Over at Reddit, the website and community that conclusively proves crowdsourcing doesn’t work, my pal Radley Balko did an AMA, which stands for Ask Me Anything. There was a wealth of excellent questions asked, ranging from the lessons from his new book, Rise of the Warrior Cop, to the truly important, his favorite barbecue spot in Nashville.

Radley did an excellent job of responding to the varied questions, even though he left such critical matters as “what does Arianna Huffington smell like” on the table.  He faced some very tough issues, Continue reading →

The Silence of Salinas put to rest the chorus of “just stop talking” advice when a person is questioned by law enforcement, prior to arrest and custodial interrogation. It left an open question of whether there was anything a person could do to enjoy his Fifth Amendment rights. or was he just caught in a judicial Catch-22.

The Second Circuit answered the question in its opinion in United States v. Okatan.  In Salinas v. Texas, the Supreme Court held that the act of going silent, after having answered questions, was not an invocation of the right to remain silent, Continue reading →

To the extent possible, Tuesday evenings in the summer are reserved for a drive in the Healey to Audrey Avenue in the hamlet of Oyster Bay, where a “cruise night” is held and car guys hang out with each other and discuss car guy stuff. Knowing less about cars than most, I tend to do more listening than talking so I don’t confirm my ignorance. Let them guess.

Another guy, driving a beat up old Land Rover defender, one of the truly great British cars even though it has a roof and too many doors, has been telling me about his litigation for a couple of years now. Continue reading →

One of the basic precepts at SJ is to try not to make anyone stupider for reading. Sadly, in selecting and publishing the positions of some pundits at Room for Debate, the New York Times has shown no regard for this rule. While the journalistic credo is that there are two sides (and often more) to every story, that doesn’t mean every point of view is sufficiently valid to warrant airing.

A worthy question was posed:

Crime in New York City has steadily declined during Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s tenure. But as the mayor leaves office, a federal judge has sidelined one of his major police policies — stop and frisk — calling its current use unconstitutional racial profiling. Continue reading →

It could have been a monumental clash that would get federalists and statists stockpiling pithy slurs. Instead, it ended, as least for now, in more of a whimper. It’s unfortunate as the case teed up the ball about as well as possible for a pressing issue to be confronted.

Paul Curry had accused MillerCoors of violating Colorado’s employment discrimination statutes. The Chicago-based brewer fired Curry, who has hepatitis C, and osteoarthritis, for violating the company’s drug-free workplace policy.

Curry was a medical marijuana patient. Continue reading →

The arraignment clerk called the federal defender’s office to let them know of the arraignment at 2:00 p.m. The phone rang. It rang five times, then went into voicemail, and she left a message at the tone. It occurred to her that this had never happened before. Before, someone always answered the phone. After all, this was the federal defender’s office, not somebody’s home where they might have gone out for a walk. Somebody was always home. Always, until now.

The New York Times ran a piece putting together some of the various factors that affect the working of federal indigent defense. Continue reading →

The President has spoken:

This is probably controversial to say, but what the heck, I’m in my second term so I can say it.  (Laughter.)  I believe, for example, that law schools would probably be wise to think about being two years instead of three years — because by the third year — in the first two years young people are learning in the classroom.  The third year they’d be better off clerking or practicing in a firm, even if they weren’t getting paid that much.  But that step alone would reduce the cost for the student. Continue reading →

So everybody has a blog these days. I know this because I read the bios of people on twitter, and they say so. I check out the CLE “how to blog” offerings that arrive daily in the email box and see the lawyers teaching have blogs. The only problem is that, most of the time, I’ve never heard of them.

And according to what they say, they are renown, award-winning, famous and very important bloggers. And still, I’ve never heard of them. Sometimes I check out their blogs, and they have a handful of posts at most, the last of which was written a few months back. Continue reading →

It happened about one in the morning, last Sunday. A young man lost control of his car and hit a telephone pole. The police say he was drinking, and his night got worse after destroying his mother’s Infiniti. On the bright side, the pole and car got the worst of it; he wasn’t hurt.

The next day, a gaggle of Verizon guys appeared with a new telephone pole, and they promptly (and surprisingly carefully) put it into the ground next to the old one. They were a bit miffed, I was told, that nobody called them in the middle of the night, Continue reading →

New York Law School crimlaw prof Robert Blecker wrote a book that apparently says we’ve become a society of wimps, afraid to punish the worst of the worst in the way “justice” demands. Naturally, that means he had to pen an op-ed about it for CNN.

No matter how vicious the crime, no matter how vile the criminal, some death penalty opponents feel certain that nobody can ever deserve to die — even if that person burned children alive, Continue reading →