Every once in a while, some twit by a baby lawyer crosses my timeline. Often, it causes me to giggle in a pathetic sort of way because it’s largely incoherent, saying something that can only be deciphered by the young and hip. I am neither. But what can be discerned in these twits is that they’re working with a paradigm that’s foreign to my universe. They love people or they hate people. If the twit is about someone they love, they shower them with positivity, no matter how little it’s deserved. But if they hate the person, there isn’t a thing they can say or do that isn’t horrible. They could give the correct time of day, and it would still be wrong.

David French raises the results of a poll out of the University of Virginia that reflects a growing desire to break America into red and blue nations. Continue reading →

Standing in for a lawyer friend of mine at oral argument, I argued my case. From the audience, I heard the occasional “YES!” behind me, then “That RIGHT!” and other choice expressions of approval. When the prosecutor argued in response, there were outburts of “Bullshit” and “he’s lying.” The faces of the judges twisted with annoyance, until the presiding judge stated for the benefit of the audience that any further outbursts would not be tolerated.

After the argument, a woman walked up to me to tell me what a great job I did and how she was there to help. She was the one (one of the ones?) who lacked impulse control, but she believed that she was supporting me, helping my side, by adding in from the cheap seats her two cents because she wanted to help. I looked at her for moment, then said, “Do you have any idea how much damage your antics did to the case? This isn’t the way to persuade judges.” I walked over to the prosecutor, explained that I had no clue this would happen and apologized. Continue reading →

Debates can be fun and informative. And this one was both and neither.

So, our democracy is crumbling.  And the Supreme Court is the tool of choice for dismantling it.  To save our democracy, we must fix our broken Supreme Court by adding seats.

These were the opening words of Tamara Brummer, a labor organizer and director of national outreach for Demand Justice, a progressive organization dedicated to putting reliably biased judges on the bench. She was joined in the affirmative side by Dahlia Lithwick, who opened thus: Continue reading →

When everyone was in lockdown, but courts realized that trials were backing up, defendants  were sitting in jail, civil claims languished to litigants’ detriment, accommodations were made. Trial by Zoom became “a thing.” They weren’t trials as we understood them to be, with people facing each other, jurors observing witnesses’ demeanor, the ability to examine and cross in real life to make the liars squirm as they were revealed.

But it was the best we could do, and so judges and lawyers told each other lies that it was close enough to pretend it was a real trial. After all, there was a pandemic and we had to make due, even if due was due enough. Continue reading →

Happy Friday, everyone! Here’s to a great weekend, and checks calendar

Oh. It’s October. Joy of all joys.

I can’t begin to tell all of you how much your humble humorist cherishes the month of October. I’m practically over here jumping with joy. Continue reading →

The problem starts with reliability. When we’re given the official stats on police killings, we assume them to be accurate. After all, it’s not as if each of us, individually, can run around and investigate each death, and why would they lie, always the question for which no good answer exists. And yet, it happens, maybe not so much lies as in deliberate falsehoods, but less than full and accurate information.

Researchers say they’ve done the digging, plus some statistical extrapolation, and come to the realization that deaths at the hand of police have been under-reported. No, under-reported fails to capture the scope of what’s wrong here. The numbers are twice as bad as previously believed. Continue reading →

Marriage is hard. It takes work and dedication. And sometimes, it fails no matter how hard you try or how much you’re willing to tolerate to make it work. And then there’s being married to a criminal defense lawyer, which adds an extra layer of difficulty given that the beast is likely to have an inherent conflict; the responsibility to clients isn’t something that takes time off when it’s inconvenient, whether because someone has to cook dinner or clean the bathroom.

So when the criminal defense lawyer isn’t the husband, but the wife, is it even doable anymore? Lara Bazelon found out the hard way. Continue reading →

The request sent to UCLA Anderson School of Management accounting lecturer Gordon Klein turned out to be a form email, one that was prepared by activist students to be sent to all instructors, and one that was intended as a prelude to either appreciation, if they acquiesced or destruction if they didn’t. Gordon Klein didn’t.

The request (which was not available at the time of the original post about Klein but is set forth here at paragraph 26) was to cut black students a break on their grades because of the trauma of the times. After Klein failed to acquiesce to the “no harm” request, and despite a conciliatory reply from the student who sent him the email, his reply went viral and the dean went public about it. Continue reading →

I remember when German Lopez first began writing on criminal law issues at Vox. His posts were both progressive and shallow, reflecting that superficial gloss that people longer on passion than knowledge tend to embrace with the certainty of the righteous. He’s come a long way since then, suffering the slings and arrows of the left for his acceptance of facts even when they fail to push the preferred narrative.

This might not seem particularly brave, but for someone who leans left, enjoyed the camaraderie of the woke and works at Vox, it was damn near begging to be cast as a traitor to the cause. As has become abundantly clear, the gravest enemies of progressives aren’t conservatives, Republicans or white supremacists, but liberals who offer a more viable, realistic, free and less hateful path toward achieving many of the same goals. Authoritarians hate the competition. Continue reading →

When I wrote about the ACLU’s attempt to twist the meaning of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s words, I avoided addressing the elephant in the quote. It has since become a “big deal,” forcing ACLU’s reimaginative executive director Anthony Romero to apologize.

Anthony Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said Monday that he regretted that a tweet sent out recently by his organization altered the words of a well-known quote by the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

“We won’t be altering people’s quotes,” Mr. Romero said in an interview on Monday evening. “It was a mistake among the digital team. Changing quotes is not something we ever did.”

Continue reading →