Webinar on "Career in Constitutional Law Practice" organized by Jammu & Kashmir High Court and J&K Judicial Academy will begin shortly.

Senior Advocates Shyam Divan, Madhavi Divan, Parag P. Tripathi and Neelima Tripathi will be in conversation with lawyer @gautambhatia88

Session begins.

Rajeev Gupta, Director of J&K Judicial Academy introduces the guests.

now takes over.

He speaks of how the pandemic and social media has taken the Court out of the Courtroom into the public realm.

With platforms such as @LiveLawIndia and @barandbench giving a blow-by-blow account of court proceedings, interest in constitutional law has grown, he says.

He adds that many constitutional lawyers do not start out wanting to practise constitutional laws as such.

Senior Madhavi Divan begins speaking.

She narrates her journey from a law office that was predominantly handled commercial matters.

She opines that it is important to have a multi-faceted grounding in diverse streams of law before specialising in one.

I couldn’t tweet a better description than the headline for this piece: After SolarWinds breach, lawmakers ask NSA for help in cracking Juniper cold case.

For those who haven’t heard this story, the context here is back in 2015 hackers broke into the source code repository of Juniper’s NetScreen firewalls and introduced serious vulnerabilities. 1/

Everyone has heard of the SolarWinds supply chain attack, but almost nobody outside our little community remembers Juniper. We don’t even know who the ultimate victim was. And there’s a reason for that. 2/

The reason is simple: following the Juniper hack, the FBI and Juniper put a tight lid on everything. Nobody, including members of Congress, were able to get straight answers about who did it or what the target was. So it vanished from our collective memory. 3/

This has real consequences. To some extent our lack of preparedness for SolarWinds is a direct result of our government’s decision to pretend that the previous major supply-chain attacks didn’t happen. 4/

A thread on the most unusual “victim advocate” case I handled. Not, oddly, a SA case. This is a story for NCOs & JOs especially. 1/

I was a LT (O3) assigned to USS Mount Whitney. Not a surface warfare officer, so while they stood command duty officer watches in port, I stood the lesser officer watch: Officer of the Deck. A nonrate was often assigned to my watch team as Messenger of the Watch: 2/

Let’s call her Laila. She was a seaman (E3) w/no rating (MOS), so she chipped paint & handled lines etc in Deck Department. She was 35yo, had a BA, & spoke two languages flawlessly—English & Farsi. She was SQUARED AWAY. But: she was from Iran. Came to the US as a child 3/

to go to school & live w/her older brother, a doctor. This was 1979. She got stuck in the US during the Revolution, became a US citizen. Joined the USN when her brother was killed in a car wreck. Most of the sailors called her “The Terrorist.” She did not fit in. 4/

She was VERY squared away, & always chipper & upbeat. She was a runner. She saved every penny, trying to get enough $ to get her youngest brother to Jordan & then to help him apply for a US visa & eventually citizenship. She wanted to strike for linguist, but still had 5/

In a final address, @JusticeATR Makan Delrahim says some of the changes recommended by House Judiciary are "quite sensible." DOJ needs more funding for antitrust, and he backs higher filing fees for mergers.

He has six recommendations: 1) Create bright line rules and alter burden of proof for mergers.

“Courts need additional guidance in these cases.” In cases where a company has more than 50 percent market share, burden should be on merging parties for any transaction in that market, he says

DOJ would still have to prove the market definition and the market share of the dominant firm.

In late October 2020, the Edmonton Proud Boys appeared at a People Vs. Predators rally.

One member of this @splcenter-designated hate group is John-Clayton Wilson/Jay Wilson/JC Wilson/JC2theW. (1/10)

@DoxerPb @RuthlessWe @AntifaGarfield @AntiFashGordon @AntifascistF12

JCW is an artist and performer, having done trapeze work. He also operated a YouTube channel, which provides men's rights activist analysis of feminism and the LGBTQ+ community, despite being a member of that community. (2/10)

It's hard to know why JC joined the bigoted Proud Boys, but JC's history of men's rights activism and anti-feminism help the connection make sense.

Here's a sample of some video topics. The language and themes align with the far-right. (3/10)

Still, JC being a member of the LGBTQ+ community makes his decision to join a hate group puzzling for us.

Not that this is unheard of, of course, but these people are not your allies. They aren't even allies with each other and we see this play out all the time. (4/10)

We gave JC multiple chances to get in touch so we could connect him with resources and people who specialize in leaving hate groups. He got the message, but he responded by changing his name and trying to hide his accounts

It's not too late to leave. We can delete tweets. (5/10)

We are today attending the virtual hearing for #AllisonBailey’s claim against Stonewall & Garden Court Chambers.

Discussions on redactions in papers.

Ben Cooper QC for @BluskyeAllison arguing against redactions.

#AllisonBailey

#AllisonBailey

Ben Cooper trying to establish communications between individuals at Stonewall & individuals at Garden Court Chambers. Arguing names of individuals is relevant and they put in public domain.

#AllisonBailey

Robin Moira White arguing private Facebook group is not public domain.

#AllisonBailey

Ben Cooper QC discussing individuals who had made complaints to Garden Court Chambers. Discussion is can these individuals be publicly named or should they be redacted in papers. These individuals have connections with Stonewall.

Seen lots of #“buidl” comments from the #xrpcommmunity. Now, more than ever, you should support changes like Richard Holland’s Hooks for the #XRPL . Let me explain why.

