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Government lawyers regularly leave public service for private law practice—often through the same revolving door that launched their public careers. The law firms they join or to which they return welcome them because of the experience they gained, and the expertise they developed, while in the government. The challenge for former government lawyers and their law firms is recognizing and managing conflicts of interest that sometimes arise out of lawyers' government service. To address the special conflict of interest concerns that emerge from the revolving door of government service, the ABA formulated Model Rule 1.11. With a single exception, Model Rule 1.11 displaces other ethics rules that generally govern conflicts of interest in lawyers' successive representations. In so doing, Model Rule 1.11 attempts to balance the competing interests in play when a matter spans a lawyer's government service and private practice. Most conflict of interest controversies involving former government lawyers pivot on the scope of the matter that is alleged to be the source of the conflict, and the degree of the lawyer's participation in the matter. To a lesser but nonetheless critical extent, former government lawyers' alleged acquisition of confidential government information also spawns disputes. Whether former government lawyers should be disciplined or disqualified for conflicts of interest tied to their public service always requires case-specific inquiry. Avoiding discipline and disqualification, and further avoiding imputed disqualification of the lawyer's law firm, requires former government lawyers and their law firms to understand and to be able to navigate the uniqueness of Model Rule 1.11. This article provides a practical guide for doing so.

The article seeks to cast doubt on the prevailing notion that regards the Allied occupation of (Southern) Italy as a harbinger of democracy by examining it from a local, decidedly bottom-up analytical perspective. I argue that the Allies disfavored the formation of political parties and the expression of political thought, even though 'you can't have a democracy without political parties', as the Italian-American Charles Poletti, one of the principal American civil affairs officers (CAO) organizing the occupation on-site, phrased it. This was particularly true during the first phase of the occupation, when military priorities reigned supreme. However, even at a later point, after the CAOs had theoretically assumed the role of an external supervising authority, a deep distrust of the country's political parties informed much of the Allies' attitudes. Rather than serving as a foundational layer for democracy, the Allies perceived the country's political parties as a threat to democratization insofar as these were believed to obstruct the former's political and economic agendas. Such antagonisms between occupier and occupied, of course, especially applied to Italy's largest and most well-organized party during the period of the Allied occupation – the Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI).

This bears on when the official's comment deletion or blocking decisions may violate the First Amendment.

Former Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey

From yesterday's decision by Judge Allen Winsor (N.D. Fla.) in Walt Disney Parks & Resorts U.S., Inc. v. DeSantis; I expect Disney will appeal (see also Adam Schulman's and Dilan Esper's analyses of this in April 2022, which proved prescient, and also my April 22 discussion of some alternative arguments): In 1967, Florida's Legislature created…