The old Cult of Positivity post by Venkat Balasubramani keeps coming back to me, as people new to social media reinvent the old wheel. It happened again when lawprof Carissa Hessick twitted that she would try to give more praise than criticism.

I know that #Twitter is often used as a forum to criticize others. I certainly use it that way.

But I’m going to try and use it more often to praise people—especially people with whom I ordinarily disagree—for doing things that I perceive as positive.

As Carissa regularly offers some very interesting and thoughtful ideas about criminal law and reform, and is one of the smarter voices in the legal academy on issues dear to my heart, I offered a warning in reply. Continue reading →

The headline alone was either the clickiest of clickbait or a testament to the failure of journalism.

Woman shot herself through mouth while handcuffed during traffic-stop suicide, officials say

Next up, Bigfoot attacks cub scout troop? But the story isn’t a joke, and there is a dead human being who can’t be forgotten in the midst of this absurd headline.

A 19-year-old woman whose hands were cuffed behind her back when she committed suicide during a traffic stop in Chesapeake died of a gunshot wound through the mouth, according to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

Continue reading →

The oddity, that was only lost on the people doing the preaching, was that none of the @ClerksForChange who spoke at the hearing on changes to the rules of conduct for federal judges suffered a scintilla of harassment, sexism, misogyny, any of the evils about which they complained. Each proclaimed their judge to have been wonderful, a paradigm of propriety.

But they had stories. Other people’s stories. Where these other people were, what they were complaining about was unclear. There were the Koz clerks, who only managed to shift from their adoration and appreciation of judge Alex Kozinski to their ripping him to shreds after they served out their clerkship and enjoyed the huge benefits of having been a Koz clerk. Ironically, the only example given was of one senior judge from flyover land whose one sharply-pointed twit was proof of the particular speaker’s being sexually harassed. By a twit. One twit. Not to her.

The new rules have now been formulated and were announced by judge Merrick Garland. Continue reading →

My mother would have called it “keeping up with the Joneses,” the need to buy a new car when you couldn’t afford to furnish your living room because the people across the street bought a new car and you certainly didn’t want to appear less successful than them. That would be humiliating.

But like all things old that have long characterized humanity’s less admirable traits, the kids believe they’ve invented it, or at least refined it to a level of singular distinction.

Scammers and cheats are the paradigmatic figures of our age, and not just because a con man is president of the United States. Again and again in recent years, people who’ve scaled the cultural heights have been revealed as audacious frauds. The systems and institutions that confer status in our society keep being exposed as Ponzi schemes. Grift is turning into our central national narrative.

Continue reading →

From the moment hearts began to break for Matthew Charles, it was clear that the unduly passionate would conflate the “injustice” suffered by this one person with the problem to be cured. Charles brought two very valuable assets to the table. First, he was an unquestionably worthy poster boy for the cause. Second, the government’s demand that he be returned to prison following Charles’ mistaken release was something that everyone could agree was wholly unjustified and unjustifiable.

It was also a total outlier scenario that bore, at most a tangential connection to the norm, to the general problem facing people who had done everything they could to improve themselves while in prison and prepare themselves for a re-entry into society, where they could live happy, law-abiding lives.

It’s unclear how many “Matthew Charleses” there are in prison. Maybe a thousand. Maybe a million. But as they were never erroneously released and unceremoniously returned, they would never be Matthew Charles. And, in its relative and peculiar way, it’s good to be Matthew Charles, not because he didn’t suffer but because all the others who suffered very much like him would never get the attention he got. Continue reading →

Most people don’t read the Congressional Record for kicks. This is what happens in Congress that you missed.

 ``I AM JAZZ''

  (Ms. SPEIER asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Ms. SPEIER. Madam Speaker, today I have the great honor of reading 
again along with my colleague, Angie Craig, ``I Am Jazz.'' It is a book 
about a transsexual young boy who becomes a young girl.
  ``I am Jazz.
  ``For as long as I can remember, my favorite color has been pink. My 
second-favorite color is silver and my third favorite color is green.
  ``Here are some of my other favorite things: dancing, singing, back 
flips, drawing, soccer, swimming, makeup, and pretending I'm a pop 
star.
  ``Most of all, I love mermaids. Sometimes I even wear a mermaid tail 
in the pool.
  ``My best friends are Samantha and Casey. We always have fun 
together. We like high heels and princess gowns, or cartwheels and 
trampolines.
  ``But I am not exactly like Samantha and Casey.
  ``I have a girl brain but a boy body. This is called transgender. I 
was born this way.''

Continue reading →

In 2005, Congress enacted the Protection of Lawful Commerce In Arms Act, and stated in clear words why.

The purposes of this chapter are as follows:

(1) To prohibit causes of action against manufacturers, distributors, dealers, and importers of firearms or ammunition products, and their trade associations, for the harm solely caused by the criminal or unlawful misuse of firearm products or ammunition products by others when the product functioned as designed and intended.

(2) To preserve a citizen’s access to a supply of firearms and ammunition for all lawful purposes, including hunting, self-defense, collecting, and competitive or recreational shooting. Continue reading →

I can’t quite remember where or when I heard Morris Dees speak back in the 90’s, but I remember that he was one of the very few speakers who ever inspired me. I may not be easily moved by speeches, but then, I may be as easily fooled as a great many other people. Morris Dees was fired by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a non-profit he co-founded in 1971 with Julian Bond and Joe Levin.

Fired.

Morris Dees, now 82, was the SPLC. What could this now-old man have done to be unceremoniously ousted from the organization he co-founded?

The group’s president, Richard Cohen, did not give a specific reason for the dismissal of Mr. Dees, 82, on Wednesday. But Mr. Cohen said in a statement that as a civil-rights group, the S.P.L.C. was “committed to ensuring that the conduct of our staff reflects the mission of the organization and the values we hope to instill in the world.” Continue reading →

Within minutes of D.C. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson imposing a second sentence on Paul Manafort, New York County District Attorney Cy Vance sprung his news.

“No one is beyond the law in New York,” said District Attorney Vance. “Following an investigation commenced by our Office in March 2017, a Manhattan grand jury has charged Mr. Manafort with state criminal violations which strike at the heart of New York’s sovereign interests, including the integrity of our residential mortgage market. I thank our prosecutors for their meticulous investigation, which has yielded serious criminal charges for which the defendant has not been held accountable.”

Manafort, according to the indictment, lied on his residential mortgage application, making him as heinous a criminal as a few million other New Yorkers and other Americans, particularly during the frenzy leading to the bubble bursting in 2007. Somehow, New York’s sovereign interests survived, hyperbole notwithstanding. Continue reading →

[Ed. Note: This is a guest post by my brilliant Fault Lines colleague, Sam Bieler.]

New York’s legislators are about to make a terrible mistake. They are going to repeal New York’s double jeopardy protections to stick it to Donald Trump. Maybe they will succeed. The price of their success will be imperiling every other criminal defendant in New York long after Trump is gone.

Led by newly-elected Attorney General Letitia James, New York legislators are returning to a scheme the previous AG spearheaded in April 2018, to modify New York’s double jeopardy law. That law, CPL § 40.20, states:

A person may not be twice prosecuted for the same offense.

Continue reading →