When news broke that Evergreen State College was shut down by police because of a “direct threat,” obvious questions went unanswered. A direct threat of what? By whom? Why? Surely there would be answers coming soon enough. The media reports said nothing. A day later and they still say nothing.

Evergreen State College, which has been in the national spotlight after protests over race boiled over last week, closed Thursday after receiving a direct threat.

The school of about 4,500 students in Washington state posted this warning: “College closing immediately. In response to a direct threat to campus safety, the college is closing immediately for the day. All are asked to leave campus or return to residence halls for instructions.”

A spokeswoman for the school wrote in a text message Thursday afternoon that a threat had been called in to local law enforcement and that the president decided to close the school temporarily out of an abundance of caution.

Continue reading →

There was once a time when these two things could be true:

1. You could disagree with a policy
2. You were unwilling to lie about the law to achieve your goal

Good times, but they are gone, as the newly formed law prof anti-Trump blog takes a dive down the rabbit hole to counter those academics who, while disagreeing with policies, refuse to use their scholarly cred to achieve their goal at the expense of academic integrity.

Interestingly, the few academics willing to call out intellectual dishonesty, compared to the many empowered to spew whatever nonsense serves their ends, appear to be making significant headway. Not because they appeal to an audience of Trump fans and supporters, but because those people who refuse to forfeit their integrity for the cause appreciate their honesty. This is apparently driving the intellectually dishonest to abstraction. Continue reading →

One of the most intriguing headlines ever launches Mark Osler‘s commentary at the Messiah who shall not be named:

The Problem with the
Justice Department

It’s a building full of prosecutors.

Come on. You’ve got to love that. But why is that a problem?

Imagine an incoming president of the United States announcing that he or she would take advice on criminal justice matters exclusively from a Federal Defender’s office. Moreover, the new chief executive intends to put the defenders in charge of federal prisons, forensic science, and the clemency process. After all, the president might argue, the defenders understand federal criminal law from the ground up, have a rich understanding of the social conditions that lead to criminal behavior, and are the federal attorneys most responsible for ensuring individual Constitutional protections. Continue reading →

Beyond the diehards who believe that there is no limit to what must be done to stop Trump from being Trump, the question of undermining legal doctrine for this purpose at the risk of creating new legal doctrine that will prove disastrous to future presidents and their ability to exercise the authority of their office looms huge. For the shallow, this is easily misunderstood as not hating Trump enough. But it has nothing to do with Trump and everything to do with law.

Are we prepared for forsake the legitimacy of law and precedent to get this guy?

In the New York Times, Cardozo lawprof Kate Shaw seeks to create the “conceptual ledge,” that rational stopping point that prevents the slide down the slippery slope into oblivion.

What weight, if any, should the words of a United States president have in court? It’s not a question the Supreme Court has ever answered. But if the Trump administration asks the court to hear this case, and the court agrees to do so, the outcome will almost certainly turn on this issue.

The Fourth Circuit’s travel ban ruling does something never before done: it goes behind the facially lawful exercise of authority by a president and condemns it as unconstitutionally motivated based on the statements of a candidate and his “surrogates.” There was no denial that the president has the authority to do as Trump did: Continue reading →

In Part 1, I addressed intra-district sentencing disparity in the District of Nebraska.  I presented eight tables containing judge-specific sentencing statistics for fiscal years 2015-2016[1] and I asked for insights from readers of Simple Justice. As promised, I now set out some of my thoughts and respond to several of the interesting, and often funny, comments.

I start with two assumptions. The great bulk of the readers of SJ loathe the Sentencing Guidelines. Also, I assume that many of you don’t like Attorney General Sessions, and are particularly worried about his May 10, 2017 memo that, among other important aspects, requires federal prosecutors to charge “the most serious, readily provable offense.”

I don’t want to argue about the Sentencing Guidelines writ large, whether Sessions is a dolt or whether you prefer Attorney General Holders’ previous (and dainty) way of doing business. Indeed, if you are now a CDL in the federal trenches, you have no choice but to “Cowboy up” and deal with the legal realism of the moment. Continue reading →

The bluegrass state has a blue job problem. People just don’t want to be Kentucky State Troopers.

