On the surface, it’s one of those laws that has surface appeal to people who have neither  a functional understanding of the nature of litigation nor a firm appreciation that not all disputes fit into their simplistic mold of one side good, the other evil. The Speak Out Act has now been signed into law by President Biden.

On Wednesday the President signed the “Speak Out Act,” now Public Law 117-224. The law exempts disputes over sexual assault or harassment from pre-signed nondisclosure or nondisparagement agreements, in the hopes of encouraging survivors to come forward without fear of being sued.

Continue reading →

Most of you might have heard of ChatGPT these days. It’s an AI chatbot that can do an amazing number of things from selling sprockets to writing episodes of “Friends.”

Because I am busy this week I’ve outsourced the Friday Funny to ChatGPT.

I blame the robots for taking my job.

Tell a humorous story about cash bail. Continue reading →

As it turned out, a bad stock market and rocky economy is just as bad for pension fund investments as it is for everyone else’s. It sucks, of course, but it’s not as if this comes as a surprise. Unless you’re a Teamster. And unless your president really loves unions and wants your love in return.

President Biden announced Thursday that he was investing $36 billion in federal funds to save the pensions of more than 350,000 union workers and retirees, a demonstration of commitment to labor just a week after a rupture over an imposed settlement of a threatened rail strike.

Continue reading →

Years ago, the word “rape” was reduced to meaninglessness. So too was “sexual assault,” a conclusory phrase that offered no clue as to what actually happened, but wrapped it up in the “survivor’s” grievance of victimization for having suffered…something. But as uninformative as “sexual assault” was, rape still held the cache of creating a mental image of a man throwing a woman to the ground in a dark alley, ripping off her clothing and overpowering her while ramming himself into her. Continue reading →

In 2012, at the request of the ABA Journal, Dan Hull and I wrote an article about the importance of mentoring, both as a duty of experienced lawyers to give back and a duty of new lawyers to get up to speed as quickly and effectively as possible for the sake of clients. Despite their having asked for the article, and our having put in the time to write it, the ABA Journal decided not to publish it because they felt our expectations of young lawyers to be good mentees was too hard and might hurt their feelings.

But mentoring has been a very important part of my career, and I’ve mentored many law students and young lawyers over the years. Some have been white. Some black and brown. Some male. Some female. None told me they were of another orientation, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t. With a couple exceptions, it’s proven very fruitful. Continue reading →

A few years back, I queried whether David Cole, the legal director of the organization that uses the legacy name American Civil Liberties Union, could save the ACLU from becoming the apologist for the termination of civil liberties and the enforcer of the woke brand of political correctness. Experience since suggests that he won’t be its savior.

Cole has now pounded the final nail in his coffin in what may be one of the most shamefully unprincipled arguments ever proffered to eradicate constitutional rights and subjugate people to the will of the woke.

Can an artist be compelled to create a website for an event she does not condone? That’s the question the Supreme Court has said it will take up on Monday, when it hears oral arguments in 303 Creative v. Elenis. The answer would seem to be obviously “no.”

Continue reading →

Why did they go after Jack Phillips? Why didn’t Jack Phillips just bake a cake? Why must this war play out in Masterpiece Cake Shop? As it turned out, it didn’t get resolved by Justice Anthony Kennedy’s punt of a ruling which compelled Phillips to take the case all the way to the Supreme Court only to end up with a non-answer. This is why the Court will hear oral argument in Lori Smith’s case today.

Ms. Smith, in an interview in her modest but cheerful studio in an office building in a suburb of Denver, sat near a plaque that echoed a Bible verse: “I am God’s masterpiece.” She said she was happy to create graphics and websites for anyone, including L.G.B.T.Q. people. But her Christian faith, she said, did not allow her to create messages celebrating same-sex marriages. Continue reading →

It’s not the Onion. It’s not even surprising. It is, however, nuts.

Continue reading →

Orin Kerr noted that the writing was remarkably good for a college sophomore, but even more remarkable was that Brooks Anderson, ’25, had the guts to write it, and the Crimson the guts to publish it. The “it” is a stinging takedown of Harvard University’s bureaucracy bloat, living proof of Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy.

Harvard is one of the world’s preeminent universities; surely it has used its billions of dollars of accumulated wealth to primarily invest in its educational program, building an unparalleled roster of top professors, expanding offerings to students, and reducing class sizes. Right? Continue reading →

My mean-ass editor wrote a post earlier this week outlining San Francisco’s recent decision to use remote controlled “killer robots” to beef up their police force. Being something of a fan of the sci-fi genre, I pointed out in the film “Terminator: Salvation” Skynet — the artificial intelligence villain of the Terminator series of films — was actually based in what remained of San Francisco. At the time, I made the remark that police using killer robots was essentially one step closer to Skynet becoming self-aware. Continue reading →