Sexual assault accusations, not to mention sending olds to die in nursing homes, against Andrew Cuomo came fast and furious, but he’s still in office. He had an advantage. He was already governor, even if every other New York Democratic pol called for his resignation. He could just shrug, ignore them and his own stunning hypocrisy, and wait until the public’s eight second attention span lapsed.

That’s not likely to work for Scott Stringer, currently the NYC comptroller and mayoral candidate. He’s not flashy, but he’s been grooming himself for the job for decades.

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They’re angry. And they’re protesting, because they’re angry. The Chronicle of Higher Ed explains why.

Amid a fresh wave of national attention on campus sexual assault, accusations are swirling at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, where the official responsible for handling those matters has resigned, and student leaders say the administration has repeatedly failed to support victims.

Campus outrage reached a peak last week when Gillian Gullett, a 2020 graduate, found out — from a reporter, not the university — that Arkansas had paid a $20,000 settlement to the now-former student she accused of sexual assault in 2017.

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President Joe Biden had a point to make, and he made it in a way that will resonate with those who agree with him.

pic.twitter.com/xkVzaElQxW

— Bad Legal Takes (@BadLegalTakes) April 29, 2021

Yes, he obviously misquoted Schenk and, to add insult to injury, missed the point. Or did he? Continue reading →

Julia Sherwin is the lawyer representing the family of Mario Gonzalez, a 26-year-old man who died in police custody in Alameda County, California.

“His death was completely avoidable and unnecessary,” she said, adding, “Drunk guy in a park doesn’t equal a capital sentence.”

She’s quite right that his death was completely avoidable and unnecessary. If no one called the police, they wouldn’t have come. If the police ignored the two 911 calls, they would never have encountered Gonzalez. If there were an alternative to the police, such as mental health professionals, and they were dispatched instead, maybe this wouldn’t have happened. Or maybe it would have. Or maybe Gonzalez would have harmed the mental health people, Or maybe not. But there were two 911 calls. Continue reading →

There is probably no agency of the government that does more to help and harm than Child Protective Services. It is simultaneously a bureaucratic nightmare, a functional cesspool of dangerous callousness, and the savior of last resort for abused and neglected children. And on top of its untenable mission to make snap decisions about kids brought on their radar by mandatory reporters, nosy neighbors and well-intended if hyper-sensitive scolds, California CPS is now saddled with a new criticism.

“It’s racist. It’s sexist. It’s ableist. It’s classist.”

Why? Mother Jones explains. Continue reading →

Toledo Law’s John W. Stoepler Professor of Law & Values Lee Strang won an award. Normally, that would raise at worst a yawn, at best an eyebrow. But not this time. The award Strang won is called the Inclusive Excellence Award, and he won it “overwhelmingly.”

UToledo College of Law Professor Lee Strang received an overwhelming number of faculty nominations focused on his presence in the classroom where he “enjoys and respects a good healthy debate,” as one nominator wrote. The individuals who nominated Strang for the award recognized his conservative point of view as a minority in academia and a benefit to legal debate. Continue reading →

There’s a really good reason why I never mention Tucker Carlson. He can’t sing. He can’t dance. He can’t tell a joke or throw a ball with great velocity. Yet, there he is on Fox News entertaining the masses by providing the right wing version of a whiny traumatized scold for the downtrodden . . . maskless.

Tucker Carlson is now telling his audience to harass people who wear face masks outside.

If they see children wearing masks, Tucker says the response should be no different than when you see a kid being abused — "call the police immediately, contact child protective services" pic.twitter.com/4svVH0JY3s

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) April 27, 2021

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I never had a problem with Batson, per se. Of course the prosecution shouldn’t discriminate against potential jurors on the basis of race. But its rationale concerned me, creating a right on the part of individuals, potential jurors, to be free from discrimination. The right to a fair and impartial jury of one’s peers belonged to the accused, not the public.

And then the other shoe fell, as it obviously would, that the same right could be infringed by the defense, since the right no longer was limited to the defendant, but was now a public right. Reverse Batson was born, and the defendant’s ability to strike jurors was, like the prosecution’s, subject to the invented right of someone who wouldn’t go to prison. Continue reading →

The reaction to the killing of 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant brought out a lot of hardcore sophistry, desperately seeking to shift the focus away from the fact that she was about to plunge a knife into another human being to another black person killed by the cops. It’s true, she was. It’s also true that there was a reason for it. It’s further true that the people arguing the cause studiously ignore the reason and only focus on the outcome.

It’s a dishonest argument, but the days when people were ashamed of being disingenuous are in the rearview mirror. Arguments that get people to the “correct” outcome matter, no matter what fallacious reasoning is required. The ends justify the means when the end is social justice. Continue reading →

Ed. Note: Another debate has broken out at SJ! Fault Lines alumni Mario Machado and Christopher Seaton are ready to slug it out to the following question: “Resolved: It is in the best interests of the American public to pursue a “national divorce.” Chris will take the affirmative while Mario argues the negative. Mario’s argument follows, and you can read Chris’ here.

The last time this Honorable nation proposed a divorce among states and took it seriously, it became the most sanguinary conflict this young country had ever seen. Ironically, when some people sought to form a permanent divide between “red” and “blue” states, the end result was a more resilient union that when fought brought together, it was able to repel all tyrannical threats from abroad. A stubborn railroad lawyer kept his oath to preserve and protect and defend the Union, despite all of his its paltry and envious foes. Continue reading →