Within minutes of my posting a snarky twit, the phone rang.

Scott, it’s Pablo. Why are you doing this to us, man?

Pablo Arredondo is Casetext’s co-founder, along with Jake Heller. I like these guys, even if I haven’t always been supportive of their coolest new ideas. They’ve had misses and hits, but they’re still standing which is far more than you could say about most of their brethren in the “legaltech” space, creating tools for lawyers that nobody wants or needs. But this time? Continue reading →

Moira Donegan started the “Shitty Media Men” list, which gave rise to an opportunity for women to tell their stories, whether real, exaggerated or completely false, without challenge or question. Did it help? Sure, it destroyed a few careers of men about whom lies were spread, but isn’t it worth it if they stopped just one bad man? Surely you understand that there will be collateral damage of innocent people in the war for gender hegemony.

So why not federal judges?

There’s a real problem in the federal judiciary. Whether you look at disgraced retired judge Alex Kozinski, who was accused of pernicious sexual harassment in 2017; the resignation of district court judge Carlos Murguia, who was reprimanded for his “inappropriate behavior”; the stymied inquiry into Kavanaugh’s behavior which disappeared because he left the D.C. Circuit when he got elevated to the Supreme Court; or the powerful testimony of Olivia Warren, who detailed the sexual harassment and abuse she was subjected to during her tenure at the Ninth Circuit by the late Judge Stephen Reinhardt, it is clear the legal industry needs to do something.

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The inaugural Rappaport Forum was held at Harvard Law School, starting with a panel discussion on “the role and limits of free speech on college campuses.” If the subject matter of the panel doesn’t immediately catch your eye, I’ll spell it out for you.

It wasn’t a panel on the protection of free speech, or the expansion of free speech, or even the assurance of free speech. It was a panel on the “limits” of free speech. As if limits were such an obvious need that the question was never “should there be a limits,” but rather what limits should there be.

In a discussion lasting roughly an hour on Friday afternoon, Lisa Feldman Barrett, a psychology professor at Northeastern University, and Jonathan Haidt, an ethical leadership professor at New York University, discussed the definition of violent speech and how the parameters of free speech have changed on college campuses with the advent of the internet.

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The op-ed was signed by a passel of prosecutors, all holding themselves out to some greater or lesser extent to be “progressive” in their view.

By Darcel D. Clark, Eric Gonzalez, Melinda Katz, Michael E. McMahon, Anthony A. Scarpino Jr., Madeline Singas and Cyrus R. Vance Jr.

Of course, signing onto an op-ed isn’t the same as writing one, and so one should take these names with the same equanimity as the op-ed that follows. Continue reading →

It opened with those dreaded words:

Yet when a good doctrine is combined with those dreaded words, the majority opinion written by Justice Alito, it’s enough to send chills down one’s spine.

There they were, at the start of the 5-4 decision in Hernandez v. Mesa.

JUSTICE ALITO delivered the opinion of the Court.

The case was a hard one, not because there wasn’t overwhelming belief that the Border Patrol agent, Jesus Mesa, Jr., who fired from El Paso, Texas into Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and killed 15-year-old Sergio Adrián Hernández Güereca, took a life wrongfully and needlessly, but because it was such a bizarre and peculiar fact pattern. As the old adage goes, bad facts make bad law. Continue reading →

It’s almost as if America’s Dad, Bill Cosby, was never convicted, and yet the conviction of Harvey Weinstein for two of the five counts with which he was charged, Rape in the Third Degree (a Class E non-violent felony) and Criminal Sexual Act in the First Degree (a Class B violent felony), is held out as the case where everything changed.

What does the hard-won, long-overdue conviction of Harvey Weinstein demonstrate?

It shows how difficult it can be to bring abusers to justice, particularly when they are wealthy and powerful. It shows how much the #MeToo movement has changed American life. And it shows how far society still has to go.

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There’s a dirty little secret lurking behind the otherwise neutral rule of a Terry stop having to do with the ugliest part of the body. When stopped, surrounded by guys with shields and guns who you seriously doubt are there to be your pal and asking you questions just because they’re deeply interested in your personal welfare, what exactly is your status? Can you say, “hey, this was fun but I really have to go now. Bye,” and walk away?

The majority of the South Carolina Supreme Court held that Eric Spears had the right to do so, which would appear, on its surface, to be a positive ruling. As it turned out, this wasn’t a good thing for Spears. Continue reading →

For some years now, Stephanie West Allen and I have marveled at how “presentism” has undermined the basic comprehension of history in context. It doesn’t make things any more, or less, right or wrong, but it gives rise to a false and distorted understanding of how and why things happened.

Was Christopher Columbus just a horrifying colonial genocidal rapist? If viewed through today’s lens, perhaps. But he didn’t exist in today’s culture, and so should his actions be judged by the woke perspective? Just to add an additional wrinkle, does it occur to those who believe that they are have reached the absolute pinnacle of propriety, righteousness, morality and decency, that their views will be judged down the road by people who will shake their heads in horror at how terrible they were? Continue reading →

To absolutely no one’s surprise, Roger Stone’s counsel moved long-suffering D.C. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson to recuse herself. To absolutely no one’s surprise, she denied the motion.

The defense does not argue that the jurors did not “serve[] . . . under difficult circumstances,” but it complains that the Court’s use of the words “with integrity” are disqualifying because there is a pending motion for new trial with respect to a single juror, and the hearing has not yet taken place.

This is just about the thinnest reed possible to argue that a judge should disqualify herself. The basis for recusal under 28 U.S.C. § 455(a) is that “[a]ny justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” For those hellbent on believing any negativity will do, there’s nothing to be said that will change their minds. But then, the standard isn’t whatever the craziest supporter believes. Continue reading →

Google’s gone woke, at least a little bit.

In an email to developers on Thursday morning, seen by Business Insider, Google said it would no longer use “gendered labels” for its image tags. Instead, it will tag any images of people with “non-gendered” labels such as “person.”

Google said it had made the change because it was not possible to infer someone’s gender solely from their appearance. It also cited its own ethical rules on AI, stating that gendering photos could exacerbate unfair bias.

To say that it’s “not possible” seems an absurd exaggeration. In most cases, it’s not only possible but obvious. That there may be some cases where it’s too close to call doesn’t compel the claim of impossibility; that’s entirely Google’s choice, and one that’s better explained by “exacerbate unfair bias,” which sounds nice if one has a fine-tuned sense of jargon, but doesn’t do much to explain what sort of unfair bias might be exacerbated by stating the obvious. Continue reading →