Nominations are Open for the 7th Annual Jdog Memorial Best Criminal Law Blawg Post (Closed)

As is the SJ end of year tradition, nominations are open for the most prestigious award in all of the criminal law blawgosphere, the 7th Annual Jdog Prize for the best blawg post in criminal law.

The prize recognizes and honors the effort and thoughtfulness of criminal law blawgers with our annual Best Criminal Law Blawg Post, which has been dedicated to the memory of our dear friend, Joel Rosenberg.

Unlike the other Beauty Pageants in the blawgosphere, the idea here is to provide a platform to revisit the excellent work done over the past year.  Past winners of the JDog prize are luminaries of the blawgosphere, Ohio’s Jeff Gamso, Connecticut’s Gideon Strumpet, Texas’ Mark Bennett, Arizona’s Matt Brown, Fishtown’s Leo Mulvihill and Texas’ Murray Newman.

Here’s the deal:

  • Anybody can nominate a post for the honor, including their own.  SJ posts are off limits.  You can nominate them anonymously, with great fanfare, just by name or with a detailed explanation of why you think a post is the best.  It can be a post from a criminal defense lawyer, a prosecutor or a non-lawyer, provided its subject is criminal law.  It can even be a post by a lawprof. You can nominate up to five posts.
  • Nominations can only be made in the comments here. No emails, phone calls, text messages, fruit baskets or lovely cards with deeply personal messages.
  • For this contest, and for this contest only, I will allow links to be included in comments to the posts (not the blawgs, but the actual posts) nominated.  Spam links will be treated harshly.
  • This is a chance to think back over the past year and give everyone some great posts to read, to ponder, to discuss and maybe even change some minds.

I invite anyone and everyone to offer the best the blawgosphere has in criminal law.  Spread the word, and let others know that this is their opportunity to show their stuff, get a backlink, and let the rest of the blawgosphere know what they’re doing.  If nothing else, this is an opportunity for you to let others know you exist, you’re writing about criminal law, and maybe catch some eyeballs. If your stuff is good, then people will read you. Go for it.

Nothing here at Simple Justice is eligible, so don’t waste time with it.

The winner will be announced on January 2nd (normally, it’s New Year’s Day, but since I’ll be out of the country that day, I’m pushing it over to the second) 1st (had my dates wrong, and I’m back).  I’m opening nominations a few days earlier this year since I’ll be away for a period and want to make sure every post nominated gets the attention it deserves.

Judging will be entirely on my shoulders, and I will be as arbitrary and capricious as I please, so there’s no complaining about the choice.  That said, I will do my best to select the blawg post that best reflects our finest work, our highest tradition, our deepest thoughts and our best purpose in putting words on a computer screen.  For anyone who doesn’t trust me to be fair, find a better offer elsewhere.

One important point: It’s up to you, the readers of criminal law blawg posts, to show me that you are willing to put in the effort to give a damn about the blawgosphere by nominating the best posts. If you can’t be bothered, then I can’t be bothered.  You enjoy reading some great stuff about criminal law, so this is the opportunity to let the writers know. And if it’s too much effort to nominate anyone, then it tells me that we’re wasting our time here. See how that works?

Finally, to address the perpetual issue, efforts to bribe me with barbecue or baked goods will not assure a win. However, it can’t hurt and is defintely worth a try.

36 thoughts on “Nominations are Open for the 7th Annual Jdog Memorial Best Criminal Law Blawg Post (Closed)”

  1. losingtrader

    Maybe a “seal” for Top 100 Silliest Comments could be given.

    Oh, and stick to your day job, given the market’s performance since your “short” call.

    1. SHG Post author

      There are few things I enjoy more than people, who scream about how they’re never coming back to SJ, coming back because they are filled with obsessive hate. It’s really quite flattering.

  7. John Barleycorn

    This guy!

    He ain’t no Ken Doll he’s the real thing!

    I never really thought it was true what some said about former and even current public defenders…

    But it really is true! Weebles may wobble but they never fall down!!!

    Straight from lions den.

    Meet the unequivocal rookie of the year and in my opinion the league MVP this season for not only showing up but bringing the heat.

    Right on time and right down the middle… I nominate the, hopefully to be Honorable one day if he throws his hat in for the ring for the bench, the one, THE ONLY…..

    Mr. Ken Womble!!!!!!!!!

    An Open Letter To NYPD Union President Pat Lynch

    http://mimesislaw.com/fault-lines/an-open-letter-to-nypd-union-president-pat-lynch/3127

    Failure At The Nassau County Legal Aid Society, Part 1

    http://mimesislaw.com/fault-lines/failure-at-the-nassau-county-legal-aid-society-part-1/4792

    Failure At The Nassau County Legal Aid Society, Part 2

    http://mimesislaw.com/fault-lines/failure-at-the-nassau-county-legal-aid-society-part-2/4847

    Search Warrants: When Is The Last Time A Judge Said No?

    http://mimesislaw.com/fault-lines/search-warrants-when-is-the-last-time-a-judge-said-no-72915713/2157

    If Ken starts painting the corners, just for fun next season, and stops listing to his overly conservitive pitching manager, he is gonna be among the all time greats!

