There is an incoming talk for new students at Lake Wobegon University, where Dean Keiller welcomes them to campus:
Welcome to Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.
And why not, Alfie Kohn asks? Continue reading
A call from a lawyer with whom I was working on a case came in while I was on the phone with another lawyer. I told him I would have to call him back, the other call being about a criminal defense lawyer, a good person and good lawyer, having a breakdown. Later, when I called back, the first lawyer asked me an interesting question: why? Why did a lawyer who was in extremis, questioning whether he could face another day in the trenches, call me.
My answer was off-the-cuff, that people recognize me as an “honest broker,” that I won’t lie to them, give them some platitudinous tummy rubs about how they’re heroes of the cause and doing God’s work by defending the Constitution. We’ve all heard that tripe, even as the law students and baby lawyers repeat it back and forth because they’re young, naive and foolish.
But was that really why people would call an old curmudgeon, a lawyer who isn’t exactly know for being all touchy-feely, filled with empathy and inclined to gently rub their tummy with the soothing words that will make them feel that they haven’t squandered their life on a wasted delusion? Continue reading
It’s been a while since my “but for video” series graced this screen. It’s all been seen. It’s all been heard. The point has been made, that the conduct complained of forever before video became ubiquitous, the conduct cops and prosecutors argued was impossible and made no sense, the conduct that judges dismissed under the mantra, “why would they do such a thing?” happens.
Judges asked “why,” the question that only the person(s) doing it could answer, but that it happened was never in doubt. We just couldn’t prove it. They just didn’t buy it. And so it happened, again and again. For the pedants who will respond, “but it doesn’t always happen,” of course not. And that’s not what anyone is saying. But it does happen.
So why bring back “but for video”? Because this one strikes home. Unlike most, there is no horrifying death, no terrible beating. In terms of consequences, it’s particularly banal, and that’s very much the point. Video has been around for a while now, and the days of denying cops abusing their authority while maintaining the capacity to deny it happened, to weasel out of the allegations against them by rhetoric rather than reality, are long past. And yet, it still happens. Continue reading
The floundering social justice organization known as the ABA, desperate to pretend that its model ethical rule 8.4(g) has been adopted by a state other than Vermont, writes that a second state, Maine, has adopted it after all those others rejected it. And except for the details that Maine substantially changed it so as to eliminate the ABA’s unduly passionate excesses that have driven away members in droves, it’s almost true.
But to its rescue appears NYU Law’s ethical maven, Stephen Gillers, who offers this deeply considered and heavily cited view:
The preposterous claim that the First Amendment entitles lawyers to make racist, sexist and homophobic statements in connection with law practice is an embarrassment.
In the BT era, before every waking moment was spent obsessing over the hour’s idiocy from the White House, there was a quiet revolt taking place in the courthouse by a handful of United States Magistrate Judges challenging the government’s efforts to remain a few steps ahead of the law and technology. I dubbed it the Magistrate’s Revolt. Good times. Fond memories of when law was still something of interest.
It’s back. Well, not quite back, as in some critical mass of people focusing on the same government apparatus as flourished before Trump, but at least a a few finding it worthy of attention again. Most notably, the New York Times has shifted from its “All Trump, All the time” status to giving a little real estate to a substantive legal issue of monumental important and doubtful sexiness. It begins with the plight of poor Timothy Carpenter, as Cristian Farias describes, who won huge and will spend the rest of his life in prison.
Timothy Carpenter won’t be remembered for the circumstances that landed him in prison, but for the Supreme Court case that bears his name. Continue reading
At Arc Digital,* Roderick Graham takes his best shot at defending the honor of what he calls “critical studies,” that strain of “scholarship” taken to task by the Sokal Squared hoax. Deep into his argument, he questions why non-academics, outsiders to critical studies, give a damn about whether it’s a legit field of scholarship.
Many who denounce critical studies are political grievers. Research identifying more instances of racism, sexism, homophobia, and so forth bear with them implications. At the least, it accuses whites, men, heterosexuals, and cisgendered people as a class — though not necessarily as individuals — as being in need of change. At the most, the research suggests adoption of policies that reduce racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia. People who benefit from the status quo, or who are otherwise opposed to changing it, are less inclined to explore its flaws.
Political grievers are usually outside of academia and other forms of knowledge production, and often have only a passing interest in the actual production of knowledge. Continue reading
It was the second call, after business hours, from the reporter for the London Times when she told me that long-time New York County assistant district attorney Elizabeth Lederer had announced that she would not be seeking reappointment to her post as adjunct at Columbia Law School. The first call was about whether she should.
There’s little doubt Columbia will be able to find a replacement. Adjunct lawprofs are a dime a dozen, even if it’s a bit harder to find someone who has the experience of prosecuting thousands of cases, trying hundreds(?), spending 39 years in the trenches of 100 Centre Street. Whether a prosecutor would be my personal choice for teaching trial practice to law students isn’t the point; that was Columbia’s choice and I get no vote. But apparently, she did it well enough to remain there, be asked to return year after year. Until now. Continue reading
There was little doubt in the New York Times that this epidemic was destroying the City.
Despite the more than $500 million spent by the city in the last fiscal year on drug-related enforcement alone – more than twice the amount in fiscal 1986 -the presence of crack is more pervasive, more violent and more insidious in its effect on New Yorkers, particularly the poor.
Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer demanded action to stop this plague, and the Times completely agreed. Continue reading
Proclaiming rights, be it housing, healthcare, food “security,” or whatever it is that people would really like to have, gathers around it fans of the benefit without much thought to the two questions that got shoved aside. What, aside from people would really like to have it, makes the thing people want a “right,” and how, as a practical matter, do we accommodate it in conjunction with other “rights,” including the “right” not to be subject to confiscatory taxes to pay for it?
This isn’t to suggest that we should let people starve to death in cardboard boxes on the street while suffering from typhus and depression. As a matter of sound social policy, we should have a social safety net to feed, house and treat people in need. But does that make it a “right”? Can a person demand his right to a split-level house, a steak dinner and rhinoplasty? What about a lawyer?
The Supreme Court held in Gideon that every indigent criminal defendant is entitled to a lawyer for his defense. a right that derives from the Sixth Amendment. We’ve done a mediocre to poor job of fulfilling that right, a problem that pops onto the radar fairly regularly, only to be displaced by some more radical concern a day, an hour, later. Continue reading
It’s eminently understandable why participants in a Dyke March might be inclined to harbor some fear, given that Naxos stepped forward at the Motor City march to conclusively demonstrate the flaw in Darwin’s theory.
When word of gunshots spread at the D.C. March, running for cover was hardly an unreasonable thing to do. Continue reading