Judge Robert Pitman spent 113 pages to reach a conclusion that had to be reached and yet defied clear judicial review through the mechanations of Texas’ preclusion of the State, itself, having any putative involvement in making it happen. Unless, of course, you consider enacting a law that was facially unconstitutional and providing the courtrooms, judges, clerks and people with guns that enforce any law or judgment in the usual course.

Judge Pitman used sharp language to criticize the law, known as Senate Bill 8, which was drafted to make it difficult to challenge in court by delegating enforcement to private individuals, who can sue anyone who performs abortions or “aids and abets” them. Continue reading →

Family law is a squishy area to discuss. Criminal defense is neat and tidy by comparison. In criminal law, it’s the client and counsel against the might of the government. Family law, by comparison, is an area where everyone’s expected to get along in an incredibly hostile environment.

Attorneys and clients who go through a Family Law case of any sort unknowingly walk into a metaphorical meat grinder. Marital dissolutions and child custody cases will suck the life out of the most battle-hardened lawyer, and leave all parties scarred and jaded for their efforts. Continue reading →

Is there some progressive rationale for the decision made by Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx not to charge the young men who engaged in a shootout on the streets of Chicago? The only explanation proffered thus far is that they were “mutual combatants,” apparently meaning that they all chose to engage in a shootout with each other. Is that a defense to murder?

The brazen mid-morning gunfight, which left one shooter dead and two of the suspects wounded, stemmed from an internal dispute between two factions of the Four Corner Hustlers street gang, according to an internal police report and a law enforcement source with knowledge of the investigation.

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As criticism of the “new” new math being taught in the upper right hand corner of America simmers, and below it the eradication of any expectation that black students be expected to add and subtract to get a diploma festers, academics are trying to find better strategies to avoid the “soft bigotry of low expectations” and teach students sufficient skills to survive, if not thrive, in the future.

When Oregon governor Kate Brown signed a law in July that suspended math and reading proficiency requirements for high school graduation for three years, an uproar ensued. Republicans charged that the state had abandoned academic standards, while the Democratic governor’s spokesperson declared that the move would help benefit the state’s “Black, Latino, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Tribal, and students of color.” Continue reading →

University of North Carolina law professor Carissa Byrne Hessick tells a very curious story in her new book, Punishment Without Trial: Why plea bargaining is a bad deal.” Carissa is in New York City to attend a criminal law conference at NYU, one I too was asked to speak at but begged off. She stayed a day extra in New York to spend with prolific twitter activist, Scott Hechinger, who took her to a Brooklyn criminal courtroom, where he schooled her.

“In this courtroom, the rule is no talking, no eating, no drinking, no using your cell phone, and no reading.” This message was delivered to me while I was sitting on a bench in a courtroom in Brooklyn one April morning. The message was delivered in a low voice by Scott Hechinger, an attorney with the Brooklyn Defender Services, who was sitting on the bench next to me.

“Why no reading?” I asked. Continue reading →

Ed. Note: The following is a guest post by Jessa Nicholson, partner at Nicholson Goetz & Otis in Madison, Wisconsin. Jessa’s post comes as an “in the trenches” view following the recent criticism of women defending men accused of sex offenses, as if a defense lawyer defending defendants of the wrong sort of crime was a traitor to her gender.

I had a draft of this guest post saved on my computer to send when I found myself arguing in opposition to the admission of “other acts” evidence in a campus sexual assault case I’m handling. I’m one of those women that sells out the sisterhood by defending people accused of sex crimes. Continue reading →

Is it cheating to have a family? Loving and supportive parents? After all, not everyone has one. In some cases, it’s a product of misfortune, a parent lost to disease or accident. In other cases, it’s a parent’s poor choices that give rise to their not being nuclear. And sometimes, the parent is there, but not very good at it and possibly really bad at parenting. So if you had good parents, a good and caring family, have you enjoyed a privilege that should be stripped from you to even the score in the name of equity?

Like White privilege, family privilege is an unacknowledged and unearned benefit instantiated in U.S. laws, policies, and practices and bestowed upon traditional or “standard” nuclear families to the disadvantage of non-traditional configured family systems (e.g., sole-parent families, unmarried committed partners rearing children together, grandparents raising grandchildren). Family privilege is defined as the benefits, often invisible and unacknowledged, that one receives by belonging to family systems long upheld in society as superior to all others. It serves to advantage certain family forms over others and is typically bestowed upon White, traditional nuclear families. Continue reading →

Not only did a protester who called herself “Blanca” follow Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema into the women’s room to exercise her right to express her grievance, but it was recorded for all to see and applaud.

Protesters followed Sen. Sinema into the bathroom at Arizona State University to confront her on Build Back Better and immigration pic.twitter.com/NDSmeu0h2M

— Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) October 3, 2021

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Every once in a while, some twit by a baby lawyer crosses my timeline. Often, it causes me to giggle in a pathetic sort of way because it’s largely incoherent, saying something that can only be deciphered by the young and hip. I am neither. But what can be discerned in these twits is that they’re working with a paradigm that’s foreign to my universe. They love people or they hate people. If the twit is about someone they love, they shower them with positivity, no matter how little it’s deserved. But if they hate the person, there isn’t a thing they can say or do that isn’t horrible. They could give the correct time of day, and it would still be wrong.

David French raises the results of a poll out of the University of Virginia that reflects a growing desire to break America into red and blue nations. Continue reading →

Standing in for a lawyer friend of mine at oral argument, I argued my case. From the audience, I heard the occasional “YES!” behind me, then “That RIGHT!” and other choice expressions of approval. When the prosecutor argued in response, there were outburts of “Bullshit” and “he’s lying.” The faces of the judges twisted with annoyance, until the presiding judge stated for the benefit of the audience that any further outbursts would not be tolerated.

After the argument, a woman walked up to me to tell me what a great job I did and how she was there to help. She was the one (one of the ones?) who lacked impulse control, but she believed that she was supporting me, helping my side, by adding in from the cheap seats her two cents because she wanted to help. I looked at her for moment, then said, “Do you have any idea how much damage your antics did to the case? This isn’t the way to persuade judges.” I walked over to the prosecutor, explained that I had no clue this would happen and apologized. Continue reading →