Is it the death of hostile environment harassment law? Northwestern lawprof Andrew M. Koppelman argues the point.

Andrew M. Koppelman, John Paul Stevens Professor of Law at Northwestern University, has written about the case as one of “free speech gone wild.” The Sixth Circuit “is being invited to invalidate the entire field of hostile environment harassment law,” he wrote last year in The Hill. If Meriwether prevails, “teachers at public colleges will have a constitutional right to subject their students to bigoted slurs. Much of anti-discrimination law would be deemed unconstitutional.”

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It was almost a tradition, in a dark humor sort of way. You were the victim of a “minor” crime. By “minor,” I mean not minor to you, because you were the victim, but minor to the cops. A hit and run without a dead body? A theft under a grand? Damage to your property? You called the police and were told to come to the precinct and make a report. Sometimes, you needed a police report for insurance purposes. Sometimes you did it because what else were you going to do?

Afterward, you would call up on occasion to ask if they found the perp and they said no. They gently told you that it wasn’t likely they would. What they didn’t tell you is that no one ever looked at your report again. No one ever tried to find the perp. No one ever would. Now they’ve said it out loud. Continue reading →

“Hey Greenfield, why don’t you only write about bad stuff cops do to black people?” Years ago, when video wasn’t yet readily available on smart phones and people’s knowledge of actual interactions between cops and others, particularly black and Hispanic young men on the street, was a cross between ignorance and fantasy, I spent a great deal of time, effort and space here trying to make clear what really happened. People were treated like scum, regularly beaten and occasionally killed, but it was invisible as the police always had an excuse and there was nothing to show they were lying about it.

Times have changed. People went from having no clue to being acutely aware, and then getting overripe and starting to rot. They now see racism everywhere, even when the cops did nothing more than their jobs, and their targets made choices resulting in the outcomes they received. Continue reading →

The push to eliminate qualified immunity as a defense to violation of a person’s constitutional rights by a government actor is beginning to bear fruit, which is great. It’s not that there is no rationale supporting it, or that it hasn’t been grossy oversold as the “cure” to police misconduct, but the doctrine was imposed by judicial fiat by the Supreme Court in Harlow v. Fitzgerald in 1982 has allowed flagrant violations of constitutional right to go unremedied. A right without a remedy is no right at all.

The Supreme Court made matters worse in Pearson v. Callahan, where the Court held that a court need not decide whether conduct violated a constitutional right before granting QI on the basis that the right in issue was not “clearly established.” It then made matters worse again in  White v. Pauly, where the Court required a level of exactitude to establish that conduct violated “clearly established law” as to allow a court to seize upon the most minute and quasi-relevant detail to distinguish the case at bar and allow the defense. Continue reading →

“Hey kiddo,” I called to my son on Monday of this week, “Spider-Man is on TV. Want to watch?”

My son, a huge Spider-Man enthusiast, put a tablet down to watch “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” a movie I found during a search on Hulu to try and bond with my son. Over the next three days, I subjected myself to the single most godawful movie ever created.

And you bastards are going to suffer with me. Continue reading →

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, who was liked when he refused to play ball with Trump, is now back to being hated again for having signed a new voting bill that Biden called “UnAmerican” and “sick.”

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp drew protests Thursday as he signed into law a sweeping Republican-sponsored overhaul of state elections that includes new restrictions on voting by mail and greater legislative control over how elections are run.

Democrats and voting rights groups say the law will disproportionately disenfranchise voters of color.

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It’s normal for the media to give a new president a “honeymoon,” a chance to get his house in order and establish a plan of what he hopes to accomplish and how he plans to do it. Granted, Trump never got a honeymoon, but then, he never had a plan and was given what he gave. Biden, however, is different again. He’s whirling and spinning, massive plans at massive costs justified by massive claims of massive problems.

And nobody in the media seems to seriously question any of it. Continue reading →

Years ago, I went to a panel discussion held by Above the Law and sat next to Elie Mystal’s wife. Christine. She was great. Funny, smart, delightful, and far more fun than Elie. Not that Elie isn’t fun. He is. Not only is he one of the funniest guys I know, but comes up with these zingers that just leave me rolling on the floor.

Back when Elie was at ATL, and ATL still had comments, some of the jerks would beat on him mercilessly. He told he was tough enough to take it, but it pissed me off and I said so. I thought enough of Elie that back when I was doing Cross for Fault Lines, he was one of my targets. I liked Elie before it was cool. Continue reading →

Who’s the best known baker in America? Duff Goldman? That Buddy guy from Jersey? Or is it Jack Phillips? You remember Phillips, the owner of Colorado’s Masterpiece Cake Shop, who took his case to the Supreme Court when he refused to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple? He won, but not really, as the Court punted on the big issue of whether he could be compelled to bake a cake when its purchasers, its purpose, conflicted with his beliefs.

This gave rise to two problems. The first is that the issue raised by the case went unanswered. The second is that it left Phillips with a target on his back. Continue reading →

Maybe the problem is that women don’t commit as many crimes as men, or are treated far more leniently than men in the system, but if a women is prosecuted for a crime, and lacks the ability to afford an attorney to represent her, Gideon has her covered as it does anyone in the criminal legal system. Fair? Not fair enough, as argued by Jessica Steinberg and Kathryn A. Sabbeth in their law review article, The Gender of Gideon.

This Article makes a simple claim that has been overlooked for decades and yet has enormous theoretical and practical significance: the constitutional guarantee of counsel adopted by the Supreme Court in Gideon v. Wainwright accrues largely to the benefit of men. Continue reading →