It seems to me that it would be relevant to a person’s case. I would expect the government to say that it is highly sensitive material, but we have legal mechanisms to balance the national...

The next question is the New England Journal flap. It seems to erode their credibility.

Most people predicted this but it wasn’t a forgone conclusion.

It seems the government is somewhat vindicated.

Negligence is much easier to prove; it’s the failure to exercise reasonable care. Willful misconduct is a much higher standard. You must intentionally misbehave. … The high standard would clearly discourage many suits.

The government is going to lose a very good ruling to avoid having this go before the Supreme Court.

I don’t think anybody today sees a reason for a filibuster, but they may after the hearing if the answers are troubling to them or they feel they haven’t gotten the answers to important questions.

The juries you draw in federal courts are more favorably inclined to institutional defendants.

It’s too soon to say Merck has momentum. Many people felt the Irvin case was a weak case to begin with. It was a short-term usage case.

It’s very difficult for Specter to thread the needle, because of all the obligations he has, … There’s substantial pressure on him because of the issue of reproductive freedom.

If he had not testified, it seems likely the jury would have come in in his favor.

By and large, the court is very deferential to this administration and others before it.

He anticipated an attack on him. I have a lot of respect for a judge who, presented with a difficult decision, admits it’s going to be tough. He has discharged his oath.

Sensenbrenner has been tough and stuck to his guns on past occasions. Maybe buying time will help.

It still doesn’t tell us where things stand.

Hopefully it won’t come to that, but maybe [BlackBerry users] should be mildly concerned.

It is a momentous decision, and they need more time to think about it.

He is saying as little as he needs to be confirmed and hasn’t made many mistakes that trouble a majority of senators whose votes he needs.

It’s probably the only thing that could prevent him from being confirmed right now, barring something coming from out of nowhere.

The tobacco industry has won some recent cases, and that Illinois case was a big one. But I think today’s ruling is certainly a big win for the plaintiffs. And I think the U.S. Supreme...

More and more people who have been injured or think they’ve been injured come forward. It takes on a life of its own.

We now have three federal appeals courts that have invalidated the federal partial birth abortion law. Most people predicted this, but it wasn’t a foregone conclusion.

It is a strong endorsement. The question is: How relevant is it? Someone who was on the 3 rd Circuit for a decade and a half and has done a good job is likely to...

If the government does not so tie him, this may weaken the case in the jury’s eyes.

His behavior is so erratic it’s hard to know what his testimony will mean for his case. But he has a right to testify.

It’s always unpredictable saying what the docket will look like in 10 years, … It could be high-tech, biotech. … If it were present-day issues, you’d have to take it case by case.

[The ground rules for asking and answering questions] are kind of ad hoc, … they invoke the history they need for the particular occasion.

The question is how high the liability shield needs to be. I think ‘willful misconduct’ is too high. We usually use some kind of negligence standard in these situations. It would be very unusual that...

[The chief justice’s personality is also important, legal analysts say.] He does have many of the qualities that potentially can make for a great and influential chief justice, … He has that great intellect, which...

It’s going to be very complex.

She’s trying to work a compromise that’s reasonable all the way around.

It sounds like a little bit of Russian roulette.

It was the intellectual elite of the conservative movement that expressed the most concern, not the religious conservatives or the business conservatives.

There’s a lot of pressure because of the concern there might be another terrorist strike in the United States.

I assume [Research In Motion] took that to heart, or at least it made them get serious about settlement.

They’ve said airport security was 50 percent of the case, and it was always a difficult case. So now it becomes doubly difficult.

Senators want to know, `Does she have an overarching theory of jurisprudence? How would she approach cases?’

She turned that to some constructive use. Once it happened, it probably made sense to make sure every group saw the same behavior and he cooperated.

Most people watching this litigation closely thought that Merck ought to win it. Despite the characterizations by Merck so far, I think this was really a loss for them.

It’s quite natural for mass tort cases to proceed under multidistrict litigation.

Juries frequently confront contradictory information, especially in criminal trials. Juries then must sort through all of the evidence, sift and weigh it, resolve the contradictions as best they can, and reach a determination.

I think it’s pretty probable that the verdict would hold up. My sense is that the judge was pretty careful.

All the survivors and families of people who perished on 9/11 will be called, and it’s hard to imagine how to counter any of that.

It’s too early to tell. Some people believe that Roberts may be similar to Rehnquist in his jurisprudence, although that’s not at all clear yet.

With the spying, it’s hard to overcome the ultimate purpose of the administration, which is to combat terrorism. With the ports, it’s almost the opposite. The ports deal is an easier issue to explain to...

That’s where Rehnquist was at his most vocal, … He was always willing to fight for an independent judiciary.

It might give them pause to think they might be sued and hauled into court.

The witness whose testimony was struck was their first and perhaps their strongest witness, and so that could make it difficult going forward on the case.

Merck is trying to paint this as a tie, but it is really not so good for them because people thought they would have had an easy win.

The government may have overstated the dire circumstances going in. But when they actually came to prosecute the case, it didn’t seem as dire or as strong a case when they came to the courthouse.