It’s been mentioned on occasion that writing law is hard, often too hard for legislatures to bother with when there is a problem that demands a solution. Something must be done, and in Ohio, as Tim Cushing notes, the lege signed a blank check.

An Ohio law that expands the definition of distracted driving took effect Monday.

The previous law defined distracted driving as driving “using a handheld electronic wireless communications device” targeting traditional mobile phone usage while driving. The new law retains this definition while also expanding distracted to include “Engaging in activity that is not necessary for the vehicle’s operation and that impairs, or reasonably would be expected to impair, the driver’s ability to drive safely.”

No doubt this law was meant to cover some wrong, some evil, some risk that the legislature deemed too grave to go unpunishable, but what that may be can’t be discerned from the words. Continue reading →

Most experienced lawyers appreciate the value of mentorship, having gained from their relationship with a more experienced lawyer what law school could never teach them. It’s not a sexy subject, even less so in the past few years as the nature of mentorship has continued in its trend away from learning and more toward validation.

Mentees are no longer tolerant of being told they’re doing it wrong, but expect a “good” mentor to only offer tummy rubs. Anything less is mean, and they have no use for mean. For reasons that elude me, they are of the view that they are doing their mentors a favor by allowing them to spend precious time handing out cookies and praise. And they’re not entirely wrong, given that mentors of a certain persuasion seem more than happy to do just that.

But even worse than bad mentors, who fail their mentees by being too nice, or too fearful, to correct errors is to be denied the opportunity to be mentored at all, and that seems a likely problem coming as a backlash to neo-feminism, particularly after the #MeToo movement picked up steam. Continue reading →

There are numerous points along the way where 33-year-old Matthew Graves could have been more compliant, more accommodating and less difficult. For some, that would have been the obvious solution to his remaining alive, as his bad attitude didn’t help him any. But then, much as it’s likely a wiser tactic to remain alive to complain another day, even if that’s not what the Constitution requires of us, and not what the Supreme Court, in its limited wisdom, believes happens on the street when cops engage with a guy for the heinous crime of . . . jay-walking.

Eagle Point, Oregon, Police Officer Daniel Cardenas did what any normal police officer would do after killing a guy. He told his story. Continue reading →

While the trial proceeds in the case against Harvard for discriminating against Asian applicants, pushed by a guy whose agenda is to end affirmative action merely because he caught Harvard red handed, defenders of diversity have focused their attentions on the last refuge of the woke, the tu quoque logical fallacy.

A lawsuit against Harvard University has put a focus on admissions policies that the plaintiffs argue hurt Asian-American applicants. I disagree with the suit, seeing it as a false flag operation that aims to dismantle affirmative action for black and Latino students.

It’s unclear how one can “disagree with the suit.” It’s not an agree or disagree thing, but a mechanism for proving a cause of action. One would expect someone as bright as Nick Kristof to understand enough about how law works to not write such a silly paragraph, particularly since he indulges in the mod use of “false flag,” a “covert operation designed to “disguising the actual source of responsibility.” Continue reading →

An Australian student* found an obstacle between him and his final grade that he didn’t anticipate.

There was no way around it, under it, over it. The deal was that in order to see his grade, he had to obtain a grade of 100% on the quiz before he could move on. Continue reading →

Wild Bill Douglas is remembered as one of the Supreme Court greats, authoring such significant opinions as Skinner v. Oklahoma, Brady v. Maryland and Griswold v. Connecticut. But William Orville Douglas was pretty awful.

Judge Richard A. Posner, who was a law clerk at the Court during the latter part of Douglas’s tenure, characterized him as “a bored, distracted, uncollegial, irresponsible” Supreme Court justice, as well as “rude, ice-cold, hot-tempered, ungrateful, foul-mouthed, self-absorbed” and so abusive in “treatment of his staff to the point where his law clerks—whom he described as ‘the lowest form of human life’—took to calling him “shithead” behind his back.”

None of this is new or surprising to those moderately familiar with Justice Douglas, who was stronger on outcome and the occasional rhetorical flourish than substance and the gritty details of making his novel outcomes work. If he was, maybe we wouldn’t be arguing about a Brady (1963) “epidemic” more than half a century later. Oh wait, that “epidemic” came from Alex Kozinski, and he’s too awful to refer to anymore given his sexual misconduct. Continue reading →

The buried lede is that Ronald Conner is a sovereign citizen. He believes that the government is a corporate sham, that it has no authority to collect taxes and that he is entitled to refuse to do so. How much does he believe this? Enough to sit in a cell for the past 16 months.

Ronald Conner hasn’t been charged with a crime.

He hasn’t been indicted.

He isn’t even accused of breaking the law.

But he is in prison. He has been for 16 months — and he could be there for a lot longer.

Continue reading →

Would you rather your lawyer get you a better deal or a worse deal? Do you care how? Should your lawyer? If the answer is yes, then Vivia Chen, the Careerist, says your lawyer should be a man.

It pains me to say this, but men and women are different—very different—in how they approach negotiation.

And guess what? Men are winning, winning, winning.

This comes from a study in the Harvard Business Review that men are more effective negotiators, but it comes with a hitch. Continue reading →

Albert Einstein is as anodyne an example as possible, since everybody concedes he was a pretty bright guy and came up with a theory of relativity of some significance. But what if it turned out that he was some sort of awful lech, leering at young women at parties and, at least once, being accused of engaging in enthusiastically consensual sex with a woman who, the next day, claimed to have had two glasses of peppermint schnapps and been incapable of consent?

Do we ignore the theory of relativity? Do we accept it, but refuse to give Einstein credit for it? Do we simply ignore his awfulness?

A recent essay in The Chronicle by Nikki Usher, an associate professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University, posed the question starkly: “Do we still keep citing the scholarship of serial harassers and sexists? Within their institutions, they may finally get the fate due to them (or not). But their citational legacy will live on, sometimes even in the form of the pro-forma citations that reviewers expect to see in a manuscript, and ask for if they don’t.”

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An op-ed by Nancy Kaffer in the Detroit Free Press makes it sound awful that Siwatu-Salama Ra was in prison, wasn’t released on bail pending appeal, was shackled to a bed when giving birth and then had her newborn child taken from her. And indeed, it may very well be awful, in whole or part.

Last year, Ra, 26, waved an unloaded gun at an acquaintance whom Ra’s mother, Rhonda Anderson, says became belligerent and violent at Anderson’s Detroit home, using her car to hit a parked car in which Ra’s toddler daughter Zala was playing.

No one was hurt. No shots were fired. Ra, a Detroit activist and community organizer with no previous criminal record, is a legal gun owner with a concealed-carry permit, who says she was afraid that the acquaintance would harm her daughter, her mother, or herself. But a jury believed that Ra acted in anger, not in self-defense, and found her guilty of felonious assault.

Continue reading →