Latest Case: Shak v. Shak (Civil Rights)

Department of Justice Once Again Proves Its Loyalty to the President, Not the Rule of Law

AUSTIN SARAT

Austin Sarat—Associate Provost, Associate Dean of the Faculty, and William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College—comments on the recent news that the Justice Department will seek dismissal of charges against Michael Flynn. Sarat suggests that because the decision does not seem to advance the fair administration of justice in this case, the court should take the unusual step of refusing to grant the prosecutor’s motion to dismiss.

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Shak v. Shak

Docket: SJC-12748

Opinion Date: May 7, 2020

Judge: Budd

Areas of Law: Civil Rights, Constitutional Law, Family Law

The Supreme Judicial Court vacated certain portions of a trial judge's nondisparagement orders issued to the parties in this case in an attempt to protect the psychological well-being of the parties' minor child, holding that the nondisparagement orders here operated as an impermissible prior restraint on speech. After Mother filed for divorce from Father, Mother filed a motion for temporary orders, including a request that the judge prohibit Father from posting disparaging remarks about her and the ongoing litigation on social media. The judge issued temporary orders that included nondisparagement provisions against both parties. Thereafter, Mother filed a complaint for civil contempt alleging that Father violated the first order. A different judge declined to find contempt on the ground that the first order, as issued, constituted an unlawful prior restraint of speech in violation of Father's constitutional rights. The Supreme judicial Court agreed, holding that the nondisparagement orders were unconstitutional.