State lawmakers — have you heard that slashing judicial budgets could end up costing your state more money in the long run than it saves?

If not, don’t blame the legal community, which has been beating the drum on this for months at hearings, in reports, and on newspaper op-ed pages.

“Really, we’ve cut to the bone,” former Solicitor General Ted Olson told the Law Blog over the weekend at an American Bar Association meeting in New Orleans. “We’re now into the bone and finding the marrow. It is that serious a problem.”

Over the past year the bar has teamed up with business interests and non-profits to sound the alarm about the crisis, which many in the legal community say has delayed justice, dampened economic growth and shut down access to the legal system for many low-and-middle income Americans.

Lawyers have skin in the game for two reasons. Yes, they have a professional duty to preserve the justice system.

But a clogged court system can also end up wasting attorneys’ time and costing them money.  An economist testifying at an ABA hearing in Georgia last year found that a 2002 court budget cut in Los Angeles, which shuttered 29 courtrooms, also appeared to put the brake on local lawyers’ compensation, which fell behind “Houston, Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, and the U.S. as a whole.”

Olson leads an ABA task force on the subject with fellow legal heavy David Boies. Onetime adversaries in Bush v. Gore, the two litigators have also teamed up to battle California’s ban on same-sex marriage (see WSJ’s latest on that here).

On this issue, their job is, in part, to lend their joint star power to a problem that they say has few lobbyists pleading its cause to cash-strapped legislatures.

Last year 42 states cut judicial funding, according to the National Center for State Courts. The reductions come as poverty levels rise and states continue to pass new laws that essentially act as unfunded mandates because they increase the number of cases coming into the court system, Olson said.

“The problem with these cuts is in part that it’s making the justice system much more costly, and much less efficient, than it would otherwise be,” said Boies, during a break from yet another hearing on the issue at New Orleans Sheraton. “So you think you’re saving a million dollars by cutting the judicial budget. But in fact you’re incurring tens of millions of dollars of costs on consumers of the justice system who now have to wait, have to travel, have to incur additional fees — have to just generally have justice delayed.”

People are waiting weeks or months for probation officers and orders of protection, they said, and business disputes can extend into decade-long battles. In Minnesota, court offices now keep shorter hours, according to the ABA. In New Hampshire, judicial vacancies remain unfilled. In Albuquerque, the backlog of court filings meant the district court clerk’s office laid off key judicial staff to hire entry-level clerks and institute night shifts to keep documents flowing throw the system.

“There aren’t any remaining efficiencies that can be squeezed out,” Boies said. “Now what you’re doing is you’re cutting essential services. You’re eliminating health insurance for some judges. You are closing courthouses. You are forcing people in some counties to bring their own paper if they want to get a copy of a court order. You have chief Justices having to beg suppliers for pens and pencils and paper for their clerks.”

Delays also cost lawyers money. They might spend weeks preparing for trial, only to arrive at court and be told to come back in three months because there aren’t any courtrooms.

“Now the case has to be prepared all over again, the witnesses have to be subpoenaed, blah, blah, blah,” Olson said. “The cost is enormous and much of it can’t be passed on to the client.”

The issue has united supporters as disparate as the NAACP and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for Legal Reform.

“If you don’t have a reliable way of enforcing contracts, if don’t have a reliable way of resolving disputes, you can’t run efficient businesses,” Boies said. “We’re turning into a third-world country in terms of our administration of justice in some areas.”

Anyway, earlier today we wrote this:

In the U.S., ethics rules require law firms to carry the last name of partners who work there, or who did before they retired or died. China has no such rules. Firms there are free to name themselves however they like, and an evocative name can be an asset.

Then we had an astute reader leave this comment:

In the U.S., ethics rules require law firms to carry the last name of partners who work there, or who did before they retired or died.” — This is probably true in only a minority of U.S. states. I believe at least half of the states now allow trade names, if not more

And another smart reader who wrote:

most states do allow trade names. But, in those states, if you use a person’s name as the firm name, or part of it, that person must be a partner (or shareholder), or some one who had that position prior to retirement or death.

