Under New York Criminal Procedure Law § 720.35, minor defendants given youthful offender treatment may not have their convictions used against them, thus providing an opportunity for them to change their evil ways and have a second chance (or fourth) at turning their lives around. This is a wonderful thing, although it held little promise for Dylan Pitt when he was stabbed by Santino Guerra on St. Patrick’s Day, 2016. Continue reading
Seaton: The SJ Guide to St. Paddy’s Day 2023
Happy Saint Paddy’s Day, dear readers! This year, the holiday where everyone is Irish falls at the tail end of Spring Break, so expect many dumb college kids puking in the streets of every destination town you can find. Worry not, you can still celebrate Saint Paddy’s in peaceful merriment.
We celebrate Saint Paddy’s day around these parts pretty much every day, depending on the mood, but today is a great day to reconnect with half my roots. My family’s half Scottish, half Irish, so we get all of the good traits from both lands without the desire to wear kilts.*
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Continue reading
Defining “Woke” (Update)
Bethany Mandel, who with Karol Markowicz, wrote a book “Stolen Youth,” and so she went on tour to promote it, including an interview with Briahna Joy Gray and Robby Soave. It didn’t go well.
LOL: Briahna Joy Gray BREAKS the brain of Rising guest Bethany Mandel by asking her to define "wokeness" pic.twitter.com/uwRSSH0LaM
— The Vanguard (@vanguard_pod) March 14, 2023
How Do You Solve A Problem Like Amy Wax?
It would be impressive enough that Amy Wax is a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. But her background is even more impressive.
Raised in an observant, conservative Jewish family, she received a bachelor’s degree from Yale and a medical degree from Harvard.
On a podcast, she said she realized medicine was not for her, and in 1987, received a law degree from Columbia University. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, as an assistant to the U.S. solicitor general, she argued 15 cases before the Supreme Court. And after seven years at the University of Virginia, she joined Penn with tenure in 2001.
Tuesday Talk*: Beyond Stanford, Are Law Schools Lost? (Update)
No doubt there’s a reason why law reviews exist as a place for legal academics to publish their scholarly writings with the acceptance, approval and oversight of student editors. If I cared enough, I could research it and find out, but I don’t. Rather, it’s sufficient for now that the system involves the least knowledgeable, least capable and least attuned to the realities of law making decisions for a profession of which they’ve yet to earn a place.
Most things are published that they may be read. Law review articles are published that they may be written. – J. Posner
DoJ Opposes Ending “Acquitted Conduct Sentencing”
It’s one of those things that people never expected and can’t imagine how it could be possible, constitutional. It’s not just that it offends our sense of fairness, but it offends the legitimacy of the process. Why have a trial if the outcome of not guilty on one offense doesn’t mean that the defendant beat the rap. How could there be such a thing as “acquitted conduct sentencing”?
If a jury convicts a defendant on some charges but not others, it has found that the facts supporting the acquitted charge were not proved beyond a reasonable doubt. That does not mean those allegations are not true or have not been proved by a preponderance of evidence or even clear and convincing evidence. Continue reading
Can You Trust Your Doctor?
Notwithstanding my personal choice to avoid fixing what’s not broken, most of us nonetheless believe that the people onto whom we entrust our bodies, our lives, are the best and brightest we can find. No, they’re not perfect, and one would have to be an idiot to believe that there aren’t docs who are less than sufficiently competent. But we believe, because there really isn’t much of a way to endure medical treatment if we didn’t.
But medical schools are making it hard. So very hard. Continue reading
When Deans Shake
There’s a law school at Leland Stanford Junior University, and it’s decided to give Yale a run for its money as the school least capable of teaching its students the virtue of humility. The debacle began with Judge Kyle Duncan being invited for a lunchtime presentation by the Federalist Society and ended with Judge Duncan leaving the room. What happened in between, and then some, is laid out by David Lat.
As I first learned via this detailed Twitter thread and subsequent Bench Memos post by Ed Whelan, yesterday Judge Kyle Duncan of the Fifth Circuit was the subject of a highly disruptive protest when he spoke at Stanford Law School. I have received extensive information about the event from multiple sources at or affiliated with SLS, as well as Judge Duncan himself, whom I interviewed by phone, and I’ll share it with you now. I also reached out to Stanford Law, but have not yet heard back; I will update this story (or write a new one) if and when I do. [UPDATE (10:49 p.m.): I would note, however, that Dean Jenny Martinez issued a school-wide message about the protest, which I have posted near the end of this story; I’m guessing she crafted it with the knowledge that it would be published, as I and others have done.]
Seaton: Sheriff Roy Gets A Physical
Sheriff Roy was a typical man in that he had no use for doctors unless they were absolutely necessary. Still, his job mandated he see one once a year, so Mud Lick’s top law enforcement officer found himself in the exam room of a veterinarian’s office.
You see, friends, back in the days of Mud Lick’s formation, the Town Elders got it in their heads the chief cop in Mud Lick should be someone of sound bodily and mental health. Therefore every year the Sheriff was to undergo a physical examination by a trained medical professional and a competency evaluation by a psychiatrist. Continue reading
It’s About The Nail
Much has been said about the CDC’s survey showing that progressive (mischaracterized as liberal, which they most assuredly are not) girls suffered more and greater depression than progressive boys and conservative boys and girls. Jonathan Haidt and David Brooks both did something surprising, pointing to reformed progressive Matt Yglesias and progressive feminist Jill Filipovic to explain this phenomenon of misery.
Yglesias wrote that “part of helping people get out of their trap is teaching them not to catastrophize.” He then described an essay by progressive journalist Jill Filipovic that argued, in Yglesias’s words, that “progressive institutional leaders have specifically taught young progressives that catastrophizing is a good way to get what they want.”