There are many cockamamie notions whirling around the damp minds of criminal law reformers which wind up with legal academics grasping at straws to write some hip, radical  article or book to promote a means of fixing the broken, invariably racist, system. Some, like jury nullification or eliminating plea bargaining, have gained traction.

A nascent notion came from the fertile imagination of a Stanford sociologist, with a courtesy appointment at Stanford Law School, Matthew Clair, who wrote a book that was excerpted at Inquest, which bills itself as “The Decareral Brainstorm.” Such sites, dedicated to such one-sided causes without a discouraging word, have a tendency to promote ridiculous ideas because there’s no one around to point out that they’re, well, ridiculous. And Clair’s idea is not merely ridiculous, but dangerous. Continue reading →

It “occurred” to me when it was rubbed in my face that the posts here are only one piece of the SJ puzzle. There are a bunch of people who keep this hotel open, from the friends who fix the program when it goes awry to those of you who help pay the freight of keeping a website on the ‘net.

There’s my editor, Beth, without whom I would look far stupider than I do otherwise, and the bouncers in the hotel bar, Skink and Sgt. Schultz. And there are the voices of reason who talk me off the edge (thanks, Judge Kopf) and the voices of unreason who drive me toward it (I’m looking at you, Barleycorn). And then there are the SJ cultural muses, Howl and Guitar Dave, whose music video selections have become as integral to my doing this gig as the catharsis of writing posts in the wee hours of the morning. Continue reading →

It was a bold idea, one that might well have bridged the gap between the high cost of legal representation and the inability of many to pay the price for the banal requirements of legal advice and assistance to perform so many common tasks. And yet, Washington State’s attempt to make Limited Licence Legal Technicians, or 3LTs as I called them, a thing died.

The reasons are somewhat speculative, as there is no empirical study explaining the problem and the rationalizations are driven by political agendas, those determined to create a lesser tier of legal representation to provide “Access to Justice” (A2J) blaming external causes rather than an inherent failure of the plan. Continue reading →

Happy Friday everybody! As you read this, I’m most likely asleep in my bed. The house is quiet. I have the entire place to myself for the day.

How did your humble humorist get such a blessed day of respite from the usual household clamor? Easy: the kids are in school and it’s Conference weekend for Dr. S.

Conference weekend is my pet name for her yearly weekend marathon Continuing Education lecture series. If you’ve ever wondered about differences in medical and legal CE, let me dispel any myths for you: everyone’s still sitting there bored, listening to a lecturer drone on, and half the attendees are probably checking sports scores or playing solitaire on a laptop to pass the time. Continue reading →

One of my ongoing concerns has been what words to use to characterize the subjects of my posts. When I speak of the right, are they “alt-right” or “white supremacists,” as I’m reliably informed by the left? And when I speak of the left, are they “SJWs,” “woke” or “progressives”? On the one hand, none of these words have sufficiently defined meanings to preclude the requisite wiggle room to disclaim membership. On the other hand, what starts out as a badge of honor for one side morphed into a pejorative when seized upon by the other.

I remember someone dismissing a post because I used the phrase SJW, which obviously meant I was some right wingnut. So what word or phrase should I use? Berny Belvedere parses the dilemma at Arc Digital. Continue reading →

Up to now, the the scheme consisted of accusation, the presumption of guilt and swift conviction, whereupon the only sentence imposed was by the mob and its enablers: death. One of the complaints, and only one, was the disproportionality of sentence, that not every accusation by a woman against a man warranted his “cancellation,” his being fired, thrown off the island and disappeared, never to be heard from or admitted into polite society again.

Shelly Ross was Chris Cuomo’s former boss. Chris, the angelic and perpetually sincere host on CNN of all causes progressive, and definitely Mario’s better looking son, did the dirty to Ross back in 2005 and she kept the receipt. Continue reading →

In 1992, Bill Clinton made the point succinctly, that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare.” Aborting a fetus wasn’t a “good thing,” some sort of abstract virtue that should be applauded, even as some of the most twisted feministish voices “wished” they had had an abortion.

But as  hysteria whips up about the omnipresent Supreme Court partisan hacks reversing Roe v. Wade and Casey, this same conflation is being insinuated back into the battle. Or maybe it never really left the argument, and so it’s raising its ugly head again doesn’t make it onto the radar of the unduly passionate. Continue reading →

In two New York Times columns, John McWhorter took aim at the University of Wisconsin, first for removing a really big rock because somebody once called it a racial slur 100 years ago, and second for removing the name of Frederic March, a “treasured alum,” because he was briefly part of a campus club which shared a bad name with an national group with which it had no association.

McWhorter’s basic position is that these were both empty, pointless gestures based on the most tenuous of connections that reflect the misguided lost cause of the woke. It’s neither about the removal of a rock or the changing of a name, expense of removal and offense to the memory of a distinguished alumnus aside. It’s about the misguided inferential leaps and the feigned claims of suffering manufactured by children seeking things to be outraged about. When real problems run dry, they move on to the trivial, and ultimately the non-existent. Continue reading →

As a freshman at Barnard, New York City was all new and cool. And it was, and is, even if nobody talks anymore about the other side of New York City, where bad things happen and people should be careful, or stay away.

Bad things happen. Terrible, terrible things that never should happen, happen. And these terrible things are done by people who shouldn’t do terrible things. Yet they do. Some Ph.D. student might write a dissertation on why society is to blame for Majors’ death, both because her killers wouldn’t have killed her if they were happily ensconced at Choate or she could roam Morningside Park at will in the middle of the night because it’s her right to do so. Someone will free-ride her Ph.D. on Tessa Major’s death.

Continue reading →

In a Tuesday Talk last month, the question was posed whether the groundswell of a new movement dedicated to only getting out of bed when absolutely necessary was a good idea. Why work yourself to death (or momentary discomfort, as those paper cuts really hurt) when it’s only to serve the benefit of others, like corporations, the ultra-wealthy and your parents’ pension), when you can have more fun doing as little as humanly possible?

Charlie Warzel, who promoted the elevation of slackers to cult status, wrote a follow-up to address the “rage of the career defenders.” Continue reading →