They are both right, according to Mike Downey, a partner at Armstrong Teasdale LLP in St. Louis and vice chairman of the ABA’s  Law Practice Management section.

In 1979, the  Supreme court looked at whether optometrists in Texas could use trade names in Friedman v. Rogers. The majority in the case ruled that a regulation that prohibited the use of assumed names was constitutional because it was meant to curb deceptive practices; Justice Harry Blackmun, joined by Justice Thurgood Marshall, found the regulation violated the First Amendment.

At the time, most states required law firms to take their names from partners at the firm, or partners who had retired or died, Downey said.

But a few years after Friedman v. Rogers, the American Bar Association changed its model rules — which are generally incorporated by individual state bar associations — to reflect that firms could use trade names as long as they weren’t deceptive.

Downey said most states allow trade names these days, but King & Wood potentially would have to drop the name were it to open its doors in the U.S.

“If you were to name a firm King & Wood, the expectation would be that King and Wood actually work there,” he said.

In other words, if a firm uses a person’s name to which it has no earthly connection, that could be considered “deceptive,” Downey said.

Deceptive, he added, is often defined very broadly.

After President Barack Obama made his not-technically-recess recess appointments, indignant Senate Republicans said no Obama nominee, for any position, would have their support for the rest of the year.

The idea appears to have lost its shine pretty quickly. The Hill reports,

Sen. Mike Lee’s (R-Utah) effort to block the confirmation of an Obama nominee in retribution for his controversial recess appointments faltered on Thursday when Cathy Ann Bencivengo was confirmed to the District Court of the Southern District of California by a strong vote of 90-6.

It was no cake walk, however. Bencivengo waited 126 days for consideration by the Senate after her unanimous approval by the Judiciary Committee.

Lee, for one, is not budging. ”I oppose this confirmation not because of the qualifications of this nominee but I do so in defense of the Constitution,” he said Thursday.

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine believes Ohio “absolutely” needs to address some issues with its lethal injection process before the state will be able to proceed with its calendar of executions.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a one-sentence order, denying an application by the state to vacate the stay the execution of convicted murderer Charles Lorraine.

A lower federal court in Ohio had ruled earlier that his execution should be stayed until the state makes some changes to how it handles lethal injections.

The changes include requiring the execution team to indicate on checklist that it reviewed the inmate’s medical chart the day before his execution.

In January, DeWine, representing Ohio Gov. John Kasich and the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, had asked the high court to vacate the stay of execution.

DeWine told Law Blog on Thursday that corrections official are continuing to work on refining Ohio’s death penalty procedure to comply with the lower court’s order.

“It is not the easiest thing to do,” DeWine said. “If you have a slight deviation, you might not know that until after the fact. But they are working on it.”

A number of prisoners in the state, including Lorraine, have questioned the state’s legal injection procedures, DeWine said.

DeWine said he didn’t think the U.S. Supreme Court’s order would have a significant impact on the state’s execution schedule. The next execution being scheduled for April.

“I would fully expect before April to see action in court on this,” he said, adding that he expects to have plan for the lower court explaining how it will comply with its order by then.

Correction: An earlier version of this post stated that Ohio filed an application to stay the execution. In fact, the application was to vacate the stay the execution.

What could get the inventor of the World Wide Web to testify in a courtroom for the first time? A patent suit that’s perceived as a threat to the modern web, particularly interactive features.

Tim Berners-Lee, who teaches at MIT and is considered one of the fathers of the Web, testified Tuesday about the early days of the web, as part of a case brought by a patent-licensing company called Eolas, and in which Google, Amazon and Yahoo are defendants, according to Wired.

Eolas and the University of California say they’re entitled to royalty payments from pretty much every website that has interactive features, like rotating pictures or streaming video. The claim stems from a patent for “the interactive web” by University of California researchers in 1993. Defendants contest that claim, saying the Viola browser offered that function first.

