Did you know that a mentally ill man from California traveled to the Maryland neighborhood of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh to kill him? By now, you probably do, or at least  you’ve heard passing mention of it. It’s not as if he succeeded and a justice was assassinated.

Simi Valley resident Nicholas Roske, 26, called  911 to say he was suicidal and planned to kill Kavanaugh. He had a Glock 17 pistol, ammunition, a knife, zip ties, pepper spray, duct tape. He made clear his purpose and his reasoning. Continue reading →

Of all places, San Francisco, where people trip over each other to be ever-more-progressive and empathetic, Kathy Boudin’s little boy was recalled from his office of district attorney. Why? What does this mean? How could this happen?

The vote wasn’t close. Chesa Boudin was crushed, 60%-40%, which was in most ways shocking as he did pretty much what he told the people he was going to do when they elected him. And aside from property crimes and perceptions, it wasn’t turning out terrible. There was no huge spike in violence, and the increase in murders in Frisco weren’t as bad as many other places, particularly those where the district attorney couldn’t even spell progressive, no less be one. Continue reading →

Having never been elected governor, or indeed being known outside upstate Erie County, New York’s default governor, Kathy Hochul, is desperately trying to create the impression that she deserves the party’s nomination as the faux-incumbent in the upcoming gubernatorial primary by trying to turn Buffalo to her advantage.

First, there are the ten new anti-gun bills signed into law in reaction to the horrific Buffalo racist mass murder, as if New York’s gun laws weren’t already among the most restrictive in the nation and still failed to prevent the tragedy. Then this. Continue reading →

Maud Maron was a career public defender with the Legal Aid Society and, as one might expect, quite progressive in her leanings. But what she was not, as became fashionable on the fringe, was “anti-racist.” This was reason enough for LAS and the Black Attorneys of Legal Aid to attack, and claim she could not be a competent public defender as she wasn’t dedicated to the cause.

The mandate is a simple one. To be anti-racist, to dismantle racism here at LAS, and in every organization, we must all recognize that white supremacy drives every policy and law, every opportunity and every advantage. For those of us who are white, it is a recognition that power and privilege has been granted merely because we are white. While you have dedicated your life to public interest, you cannot do this work effectively and fully unless and until you face that reality and own that you are part of the problem.

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As David Bernstein notes, the four months it took for Georgetown Law to “investigate” Ilya Shapiro’s two twits was longer than most Supreme Court nomination hearings, excluding Merrick Garland since he was never given a hearing. Ilya called the twits “inartful,” which they certainly were, but “reckless” would be a better characterization, which is what I called them.

Could it have really taken four months to “investigate” two twits? Of course not. Perhaps the expectation was that the flames of social media seeking to burn Shapiro at the stake would die down, maybe even flame out. Perhaps they could have come up with some other way to graciously remove Georgetown Law Center from the bullseye of woke outrage without having to court disaster from the unduly passionate children while recognizing that pretty much everyone with the intellectual age of greater than 12 condemned Georgetown Law’s suspending Ilya. Academic freedom was very much on the line here, as was the realization that hypocrisy would eventually serve to eat them all if legal academics didn’t draw a line. Continue reading →

While I’ve chronicled the ACLU’s very deliberate fall from grace, as it persists in reminding us about its defense of Skokie Nazis that happened a mere 44 years ago, I didn’t follow the defamation trial of Johnny Depp (or “Derp,” as a very serious Stanford law professor calls him) and Amber Heard over an op-ed published in the Washington Post.

It wasn’t until the jury found Heard liable and awarded compensatory and punitive damages that this case, one which surprised many lawyers by making it past a motion to dismiss for failing to suffice to establish defamatory statements, became interesting. Continue reading →

Dr. SJ and I were supposed to go to Paris at the end of March 2020. Things didn’t work out then, something about a pandemic. But we’re off today, Florence, Rome and Paris, for a bit. See you when we return. If we return.

Until then, please behave and be kind to each other.

Writing for the majority of six in Shinn v. Ramirez, Justice Clarence Thomas echoed a position expressed by Justice Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice William Rehnquist before him. Innocence is not a reason not to execute a human being.

This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is “actually” innocent.

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When C.J. Ciaramella wrote about the story of Justyna and Matt Kozbial’s building being seized for forfeiture by Highland Park, Michigan, it evoked a curious reaction. It wasn’t just the outrage about the ordinary scheme of civil in rem forfeiture, the taking of “things” the government claims was used in or derived from crime. That’s been going on for the past decade or so, even though in rem forfeiture has been going since the ’80s with few outside of the criminal defense bar caring.

As in rem forfeiture spread from putative drug dealers and mobsters to ordinary folk, people began to see why it was such a bad idea, a wrong-headed solution when it only affected people society disfavored. When it touched the lives of people who were sympathetic, the epiphany happened. Better late than never, right? Continue reading →

Ben Domenech made a joke on the twitters after the employees of Vox, a media outlet with what some might call a different political orientation than the Federalist, where Domench is in charge, unionized.

FYI @fdrlst first one of you tries to unionize I swear I’ll send you back to the salt mine.

The National Labor Relations Board ALJ found this to be an unfair labor practice, holding that a threat against unionization framed as a joke was still a threat. It was obviously a joke and a motivated administrative determination by Judge Chu, who demonstrated a peculiar sensitivity to the feelings of potential union members. Continue reading →