They’ve got some strict rules in Kentucky. There was that 60 college credit thing. And then, there’s the summer tat problem, which totally sucks after the permanent remembrance of that drunken night with the white sheep. What to do? Continue reading →

The cop’s best gal, Heather McDonald, has tried to single-handedly undo one of the few reforms to policing that nearly everyone, cops excepted, else has agreed goes beyond the pale: racial profiling.* Her weapon of choice? Redefinition.

The anti-“racial profiling” juggernaut must be stopped, before it obliterates the crime-fighting gains of the last decade, especially in inner cities. The anti-profiling crusade thrives on an ignorance of policing and a willful blindness to the demographics of crime. Yet politicians are swarming on board. In February, President George W. Bush joined the rush, declaring portentously: “Racial profiling is wrong, and we will end it in America.”

Too bad no one asked President Bush: “What exactly do you mean by ‘racial profiling,’ and what evidence do you have that it exists?” For the anti-profiling crusaders have created a headlong movement without defining their central term and without providing a shred of credible evidence that “racial profiling” is a widespread police practice.

This would be terrible if true. The good news is that its not true. The generous view is that nobody told McDonald, so she’s left to her own devices. Continue reading →

Hard as it may be to imagine an elitist country club in Jersey, Princeton existed. But it’s trying desperately to shed its old legacy Ivy image to appear more like the second-tier Ivies where the poor and downtrodden had a chance of admission.

Eisgruber and his colleagues have made real and rapid progress. Princeton was until recently among the country’s least economically diverse colleges, overlooking hundreds of qualified low-income high-school students each year.

No more. Only 6.5 percent of the class of 2007 received Pell grants, which typically go to students in the bottom half of income distribution. The share among the class of 2017, which graduates next week, is 14.9 percent. The share in both this year’s and next year’s freshman class is 21 percent.

The changes aren’t just about one statistic, either. Princeton is also enrolling more middle-class students and low-income foreigners, who are ineligible for Pell grants.

The mothers at Rosemary Hall are aghast, now that there is no longer a guarantee that one’s roomie will be suitable for a dinner invitation. But it’s not just that they don’t know which fork to use. Continue reading →

Most of us believe ourselves to be normal, by which I mean that we believe our sensibilities to be reasonable and those that differ to be unreasonable, if not totally wrong. And most of us believe that the majority of people agree with us, because we’re, well, normal. For those who believe themselves to be exceptional, this isn’t about you.

Much has been said about cultural appropriation of late, here and elsewhere, largely because of its absurdity and untenability, and this has created a dilemma for those who passionately believe that it exists and is wrong, since they’re constrained to rationalize why they believe something so logically flawed while being smack in the middle of that reasonable majority.

This conflict of feelings and reason took hold at the Guardian, where the problem confronting novelists became a platform for the battle to be fought.

Clearly, if writers were barred from creating characters with attributes that we do not “own” (gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and so on), fiction would be impossible. Stories would be peopled by clones of the author. Since trespassing into otherness is a foundation of the novelist’s work, should we restrict ourselves in some way, so as to avoid doing violence to those who identify with our characters? The injunction to refrain from “cultural appropriation” sounds like a call for censorship, or at best a warning to self-censor, an infringement of the creative liberty to which so many surprising people profess themselves attached.

Continue reading →

Feelings are understandably very raw in Portland at the moment. With good reason. For very pragmatic reasons, Portland’s mayor, Ted Wheeler, has called for the suspension of constitutional rights.

***

2) I have confirmed that the City of Portland has NOT and will not issue any permits for the alt right events scheduled on June 4th or June 10th. The Federal government controls permitting for Shrunk Plaza, and it is my understanding that they have issued a permit for the event on June 4th.

3) I am calling on the federal government to IMMEDIATELY REVOKE the permit(s) they have issued for the June 4th event and to not issue a permit for June 10th. Our City is in mourning, our community’s anger is real, and the timing and subject of these events can only exacerbate an already difficult situation.

4) I am appealing to the organizers of the alt-right demonstrations to CANCEL the events they have scheduled on June 4th and June 10th. I urge them to ask their supporters to stay away from Portland. There is never a place for bigotry or hatred in our community, and especially not now.

Continue reading →