Berners-Lee described Viola as “an important part of the development of the web,” and evidence was presented showing working interactive elements of the browser before the patent claim.

On cross-examination, Berners-Lee was pressed on his opinion of software patents, a subject he’d addressed in print. The plaintiff’s attorney presented segments of a 2004 presentation Berners-Lee gave in Finland, in which he noted U.S. patents created “fear, uncertainty and doubt” and “an incentive for obfuscation,” adding that the U.S. patent office set a “ridiculously low bar” for what constitutes a novel invention.

“I had concerns about the software patent system in the U.S., and this particular patent is key in raising those concerns,” he said, according to Good Morning Silicon Valley.

His testimony also described the early days of the web community, and said it wasn’t focused on patents or money, noting that the Viola invention was put online for free.

A jury may reach a decision this week on whether the patents are valid. Eolas is seeking royalties of more than $600 million, according to CNET.

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 11-7 to advance a bill that would permit the televising of Supreme Court proceedings. The bill wouldn’t mandate cameras in the court: If a majority of the justices voted against allowing access in any given case, the arguments wouldn’t be televised.

The idea is that even if a majority of the Supreme Court justices now oppose cameras in the court — and they do — the future could bring justices to the bench who hold a different view of government transparency.

The committee held a hearing on the bill in December, and click here for a video of today’s vote.

The ayes:

Chairman Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.)

Sen. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.), who introduced the bill

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.)

Sen. John Cornyn (R., Texas)

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa)

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.)

Sen. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.)

Sen. Herb Kohl (D., Wisc.)

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.)

Sen. Chris Coons (D., Del.)

Sen. Al Franken (D., Minn.)

The nays:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.)

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R., Utah)

Sen. Jon Kyl (R., Ariz.)

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.)

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.)

Sen. Michael Lee (R., Utah)

Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.)

A similar bill — the Camera in the Courtroom Act of 2011 — is pending in the House Judiciary Committee.

In December, when we got word that Beijing-based King & Wood, a top Chinese law practice, and the big Australian firm Mallesons Stephen Jaques were tying up, we wondered aloud how the Chinese firm got its very Anglo-sounding name.

Leigh Jones at Reuters has found the answer. In fact, Messrs. King and Wood do not exist.

In the U.S., ethics rules require law firms to carry the last name of partners who work there, or who did before they retired or died. China has no such rules. Firms there are free to name themselves however they like, and an evocative name can be an asset.

Stuart Fuller, global managing partner of Mallesons, told Jones King & Wood’s name choice was “a very smart move.”

“It was symbolic of King & Wood’s approach to position itself as a firm with a heavy international focus,” Fuller said.

The firms also have Chinese names, but they aren’t identified with people either. King & Wood goes by Jin Du – Jin means gold, and Du can mean earth or wood.

The name issue goes both ways. U.S. firms that are opening doors in China have to call themselves something in Chinese. According to The American Lawyer, firms have tried a couple strategies.

Some have adopted two Chinese characters that sound similar to the firm’s name in English but also convey something about the firm’s ideals. Davis Polk & Wardwell in Chinese, for instance, translates to “Flourishing Safeguard.”

Other firms — including Sullivan & Cromwell, Wilson Sonsini and Shearman & Sterling — simply translate the name phonetically.

All is Wells: Federal securities regulators plan to warn several major banks that they intend to sue them over mortgage-related actions linked to the financial crisis, the WSJ reports. At issue is whether the banks misrepresented the poor quality of loan pools they bundled and sold to investors.

It isn’t clear which firms will receive the “Wells notices.” Banks whose activities are being examined in the civil investigation include Ally Financial, Bank of America, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs, according to the Journal. Representatives of the banks declined to comment, as did a spokesman for the SEC.

