He must have been respected as an academic enough to have reached the position of dean of Chapman Law School, so it’s not as if John Eastman, Republican though he may be, was left with few other career options. That said, he made a choice to torch the one thing he was that set him apart from the sort of guy who makes pillows. John Eastman was a lawyer.

Eastman “made multiple patently false and misleading statements in court filings, in public remarks heard by countless Americans,” Judge Yvette Roland wrote in her 128-page ruling. These statements were “improperly aimed at casting doubt on the legitimate election results and support for the baseless claim that the presidency was stolen from his client — all while relying on his credentials as an attorney and constitutional scholar to lend credibility to his unfounded claims.”

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Riffing off Jon Haidt’s argument that the primary culprit in the degradation of youth is the smartphone, David French takes up the cause.

Older generations reflect on the deficiencies of “kids these days,” and they find something new to blame. The latest technology and new forms of entertainment are always bewitching our children. In my time, I’ve witnessed several distinct public panics over television, video games and music. They’ve all been overblown. Continue reading →

It’s quite normal for employees of government entities to be required to watch various training videos, from sexual harassment to racial sensitivity, as a requirement of the job. To some extent, it’s a protective measure to provide a defense against liability should some claim arise later that someone acted inappropriately. The entity can point at the training video and argue, “we tried our best.” And at the same time, almost no one believes these videos accomplish anything, and some contend they make matters worse.

But DHS employees Aaron and his father Joseph Norgren claimed these videos compelled speech on their part, in violation of their rights under the First Amendment. Continue reading →

Whether it’s an epidemic or just a rare but outrageous scenario, squatters have emerged as a manifestation of what’s wrong with ‘Merica. Even if its little more than the latest hysteria, it’s worthwhile understanding how and why this happens and the squatters manage to get away with it.

A recent string of incidents in Georgia, New York and Washington has brought squatting, the practice of occupying someone else’s property without their consent, into the spotlight.

In Washington, a squatter named Sang Kim made headlines after preventing Jaskaran Singh, a landlord, from possessing his $2 million property following Kim’s refusal to pay rent for two years. Continue reading →

Her excuse was that as head of the Republican National Committee, it was her job to be a good team player and take one for the team.

After conceding that the insurrection of January 6th was “not acceptable,” there was no rigged election and Biden won “fair and square,” Ronna Romney McDaniel says she now gets to be herself and say what she believes. Does she get a free pass for the lies she intentionally spewed “for the team”? A lot of people at NBC and its lefty cousin, MSNBC, oppose her hire as an on-air commentator (at $300,000 per year). Are they wrong? Continue reading →

I’m not a collections lawyer, and I don’t play one on TV, but I’ve known enough of them to be acutely aware of the complexity and problems of getting the money awarded by the jury. Large damage awards are often reported without much comment about the fact that the plaintiff now holds a piece of paper. Converting that paper into money is a separate issue. When the defendant is covered by insurance, collections are easy. Otherwise, they can be difficult. Often, very difficult. You can’t get blood from a rock, for example.

But this is the day upon which Trump must either bond the award to the State of New York or Tish James gets to start to collect the judgment by fiat. There may be restraining notices sent to banks and other financial entities that will freeze Trump accounts. There may be an application for orders from the court to seize assets. There may be post-judgment discovery demands to ascertain assets and, in this particular case, identify the ownership of assets. It’s not at all clear that buildings with the name “Trump” on them are owned by Trump, or to what extent. Continue reading →

There has been a constant drone that what Israel is doing in Gaza is “over the top,” and Israel must do something else. But what? No one has an answer. At the New York Times, David Brooks sought to provide one. His column runs through the various alternatives and their efficacy. It’s a more important read than anything I can offer today, so I commend it to you.

One point worthy of further discussion is the role the Biden administration, pro-Palestinian protesters and others in the international community have played.

Hamas’s survival depends on support in the court of international opinion and on making this war as bloody as possible for civilians, until Israel relents.

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Of course you wouldn’t mold your serious views based upon what some actress or director believes, because they may be authorities about acting or directing, but obviously have no authority when it comes to thing like, oh, law. But law professors? While they may lack a certain practical knowledge of law, surely they are reliable sources of deep legal thought, and you can rely upon their signature when an amicus brief is proffered to a court that this is what they, in their highly intelligent, deeply considered, opinion is the law.

Right. Right?!?

The number of amicus briefs submitted by academics has increased dramatically over the past several decades. In principle, such scholars’ briefs should help courts resolve difficult cases by sharing relevant expertise. Judges are necessarily generalists. Scholars in a particular field, on the other hand, may have genuine expertise about the specific issues at hand in a given case that could assist the judges in making a decision. Continue reading →

At the Academy Awards, a winning activist actress had her say.

In 1978 the English actress Vanessa Redgrave won an Oscar for her role in the film “Julia” and used the occasion to denounce “a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums whose behavior is an insult to the stature of Jews everywhere.”

Later in the ceremony, the screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky used his own turn onstage to offer a memorable rebuttal: “I would like to suggest to Miss Redgrave,” he said to applause, “that her winning an Academy Award is not a pivotal moment in history, does not require a proclamation, and a simple ‘thank you’ would have sufficed.”

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It was a longshot, but somehow 72-year-old Sylvia Gonzalez managed to pull it off. She was elected to the city council of Castle Hill, Texas on a platform of going after the city manager. That did not make her popular with the mayor, who decided to do something about it.

Gonzalez started a petition for the ouster of the city manager. After a council meeting, she collected her papers and put them in a binder. Included was the petition, which the mayor, Edward Trevino, asked for and which she immediately found and gave to him. Big deal? Big enough, as it turned out. Continue reading →