While the bail reform activists were thrilled with the coup pulled off in the dark of night, more serious and more concerned criminal law folks cringed. For decades, we tried to reform various aspects of the New York criminal legal system that most of us knew and agreed were bad, unfair and, as might be admitted at the bar in Forlini’s, unconstitutional. But knowing the system was a wreck was the easy part. Coming up with changes to the system that would serve everyone’s interests, that everyone could live with, was hard. Very hard.

With the “blue wave” of 2018 came Democratic control of the New York Senate, and with it came people utterly unaware of the serious concerns, the years of trying to come up with sustainable reform and the recognition that swinging the pendulum too far the other way didn’t mean it would work, but that it would swing back.

Not that they understood. Or cared. Oh, they were so filled with their power and importance, and had the support of their tribe of brilliant activists, like Shaun King and the new breed of internet hucksters who spewed their mix of simplistic nonsense and half-truths to the useful idiots. Continue reading →

Put aside your feelings about the Federalist, and consider only whether the twit that happened to come from Ben Domenech’s fingers was a joke, a veiled threat or both.

As far as I know, the Federalist does not have any salt mines to send anyone back to, so this was a joke and not a serious threat, right? Except the National Labor Relations Board Judge Kenneth Chu didn’t laugh. Continue reading →

It’s not as if Bill de Blasio invented snitching in New York. It has a long history, from the United States Sentencing Guidelines which offered only one way out of their clutches to the ubiquitous ad campaign following 9/11, See Something, Say Something. When the former worked so well turning brother against brother, turning “good” New Yorkers against evil terrorists hardly seemed a stretch.

So why not turn neighbor against neighbor?

How do you report places that aren’t enforcing social distancing? It’s simple: just snap a photo and text it to 311-692. #AskMyMayor pic.twitter.com/WQdCcVf1Rl

— Mayor Eric Adams (@NYCMayor) April 18, 2020

Continue reading →

Most days, Dr. SJ goes for a nice long walk with her socially distant friends. She likes to walk. I would take the Gator from my library to the bathroom if I could, but to each his own. A couple days ago, she walked the trails of Tiffany Creek Preserve with a garbage bag in hand.

By the end of the walk, the bag was full. Beer cans, used diapers, lots of formerly-sterile gloves and designer water bottles. It could have been pristine. Instead, it was a dump. The litter didn’t get there on its own.

Today is Earth Day. Today is the 50th Earth Day. You probably weren’t aware of this because it’s no longer a big deal, but it was once. Continue reading →

Whatever teachers are doing with kids at school, there is one thing that people have come to appreciate: they keep the little shits out of your hair so you can go about doing whatever it is you feel you want to do with your life without having to hear their whining about being hungry. Again. After all, why shouldn’t you get to do whatever you feel like doing, which is your right because you are the center of the universe with no responsibility for anyone.

Here is where, ordinarily, I would conclude with a grand thought about America: I might venture that cross-society parental stress under pandemic could forge a new parental voting bloc. That perhaps now universal child care will be regarded as a necessity, not some kind of indulgence. But the kids are asking for lunch, and I have to break it to them that all the hot dogs are gone.

That’s Farhad Manjoo, spokesmodel for the disaffected digital native, who concedes his privilege while admitting it makes him feel like a failure to be a failure. Continue reading →

Whether it’s the Bernie bros arguing how the coronavirus proves we need his Medicare4All, or the fact that poor people are still poor even in a pandemic, and rich people get to use their money to obtain things, from toilet paper and masks to tests, there is much talk about how this pandemic will change everything.

Indeed, in one of the more unhelpful op-eds published by the New York Times, Viet Thanh Nguyen raises “ideas that won’t survive the coronavirus,” such as American Exceptionalism. After all, is there anything more worthy of discussion as people are dying than what a terrible nation this is? Continue reading →

The name Grace Helen Whitener didn’t mean anything to me, but upon learning that she was appointed to the Washington State Supreme Court, I naturally assumed she’s an accomplished lawyer at the very least. Wikipedia provides a little information.

Whitener was born and raised in Trinidad. She moved to the United States when she was 16 to receive medical care. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in International Marketing and Trade from Baruch College, followed by a Juris Doctor from the Seattle University School of Law.

After graduating from law school, Whitener worked as a public defender, prosecutor, and private defense attorney. She served as a judge on the Board of Industrial Insurance Appeals for two years and then on the Pierce County Superior Court from 2015 to 2020, having been appointed by Governor Inslee and elected unopposed in 2015 and 2016. She assumed office on the Washington Supreme Court on April 13, 2020. She will run for election in 2020 for the remaining two years of Wiggins’s term.

Continue reading →

When I went to law school, my professors taught law much like Kingsfield. While I had some undergrad profs who were unabashedly ideological (Roger Keeran was my faculty adviser and first-year labor history prof, whose final exam question was something along the lines of “Explain why capitalism is a failure,” but he had a sense of humor about it.)

My law profs? I haven’t the slightest clue what their politics were. They lectured about competing theories and interests represented in statutory and caselaw without telling us which was right or wrong. We, their students, would vigorously argue about it, but they remained neutral, leaving it to us to weigh the competing interests. It never occurred to me that law could, or would, be taught any other way. Continue reading →

What if you tried to run a business but nobody came? Well, that happens if you’re either selling something people don’t want or doing a poor job of it. There’s no guarantee when you open your doors that anybody will show. But Du Jour Bakery made delicious baked goods, loved by patrons, and still it’s struggling.

The answer, obviously, is that coronavirus sheltering means people are staying home, not going to the bakery and not buying the “outrageous delectables, including dozens of muffins the size of baseballs,” that would otherwise sustain the bakery as a viable enterprise. Continue reading →

The numbers speak for themselves, that the poor are disproportionately suffering infection and death. The poor are disproportionately black and Hispanic. But within the litany of reasons why this is happening is a not insignificant lie:

Leaving Detroit, I thought about the disproportionate number of black folks dying from the coronavirus because they had asthma, diabetes or hypertension. Because they had limited access to affordable, healthy food.

I’ve spent more time uptown than most, and there are stores and bodegas replete with glorious fresh vegetables. There is no problem with “limited access to affordable, healthy food,” but a problem with Whoppers. They’re cheap, effortless and taste delicious. Continue reading →