In response to the brilliant Atlantic post by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt decrying the coddling of the American mind, Cornell assistant philosophy prof Kate Manne, a self-described millennial, explains that trigger warnings aren’t coddling at all.

But trigger warnings have been adapted to serve a subtly different purpose within universities. Increasingly, professors like me simply give students notice in their syllabuses, or before certain reading assignments. The point is not to enable — let alone encourage — students to skip these readings or our subsequent class discussion (both of which are mandatory in my courses, absent a formal exemption). Rather, it is to allow those who are sensitive to these subjects to prepare themselves for reading about them, and better manage their reactions. The evidence suggests that at least some of the students in any given class of mine are likely to have suffered some sort of trauma, whether from sexual assault or another type of abuse or violence. So I think the benefits of trigger warnings can be significant.

As she explains, the notion was derived on the internets for returning war veterans suffering from PTSD, and has since devolved to the “trauma” suffered by students who have no diagnosed mental illness (though many seem to confuse their unpleasantness with PTSD) at reading, hearing, seeing, whatever strikes them as distressing. Continue reading →

A room at the George V in Paris is going to cost you big time, but then, you knew that going in and chose to run up such a tab.  Prison, not so much.  On the bright side, room, board, medical care and the ancillary joys like telephone and commissary, may not be charged at George V rates.  On the dark side, that they can be charged at all is outrageous.

He was at the end of a three-year sentence in a Florida state prison when he was caught stealing potatoes from the prison kitchen. As punishment, he was sent to confinement with a cellmate who, according to court filings, was “severely mentally ill.” The man attacked Barrett in a violent rage, ultimately gouging out one of his eyes. “I went into shock,” Barrett said.

When he got out of prison one month later, Barrett, 36, sued the Florida Department of Corrections for negligence. The department responded with a counterclaim or a “cost of incarceration lien” of $54,750 — the total cost of Barrett’s 1,095 day stay in the prison at $50 a day.

Nice.  First, Jeremy Barrett gets his eye gouged out by a crazed cellmate, and then he gets a bill for the pleasure.  But, that’s the law. Continue reading →

Joshua Nisbet had a lawyer. Then another lawyer. And another. Then a couple more. And then he didn’t.  The Sixth Amendment guarantees defendants a laundry list of rights, the assistance of counsel among them.

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

Yet, Cumberland Count Justice Thomas Warren ordered Nisbet to trial without a lawyer, and the Maine Supreme Court is being asked whether this is constitutional. Continue reading →

For those who think technology provides some level of salvation for the criminal justice system, there’s a pull to speak to the things it can do that make the wheels turn better, faster, more reliably, than they did when it was humans with pencils running the show.  And indeed, these claims are absolutely valid. When tech works.

Until it doesn’t.

A computer error is being blamed for wrongly accusing hundreds of people of skipping court-ordered drug tests, subjecting them to potential penalties including fines and jail time.

Jail Alternatives for Michigan Services, known as JAMS, is metro Detroit’s largest provider of court-ordered drug testing. The company experienced the issue in late August, but apparently didn’t notice it until Dana O’Neal of Oakland County pre-trial services called to ask why no positive test results had been submitted in recent weeks, said Barbara Hankey, manager of Oakland County Community Corrections.

Oops. It seems that instead of providing test results to pre-trial services, JAMS was sending notices that people failed to appear for drug-testing, a violation of the terms of their release.  These notices, in turn, would produce warrants for the arrest of the people who failed to show, which would result in their incarceration and notation on their rap sheet that they can’t be trusted to be released.  This is serious stuff. Continue reading →

Advertisements on websites suck. There’s no reason in explaining to anyone why, as they already know and have embraced the joys of ad blocking. And if you don’t, then stop reading as you lack the experience to understand what is written below. Have a nice day.

If I was willing to put ads on SJ, I could probably make some decent money. A few years ago, the going rate was paltry, and the trade-off between the suck of advertising and the anticipated revenue clearly favored foregoing ads. What kind of jerk would subject readers to the nightmare of advertisements in exchange for lunch money?

But times change, and as it now stands, the volume of readers here would produce enough revenue to make it worthwhile. So why not? It’s not as if I’m not a total capitalist.  The short answer, for me at least, has been that if I hate ads so much, how can I put anyone else through them.

I recently added the donate button on the sidebar. The reaction has been, to say the least, rather astounding. I expected nothing, and instead, many readers have been remarkably generous, with money and barbecue.  I rejected a few donations, because I know who some of you are, and refuse to take money from people who can’t afford it or have already contributed greatly by your efforts to SJ.  But I greatly appreciate the thought. Continue reading →

The saga of two teens charged with possession of child porn for their own consensual possession of naked images of themselves and each other has ended in the usual manner, guilty pleas.

