The thing I remember most about Mario Batali’s restaurant, Del Posto, was the steel swizzle sticks at the bar. They were pretty cool. The food was fine, and extremely expensive, but that was the price of going to a restaurant by this new breed of creature, celebrity chef. What happened in the back of house was historically raunchy, vulgar and private. Drugs, sex and rock ‘n’ roll, but anyone who sought a place on the line knew that was the lifestyle, wrong though it may be from the outsiders perspective.

Us outsiders learned of such things from Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, may he rest in peace. Continue reading →

A law school graduate who didn’t pass the California bar was bemoaning her circumstance and condemning the 33% pass rate. Among the things noted was that this was one of the first generations of primarily zoom-educated law students to take the bar exam. The graduate asserted that remote education had nothing to do with the massive failure rate. Whether this is right or wrong, I dunno, but it’s not so easily dismissed.

The experience of learning in a classroom was denied these students, with good reason, but still lost to them. Harvard released a study showing remote learning was significantly worse than in-person education, which should surprise no one who didn’t indulge their litany of excuses about why something that sucked wasn’t as bad as everybody knew it was. Continue reading →

Protests at the homes of the six Supreme Court justices, ironically including Chief justice  John Roberts who is presumed not to be part of the majority in the Dobbs case, began after a pro-abortion group published their home addresses for this purpose. The division between those who support protests of this nature and those who do not is proceeding as expected on social media.

What does the White House have to say about these protests? Continue reading →

It might seem too early, as many of those who support the Alito draft opinion that would overrule Roe and Casey, needless to affirm the Mississippi law as falling within the permissible restrictions that do not unduly burden a penumbral right, would argue. After all, we’re told, this isn’t the end of abortion, but the return to where the decision ought to be made, state legislatures. It probably won’t change much of anything, it’s argued, so why get all crazy about it?

Of course, Louisiana voted out of committee this week a law making all abortions murder. Continue reading →

Among the many reactions to the leaked Alito Dobbs draft are protests at the Supreme Court, for which fences have been erected out of concern that “mostly peaceful” protests are not peaceful protests. To the extent that people feel the need to protest, that’s their right within the parameters of expressive communication that doesn’t impair the functioning of the Court.

Whether it’s effective, beyond being cathartic for protesters, is another matter. People struggle with the notion that the Supreme Court was not crafted to be a democratic body, a political body, whose rulings reflect the will of the people. Indeed, it was crafted to be immune from political whims by giving justices life tenure so they need not fear a backlash from their rulings if the public disapproves. Continue reading →

Sheriff Roy saw many odd occurrences during his time as a law enforcement officer. His years manning the helm of Mud Lick’s Sheriff’s Department opened his eyes to many wild cases of people breaking the law.

The call he’d gotten about a disabled vehicle straddling a median near the Wiggly Piggly? This was something out of a bad training video at the Academy.

The car was an old El Camino that somehow managed to strike a sign proclaiming “No U Turn” in the median near the Wiggly Piggly’s parking lot. Brown might have been the color, but it was now a mixture of Bond-O, rust colors, and some puke green. Continue reading →

It’s easy to dismiss the blight of student loan debt if you’re not someone crushed by it. It’s easy to see why “cancellation” of student loan debt is critical if you are. Addressing the issue, however, is anything but easy.

But pressure is building to enact some kind of dramatic giveaway before the midterms. And word from the White House is that Biden has magically found his legal authority.

Continue reading →

As a mother, Jessica Grose wants her fourth grader to be able to do math at grade level, something American schools have proven remarkably poor at achieving.

As a parent, I read this and felt completely exhausted. Partly because I don’t care all that much about whether textbooks explicitly address social and emotional learning. Good teachers, those who care about all of the students in their classes, incorporate these concepts whether they’re spelled out in a textbook. My fourth grader constantly tells me that “practice makes progress,” instead of “practice makes perfect,” because her school is teaching her to keep working at something even if she isn’t great at it right off the bat.

Continue reading →

I can’t remember who said it, but someone once challenged the universe to proffer one decent thing Fifth Circuit Judge James Ho has ever done. Challenge accepted.

Worthy civil rights claims are often never brought to trial. That’s because an unholy trinity of legal doctrines—qualified immunity, absolute prosecutorial immunity, and Monell v. Department of Social Services of City of New York, 436 U.S. 658 (1978)—frequently conspires to turn winnable claims into losing ones. Continue reading →

My old buddy and fellow curmudgeon, Mark Herrmann, still writes for Above the Law once a week, as he has since it was readable and credible. Why is a mystery to me, as he’sf smart and funny, thus unrelatable to ATL’s readership these days. My best guess is that he’s still in the groove and, to the extent he’s able to offer any serious thoughts to a young lawyer, he wants to help. Mark’s that kind of guy.

So he wrote a post that was somewhat satirical, but with a point. Continue reading →