I’ve worked with Richard for several years trying to build on the XRPL. It’s cheap, fast, secure and has the potential to mint tokens. So, why not use it, right? For example, we worked on a self-KYC identity solution called iXRPL. 2/n

It stamps your XRP account with a token from an identity provider that confirms you have KYC’d yourself and allows you to grant single-use access to the underlying data for exchanges seeking to confirm your identity. 3/n

It protects against fraud (e.g. deal only with stamped accounts) and solves the proposed FinCEN rule of KYC’ing private wallets. Everything is encrypted and decentralised and runs on unique consensus protocol Richard developed called HotPocket. We will showcase it soon. 4/n

But for other uses, we kept running into a problem: tokens on the xrpl are controlled by keys, not code. You can split the keys, but you always end up with someone controlling the secrets and those secrets have to be held somewhere. 5/n

1/
A huge mistake people make is to think of postmodernism, post-structuralism, intersectionality, Critical Legal Studies, Critical Race Theory, 4th wave feminism, and Critical Theory as being separate and distinct, having nothing to do with each other

This is a massive mistake.

2/
These disciplines are connected. They are not like individual academic factories producing different theories. The fact is that the ideas that are produced in various disciplines cross-pollinate and influence each other. The theorists make use of and share each others ideas.

3/
These fields are akin to ingredients used by activists to make the stew of Critical Social Justice.

Mix some postmodernism here with some intersectionality there, add Critical Race Theory and 4th wave feminist post-structuralism and *taste test* YUMMY...Social Justice!👨‍🍳

4/
Take a look through the activist literature and you'll see that they pull from all these theorists as they see fit and as they find it useful.

An excellent example of this is the book/website: "Beautiful Trouble." You can see how this dynamic works in that book.

5/
You all know the old trick about how "postmoderns" and Marxists are totally different? Well that was true at one time, but woke activists will gladly take ideas from both the Postmodern philosopher Michel Foucault (1st pic) and the Marxist Antonio Gramsci (2nd pic)

Entering 2021, our hearts are already broken.

That's exactly why we're ready to fight the good fight

And let me say this WADR in response to understandably heartbroken, frustrated and passionate people suggesting that I'm an easy touch, a RINO, naive, or insufficiently dedicated to conservatism: >

These remarks come up not only in response to my video saying that we must remember and live by the principles we say we're fighting for, but to my tweets saying that Lin Wood has lost touch with reality or that John Roberts is not being blackmailed. >

I've been a conservative activist since I was a teenager. The announcements for conservative events I was running were torn off the walls at Princeton in the 80's. Interviewers at law firms recommended that I not be extended an offer because the Federalist Society was Nazis. >

More recently I left one law firm partnership after being told I could not represent the Gab social media platform after it the representation been approved up and down the org chart and on the eve of filing.

People might say we were Nazis. >

Kerala High Court resumes hearing of Bail Application of M Sivasankar, Former Principal Secretary of Kerala Chief Minister

Sivasankar is presently in ED's custody for alleged involvement in the Kerala Gold Smuggling case. He is also being investigated by the NIA and Customs Department.

Senior Advocate Jaideep Gupta is arguing for Sivasankar.

He denies ED's allegations that Sivasankar contacted customs officials to clear the baggage alleged to be containing smuggled gold.

Gupta claims statement made by co-accused Swapna Suresh about Sivasankar's involvement are not credible as the same were made after her arrest.

Gupta points out that the correspondence between Sivasankar and Swapna does not disclose any knowledge on the latter's part.

He also tells Court that all of Swapna's statements categorically denied his client's involvement in gold smuggling, until before her arrest.

Supreme Court hears the writ petition filed by CPI Rajya Sabha MP Binoy Viswam @BinoyViswam1 seeking data protection measures for Unified Payments Interface (UPI).

Krishnan Venugopal for Binoy Viswam : The system of Whatsapp is not secure. Whatsapp is using the platform of the messenger service to allow payments.

#SupremeCourt

Krishnan Venugopal refers to the 'Pegasus' issue to argue that Whatsapp's system is not safe and secure.

#SupremeCourt

Krishnan Venugopal : Another issue is data localization. Problem with whatsapp, amazon & google is that when they allow payment to happen, data goes abroad. RBI justifies this process by saying that it is fine for data of Indians to go abroad without any formal protection.

Krishnan Venugopal : Critical financial data is allowed to be accessed by companies abroad and RBI justifies it. This is violation of Privacy judgment as my data is being grossly misused as these companies then collect this data and use it for advertisement purposes.

Delhi court starts hearing MJ Akbar's defamation case against Priya Ramani.

Sr. Adv. Rebecca John begins submissions for Ramani.

John refers to case documents: The whole of Priya Ramani's case was put up before the witness.

#MeToo #metooindia @mjakbar

John: I was under an obligation to tell the witness what my defence was, have fulfilled that obligation.

Continues showing case documents.

John refers to an article by Ramani in 2017 where noone was named, however, in 2018 when she tweeted, this article was referred to/attached in the tweet.

John: Only the first four paras of the article referred to Akbar, rest of the article was about male bosses in general.

John refers to the article in @voguemagazine

Good morning, all. There's a little bit of news out of Michigan already this morning - it looks like Judge Parker wanted to start the work week this week with unnecessary and stupid distractions cleared away.

So she dismissed the MI Kraken tentacle sometime after midnight.

It a 36-page opinion.

And it starts out strong.

ACK - my bad -

Sorry. I'm tweeting without caffeine and it shows. The order rejects the injunction, but it doesn't dismiss the case (yet). Skimming ahead, that appears a foregone conclusion, but technically the case isn't dismissed.

Seriously, though - this is yet another judge who is responding to these request to overturn the election with the judicial version of "you want me to *what*? Hard pass."

The judge is being kind to the plaintiffs here and doesn't mention the epiceyeburningdisasterthatwastheoriginalcomplaint. But you'll note that the judge also doesn't mention what claims were in that complaint or whether they are the same as the ones in the 1st Amended Complaint.