Judge Carton Has Left The Bench

It seems like only yesterday that  Carolyn Elefant and  Bob Ambrogi gave up the helm of ALM’s Legal Blog Watch, a daily roundup of interesting stuff happening in the blawgosphere.  Then  Bruce Carton stepped into the breach.

This was a good thing, as Bruce was one of the few guys who was able to maintain a sense of humor and relative decorum while grinding out posts on command.  The idea of one person doing the work of two nearly sunk the ship from the outset, and  I almost came aboard in with him. Fortunately for me, ALM was too cheap and clueless to make that happen, so Bruce sailed solo.

Today is Bruce’s last day.  He’s weathered some rough seas along the way, with the blawgosphere often refusing to give up its secrets easily.  Or to put it in more concrete terms, the vibrancy of the blawgosphere has slowly waned, leaving Bruce to work pretty damned hard to come up with great stuff when the worthwhile content of the blawgosphere just wasn’t there. Sure, there have been about ten million new “blogs” over the past couple of years, but nothing anybody would bother to read. Flawging crap aplenty, but substance became increasingly hard to find.

So Bruce came up with some shticks of his own.  There was the brilliant  Things You Can’t Do on a Plane series. And of course, who can forget the Lindsay Lohan mug shot updates, always a crowd pleaser.  Bruce was always on top of cutting edge law with his  Three Burning Questions posts.

But my personal favorite has always been Judge Carton Rules, and he has been kind enough to leave us with the complete set, suitable for citation.


Since February 2010, Judge Carton has been ruling on important matters here at Legal Blog Watch. As I wrote when I introduced Judge Carton, 



No, Judge Carton is not a real judge and,  like Judge Wapner, my rulings are not “technically” binding on the parties. But that has never stopped me from ruling before,  see, e.g., MacStupid, aka MacGyver v. MacGruber, and it certainly won’t stop me here. Moving on.


My mission? To spare the parties to cases in which the outcome is obvious the time and expense of further litigation.


Think of the thousands, maybe millions, of litigants saved from the expense and embarrassment of crashing litigation defeat by Judge Carton’s wise dictates.  Bruce is nothing if not a great humanitarian. If only anyone had heeded his rulings.

For me, Bruce’s departure marks yet another watermark in the glory days of the blawgosphere. He denies it, as if it’s just another transition to the next guy who will take the helm, but he’s wrong.  Bruce was one of the giants of the blawgosphere, and while no one has as yet stepped forward to announce that they are taking his place, his loss as the voice of Legal Blog Watch will be sorely missed.

Thanks, Judge Carton.  You did a heck of a job, and it was always fun to see what sort of craziness you found with each new post. You were a pillar of the blawgosphere, and it won’t be the same without you.