Is the Senate anti-democratic? Is the electoral college some absurd arcane contraption, the existence of which not only defies the notion of majority rules but invites gamesmanship, if not a coup should we have a president so unworthy as to consider such a thing? Well, yes. There are reasons why these things exist, why the system was crafted the way it was in order to create any union, no less a more perfect one, because without the Senate, without the electoral college, would there be a United States of America at all?

On Wednesday, a bipartisan group of 16 senators, led by Susan Collins of Maine and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, released the text of a new bill intended to make it harder to overturn the results of a presidential election. A direct response to Donald Trump’s multipronged attempt to stay in power, the bill is meant to keep a future candidate for president, including a losing incumbent, from following the same playbook.

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Should the bar exam be eliminated? There is a lot packed into that question about the efficacy of the bar exam, whether it serves to assure a minimum level of competence for admitted lawyers or whether it’s a waste of time, a barrier to keep the number of lawyers down and/or a rite of passage. But is it discriminatory?

The recommendation to eliminate the admissions testing requirement comes amidst cascading charges that reliance on the Law School Admission Test hurts minority applicants. The proposition is sharply contested by many friends of diversity….  Some find  it stigmatizing to be told they can’t do as well on the test as White applicants. But given that the case against the test appears to have persuaded the wordily named Council of the ABA’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, let’s assume for the sake of argument that the LSAT does indeed represent an unfair barrier to entry to the legal profession. Continue reading →

I vaguely recall thinking that maybe, just maybe, the New York Times uber-millennial progressive columnist was growing up, only to have my hope dashed on the rocks of simplicity the next week. And yet, ever the optimist, here it comes again and maybe, just maybe, this time it will be real.

I called on Franken to resign from the Senate, not because I thought his alleged actions were irredeemable, but because I thought Democrats should free themselves of the burden of defending him.

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It’s understandable that someone who graduated from college last year would believe that “legal sex” required affirmative consent. After all, it’s become the rule on college campuses, and they’ve been thoroughly indoctrinated into it by programs, plays, seminars, discussion groups, marches and powerpoint presentations.

So when Emma Camp “explains” what constitutes “legal sex,” she can hardly be blamed for believing it, even if she’s not a lawyer and knows absolutely nothing about law.* After all, this is what’s been beaten into her head over the last ten minutes when she’s been adulting. Continue reading →

Money talks, but what does it say?

In Arizona, Democrats have intervened on behalf of Kari Lake, a candidate for governor who has fanned lies about the 2020 election and demanded the imprisonment of the Democratic front-runner. In Pennsylvania, Democrats ran ads boosting Doug Mastriano, a Christian theocrat who participated in the Jan. 6 insurrection before running for governor.

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A few days ago, Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern put out a call on twitter to academics to find out how they would teach law going forward in light of the current Supreme Court state of Affairs. He posed his inquiry in a relatively fair and neutral way.

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Aaron Sibarium took a huge risk by raising an important point in the context of a scenario so deeply emotional that the expectation of calm, reasoned consideration of his point was nearly impossible. And indeed, many were outraged and mustered their best snark challenges to the particulars for lack of grasping the concept. As the example raised was the police failure at Uvalde, this outcome was not only understandable, but wholly unsurprising. Nonetheless, the point raised was still important.

But when cops in Texas have pulled the trigger under similar circumstances, they’ve ended up in court. In at least three cases since 2014, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals sided against police officers who made split-second decisions to shoot armed suspects—one of whom appeared to be headed for a Texas high school. The court, which has jurisdiction over the Lone Star State, denied several officers’ requests for qualified immunity, a legal defense that protects police from civil lawsuits. Continue reading →

The backstory, in itself, is one of those peculiar tales of the times, where certain words and phrases take on magical meaning untethered from whatever is really going on. It may be bad or it may not, but it’s hard to tell from the Second Circuit’s recitation of the facts in Torcivia v. Suffolk County.

Father, who had imbibed a few, and 17-year-old daughter were having a fight over her guinea pig at one in the morning. So she called the cops. There was no claim the the father hit her, but that he was being angry and saying mean things to her. So the cops came ready to take dad down. Was the daughter afraid of being harmed? Was the father a danger? Or was something else happening here, which the police called a “domestic dispute” because it was his daughter and in the home. Continue reading →

Happy Friday, everyone! In case you’re not wrapped up in the world of pseudo-intellectual news, Jordan Peterson of “12 Rules for Life” and “Beyond Order” fame was recently banned from Twitter. His crime? The practice of “Deadnaming,” or calling trans actor Elliot Page by the name with which he was given at birth. [Ed. Note: Elliot Page used to be Ellen Page, who no longer exists, so never use that name. Thank you.]

Peterson has since embraced a philosophy of anti-wokeism that’s made him a darling of conservative media. The Daily Wire, a right-wing news site, actually signed a deal with Peterson to host a new series featuring him and host all of the Canadian professor’s content. Continue reading →

It’s entirely unsurprising that Roxane Gay writes about the plight of WNBA player Brittney Griner, even if it’s extremely unlikely that Gay’s gone anywhere near a sporting event in her life unless it involved free vegan pizza. Yet, Gay not only shows a concern for Griner, but does so in the requisite “whataboutism” of why the rest of us don’t care as much as Gay says we should.

When unspeakable tragedies occur, people often call for unity. They’ll say, “We are Boston Strong” or “Je suis Charlie” or “We are [insert wherever or whomever the unthinkable has happened to].” It’s a laudable instinct to claim solidarity with those who have suffered, to imagine we truly understand the ways we are all connected, to proclaim that what affects one of us affects all of us.

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