Happy Monday! Here are some law blog posts for you to digest before you head downy ocean for the MSBA annual meeting:

• Former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez has been teaching political science at Texas Tech University and peddling an autobiography, but he hasn’t been able to get a publisher to bite. “Given all the decisions that I was a part of, the decisions I witnessed, and the decisions I made, I think it will be something that will be of interest and I hope it will be a useful contribution to the historic record of the Bush legacy,” Gonzales tells Main Justice. Gonzalez is hoping book sales might generate some cash to cover his legal bills, which are extensive given the ongoing investigation into the attorney general firings that happened during his term. Would you plop down $25 for the hardcover?
• Our sister blog, DC Dicta, aggregates the latest commentary and analysis on the Kagan papers, the 46,000 pages of documents released Friday covering Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan’s work in the Clinton administration. Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions tells Reuters he’s already spotted “a leftist philosophy and an approach to the law that seems more concerned with achieving a desired social result than fairly following the Constitution.” Should make for an interesting Senate confirmation hearing, which is scheduled to start June 28.
• Not only do Wall Street bankers make scads of money, they’re also too attractive? (Hat Tip: Dealbreaker)
• The Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) wants law schools to quit giving LSAT scores to U.S. News, which publishes highly influential annual college rankings. SALT believes the pressure to nab students with high test scores is undercutting efforts to admit diverse classes. Above the Law has its own take: “You gotta love it when a bunch of law professors get in a room and collectively decide that silence is what prospective law students are really looking for these days.”

My cover story in Monday’s Maryland Lawyer about the Sunnyside church talks about state law governing corporate and property rights of religious entities. There was one question I could not answer before my deadline: where did this 1976 law come from?

(Unfortunately, there is no quick link to the statute. If you want to see it, click here, then “Maryland Code”, “Corporations and Associations,” “Title 5. Special Types of Corporations,” “Subtitle 3. “Religious Corporations.”)

I had heard that former Gov. Marvin Mandel testified in the General Assembly on the law’s history this past session. Mandel told me Monday the same thing he told the House Committee about the law.

“I still think it’s unconstitutional,” he said. “The state shouldn’t get involved in religion.”

Yet it was Mandel who introduced the legislation at the request of the Episcopal Church, which was having an “internal battle over its assets.” He said he made his reservations about the bill known, but ultimately signed it into law because the factions had decided the bill was best the way to solve the problem. (For what it’s worth, Mandel is Jewish.)

The Sunnyside case is the first time in 35 years legislators looked at a law Mandel thought would have been long gone from the books by now.

“No one’s questioned it up until this time,” he said. “I was surprised no one stepped forward and contested it.”

The former governor added that he would be keeping an eye on the Sunnyside case as it makes its way through the courts.

When former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich opened the Baltimore office of Womble Carlyle about a month after leaving office three years ago, taking key legal and public relations staff with him, there were those who wondered about the move: Was it a law office, or campaign headquarters?

The Maryland Democratic Party has wondered more vocally over the years, and according to the Baltimore Sun’s Maryland Politics blog, took formal action Thursday by writing to the state Board of Elections, challenging the propriety of the arrangement in light of Ehrlich’s expected return to the political sphere.

Ohio State law professor Christopher M. Fairman offered his take Sunday about the controversy over the use of the word “retard.” Fairman said he would not be signing a petition championed by the Special Olympics to ban the use of “the r-word,” which is not surprising considering he is the author of this book.

There were two main points I took away from Fairman’s essay in The Washington Post:

1. “Words themselves are not the culprit; the meaning we attach to them is, and such meanings change dramatically over time and across communities”
2. “Invariably, negative connotations materialize around whatever new word is used. …This illustrates one of the recurring follies of speech restriction: While there may be another word to use, a negative connotation eventually is found. Offense – both given and taken – is inevitable.”

Fairman also notes courts have found government-backed “speech codes” unconstitutional.

Reaction to Fairman’s essay has been strong, including opposing views from Post columnist Michael Gerson and Timothy Shriver, president of the Special Olympics. And perhaps the most prominent opponent of the word “retard” lately has been Sarah Palin.

Washington Post readers had a chance to respond to Fairman as well during an online chat. What do you think of his position? Should “the r-word” be considered on par with “the n-word”?

As if this article about the challenges being made against a “post-theist” councilman in Asheville weren’t interesting enough, there’s also the Maryland connection. As the story notes, Maryland is one of a handful of states with a constitutional clause requiring “a declaration of belief in the existence of God” from state office-holders (see Article 37 of the Declaration of Rights).

Rest assured, the Free State hasn’t tried to enforce the requirement since 1961, when the U.S. Supreme Court found it unconstitutional in Torcaso v. Watkins, a case involving a Maryland notary public. In 1978 — a mere 17 years later – the wording of the oath of office was changed in response to Torcaso, but Article 37 has never been amended to delete the requirement itself. That’s understandable, given the difficulties of amending the state constitution. Can you imagine getting 60% of the state’s lawmakers to back the idea of excising God from anything, let alone the Declaration of Rights? My guess is that it would have been easier back in the ’60s.

Slate had an interesting story yesterday about the last meals of death row inmates in anticipation of convicted “Beltway Sniper” John Allen Muhammad’s execution last night in Virginia. (Muhammad chose not to reveal his last meal to the public.)

