Sure, the criminalization of straws has drawn all the attention, because once straws are outlawed, only outlaws will have straws. But like the transgender bathroom bills that weren’t just about bathrooms, the straw ban isn’t just about straws.

San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors has voted unanimously to ban single-use plastic straws, making it the second major American city to do so.

The ordinance outlaws not just plastic straws, but also plastic splash sticks, toothpicks, and cocktail sticks, which would have to include those little swords and umbrellas. Other straw bans typically target food service businesses, but this one will prohibit anyone, including grocery stores and other retailers, from selling plastic straws.

What do they have against those cute little plastic swords to hold your martini olives? Continue reading →

You find insight in the oddest places sometimes. It came to me in this article about Gwyneth Paltrow’s business “Goop” in the New York Times. It’s a curious business model, conflicting head-on with the latest social justice ideals of pandering to certain identities of the downtrodden, and instead using her “immense privilege” to find and market things that only the woke and wealthy can buy. Provided they’re into some particularly dumb stuff, as G.P. is.

But that’s not the insight, and if anything, is the antithesis of insight as it’s premised on rhetorical flourish to spin her way out of every putative social justice belief with the plausible deniability of the finest jargonmeister. Rather, it’s the market she tapped.

The minute the phrase “having it all” lost favor among women, wellness came in to pick up the pieces. It was a way to reorient ourselves — we were not in service to anyone else, and we were worthy subjects of our own care. It wasn’t about achieving; it was about putting ourselves at the top of a list that we hadn’t even previously been on. Wellness was maybe a result of too much having it all, too much pursuit, too many boxes that we’d seen our exhausted mothers fall into bed without checking off. Wellness arrived because it was gravely needed.

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On July 19, 2018, seven young female lawyers, with impressive educational credentials but little practical experience, founded an organization called Law Clerks for Workplace Accountability (LCWA). All (but perhaps one) appear to have served a year or two as law clerks to federal judges and all apparently had wonderful experiences.

The foregoing is a screen capture from the LCWA web site.

On July 20, 2018, they submitted a response (hereinafter Response)[i] to the Report of the Federal Judiciary Workplace Conduct Working Group to the Judicial Conference[ii] of the United States (June 1, 2018) (hereinafter Report) (available here together with the executive summary).[iii] Continue reading →

When word broke of massive layoffs at New York’s number 2 tabloid and number 3 newspaper, shock waves hit the world of journalism. The owners of the New York Daily News cut half the newsroom.

“We are fundamentally restructuring the Daily News,” an email from Tronc to the staff reads. “We are reducing today the size of the editorial team by approximately 50 percent and re-focusing much of our talent on breaking news — especially in areas of crime, civil justice and public responsibility.”

The “death” of newspapers, preceded by massive layoffs, isn’t new. It’s been going on for years, as the internet has made dailies superfluous and financially unviable. Why pay for news you already know about? Who wants to read today’s news tomorrow? Why buy a paper, no less maintain a subscription, when there’s nothing new in the news? Continue reading →

A commenter to my post about Judge Kopf’s twit on the law clerks’ demands wrote something concerning.

I find it curious that you honestly seem to believe that decades of experience in the judiciary necessarily qualify someone to effectively make policy on sexual harassment.** It really doesn’t, no more so than decades of judiciary experience qualifies someone to play second base for the New York Yankees.

Putting aside the bizarre attempt at analogy,*** there is a shocking disconnect reflected in this assertion. Decades of experience don’t matter. Experience has no value. Continue reading →

There are some recurring debates within the legal academy, what to call your professors (first name or Prof. Smith) and whether to allow students to type out notes on their laptop or hand write them. But this post at PrawfBlawg by Hadar Aviram caught me by surprise.

I run my class on an all-volunteer basis because I was raised in a system that did not have cold-calling and I dislike it. But this nifty idea from Nathan Robinson, which he claims he learned from James Forman, holds some promise. He hands each of his students a card with three colored stripes and instructs them to write their name on all three stripes, and then to fold the card so that only one color is showing at the time.

There is a view within the Academy that cold-calling can be humiliating when a student isn’t prepared, if a student can’t handle the pressure of speaking before her class, or if a student utters something inane and the class laughs at their dumb classmate. Continue reading →

If the name Shiva Ayyadurai  sounds familiar, it’s likely because he sued Mike Masnick and Techdirt over its calling bullshit on Ayyadurai’s claim that he invented email.  He lost. But he’s running for Senate from Massachusetts and, well, see for yourself.

I will take a punch in the face ANY DAY for America & Free Speech. We will have another ANTI-RACIST Rally against the scumbag #FakeIndian @SenWarren and her White Supremacist THUGS. JOIN US. Declare Your Independence! Stop Race War pic.twitter.com/IOtTCTzi1h

— Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai,PhD (M.I.T.) Inventor of Email (@va_shiva) July 22, 2018

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After 23 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit, Darryl Fulton suffered far more “inconvenience” than any person should ever have to endure. But he had yet to deal with Chase.

“I’m just trying to deposit my check,” Fulton said. “I just wanted to be treated like anyone else.”

[Fulton’s lawyer] Kathleen Zellner criticized Chase for not allowing Fulton to deposit a $169,876 check from the state at its bank branch on 79th Street and Cicero Avenue, questioning whether racism played a part. The first time Fulton tried to deposit the money, Zellner said, the bank said she would have to endorse the check because her firm’s name was under his, though Fulton’s name was on the “pay to the order of” line.

Lest there be any confusion, the firm’s name was printed in the portion of the check reflecting where it was mailed, nothing more. It’s almost as if Chase has never seen a mailed check before. Continue reading →

It wasn’t long ago that the nation went bonkers at the threat of terrorism, and with some cause. But as with most hysteria, it went from serious concerns to less serious concerns, and ultimately the word took on such significance and outrage that the actual facts no longer mattered and the mere incantation of “terrorism” was enough to bring the bludgeon down on a defendant’s head. Senior District Judge John Kane said “Enough.”

After his co-defendant Jamshid Muhtorov informed him that the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) was in need of financial support, Defendant Bakhtiyor Jumaev mailed Mr. Muhtorov $300. Mr. Jumaev wrote only a single check, and the funds never reached the IJU or any other foreign terrorist organization. Mr. Jumaev had no specific plot or plan and did not intend to further any via his contribution. The idea to aid the terrorist organization was proposed and facilitated entirely by Mr. Muhtorov. Indeed, Mr. Jumaev had no direct contact with the members of any terrorist organization. And, significantly, he never committed any act of violence, nor did he advocate for any particular violent act.

Providing “material support” to a terrorist organization is a crime. Whether the donation of funds was meant to support terrorism or other purposes isn’t relevant under the law. Nor does it matter whether the funds actually ended up there. That Jumaev mailed a check was enough for the law to kick in, for a jury to convict him. And they did. With the level of gusto reserved for a guy planning to blow up the World Trade Center, using all the official means crafted to thwart the most serious of terrorist outrages. Continue reading →

One of the more peculiar aspects of the social media age is that random people feel compelled to inform you of their sensibilities. Sometimes they will let you know that they agree, or disagree, with you. Sometimes they will tell you that they think you went too hard or too easy on an issue. Oftentimes, they will tell you that you’ve violated their flavor of a social norm.

Why?

I received a twit yesterday from a law professor telling me that she felt I was gratuitously rude in a characterization that appeared here. Who and what isn’t important, as this post has nothing to do with the target of the twit. There were no reasons proffered, not that such matters are susceptible to reasoning; they’re just a matter of one’s feelings, like one’s preferred flavor of ice cream. Continue reading →