Legal Commentary

I did not learn this until this morning, but apparently the legal world was atwitter for about 30 minutes yesterday morning over rumors, first reported in RadarOnline.com, that Chief Justice Roberts was stepping down for health reasons. (H/T: My colleague, Tom Baker).

Now we have an explanation, according to Above the Law: Professor Peter Teague began a 9 a.m. crim law lecture at Georgetown on the problem of informant reliability by telling the students that Roberts would be announcing his resignation the following day, although not disclosing or explaining his sources. At around 9:30, he told the students it was a joke. The original Radar story was time-stamped 6:10 a.m. P.S.T. (9:10 a.m. E.S.T.); the retraction may have come shortly after Teague let his students in on the joke (there is some dispute about that).

My question is how information traveled from the confines of Prof. Teague's criminal law class in Washington, D.C. to the folks at RadarOnline. I'm guessing Prof. Teague does not have a no-laptop rule. And I'm guessing at least one student was doing something other than furiously typing notes on that laptop.