The Slate story provided links to the Web site of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which posted the final meals requested by offenders until 2004, and continues to post their final statements.  Psalm 23 appeared to be a popular choice judging by a random sample. (Muhammad “ignored a request” to make a final statement, according to news reports.)

The Texas sites are eerie and chilling. Delbert Teague Jr., for example, was executed in 1998 for murdering a Fort Worth man in 1985. He did not request a final meal, but at the “last minute he decided to eat a hamburger at his mother’s request,” according to records. His last statement was as follows:

I have come here today to die, not make speeches. Today is a good day for dying.

Est Sularus Oth Mithas (My Honor Is My Life).

As someone commented on the Slate story, “there is something disgustingly voyeuristic about it all.”

On Saturday, I spent a rejuvenating morning serving as a judge for the semi-final round of a moot-court competition hosted by American University’s Washington College of Law.

My service to the Burton D. Wechsler First Amendment Moot Court Competition stirred me in three ways:

1. It made me feel 20 years younger, when I nervously stood as a law student waiting to be grilled by “judges” at the same school;

2. It enabled me to step out of the role of spectator (I have reported on oral arguments for two decades) and participate in the enterprise; and

3. As a husband — and father of a teen and a tween — it was refreshing to have people listen to me and answer my questions.

It also didn’t hurt that the fact pattern and issue were right up my alley.

The head of research and development at a major high-tech company was suing for libel a blogger who had accused him online of running a Mumbaian sweatshop where child laborers built computer components.

The issue before the moot court was whether the company executive qualified as a “public figure” or “private person” under the Supreme Court’s First Amendment jurisprudence, a critical distinction that largely determines who wins the case.

Public figures, to prove libel, have the heavy burden of showing that the reporter wrote an erroneous story either knowing it was false or with a reckless disregard for the truth.  Private individuals need only show that the journalist was negligent in reporting a story that was  untrue.

The three-judge panel on which I served — as “chief” no less — ruled for the reporter. Imagine that.

Talk about a cold case.

A U.S. District Court judge recently ruled that the federal government will have to prove a Philadelphia jewelry dealer stole rare, gold 1933 ”double eagle” coins from the U.S. Mint – 75 years ago, according to The New York Times.

Around 500,000 of these $20 coins were minted before President Roosevelt issued an executive order that made owning large amounts of gold coins illegal as he moved the country away from the gold standard. Two coins ended up in the Smithsonian, and most of the rest were melted down, according to the Times.

Other coins did survive, however, and the only one sold at public auction went for $7.6 million. So imagine Roy Langbord’s surprise, then, when in 2003 he discovered 10 double eagles in a long-forgotten family safe deposit box. The Mint authenticated the coins five years ago but said it would be keeping them because Langbord’s grandfather stole them. Langbord and his family claim his grandfather acquired the coins legitimately before the ban was enacted.

The government has until the end of the month to prove the coins were stolen or else they will have to return them to Langbord. Observers believe it will be nearly impossible for the government to prove its theft theory.

Or, if I may put words into their mouths, the government’s chances are significantly less than a coin flip.

A vote on U.S. District Judge Andre M. Davis’ nomination to the 4th Circuit could be scheduled as soon as next week, according to The Baltimore Sun’s Maryland Politics blog.

Since taking office, President Obama has made 17 Article III appointments to the federal judiciary. So far the full Senate has approved just one: Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who heard her first case on Wednesday.

Sorry, still no word on when DLLR Secretary Tom Perez might be able to follow his staff to the Justice Department.

Wednesday’s reindictment of Mayor Sheila A. Dixon is reinvigorating our interest in the fight between her lawyers and the state prosecutor over three grand jury subpoenas issued well after her first indictmen.

Even though the state prosecutor withdrew the post-indictment subpoenas shortly after her lawyers sought to quash them earlier this month, the presiding judge asked for more discussion of the issue.

And lawyers on both sides, none particularly shy, have obliged, poised to make pretrial hay of the controversy.

Last Monday, State Prosecutor Robert A. Rohrbaugh said the public filing of Dixon’s motion to quash — to prevent two current city employees and one former city employee from offering testimony and evidence to the grand jury — was “in direct contravention” of the Maryland rules and that it could “inappropriately influence the potential jury pool and prospective jurors.” He promised to say more in a private hearing.

Dixon’s lawyers called Rohrbaugh’s two-page response “paltry” and accused the state prosecutor of blaming Dixon for his mistake.

“By withdrawing the subpoenas, the State impliedly admits that it abused the grand jury process by issuing them in the first place,”their motion reads. “Yet, in what can only be described as the height of irony, the State Prosecutor complains that the defendant has wrongfully exposed his abuse of process by filing her motion on the public record.”

“The grand jury is not the prosecutor’s private discovery cell, and he should not be permitted to undermine the integrity of the Court’s processes to his own advantage, nor hide behind the veil of grand jury secrecy for that purpose.”

Rohrbaugh argues it’s a moot point, but Dixon’s defense team thinks there might be “other potential similar violations.”

In light of yesterday’s reindictments, is the subpoena question even more moot, or even more relevant?

– BRENDAN KEARNEY