Andrew Cohen Quotes on Law & Regulation (7 Quotes)

The court almost had to take up this issue again. It was clear in 2003 when it said that you could not limit this procedure unless certain exceptions were in place. Congress then enacted a law without those restrictions and now the court will have to decide whether the justification for the Congressional action is constitutional or not. It should be a very close case, almost certainly a five-four ruling.

First he says he wants to die a martyr and now he is begging the jury to spare his life and telling the panel that his dedicated lawyers are out to get him. It doesn't add up and perhaps that's exactly what he has in mind.

The unanimous ruling tells me that there wasn't a lot of patience or sympathy by the court for the argument by the law schools. And I would think that this finally ends the long-running legal debate on this issue.

This ruling will encourage other people in other states who may have been contemplating similar assisted-suicide laws to go ahead and get them on the books and as long as those other laws are similar to the Oregon law they ought to pass the constitutional test. And I wouldn't be surprised if these efforts begin immediately.

The judge didn't order the feds to suddenly release all sorts of classified or secret information. All the judge did was to tell the Justice Department that it has to speed up its response to a request for information about the National Security Agency program. And the information that initially will be released will be very unspecific. The big battles are yet to come over how much of this stuff eventually is made public.

I think prosecutors and the judge are going to see the case as a perfect vehicle to send a message that this sort of conduct, whatever the motives, just wont be tolerated. And I think that push is going to be more powerful than any argument that they get a lot of leniency because of their age or anything else.

Each time you go before a grand jury as a target or a subject or a person of interest or anyone else other than a plain old witness you put yourself in legal jeopardy. And now Rove will have done that five times. So today is not a good day for him no matter what his lawyers eventually decide to say about it.