Deal on foreclosure abuses: Government officials have sealed a pact worth as much as $26 billion with five major banks, capping a yearlong push to settle federal and state probes of alleged foreclosure abuses by lenders. Attorney General Eric Holder, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan and other federal and state officials are scheduled to announce the details of the settlement at 10 a.m. in Washington. WSJ

Too exclusive: Kessler, Topaz, Meltzer & Check and Prickett, Jones & Elliott — the firms that recently won a $305 million attorney fee award in the Grupo Mexico shareholder derivative litigation — and  Klausner, Kaufman, Jensen & Levinson filed class actions on Monday and Tuesday challenging company bylaw provisions that would require shareholder suits to be filed exclusively in the Delaware Chancery Court. The lawsuits claim such rules require shareholder votes. The AmLaw Litigation Daily (sub req)

Insider-trading bill: The House of Representatives is expected to approve legislation Thursday to tighten insider-trading rules in Congress, despite changes made by a top lawmaker to remove a key disclosure provision. WSJ

Ex-UVa lacrosse player George Huguely never intended to kill his ex-girlfriend when he broke into her bedroom two years ago, his attorney told jurors on Wednesday at the start of his criminal trial. WSJ

A suspected Russian arms dealer convicted last year of conspiring to sell surface-to-air missiles and other weapons in a U.S. sting operation wants to be held under less restrictive conditions while he’s awaiting sentencing.

Viktor Bout, a former Soviet air force officer, no longer wants to be held in the special housing unit, or SHU, at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan. He has been held there since he was extradited from Thailand in 2010 after two years of legal wrangling.

His lawyer, Albert Dayan, said in a letter to the court that Bout, 45 years old, is essentially held in solitary confinement with no human contact, no fresh air and no access to the prison commissary to supplement his diet. Dayan said the prison diet is inadequate for Bout’s needs as a vegetarian.

Dayan asked that Bout be moved to the prison’s general population, noting that Monzer al-Kassar, an alleged Syrian arms trafficker, was allowed to be in general population while at the MCC.

Kassar, 66, was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 2009 after he was convicted of conspiring to sell weapons and murder U.S. citizens following a similar sting operation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

“[Bout] doesn’t know when the sun rise or sets,” Dayan said in the letter, which was read during a court hearing on Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin seemed to agree with Dayan’s arguments. ”It seems harsh. It seems brutal,” she said. “It seems unnecessary. It seems like something should be done about it.”

The judge set a hearing for Friday to discuss the issue further. Prosecutors on Wednesday said they need time to consult with the U.S. Bureau of Prisons before responding.

Dayan said that he wants to resolve the issue before Bout is sentenced, otherwise the special designation may follow him to the prison where he ultimately serves his time.

Separately, Judge Scheindlin rejected a bid Wednesday by Bout to set aside his conviction in November on four conspiracy charges. He faces up to life in prison on the charges. Sentencing is set for March 12.

Maybe you saw this gem from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel about a man who was sentenced to a date night:

A marital spat that began when a Plantation man didn’t wish his wife a happy birthday and then escalated into a domestic violence charge, resulted in an unusual bond court ruling by a perceptive judge.

Instead of setting bond or keeping Joseph Bray locked up, [the judge] ordered him to treat his spouse to dinner, a bowling date and then to undergo marriage counseling.

“He’s going to stop by somewhere and he’s going to get some flowers,” Judge John “Jay” Hurley said during the first appearance hearing. “And then he’s going to go home, pick up his wife, get dressed, take her to Red Lobster. And then after they have Red Lobster, they’re going to go bowling.”

Judge Hurley’s creative sentence — as in more creative than jail — is not anomalous. Well, not entirely. Maybe he’s the first to sentence someone to dinner at Red Lobster, but he’s not the first to dispense justice in a way lawmakers probably never contemplated.

In one famous case, a federal judge in California – Vaughn Walker of Proposition 8 fame — ordered a mail thief to stand outside a post office with a sign that read: “I stole mail. This is my punishment.” The case went to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which upheld the punishment.

Doug Berman, a law professor at the Ohio State University who writes the Sentencing Law and Policy blog, told Law Blog that Judge Hurley’s sentence was interesting because it wasn’t aimed at shaming Bray.

