NO AUTHORITY, NO CASINO?
Although Western District Judge William Skretny ruled in July that a Buffalo casino operated by the Seneca Indian Nation had to shut down because gambling was not part of its land claim, he stopped short of enforcing the ruling yesterday, instead calling on the National Indian Gaming Commission to broker a settlement. A group of local gambling opponents had sought the casino’s closure. “Congress did give the chairman and the commission discretion, within the (Indian Gaming Regulatory Act’s) remedial framework to determine what type of enforcement action is appropriate under the circumstances of a particular violation or substantial violation,” Skretny wrote. “Thus, plaintiffs’ request that the court give effect to its July 8, 2008 decision by directing the chairman to take specific enforcement action is not in accord with the IGRA’s remedial scheme.”

RIVAL = RECUSAL?
Monroe County Supreme Court Justice Joseph Valentino has advised attorneys in an upcoming rape case that the defendant, Monroe County Legislator William C. Bastuk, is a former political rival in a judicial campaign 20 years before. No word yet on a possible recusal in the case.

DA EVICTED FROM CASE
Bronx Housing Court Judge Ava P. Alterman has ruled the Bronx DA’s office lacks the authority to represent a landlord in an eviction proceeding, even though the tenant was selling crack cocaine from his apartment. As reported by The New York Law Journal, the DA’s office had ordered a landlord to evict the man under the so-called “bawdy house law,” and then insinuated itself into the case as the landlord’s co-counsel. “In claiming the right to represent private landlords in illegal use eviction proceedings, the District Attorney seeks to engraft additional powers beyond those specifically granted by the Legislature,” Alterman wrote.

NO AUTHORITY, PART II
The Law Journal also reports that the Second Circuit has deferred to the State Court of Appeals in a tricky eight-year-old case hinging on whether an imprisoned father has the right to fight to determine whether his blind son receives adequate educational accommodations. The case was initiated in federal court, but the Circuit ruled that it turned on a matter of state law that had not been addressed by the state’s highest court. Although the … lower court authority strongly indicates that under New York law a non-custodial parent does not retain the right to participate in education decisions for the child, there is no controlling New York Court of Appeals authority on point,” wrote Judge John M. Walker Jr.

THE MYTH OF BIDEN AS BORKER
Jeffrey Rosen has an editorial in The New York Times about the “myth” of Joseph Biden’s disruption of the Supreme Court bids of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. Biden presided over the Senate Judiciary Committee during the confirmation hearings of both candidates.

ROSENBERG RELEASE 
And Newsday reports on yesterday’s release of grand jury testimony in the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg espionage trial by Southern District Judge Alvin Hellerstein. “Each generation has defined its own answer,” Hellerstein ruled. “And each generation needs to explore the history of the past to understand fully the context in which these polar extremes come into clashes with one another … So history of how we dealt with these problems in the 1940s and 1950s is a current history, and a history that is very important for us to understand.”