Top legal news of 2014

In honor of New Year's Eve and in order to reflect on events of this past year we offer you a round-up of top legal news lists from various sources on the web. Happy New Year, everyone!

Westlaw Legal Solutions Blog has published the Top 20 Legal Events of 2014 in three parts, detailing various cases and events that have shaped the legal world this past year. Some notable aspects:

• Supreme Court cases such as McCullen v. Coakley, Hall v. Florida and Abramski v. U.S dealing with such  controversial issues as buffer zones for abortion clinics, capital punishment for the intellectually disabled and buying guns on behalf of third parties, respectively,
• The Supreme Court's refusal to grant cert. to same-sex marriage cases, effectively allowing those marriages to stand in a significant number of states, 
• The 6th Circuit case that created a split among federal circuits regarding the legality of same-sex marriage bans,
• The U.S. normalizing relations with Cuba, and
• The President's executive order for immigration action.

The ABA Journal has also released their top ten list, which describes their most popular stories of 2014. Some highlights include:

• "Rare ‘Perry Mason’ moment in court wins dismissal for defendant, desk duty for 5 police officers," (in which a video introduced at a suppression hearing proved that 5 police officers lied on the stand about the search of a defendant in a drug case),
• "Lawyer is disbarred for ‘inexplicable incompetence,’" (in which an attorney argues a case in court dressed as Thomas Jefferson - complete with video), and
• "Which students belong in law school? Law prof offers an answer," (in which a law professor describes the characteristics of law students that he believes will make good lawyers and makes many commenters unhappy).

Cleveland.com has published their list of the top five bills passed by Ohio lawmakers in 2014 and synopses of a few top Ohio Supreme Court cases. These include:

• Redistricting reform,
• Confidentiality for manufacturers of Ohio's execution drugs,
• Requiring police to be present while traffic cameras are operating,
• The JobsOhio case (in which the Court found that ProgressOhio.org did not have standing to challenge the constitutionality of Governor Kasich's JobsOhio Act, but did not address whether it was constitutional), 
• A payday loans loophole case (in which the Court upheld a loophole in the law regulating payday lenders, allowing them to escape the restrictions approved by voters in 2008 by registering under the Mortgage Lending Act instead of the Short Term Loan Act), and
• A standards for appraisal case (in which the Court "established a guide for counties to use the sale price for a property when setting the appraisal value for taxes," and set a 24-month-limit as a definition of when a sale was recent.

Finally, Ohio.com has linked to the "Associated Press' top stories of 2014 from around Ohio," which describes some noteworthy moments from the past year, including:

• The U.S. Department of Justice completing their investigation of Cleveland police and issuing a report condemning the organization for excessive force, recklessness and civil rights violations,
• Governor John Kasich winning a second term and Republicans sweeping statewide political races, and
• Ohio putting executions on hold after an inmate took nearly 26 minutes to die when the state administered a new execution drug cocktail for the first time.