President Joe Biden had a point to make, and he made it in a way that will resonate with those who agree with him.
— Bad Legal Takes (@BadLegalTakes) April 29, 2021
Yes, he obviously misquoted Schenk and, to add insult to injury, missed the point. Or did he? Continue reading
Julia Sherwin is the lawyer representing the family of Mario Gonzalez, a 26-year-old man who died in police custody in Alameda County, California.
“His death was completely avoidable and unnecessary,” she said, adding, “Drunk guy in a park doesn’t equal a capital sentence.”
She’s quite right that his death was completely avoidable and unnecessary. If no one called the police, they wouldn’t have come. If the police ignored the two 911 calls, they would never have encountered Gonzalez. If there were an alternative to the police, such as mental health professionals, and they were dispatched instead, maybe this wouldn’t have happened. Or maybe it would have. Or maybe Gonzalez would have harmed the mental health people, Or maybe not. But there were two 911 calls. Continue reading
There is probably no agency of the government that does more to help and harm than Child Protective Services. It is simultaneously a bureaucratic nightmare, a functional cesspool of dangerous callousness, and the savior of last resort for abused and neglected children. And on top of its untenable mission to make snap decisions about kids brought on their radar by mandatory reporters, nosy neighbors and well-intended if hyper-sensitive scolds, California CPS is now saddled with a new criticism.
“It’s racist. It’s sexist. It’s ableist. It’s classist.”
Why? Mother Jones explains. Continue reading
Toledo Law’s John W. Stoepler Professor of Law & Values Lee Strang won an award. Normally, that would raise at worst a yawn, at best an eyebrow. But not this time. The award Strang won is called the Inclusive Excellence Award, and he won it “overwhelmingly.”
UToledo College of Law Professor Lee Strang received an overwhelming number of faculty nominations focused on his presence in the classroom where he “enjoys and respects a good healthy debate,” as one nominator wrote. The individuals who nominated Strang for the award recognized his conservative point of view as a minority in academia and a benefit to legal debate. Continue reading
There’s a really good reason why I never mention Tucker Carlson. He can’t sing. He can’t dance. He can’t tell a joke or throw a ball with great velocity. Yet, there he is on Fox News entertaining the masses by providing the right wing version of a whiny traumatized scold for the downtrodden . . . maskless.
Tucker Carlson is now telling his audience to harass people who wear face masks outside.
If they see children wearing masks, Tucker says the response should be no different than when you see a kid being abused — "call the police immediately, contact child protective services" pic.twitter.com/4svVH0JY3s
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) April 27, 2021
I never had a problem with Batson, per se. Of course the prosecution shouldn’t discriminate against potential jurors on the basis of race. But its rationale concerned me, creating a right on the part of individuals, potential jurors, to be free from discrimination. The right to a fair and impartial jury of one’s peers belonged to the accused, not the public.
And then the other shoe fell, as it obviously would, that the same right could be infringed by the defense, since the right no longer was limited to the defendant, but was now a public right. Reverse Batson was born, and the defendant’s ability to strike jurors was, like the prosecution’s, subject to the invented right of someone who wouldn’t go to prison. Continue reading
The reaction to the killing of 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant brought out a lot of hardcore sophistry, desperately seeking to shift the focus away from the fact that she was about to plunge a knife into another human being to another black person killed by the cops. It’s true, she was. It’s also true that there was a reason for it. It’s further true that the people arguing the cause studiously ignore the reason and only focus on the outcome.
It’s a dishonest argument, but the days when people were ashamed of being disingenuous are in the rearview mirror. Arguments that get people to the “correct” outcome matter, no matter what fallacious reasoning is required. The ends justify the means when the end is social justice. Continue reading
I knew George Floyd. Not the George Floyd who was killed in Minneapolis, but the generic George Floyd. I knew him. I knew a thousand George Floyds. Guys trying to survive on the street. Nice enough guys with few prospects trying to make their way through life as best they could. Some were surprisingly smart, inherently knowing a great deal about organizational behavior because they surely didn’t learn it at Harvard Business School. Some weren’t very smart. Many were addicted to drugs.
Addicted to opioids doesn’t make one evil, or even an unpleasant person. People who are addicted can be good people, but they tend to do dumb stuff and get themselves into trouble. That’s largely why I knew George Floyd, because he would come to my office, sit in the chair across my desk and talk to me. Continue reading
There seems to be an ongoing competition between Harvard and Yale Law Schools to see which can be more ridiculous than the other. While Dersh does his best to balance out Larry Tribe on the Harvard team, Yale came on strong this week with its condemnation of prawf Amy Chua.
The Yale Daily News reported recently that a professor at the university’s law school, Amy Chua, had been disciplined for allegedly inviting students to dinner parties at her house in violation of a 2019 agreement with the dean. Current and former students of Chua’s sent dozens of emails to the administration to protest the decision. Some high-profile supporters condemned her treatment: One deemed it “sinister,” while others suggested it might be racist and sexist. Chua herself called the whole thing “surreal,” denied any wrongdoing, and demanded an investigation. Continue reading
No, it’s not the answer to all police abuse problems, as some have been disingenuously claiming to push their agenda to the unduly passionate, but abolishing qualified immunity is certainly a hugely important reform. And with the bipartisan support of Republican Senator Tim Scott, it should be a done deal. Yet, it’s not. How is this possible?
Sen. Tim Scott (R–S.C.) has reportedly proposed a compromise to rein in qualified immunity, the legal doctrine that makes it difficult for victims to sue government officials when their constitutional rights have been violated. Continue reading