As day follows night, pundits masquerading as news reporters hook up with hitherto unknown law profs whose passionate theories mattered to no one whenever a high-profile case doesn’t go the way they believe it should. This time, there are two happening simultaneously, and if two outliers don’t prove a pervasive problem in need of fixing, what does?

The Kyle Rittenhouse and Ahmaud Arbery cases raise intriguing legal questions about people who take the law into their own hands and then claim self-defense when someone dies.

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I’ve seen the argument. I’ve made the argument. When it’s applied to a specific set of facts, a particular individual, it’s a damn fine argument. But as a general proposition, it doesn’t work.

Growing up on the South Side of Chicago, I’ve seen my classmates carry firearms to keep themselves and their families safe from harm. And I later represented some of those same individuals in court—being prosecuted for firearm possession—when I started work as a public defender.

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“I’m exhausted,” the email began. I knew his pain. All those keys. All those letters. All those words. Writing his Friday Funny had finally taken its toll on Chris Seaton, who decided on sheer impulse to shave his head, buy a saffron robe at the Dollar Tree and become an acolyte of the Dalai Lama.

I mean, who cares about grown-ass men in tights pretending to be wrestlers? What the fuck does “roll tide” even mean?

Oh crap. This is serious. Continue reading →

Some kids are smarter than others. Some kids work harder to learn than others. Some kids have the benefit of parents who read to them, make them study, help them to learn and instill in their children the value of education and knowledge. And schools have long used a grading system to distinguish between those who achieve competence, those who achieve mastery and those who don’t. The former rise to the top of their class. The latter become judges find other ways to fulfill their dreams.

Is that fair to the kids who fail? Continue reading →

The trial of Kyle Rittenhouse has been fairly interesting for lawyers, particularly given the decision to put the defendant on the stand given that the trial had been going quite well for the defense and there is nothing more risky than having a defendant testify. No matter how well prepped, how sincere, how innocent (or guilty), it’s a crap shoot. One never knows what will come out of a defendant’s mouth under the stress of courtroom testimony. Even the best defendant can implode on the stand.

But the notion of a public trial includes not only the defendant’s interest in not being railroaded behind closed doors, but that the public has faith in the legal system reaching a fair verdict by hearing with its own ears, seeing with its own eyes, the testimony proffered, the arguments made, the instructions given, so that the public understands how a verdict was reached. How’s that going? Continue reading →

When you stick a needle in your eye, the immediate need is to stop the blood and eyeball goo from gushing out.* But once you’ve stopped the bleeding, you need to give some thought to not sticking a needle in your eye anymore. The problem isn’t that needles are sharp, or needles can pierce eyes, or eyes are filled with goo. The problem is that you stuck a needle in your eye.

Rikers Island is an eyeball after the needle’s been stuck in it. Former New York Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman recounts the goo. Continue reading →

Most of us drive on roads and over bridges, regardless of whether we’re right, left or somewhere in between. We ride on subways and trains. We fly on airplanes. We purchase products manufactured elsewhere that magically turn up at our local store or at our door. Most of us, regardless of our race, gender, religion or ethnicity, need functional infrastructure for our world to happen, and a huge piece of that infrastructure involves transportation.

So what does our Secretary of Transportation have to say about it? Continue reading →

If anything is a sign of the times, it’s that the announcement by Pano Kanelos, the putative founding president, of a new university was made on Bari Weiss’ substack.

So much is broken in America. But higher education might be the most fractured institution of all.

There is a gaping chasm between the promise and the reality of higher education. Yale’s motto is Lux et Veritas, light and truth. Harvard proclaims: Veritas. Young men and women of Stanford are told Die Luft der Freiheit weht: The wind of freedom blows. Continue reading →

Tasers are one of those weapons with the perpetually unhelpful good news/bad news outcome. Sure, the officer didn’t draw his handgun and put a bullet into the guy’s center mass, which is never good news. But cops often treat Tasers, because they won’t necessarily kill, so casually that they are used when force isn’t justified, often for convenience rather than necessity. And then there’s the problem that sometimes they do kill, even as Axon, formerly known as Taser International until they had to change their name to shed the taint of early Taser abuse, blames it on contrived causes that aren’t its fault.

Two Wilson, Oklahoma, officers were convicted of second degree murder for tasering a guy to death. His crime was resisting their commands to let them arrest him after running around naked in the street. Continue reading →

It’s not just the hubris of believing that because you’re a cop, whatever you do is acceptable no matter how unlawful, vicious or downright stupid, but that the non-cop world ought to somehow know that you’re a cop and just take it.

But as the “Good Guy Curve” makes clear, if some random criminal fires a round at Jaleel Stallings, and Jaleel Stallings, being a good guy, defends himself by returning fire, it’s not a crime. Even if it turns out that the initial shooter in an unmarked van has a shield in his pocket. Even if he’s a cop. It was five days after George Floyd was killed, and an unmarked white van of cops were told to go out and “fuck ’em up.” So they did. Continue reading →