In the grand scheme of reviled Supreme Court justices, William Rehnquist was no Roger Taney. But it was bad enough to be Rehnquist that he didn’t have to be. And so there’s a natural inclination to want to believe the worst of the show pony with his velvet stripes on his black robe. And Rick Hasen and Dahlia Lithwick do just that.

The late chief justice, who long sought to turn the 14^th Amendment on its head, notoriously drafted a 1952 memo as a Supreme Court clerk that defended racial segregation in the South and the disastrous Plessy v. Ferguson decision on which the institution’s legality was based. Although Rehnquist denied during his confirmation hearings that the memo reflected his own views—saying they were meant to reflect those of Robert H. Jackson, the justice he was clerking for in 1952—a newly released court document, not previously reported, lays bare Rehnquist’s abhorrent true position on segregation as late as 1993.

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Greetings, dear readers of Simple Justice! Today, I want to delve into a fascinating story of a hoax that rocked the world of parapsychology and exposed the charlatans who peddled their wares as psychic phenomena. I am, of course, talking about the con game called “Project Alpha,” run by three magicians that exposed just how little rigor scientists apply to their methods when they want to believe something is true.

For the uninitiated, James Randi was a magician and skeptic who devoted his life to debunking claims of paranormal and supernatural abilities. He founded the James Randi Educational Foundation, which offered a million-dollar prize to anyone who could demonstrate their paranormal powers under scientific scrutiny. Though Randi has left this world, the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) still stands, and that million dollar prize has never been collected. Continue reading →

When Stanford law school’s DEI dean, Tirien Steinbach, took to the mic to stand up for the students who silenced invited speaker Judge Kyle Duncan, she was suspended from her position and roundly castigated for both failing to enforce the law school’s policies as well as encouraging the heckler’s veto to silence free speech. What, I pondered, did the deans and pundits expect a DEI dean to do? Wasn’t this her job?

[H]ow could it be that well-trained DEI Deans at elite institutions can have such a fundamentally flawed vision of the purpose of an academic institution? And what are these DEI staff teaching law students? Indeed, Steinbach doubled-down on her position in the WSJ: Continue reading →

The Illinois Supreme Court has created a Committee on Equality, with six subcommittees, for the purpose of “bringing equality and facilitating trust in the court system.” While it’s unclear why there is a need for such a committee at all, given that Equal Protection is a constitutional mandate, and that the word “equality” has fallen out of fashion in favor of “equity,” which allows for the currently preferred outcomes without regard to principle, the goal can’t be faulted. After all, who would be against “bringing equality and facilitating trust in the court system”? Continue reading →

We’ve held debates here, most notably between two of our former Fault Lines debating rivals, Chris Seaton and Mario Machado. And the rules are pretty much there are no rules. They agree upon a proposition and then one takes the affirmative and the other gets stuck with the negative, whether they are personally for or against the resolution. Why? Because debating is about debating, about coming up with the most persuasive argument possible to make your case.

What happens here, apparently, stays here, or at least isn’t happening on the national high school debate tournaments. Sure, they have rules because schools love rules, but they also have judges who adore debate except when an argument is made that conflicts with their beliefs or failings. And they make no secret of their “paradigm.” Continue reading →

From the post-pandemic spike in murder in 2020-21, murders are down last year and this year. Did you know that, or did you feel that murders are out of control? The old adage, “if it bleeds, it leads,” doesn’t care what impression it gives the public as to the frequency of murder, but what the public cares enough to watch to turn the dial to their network. And murders capture eyeballs, even if the reporting creates the impression that crime is far worse than it is.

But that same old adage needs tweaking, because these days, bleeding isn’t good enough for leading. Not all murders get the same treatment in the media. Continue reading →

I wrote a short post about Memorial Day in 2007 that remains relevant today.

Despite my apparent cynicism, Memorial Day has always meant something to me.  Having grown up in the house of a WWII combat veteran, Purple Heart and Bronze Star, I was reared on the stories of pain, sacrifice and honor in the name of our country.  A bit jingoistic, perhaps, but when honor comes at the price of a human life, it is something worthy of our remembrance. Continue reading →

Somebody got the idea to put “Hi Mom” in tape on the top of their mortar board, and everybody thought it was sweet, funny and acceptable. Before that, nobody questioned that students at graduation wore the traditional cap and gown, without any adornments for individuality or to express a message, whether that message was ethnic, political or personal. But that mortar board put graduates on the slippery slope and for Naomi Peña Villasano, the slide ended with a serape bearing the Mexican and American flags.

In the lawsuit, filed on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, lawyers for the student, Naomi Peña Villasano, said she was told by the school principal’s secretary that she could not wear the sash because “allowing that regalia would ‘open too many doors.’”

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For years, decades really, I’ve explained and argued why most “new big things” in legal tech are either not going to work or fill a need that doesn’t exist. Legal tech guys really hated me for calling bullshit on their baby. Some who paid me to “consult” thought their money would buy my endorsement of their mutt. They learned. I was regularly accused of being a tech hater, but as Keith Lee succinctly explained, “It’s not that lawyers are anti-technology, it’s that they are anti-bullshit.

AI is all the rage at the moment. Remember blockchain? Remember NFTs? Remember self-driving cars? Remember Google Glasses? The newest billion dollar baby is ChatGPT. How’s that working out for lawyers? Continue reading →

Taylor Jefferson, a second grade teacher at Bear Bryant Elementary, sat at his desk grading end-of-year papers for his students’ final report cards of the term. As he finished the stack, his desk phone’s intercom crackled.

“Jefferson to the principal’s office. Mr. Jefferson, please come to the principal’s office.”

As Taylor made his way to the front of the school he tried to suss out what this could be. It was three days until school broke for the summer, so there was no way it could be something concerning an issue with a student. Most of the kids running around the school were focused on their impending vacation time so they were pretty well behaved. Continue reading →