We’re up to our neck in victims these days, but one for whom few tears are shed is Harper Lee’s protagonist in To Kill A Mockingbird, Atticus Finch.  To some extent, he served as an inspiration for generations of young people to go to law school, to become lawyers.

What distinguished these young people from the law school matriculants of today?  They were smart. They chose to join a still-vibrant profession. They passed the bar exam on the first try, second at worst. And when they learned that the real practice of criminal defense bore no similarity to what their law school prof taught them, getting their butts kicked for all the wrong reasons on a daily basis, they again turned to Atticus Finch to remind them of why they should get up the next morning and fight again.

So why tear this character apart?  Katie Rose Guest Pryal explains at Quartz:

As I’ve said before, the world does not need more lawyers like Atticus Finch. He’s a flawed inspiration for attending law school. He took on a case he didn’t want to take because no one else would do it and because his client, Tom Robinson, was not only righteous; he was obviously innocent. Then, Atticus slut-shamed an abused, impoverished girl to get his client off. Helped along by Gregory Peck’s steadfast portrayal in the beloved Hollywood classic, Atticus Finch, the lawyer-hero of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, has been inspiring law students for decades.

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A decision just issued from New York Acting Supreme Court  Justice L.B. Sullivan that might make Donald Trump’s hair stand up. Via Eric Turkewitz, the order comes as a lagging indicator in Trump’s lawsuit against Univision for its decision not to air the Miss Universe Pageant.

In reaction, Trump sued Univision under the legal theory of quia non potest.  Turk wasn’t impressed:

At the time it happened, I ripped the defamation claim to shreds as frivolous. As didPopehat, albeit more colorfully than I (Donald Trump’s Lawyers Don’t Know Or Don’t Care What Defamation Is)

Now, it appears, a New York judge agrees. Even though the case was removed a couple weeks later to federal court, it was filed in New York’s Supreme Court (our main trial level court). And because it was filed there, the court apparently retains jurisdiction over anything that happened while still under its roof.

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It’s hard for indigent defenders to keep abreast of the cutting edge training that’s needed to fulfill their critical societal function. They’re overwhelmed. They’re underpaid. They have little time on their hands to waste.  And yet, there are important, no, vital, things that they must be taught.

Fortunately, the newly formed National Association for Public Defense exists to vet the plethora of courses, CLEs, lectures and programs, so that trench public defenders’ time won’t be squandered on worthless stuff like “advanced cross examination” and “effective jury selection.”  Instead, they can focus their very limited time and attention on matters that go to the core of their function.

How Sanism Poisons the Attorney-Client Relationship in Criminal Cases

Sanism, because there are still -isms left unmentioned. And if you think this is, well, nuts. think again. Continue reading →

The call came in to the police. A 10-87 in progress, and mere moments before the evidence is gone forever.  But when a man takes revenge on a woman for her refusal to accede to rape, something must be done.

A man in Laholm, Hallan County in Sweden was reported to police because he farted after the woman he was with denied to have sex with him.

She reported the incident to the local police saying that his “revenge fart” disturbed her peace of mind.

The official report would, of course, read flatulens. because police reports are official documents and, obviously, this happened in Sweden. But in order to demonstrate a harm of sufficient magnitude to meet the elements of an offense, one question needed to be answered:  doesn’t a woman deserve peace of mind? Continue reading →

There is no law school more progressive, and no law dean who better embodies the politics of his law school, than Erwin Chemerinsky’s UC Irvine. It wasn’t accidental, but precisely what was intended, as UC Irvine Law was created out of nothing in 2006 with Chemerinsky at the helm with a mandate.  To his credit, Dean Chemerinsky built what he was charged to build, a “visionary” law school.

If there is anyone who can feel the blood coursing through the throbbing veins of passionate law students, it’s Chemerinsky, so if there is anyone capable of making sense of free speech on campus, he’s the guy.  And in the LA Times, he takes up the cause, imploring us to teach students, rather than mock or ignore them.

Teaching a freshman seminar on freedom of speech on college campuses has made us aware of the urgent need to educate the current generation of students about the importance of the 1st Amendment. From the beginning of our course, we were surprised by the often unanimous willingness of our students to support efforts to restrict and punish a wide range of expression. Not a single student in the class saw any constitutional problem with requiring professors to give “trigger warnings” before teaching potentially disturbing material.

Well, if they’re arriving at Harvard with “minds of mush,” what did you expect at UC Irvine? It’s not Stanford.  Though it is, frankly, shocking that not a single student took issue with restricting and punishing “a wide range of expression.” How could this be? Continue reading →