Ed. Note: Who doesn’t fight with loved ones at some point during the holidays? Fault Lines alumni Mario Machado and Chris Seaton seem to love arguing with each other, so they put a debate topic on Twitter, and with over sixty percent of the vote, SJ readers chose “Resolved: Die Hard is a Christmas Movie” as the SJ Holiday Debate topic. Chris will argue the affirmative, Mario the negative. Below is Chris’ argument.

Ah, Christmas. A time when we hang the stockings by the chimney, put decorations on the tree, and watch Hans Gruber fall to his death from Nakatomi Tower to celebrate the season.

Hey, some people go for “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” or “It’s A Wonderful Life.” There’s no denying, however, that Bruce Willis’ action classic “Die Hard” is a Christmas movie. Continue reading →

One of the first things you learn in the trenches is that you do not tell a judge that something that’s obviously real isn’t real. Not only will you lose your argument, but you lose your credibility. The former is bad for the client. The latter is a disaster for the lawyer. Credibility once lost is likely gone forever.

Yet, denying reality has been at the forefront of many of the battles for reform. Despite a spike in murders and assaults, police and crim law reformers vehemently deny that there is a crime problem. The reason is obvious, that fear of crime pushes the public to back simplistic Draconian fixes and reject the efforts to reform many of the worst aspects of the legal system. The window of opportunity opened by the public’s shift against police and “systemic racism” will slam shut as fear of crime seizes their consciousness. Continue reading →

The parents of Ethan Crumley, James and Jennifer, have been charged with manslaughter for their son’s school shooting and killing of four students. On its surface, many applaud this prosecution, as they seem to be horrible parents who produced and facilitated action from a child that had horrific and tragic consequences. There is little sympathy of the Crumley family to be found.

But the attenuated connection between being bad parents and a child murdering students is a huge legal stretch. That doesn’t mean it won’t work, just as the sophist legal reasoning that turned drunk drivers into murderers worked. Or, if that example doesn’t bother you too much, the legal reasoning that turned in rem civil asset forfeiture to “take the profit out of crime” into a license to steal. It may start with the people we hate, so we shrug off the outrageousness of the law because “screw ’em,” but it never ends there. Continue reading →

While some governors are flexing their mask muscles to address, whether in reality or appearance, the concern for the next variant of Covid, Colorado’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis, has taken a very different approach to masks.

All hail Colorado’s Democratic Gov. Jared Polis, who liberated himself from the “forever COVID” mentality that has gripped far too many lawmakers.

Ever think you would see “all hail” a Dem in the New York Post? Continue reading →

Among the litany of problems a defendant faces at trial that elude those who simplistically believe forcing every case to trial rather than plea is that witnesses, even in a mundane case that won’t make the front page of the New York Times, don’t want to testify. Maybe they fear police retaliation. Maybe they have skeletons in their closet they would prefer stay there. Maybe they’re afraid of what the neighborhood will think. Maybe they just don’t want to get involved.

There’s rarely much good to come from being a witness for the defense. They don’t hand out medals and rarely does anyone extol your bravery for being so honest for the benefit of that mutt everybody knows is guilty. So why do it? Continue reading →

Will there be civil war over abortion? Charles Blow sees it coming.

In a dissent on Friday, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote: “This is a brazen challenge to our federal structure. It echoes the philosophy of John C. Calhoun, a virulent defender of the slaveholding South who insisted that States had the right to ‘veto’ or ‘nullif[y]’ any federal law with which they disagreed.”

I found the invocation of South Carolina’s Calhoun striking.

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West Side Story has long been one of my all-time favorite films. Sure, there were mistakes made. Few street gangs in 1957 were properly trained in modern dance, no less ballet. Rarely did they hang out on stoops and sing when they had nothing better to do. But it was a glorious musical, a brilliant story and a wonderful pageant.

Was it due to be remade? Perhaps. Without remakes, there wouldn’t be a lot of “makes” at all these days. And if so, who better to take on a project of such stature than Spielberg? Yet, it opened this weekend and its box officer was tepid. Worse than that, it seems that the people most inclined to go see this new and improved version were olds who, like me, adored the original movie. Continue reading →

The title is a trick question, with apologies to Betteridge, because there is no problem.

Monday saw the release of yet another poll showing that the term “Latinx” is unpopular among Hispanic voters — only 2 percent preferred to use it, while 40 percent found it off-putting and 30 percent said they’d be less likely to vote for a politician who deployed it. Naturally, the rest of the week was spent arguing over how much this mattered.

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There’s this thing that progressive criminal reform activists do that they just can’t not do. Deny body counts. Shoplifting stats can be argued, but you can’t make dead bodies disappear. And in Philadelphia, there are more dead bodies than there have been in years, 521 at the moment.

But other crimes are down? But there are still dead bodies. Philly DA Larry Krasner made the mistake, even if with the best of intentions, of denying the dead bodies. Continue reading →

In the Washington Post, it was Harvard prawfs Larry Tribe and former federal judge Nancy Gertner. In Time, it was Penn prawf Kermit Roosevelt. Will Baude did it at Volokh Conspiracy, and Keith Whittington did it in the Wall Street Journal. No doubt more members of President Biden’s Supreme Court commission will have something to say.

The Final Report was unanimously approved, largely because it fairly reflected the arguments proffered for and against various reform proposals and avoided issuing any recommendations, whether to do something or do nothing.

The Commission was not asked to make recommendations, and it did not. I hope it offers some helpful analysis of reform proposals surrounding the Court. Continue reading →