Reports have been coming out for the past few days that Attorney General Eric Holder will make a major announcement today at the ABA Annual Meeting. From the New York Times:

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., in a speech at the American Bar Association’s annual meeting in San Francisco on Monday, is expected to announce the new policy as one of several steps intended to curb soaring taxpayer spending on prisons and help correct what he regards as unfairness in the justice system, according to his prepared remarks.

Saying that “too many Americans Continue reading →

At A Public Defender, Gideon offers a blurb from the concurrence of some otherwise unremarkable Connecticut opinion that sums up one of the nasty little sucky secrets of the system.

ROGERS, C. J., concurring. I agree with the majority’s conclusion in part II of its opinion that appellate review of a waived constitutional claim that the jury instructions failed to include an essential element of the crime charged is barred by this court’s decision in State v. Kitchens, 299 Conn. 447, 482–83, 10 A.3d 942 (2011). I write separately to emphasize Continue reading →

At My Shingle. Carolyn Elefant writes about the “persecution” of Carl Malamud for the making law available to the public to see.

Looks like ABA Legal Rebel,  Carl Malamud, leader of the “free law movement” is at it again. This time, reports the Washington Post, Malamud has been busy posting building codes that govern at his website, Public.Resource.org. Trouble is, the building codes — enacted by state and local law — incorporate industry-developed standards which are protected by copyright law. Some of the industry groups that develop these standard have now filed this  Complaint against Malamud alleging copyright violation.

While calling a complaint for copyright violation “persecution” Continue reading →

The initial word was that police were called in to help stop a “riot” at the Citrus Center for Adolescent Treatment Service in Pembroke Pines, Florida.  It was a facility for severely mentally ill adolescents, which should have been the first clue for the cops that they weren’t dealing with people who would respond to their authority in the manner they usually demand. That’s the nature of mental illness.

Yet, the notion that these were sicks kids didn’t seep into one (unnamed) cop’s head. Continue reading →

When Reuters “broke” the news that the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Special Operations Division engaged in what was euphemistically called “parallel construction,” experienced criminal defense lawyers lifted an eyebrow and stifled a yawn. How do you break something that we’ve all known about for 20 years?  If there was anything shocking about the story, it was former Judge Nancy Gertner’s reaction to the story.

“I have never heard of anything like this at all,” said Nancy Gertner, a Harvard Law School professor who served as a federal judge from 1994 to 2011. Continue reading →

I’ve been called blunt, terse and far, far worse, but rarely has anyone suggested that I’ve been too polite to make my position clear. Apparently, the same can’t be said for the ABA’s committee on the future of legal education, at least as far as lawprofs are concerned. At Concurring Opinions, Lawrence Cunningham questions what exactly they were getting at in the working paper:

Obsession with status is a culprit in the woes of today’s American law schools and faculty, the Working Paper finds. Continue reading →

The descriptions of Israel Hernández-Llach are either glowing or demeaning, and in some cases both. From the Miami Herald:

At just 18, Israel Hernández-Llach was already an award-winning artist, on the threshold of acclaim in Miami Beach art circles. He was a sculptor, painter, writer and photographer whose craft was inspired by his home country of Colombia and his adopted city, Miami.

And in the next paragraph:

He was also a graffiti artist, Continue reading →

Of the many cesspools of the criminal justice system, none is more troubling than what becomes of the children of parents deemed unfit for having engaged in crime, even if the same conduct isn’t a crime elsewhere. But the wounds that come from taking children from parents who cared for them with love because of state paternalism are rarely seen, and so the cesspool continues to fester because it all seems to make sense in theory.

The fear is obvious. A parent arrested for smoking marijuana in a state where pot remains a heinous crime, as opposed to those states where pot is now an acceptable thing to do, can’t be trusted to be a safe parent. Continue reading →

Following the suicide of Aaron Swartz, MIT’s new president, L. Rafael Reif, whose unspoken (but barely hidden) goal is to wipe the place clean of its organic culture so that incoming students can pop their Izod collars just like they would have done if they went to Exeter, appointed Course 6 (that’s MIT-speak for computer science) professor Hal Abelson to conduct an investigation to determine whether MIT was complicit in the factors that drove Swartz to his end.

Abelson was picked as an honest broker, a man who shared Swartz’s vision of the internet, at least to some extent. Of course, he was still a prof and received a paycheck that bore the Institute’s name, Continue reading →

Franklin County, Ohio, Judge Amy Salerno disagreed with the verdict of a jury. Oh boy. As she explained it to the Columbus Dispatch, “(I) failed to contain my surprise at this particular meeting (with jurors).” This may be a bit of an understatement.

“(The judge) said, ‘Ninety-nine percent of the time, the jury is correct,’  ” according to [juror LeShawn] Chapman. “  ‘Now it’s 98 percent. You got this wrong.’ Continue reading →