Berman, who said he generally supports creative sentencing, pointed to cases across the country where judges have ordered defendants to enter in to education programs or write reports on Shakespeare.

“When done well by the right folks with the right idea in mind, creative sentencing can be a good thing. There are lots of folks for whom prison may do more harm than good, not just for themselves but for society,” he said.

But the question is, can judges really order people to do such strange things?

“And the answer is it’s not clear, in part because judges don’t do this much,” Berman said. ”There’s not a lot of law out there on this, and this stuff usually comes up in settings where it’s awfully unlikely to be litigated.” (Like Hurley’s courtroom.)

If legislatures don’t define the forms and range of permissible punishment for a crime, judges have a lot of slack. Even if the the statute spells it out, judges can institute creative conditions to supervised release or probation.

Opponents of creative sentencing say it smacks of judges looking for publicity. And, they say, citizens should know what the consequences are for breaking the law.

DOJ’s Lanny Breuer

You’d think Lanny Breuer, head of the criminal division of the U.S. Department of Justice, would want to avoid a panel discussion called “Crooks on the Loose? Did Felons Get a Free Pass in the Financial Crisis?”

Apparently not. Breuer walked into a brawl Wednesday when he sat on the New York University School of Law panel with former New York governor Eliot Spitzer, an outspoken critic of the Justice Department’s lack of criminal prosecutions in the wake of the subprime mortgage collapse.

Shots were fired almost immediately when the moderator Neil Barofsky, a former special inspector general of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, asked Breuer why he hasn’t done more to go after those responsible for one of the country’s biggest financial meltdowns in history.

Elliott Spitzer chimed in, offering tips on how Breuer’s office should go after alleged perpetrators of the financial crimes.

Breuer stood his ground. “I just don’t accept the fact that we haven’t done anything,” he said, pointing to a myriad of recent insider trading convictions and Ponzi scheme busts. Breuer said he finds the excessive greed risk and risk-taking that led to the 2008 global financial crisis “abhorrent,” but said not all of it was criminal.

Ironically, Mr. Breuer’s biggest defender on the panel was Mary Jo White, a former Manhattan U.S. Attorney who chairs Debevoise & Plimpton’s litigation department, which defends clients against the Justice Department. White noted that Breuer recently sat on a different panel, where he took heat going after Wall Street executives with too much gusto.

“I want to know who was on that panel,” Spitzer said. “I find that shocking.”

This WS comes to us via Howard Bashman at How Appealing.

In a dissent Tuesday, Judge Neil M. Gorsuch of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit let loose his inner grammarian on sentencing guidelines for defendants who illegally re-enter the country after being deported.

He wrote,

In the richness of the English language, few things can create as much mischief as piling prepositional phrase upon prepositional phrase. The child says, “I saw the man on the hill with the telescope.” Did the child use the telescope to see the man on the hill? Or did the child see a man — or even a hill — bearing a telescope? A newspaper headline heralds, “Brothers Reunited after 20 Years on a Roller Coaster.” Did the brothers recently bump into each other at an amusement park? Or were they the long suffering experimental subjects of some evil genius?

Of course, we’re all guilty of venial syntactical sins. And our federal government can claim no exception. Which takes us to USSG § 2L1.2(b)(1) and this jumble of prepositional phrases — If the defendant previously was deported, or unlawfully remained in the United States, after —

(A) a conviction for a felony that is (i) a drug trafficking offense for which the sentence imposed exceeded thirteen months . . . [add a sentencing enhancement].

This has to be a sentence only a grammar teacher could love. We have here our old nemesis the passive voice, followed by a scraggly expression of time (“previously . . .after”), then a train of prepositional phrases linked one after another and themselves rudely interrupted by a pair of parenthetical punctuations. Happily, our role isn’t to grade the grammar, only discern the meaning.

Adam Liptak at the Times had a fascinating story yesterday on the waning influence of the U.S. Constitution. It was based largely on a new study by David S. Law of Washington University in St. Louis and Mila Versteeg of the University of Virginia.

