I’ve never been comfortable with Toronto psychology professor Jordan Peterson. Much as I agree with his position that people can’t make up their own gender pronouns and demand others use them, under force of law, there’s something unseemly about him. Too self-promotional. Too one-note. Too . . . obvious.

Had Peterson not been an academic, no one would invite him to speak or debate. His shtick was worthy of a blog post or two, but that was as deep as it went. Still, grad student teaching assistant Lindsay Shepard saw purpose in showing a debate involving Peterson to her class. Oh no.

A teaching assistant named Lindsay Shepherd was reprimanded by her supervising professor, as well as a “manager of Gendered Violence Prevention and Support” and one other professor. Her crime? Screening for two sections of her communications class a recorded TV segment in which Jordan Peterson, among others, debates a recent law concerning the use of gender pronouns. Continue reading →

The Rep. Joe Barton mess provided an early opportunity to consider whether the voices demanding criminalization of revenge porn were honorable or not. This comes at a good time, in light of the push in Congress to create a federal crime of it, backed by invariably teary-eyed Congressvictim Jackie Speier, and take down Section 230 safe harbor in the process.

At the Washington Examiner,* revenge porn activists were asked about the Barton scenario, and the responses were exceptionally revealing.

Bekah Wells of Women Against Revenge Porn, speaking under an initial impression the congressman was victimized, said that “Joe Barton has nothing to be ashamed of. Leave him alone.”

“I don’t care if his penis has a Bob Dylan song tattooed on it. It’s not newsworthy,” Wells said. “The media needs to stop with this stuff. And I hope Joe sues the shit out of TMZ.”

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There are a few different words used to capture various aspects of the trait. Honor. Integrity, Honesty. For most of my life, and my career, these words represented inherent virtues. You told the truth because telling the truth was the right thing to do. You kept your promises because it was the honorable thing to do.

We were honorable people.

Somehow, we’ve lost this. Honor is no longer a virtue that we hold for ourselves. Some years ago, I characterized ethics as the thing you do when no one is looking. You were ethical because you were ethical, even if you could get away with not being ethical. You were ethical even if it was contrary to your self-interest. And at the end of the day, you would be able to look at yourself in the mirror, go to sleep, without feeling shame for your choices, your actions.  Continue reading →

While bail, in general, is a fiasco in application, New York, in particular, has a pretty good bail law. Not only does the law provide a veritable cornucopia of options to make bail, but it limits the imposition of bail to risk of flight. New York has no community safety component, even though our progressive former chief judge would like to add that to the law, to make bail more available.*

But that’s the law. That’s the theory. This is the practice.

Spend even a little time in Kings County Criminal Court, and a pattern to the proceedings quickly emerges. A person recently arrested in Brooklyn is brought before a judge to be arraigned. An assistant district attorney asks the judge to set bail. The judge, without asking whether the defendant can afford the payment, offers him two unworkable choices: Post the full amount of bail now or pay a visit to the bail bondsman, an expensive proposition. Continue reading →

There is nothing surprising about Ian Milhiser’s fears. After all, he’s a staunch, if hyperbolic, progressive advocate dedicated to the cause, and so one would expect him to cry the sky is falling at every turn.

The memo, co-authored by law professor and Federalist Society founder Steven G. Calabresi, proposes a monumental expansion of the federal judiciary. It also is not subtle about its motivations. As the memo states in its introduction, a major purpose of this court-packing scheme is “undoing the judicial legacy of President Barack Obama.”

Shockingly, conservatives aren’t as thrilled by Obama’s judicial selections as they are of their own. So Calabresi has come up with a scheme to expand the number of judges, which will enable Trump to appoint them. Trump’s White House counsel looks to the Federalist Society for nominees, so it’s a really good idea for the FedSoc if this were to happen. It won’t, but a guy can dream, right?  Continue reading →

Ken Armstrong and T. Christian Miller* start their op-ed with the dreaded formulaic anecdote designed to make you feel the pain. The story is of a rape victim who was not believed, and subsequently prosecuted for falsely reporting. And it turned out she was telling the truth. And she wasn’t the only one.

What happened to Marie seemed unthinkable. She was victimized twice — first raped, then prosecuted. But cases like hers can be found around the country. In 1997, a legally blind woman reported being raped at knife point in Madison, Wis. That same year, a pregnant 16-year-old reported being raped in New York City. In 2004, a 19-year-old reported being sexually assaulted at gunpoint in Cranberry Township, Pa.

In all three instances, the women were charged with lying. In all three instances, their reports turned out to be true. The men who raped them were later identified and convicted.

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It starts with trying to make the place more user friendly. Remember when colleges had students review their professors, rating them as part of a scheme to make students happier? How long did it take for the tyranny to begin, the inmates to seize control of the asylum, before profs figured out that if they were hard on students, rigorous in their demands or failed to adhere to the language or concepts most beloved at any given moment, their rating would suck?

Tenure? Plum assignment? Popularity? Who doesn’t want to win the Miss Congeniality Award? And seeing how well that’s worked out in the campus setting, why not bring it to the courtroom?

At Manhattan Criminal Court, judges are being urged to watch their language —avoiding legal jargon, calling people by their name rather than “the defendant,” and greeting people when they enter.

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A few of you have noticed* that I haven’t been twitting lately. Sure, the posts here appear in twits, but that’s an automated function of the blogging program. Set it and forget it. My last actual twit was on November 14th, ten days ago.

I’ve taken what I delightfully call a twitter hiatus. There was no announcement. I just stopped, cold turkey. Twitter went on just fine without me.

It’s been unfun for a while. There are still the usual eggboy nutjobs, the n00b geniuses who must correct anyone on the twitters who is wrong and the stigmatized sufferers of the Dunning-Kruger Syndrome. But these are just the flotsam and jetsam of the medium, perennially present and presently ignored. Continue reading →

There’s nothing new about it. Usually, it’s cloaked in words that are designed to create the opposite effect, to make it seem smart, or insider-ish, There’s nothing new about this, either. Remember Pacific Bell’s Kroning, for example, that produced only one thing of value.*

What we need is an anti-bullshit movement. It would be made up of people from all walks of life who are dedicated to rooting out empty language. It would question management twaddle in government, in popular culture, in the private sector, in education and in our private lives.

The aim would not just be bullshit-spotting. It would also be a way of reminding people that each of our institutions has its own language and rich set of traditions which are being undermined by the spread of the empty management-speak. It would try to remind people of the power which speech and ideas can have when they are not suffocated with bullshit.

What may distinguish this call to arms is that it calls bullshit what it is, bullshit. But then, to say “don’t bullshit” is about as useful as saying “don’t rape.” Duh, but it fails to inform anyone what it means. Some bullshit is easily identified, such as hip jargon. Continue reading →

In advance of the holiday, my St. John’s lawprof pal John Q. Barrett sent out his wonderful Jackson Letter* which included this bit of wisdom.

Dr. Hurwitz closed his November 1953 note to Justice Jackson, written on Thanksgiving Day, with a modest, I think admirable, nod to the role of fortune, and perhaps the role of higher power, in every life:

On this day anyone should be thankful for all the good he has, which are none of his doing.

“None” might be a bit of an overstatement, but it’s delusional to believe that fortune doesn’t play a significant role in the good we enjoy. And as Dr. Hurwitz notes, that’s why we are thankful. If the wonderful things in our lives were merely the product of our efforts, there would be no reason to be thankful. We earned them. But they aren’t, even if our efforts enabled us to take advantage of kismet. Continue reading →