Law Day"—two holidays that have not caught on. Incidentally, the international distress signal code word "Mayday" has nothing to do with May 1st. It's actually derived from the French m'aider,meaning, come help me. The Writer’s Almanac