The gist: Our founding document is passe. It is less imitated these days, and to the extent it is still an example, the Constitution is more likely to serve as what-not-to-do guide, the authors say. These are harsh truths.

Why is the Constitution losing its sway internationally? The authors point to criticism that the document is out of sync with an evolving global consensus on issues of human rights.

But if the U.S. Constitution is no longer the chief inspiration for constitution-making in other nations, who is the new king?

Canada. That’s who.

According to Law and Versteeg, over the 1960s and 1970s,  global constitutionalism showed signs of convergence on the Canadian and the U.S. models. They were similar to each other, and nations around the world were copying them at a high rate. When one would dip a bit in terms of influence, so would the other.

But Canada’s adoption of a statutory bill of rights in 1960 put it closer to the mainstream, and by 1982, the influence gap between the U.S. and Canadian models was profound. Then something funny happened. That year, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was adopted.

(The revisions guarantee equal rights for women and disabled people, allow affirmative action and require that those arrested be informed of their rights, among other things, but as Liptak notes, the Charter is also less absolute: Such rights are balanced against “such reasonable limits” as “can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”)

According to Law and Versteeg, Canada fell out step with the world for a few years after the revisions, but then it rallied:

For a few brief years following those revisions — and for the first time ever — the Canadian Constitution became more of an outlier than the U.S. Constitution. By1986, however, Canada was once again more in line with the constitutional mainstream than the United States. The gap between the two countries proceeded to widen dramatically in the 1990s, as average similarity to the U.S. Constitution went into a nosedive at the same time that similarity to the Canadian Constitution continued to creep upward.

Canada’s “constitutional leadership” is pronounced in common law nations. But among other categories of countries, the authors found overall similarity to the Canadian model was “barely increasing.”

Marcia Walden refused to counsel a woman in a same-sex relationship and referred her to another counselor, saying that her “personal values” prevented her from helping the woman. CDC officials asked that Walden be removed from her counseling job.

The Atlanta-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit said the record was clear that Walden was removed for the manner in which she handled the referral — not because of her beliefs — and because officials were concerned she would act the same way in the future, the Atlanta-Journal Constitution reported. The ruling can be read here. The Daily Report has a story on the ruling here.

The decision by the three-judge panel upheld a lower court’s decision to throw out Walden’s claim.

Walden’s lawyer, Byron Babione, told AJC he was disappointed with the ruling and was determing the next steps to  ”ultimately vindicate Marcia and the freedoms for which she’s fighting.”

Last month, Law Blog noted the revival of a three-year old lawsuit concerning counselors who refuse to work with gays and lesbians on religious grounds and whether they are in violation of professional ethics.

In late January, the Sixth Circuit reversed a lower court’s dismissal of a case from a woman who refused to counsel on the basis of sexual orientation, and sent the case back to federal district court for trial.

A federal judge in Washington has denied requests by Justice Department prosecutors and their attorneys to keep an investigative report on the Ted Stevens case secret.

The report, parts of which were revealed in court filings in November, found that prosecutors handling a corruption case against the late senator engaged in “systematic concealment” of evidence that could have helped Stevens defend himself.

Stevens (pictured) was convicted in 2008 of making false statements on his Senate disclosure forms about gifts he received. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan later dismissed the case at the request of Attorney General Eric Holder.

Four of the six prosecutors who were investigated for their role in the Stevens case opposed releasing the report, Judge Sullivan said in a ruling Wednesday. The names of the prosecutors were redacted.

Sullivan denied the requests, writing that the public has an “overriding and compelling right to access” the 500-page report. The report will be filed on the public docket on March 15, after the prosecutors have a chance to submit comments or objections to its findings, the judge said.

Sullivan appointed Washington lawyer Henry F. Schuelke III to investigate the prosecution.

Stevens died in a plane crash in 2010.