    *Just click on The Man’s name over there at the uptown pinstripes roster roll. And you all just wait…Because when Ken stops letting his pitching coach hold him back and filling his head with all the trials and tribulations of the blaw-o-sphere and Ken starts sitting next to Jeff “bring it on” Gamso, when he is visiting the dugout, Gamso is gonna whisper in his ear about the secrets to comming up with the headline for a post, which will set “The Ken” free, and the rest will be history!

  11. GJS

    Judging will be entirely on my shoulders, and I will be as arbitrary and capricious………

    Sounds like a lot of courts I have attended; at least you had the good grace to restate the rules up front.

    I’ve just started auditing this blog so i think the nominees will be an excellent ‘catch up’ series for me. Will you publish them all in a list?

  12. Mort

    Just because I don’t want to get a taste of something I won’t ever get again, I’m not going to link them, but Ken White’s Lawsplainers are great reads.

  15. Mark Draughn

    Matt Brown tells this sadly ordinary story of a client facing charges from a police sting :
    http://brownandlittlelaw.com/2015/03/25/the-story-of-a-real-victim/

    Norm DeGuerre tries a trick to help a client make a decision :
    http://chasingtruthcatchinghell.com/2015/05/18/grandma-should-i-plea-a-largely-true-story/

    If burning the whole system to the ground is your idea of a valid defense strategy, Matt Haiduk would probably agree :
    http://matthaiduk.com/2015/03/25/setting-every-damn-case-for-trial-the-beginning-of-the-end-of-my-reign-of-pain-as-a-public-defender/

    And just to show I’m not a hater, here’s a prosecutor nominee, although this post is about quitting his job… :
    http://prosecutorsdiscretion.blogspot.com/2015/03/a-new-journey.html

    And while Scott is allowing links in the blog, let me see if I can sneak in a link to help out all you lawyers trying to solve the comment math problems:
    http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2%2Bx%3D6

  18. Colin Samuels

    There were a number of excellent posts concerning overcriminalization (regrettably, directly proportional to the efforts to overcriminalize, but I digress); I thought several critiques of the misguided “revenge porn” initiatives were all worthy of nomination: Mark Bennett, for his excellent fisking of the model statute (http://blog.bennettandbennett.com/2015/01/2015-14-fking-danielle-citron/) and subsequent follow-up on the proponents’ confidentiality arguments (http://blog.bennettandbennett.com/2015/05/2015-59-revenge-porn-statutes-and-confidentiality/), and Greg Prickett, for his post noting that not all problems (like revenge porn) should be dealt with in a criminal law context (http://mimesislaw.com/fault-lines/revenge-porn-when-a-problem-is-not-a-crime/2187).

    Concerning the Second Amendment, I thought a couple of recent posts from Ken White (http://mimesislaw.com/fault-lines/rights-are-bundled-not-a-la-carte/5328) and Josh Kendrick (http://mimesislaw.com/fault-lines/the-danger-of-common-sense-restrictions-on-constitutional-rights/5373) were worthy of nomination, and entirely in keeping with JDog’s fervent interest in Second Amendment law.

    I thought one of the more troubling incidents in a year filled with police killings of unarmed people was the one where a man rightly told the police to come back with a warrant if they wanted to enter his dwelling, and was subsequently killed for doing so. Kendrick’s post (http://mimesislaw.com/fault-lines/james-livingston-killed-for-knowing-his-rights/4857) on the incident was one of the best ones. An earlier Prickett post (http://mimesislaw.com/fault-lines/cooperate-with-the-police-or-else/4628) ably highlighted the “us v. them” mentality which often results in (and for police and their apologists justifies) such outcomes.

  21. Ken Womble

    A bit of homerism for my stomping ground Fault Lines, but I want to add a few to the mix.

    Andrew Fleischman dropped a fantastic piece about the sanctity of the home in Virginia. http://mimesislaw.com/fault-lines/in-virginia-refusing-to-let-police-into-your-home-gives-them-authority-to-enter/3432

    And I (like many, many others) just love me some Greg Prickett. I will second the nomination for his recent piece THE EXECUTION OF NICHOLAS ROBERTSON* http://mimesislaw.com/fault-lines/when-you-cant-run-you-crawl-and-when-you-cant-crawl/5454 (my favorite of his so far).

    And finally, not sure how criminal blawgospherey this one is, but I would be remiss if I did not give a shout out to the Good Judge, RGK. Some things are more important than others. http://wednesdaywiththedecentlyprofane.me/2015/07/09/some-things-are-more-important-than-others-2/

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