The name Grace Helen Whitener didn’t mean anything to me, but upon learning that she was appointed to the Washington State Supreme Court, I naturally assumed she’s an accomplished lawyer at the very least. Wikipedia provides a little information.

Whitener was born and raised in Trinidad. She moved to the United States when she was 16 to receive medical care. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in International Marketing and Trade from Baruch College, followed by a Juris Doctor from the Seattle University School of Law.

After graduating from law school, Whitener worked as a public defender, prosecutor, and private defense attorney. She served as a judge on the Board of Industrial Insurance Appeals for two years and then on the Pierce County Superior Court from 2015 to 2020, having been appointed by Governor Inslee and elected unopposed in 2015 and 2016. She assumed office on the Washington Supreme Court on April 13, 2020. She will run for election in 2020 for the remaining two years of Wiggins’s term.

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When I went to law school, my professors taught law much like Kingsfield. While I had some undergrad profs who were unabashedly ideological (Roger Keeran was my faculty adviser and first-year labor history prof, whose final exam question was something along the lines of “Explain why capitalism is a failure,” but he had a sense of humor about it.)

My law profs? I haven’t the slightest clue what their politics were. They lectured about competing theories and interests represented in statutory and caselaw without telling us which was right or wrong. We, their students, would vigorously argue about it, but they remained neutral, leaving it to us to weigh the competing interests. It never occurred to me that law could, or would, be taught any other way. Continue reading →

What if you tried to run a business but nobody came? Well, that happens if you’re either selling something people don’t want or doing a poor job of it. There’s no guarantee when you open your doors that anybody will show. But Du Jour Bakery made delicious baked goods, loved by patrons, and still it’s struggling.

The answer, obviously, is that coronavirus sheltering means people are staying home, not going to the bakery and not buying the “outrageous delectables, including dozens of muffins the size of baseballs,” that would otherwise sustain the bakery as a viable enterprise. Continue reading →

The numbers speak for themselves, that the poor are disproportionately suffering infection and death. The poor are disproportionately black and Hispanic. But within the litany of reasons why this is happening is a not insignificant lie:

Leaving Detroit, I thought about the disproportionate number of black folks dying from the coronavirus because they had asthma, diabetes or hypertension. Because they had limited access to affordable, healthy food.

I’ve spent more time uptown than most, and there are stores and bodegas replete with glorious fresh vegetables. There is no problem with “limited access to affordable, healthy food,” but a problem with Whoppers. They’re cheap, effortless and taste delicious. Continue reading →

Jacksonville opened its beaches, and people immediately took advantage of it to go for a walk.

As soon as the clock ticked past 5 p.m. on Friday, signaling the reopening of beaches in Jacksonville, Fla., people flocked to the shoreline in droves, evidence of Floridians’ desire for fresh, salty air after more than two weeks under a stay-at-home order.

Like day follows night, outrage followed opening. Continue reading →

It would have been completely irresponsible for Trump to hype his “feelings” about the efficacy of the off-label use of malaria drug hydroxychloroquine for coronavirus had he been qualified to offer any opinion on drugs.

Of course, if you take your pharma advice based on Trump’s feelings, you get what you paid for. “What have you got to lose?” is not quite a sound basis to ingest things, but when the alternative is death, it’s a fair question. Using the concept of “compassionate care,” using unproven therapies for people who will die without it gives them a chance. Doing nothing does not. Continue reading →

Dr. SJ “got her,” as one commonly refers to the means by which a housekeeper is shared among friends and acquaintances, a couple years ago, so Gloria has been a fixture at Casa de SJ for a while. Over that time, the relationship has been friendly. Gloria laughs at my lame attempts at broken Spanish, and I do the same with her broken English, which is frankly a lot better than my Spanish.

Gloria isn’t a very good housekeeper. She does an adequate job of cleaning, but not deep and she misses a lot. She was better in the beginning and has since done less over time. Only when she’s specifically asked to do so will she vacuum under the beds rather than around them. But she’s honest and careful with our things. If something gets broken, she’ll tell me and apologize, and I’ll tell her not to worry and it’s not her fault, just to make her feel better about it. I like Gloria. Continue reading →

Whether the word “hero” has been overused to the point of meaninglessness during the pandemic is worthy of debate, few would question that health care professionals have done themselves proud in their dedication to serving others, at grave risk to themselves and their families and under conditions that no doctor or nurse should endure.

And some of that magic rubs off on the building where this happened. Without ICU beds and, dare I say it, ventilators, how could the defense against COVID-19 have been as valiant as it has? So hospitals get our love too, to the tune of $100 billion in the stimulus package plus whatever additional monies they can glom off the $349 billion in rescue money. And as additional funding gets debated within the bathrooms of Congress, the Democrats are seeking another $100 billion dedicated to hospitals. After all, they’re heroes, right? Continue reading →

A little over a month ago, the people in the know laughed at the fools who thought masks would save them.

“Seriously people — STOP BUYING MASKS!” the surgeon general, Jerome M. Adams, said in a tweet on Saturday morning. “They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if health care providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!”

The second part, that health care providers’ need for the scarce resource of masks took priority over the general public was entirely understandable, but the Surgeon General understood that for the altruism that gushed from people’s fingertips, they weren’t going to die for the cause. And so the first part — the masks are “NOT effective” — had to be included, for without that, the cause was lost. Continue reading →

Lawyers don’t wear the uniform in court because it’s got magical powers, but because we represent clients, actual human beings who have placed their lives and fortunes in our hands, and we don’t detract from the duty to do our best on their behalf by being self-indulgent. If judges and juries expect and respect lawyers who dress the part, it’s a small price to pay for the honor of being entrusted with the lives of others.

Except in Florida, during a pandemic, on Zoom.

Sweatpants and T-shirts may be the uniform for the new work-at-home workforce.

But if you’re a lawyer in Broward County, a judge wants you to avoid dressing down for tele-court appearances.

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