Sullivan’s ruling is embedded below.

schuelke

The WSJ’s Steve Eder is in Charlottesville, Va., covering the trial of former University of Virginia lacrosse player George Huguely, 24, who is accused in the May, 2010 death of Yeardley Love, his ex-girlfriend. Eder will be feeding us dispatches.

Update 10:54 a.m. A jury of 14 — seven men and seven women — has been selected. It’s unclear which are the alternates as of now. Opening statements should begin soon.

On Monday, before the jury selection process began, Huguely pleaded not guilty to five charges; murder in the first degree, robbery, burglary in the nighttime, breaking and entering, grand larceny, and murder in the commission of robbery.

Prosecutors and lawyers for Huguely then spent all of Monday and Tuesday trying to seat a jury for the case, a task that has been made difficult by the high-profile nature of the case. Scores of reporters from across the country have converged on Charlottesville, the typically quiet home of University of Virginia, to cover the trial.

By midday on Tuesday, 21 potential jurors had been identified, the court said. A pool of 27 is needed in order to get to a 12-person jury pool with three alternates, the court said.

The trial, which is expected to begin as soon as jury selection concludes, is likely to last about two weeks. Charlottesville Circuit Court Judge Edward Hogshire is presiding over the trial.

Prop 8: The Ninth Circuit ruled that California’s gay marriage ban was unconstitutional. The WSJ looks at how the ruling may bear on the presidential race; Washington Wire reports that Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney slammed the decision. Meanwhile, opponents and backers of Prop eight are playing the waiting game.

Overruled: The U.S. attorney who closed a nearly two-year investigation into the racing team of seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong rejected a recommendation from his assistants that he pursue criminal charges in the case. WSJ

House arrest: The Pennsylvania attorney general wants Jerry Sandusky to remain inside his home, while ex-Penn State football coach awaits trial on child-sex-abuse charges. WSJ

Dickens v. Lawyers: Yesterday was the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens’s birth. If you’re a lawyer, be glad he’s dead. NYT

FCPA: Justice Department officials are considering dropping a high-profile foreign bribery case in Washington following two unsuccessful trials that included three acquittals. BLT

The two legal superstars leading the fight against Proposition 8, California’s voter-mandated ban on gay marriage, were chilling in New Orleans this weekend.

Chugging Hurricanes and flinging Mardi Gras beads at dewy co-eds?

No, that’s not how David Boies and Ted Olson roll.

The veteran litigators  were at an American Bar Association meeting to discuss the crisis in state judicial funding (more on that, and their insights into the future of the legal biz, later).

But the same-sex marriage case—known as the Perry trial, after lead plaintiff Kristin M. Perry—was clearly on both their minds.

“If we’re successful in California we can do something that is extraordinarily gratifying,” said Olson, the former Solicitor General, about the case.

Filed in May 2009 on behalf of one gay couple and one lesbian couple, the lawsuit challenged Prop. 8 on grounds it violated the U.S. Constitution. Here’s what LB had to say back then about the case.

On Tuesday a federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled that the law was unconstitutional because it used the initiative power to target a minority group and take away a right it possessed, without legitimate reason. The decision could land these veteran litigators and one-time adversaries back into their natural habitat: arguing before the Supreme Court.

Here’s an edited transcript of what Olson and Boies had to say before the ruling came down.

Law Blog: What case of yours made you most proud to be a lawyer?

David Boies: There have been so many that I have been lucky enough to be involved in. [Runs through the Boies greatest hits list: Bush v. Gore, United States v. Microsoft, Westmoreland v. CBS]

The Perry case in California that Ted and I are doing—while it’s still in process, it is, I think, one of the cases that I am proudest of.  The Prop 8 case.

Law Blog: Do you have any parting words for young lawyers or people considering the profession at a time when it is undergoing some pretty profound shifts?

Ted Olsen: This is the greatest profession on the planet. It is an intellectual challenge, it is an opportunity to do things that make you feel good about yourself and about the profession.

David mentioned the Proposition 8 case, where we had the opportunity to work together to attempt to change the lives of literally millions of people, if you think beyond California.