The terms of the plea agreements are extremely onerous, considering the acts were consensual and there was no age discrepancy between the participants. What the teens have agreed to sounds not too different than what’s routinely handed to other sex offenders — except that these teens molested no children, possessed no child porn and performed no acts of sexual violence. Comega Copening, the other participant in this heinous two-person sexting ring will be treated as a criminal not worthy of his own phone for the next 365 days.

Of course, probation, 30 hours of community service and a prohibition against having a cellphone for a year beats prison for an offense that met the elements of a poorly-drafted law, and caused no harm to anyone, except themselves if one accepts the premise of Cumberland County Sheriff’s Sgt. Sean Swain.

“We don’t know where these pictures are going to go. We’re more or less saving the kids from themselves because they’re not seeing what’s going to come down the road.”

Continue reading →

The provisions of the Safe Campus Act that mandate basic due process protections for the accused may be dreaded by those bent on making sure no guy goes unpunished, but that’s hardly their big beef with the proposed law. What they can’t stomach at all is the mandatory reporting of an alleged crime to law enforcement.

Critics have called the bill “absurd,” arguing that mandatory reporting to law enforcement will deter victims from coming forward. Writing in The Washington Post, attorney and journalist Jill Filipovic lamented, “Even when women do report to police, the investigation rate is low and the conviction rate even lower—only two accused rapists out of every 100 spend a day in jail.”

On its surface, that certainly seems as if police either don’t take the crime of rape seriously, or dismiss allegations out of hand. Neither reaction by police is acceptable, if that’s the case. But it’s not.

Of primary concern is Sec. 163 of the bill, which mandates that survivors must initiate a police proceeding before any action can be taken by the University in regards to incidents of sexual assault. We fear that this provision will exacerbate the already severe problem of the underreporting of sexual assaults.

Continue reading →

For years now, Starbucks has been the office of choice for the ultra-hip tech lawyer who can’t afford a place of his own.  But as Philly Police Officer Joe Leighthardt explained on Facebook, police want their own access to the Temple of Frappucino, telling the story of a bro-cop whose needs went, ahem, unfulfilled.

 I walk into the Starbucks at 13th and Chestnut in full uniform and ask the young blonde liberal behind the counter if I could use their public bathroom for which you need a key code and she states, in a loud voice so all the other customers can hear that the bathroom is for paying customers only. I then ask in a very polite manner if I could please use it. She then states in the same loud manner and a smirk “Are you a paying customer?” It was at this point that I realized what she was doing. As I walked out with my hand up and while she continued loudly to tell me about the bathroom down the street, I was even more astonished that the many customers and other employees said nothing and seemed indifferent. This is the world cops live in anymore. It’s hip for this generation to berate and totally disrespect cops in front of the public and praise cop killers as the heroes of they’re (sic) time. I never post things but I hope my fellow brothers and sisters in blue see this and know that we have each other… and not to patronize that Starbucks.

Damn them “young blonde liberals” and their lack of urinempathy.  Did she really expect a police officer to buy a coffee? Does she know nothing of tradition? Continue reading →

A few years ago, I had a chat with the dean of my alma mater, New York Law School, after it announced it was hooking up with a slimy internet outlet selling minicourses in unethical legal marketing by defrocked lawyers.  Then Dean Richard Mataser admitted to me that he actually had no clue whom his school had gotten in bed with.

The problem, he explained, is that NYLS isn’t Harvard Law School, and never would be.  That was not exactly an epiphany. So, he went on, it needed some hook to make itself relevant, and it was hanging its future on being the school that embraced the internet. Did I get it?

Sure, I told the dean, but if that was where it wanted to focus, it had to, you know, have a clue about the internet. He didn’t. It didn’t. He was going to look into it. And then he retired.

As an alumnus, they send me emails from time to time hourly extolling their scholarly efforts, and incoming was one of their major efforts, a make-a-name-for-yourself symposium: Continue reading →

When did “hetero” become a dirty prefix?  It means “different,” as does “diversity.” And yet, one soars on college campuses while the other is an epithet. The point arose in a twit yesterday, when a crim pro professor “chewed out” a student for suggesting that over-indictment was a problem.  Never, the professor replied.

It harkened back to thoughts of non-lawyer lawprof Mary Anne Franks teaching criminal law at Miami law school, giving rise to the inevitable question of how someone so mired in her own politics could teach students, when she was incapable of surmounting her own intellectual dishonesty.  What could she possibly tell students if she was shameless enough to write law review articles that were flagrant nonsense?

Nowhere is diversity more celebrated, and hetero more despised, than on the grassy quads of higher education.  To call it an echo chamber is too obvious; it’s not merely that the intellectual “elites” believe in progressive values, but they go well beyond intolerant when it comes to any other political views.  The offshoot is that the young, impressionable minds of mush placed in their care have been rendered incapable of hearing, no less thinking, of any other views.

Some scholars have decided to stop hiding behind rocks to avoid the sting of their colleagues’ slings and arrows, and to step into the sunlight at a new blog called Heterodox Academy. Jonathan Haidt explains: Continue reading →