If we’re successful in California we can do something that is extraordinarily gratifying. And working with the people that may be affected by that decision, and talking to them and listening to them and looking into their hearts, we feel—and I know David feels the same way that I do about this—that we are deeply emotionally involved in something that is extraordinarily emotionally gratifying.

Christopher L. Garcia, who has headed  the office’s Securities and Commodities Fraud Task Force since March 2010, is heading to Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP to serve as a litigation partner in the firm’s Securities Litigaiton and White Collar Defense & Investigations practices.

Garcia, who joined the office in 2004, oversaw a group of prosecutors who spearheaded a broad probe into insider trading in corporate America, as well as cases arising out of the 2008 financial crisis and stemming from Bernard Madoff’s decades-long Ponzi scheme. Garcia was named deputy chief of the task force in October 2009, the same month that Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam was charged with insider trading.

“I had the unique opportunity at the U.S. Attorney’s Office to observe some of the finest lawyers in the country and was able to see Weil lawyers at work,” Garcia said in a statement. “It was an honor and privilege to serve as Chief, and I know that I am leaving behind a unit chock-full of some of the finest fraud prosecutors in the country.”

Jonathan Streeter, the lead prosecutor in Rajaratnam’s case, recently left the office to join Dechert LLP. Boyd Johnson, the former Deputy U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, left the office in September to join WilmerHale.

A 1999 graduate of Harvard Law School and a former associate at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, Garcia will be based out of Weil’s New York offices.

Federal prosecutors said they are planning to unveil previously undisclosed instances in which former Goldman Sachs Group director Rajat Gupta allegedly shared inside information when the criminal insider trading case against him goes to trial later this year.

Prosecutors announced their intentions at a court hearing in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday, as a federal judge granted defense lawyers’ request to delay the trial so they could have more time to prepare. The trial, which had been set to start in April, will now start six weeks later on May 21^s, U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff said.

Mr. Gupta, once one of the nation’s more prominent businessmen and corporate directors, has been accused of giving improper tips to a friend and business associate, Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam.

He was originally charged in October and the allegations against him were expanded in a new indictment last month, doubling the number of illicit tips he allegedly made to Mr. Rajaratnam to four. On Tuesday, Mr. Gupta pleaded not guilty to the latest indictment.

At Tuesday’s hearing, Mr. Gupta’s lawyers asked that the case be delayed 90 days in order to give them more time to prepare for the expanded indictment.

Prosecutors then revealed that they plan to disclose additional instances of improper tipping by Mr. Gupta to the defense and that they would likely file another indictment adding new fraud charges if the trial were delayed.

“We’re going to disclose other tips in furtherance of the conspiracy,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Reed Brodsky said in court.

Mr. Brodsky didn’t provide any additional information about the alleged tips at the hearing, but said they will be shared with the defense in court documents within six weeks.

Gary Naftalis, a lawyer for Mr. Gupta, said it would be unfair for prosecutors to continue adding to the case at this late date, even with a minor delay in the trial.

“It’s time for them to stop and try the case they brought,” said Mr. Naftalis, who declined additional comment after the hearing.

Judge Rakoff said the prosecutors weren’t precluded from introducing into evidence at trial any additional tips that were in furtherance of the alleged conspiracy.

Prosecutors have alleged that Mr. Gupta shared inside information with Mr. Rajaratnam that he gleaned while serving as a board member at Goldman Sachs and Proctor & Gamble, including a $5 billion investment in Goldman by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway at the height of the financial crisis in October 2008.

Mr. Gupta’s lawyers have argued in part that the relationship between Mr. Gupta and Mr. Rajaratnam deteriorated in 2008 and in 2009, following the loss of Mr. Gupta’s entire $10 million investment with Mr. Rajaratnam after the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in September 2008. As  a result, he had no motive to tip Mr. Rajaratnam, his lawyers have said.

Mr. Rajaratnam was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison in October, the longest sentence ever imposed in an insider-trading case. He is expected to appeal his conviction on conspiracy and securities-fraud charges.