By 4-1-4 vote, the Supreme Court held that campaign finance limitations were an unconstitutional restraint on the 1st Amendment in McCutcheon v. FEC.  The inevitable ensued.  The TL;dr version of the opinion reads:

The right to participate in democracy through political contributions is protected by the First Amendment, but that right is not absolute.Congress may regulate campaign contributions to protect against corruption or the appearance of corruption. See, e.g., Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 1, 26–27. It may not, however, regulate contributions simply to reduce the amount of money in politics, or to restrict the political participation of some in order to enhance the relative influence of others. See, e.g., Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett, 564 U. S. ___, ___.

The New York Times editorial castigating the opinion offered the dissent,

The Supreme Court on Wednesday continued its crusade to knock down all barriers to the distorting power of money on American elections. Continue reading →

Alas, I’m not in Orlando, the city born of fantasy in a bipolar state whose claim to fame is warmth and swamps, and so I won’t be able to share in the glow of finally being among those who share low self-esteem and the need to surround themselves with others who pray they can persuade the fools of the legal profession to loosen their mighty grip on their few remaining dollars.  But I’m with you in spirit and want to offer my best wishes for a fabulous few days.

For three days, you can call yourselves professionals.  Not in the sense of having survived a course of education designed to provide you with knowledge and ability to perform a task, nor in the sense of having a code of ethics, the violation of which will send you to the pokey and prevent your bulk emails offering your services to the unsuspecting, or even in the sense that you’ve been tested and found sufficiently competent to take responsibility for others.  No, not that kind of professional. The kind of professional that allows you to believe, against all odds, reason and the laws of physics, that you are worthy of respect. Continue reading →

For those criminal defense lawyers whose attitude toward pre-trial motions is to make sure they change all the names before submitting their pro forma papers, take the time out of your empty life to read the memorandum in support filed by Josh Dratel on behalf of his client, Ross Ulbricht.

Ulbricht was the man behind Silk Road, alleged to be

an “underground website” allegedly “designed to enable users across the world to buy and sell illegal drugs and other illicit goods and services anonymously and outside the reach of law enforcement.”

It’s terribly evil, because all the reports about it when the crypto-challenged learned of its existence from the media following Ulbricht’s arrest said so.  A kinder description would be the eBay for those with mad computer skilz outside the control of government. Continue reading →

California may have been an early adopter of medical marijuana, but the nice folks who have their hands on the wheel in Fresno don’t see what that has to do with them.  While the state law permits the growth of medical marijuana, it also allowed localities to regulate its cultivation, which is a hole big enough to drive a Mack truck through.  Fresno figured it out.

Via KFSN-TV in Fresno:

Fresno narcotics officers have been called out to more than a dozen properties in the past two days, where marijuana was growing in backyards, shanty’s or garage enclosures. Complaints from neighbors have come from all over town, from McKinley and Cedar to Willow and Nees.

Narcotics Detective Mike Brogdon says the complaints multiplied. Continue reading →

Criminal law tends to draw an odd assortment of interested folks, which is reflected in the comments to posts here which range from brilliant and incisive to utterly idiotic.  As regular readers know, I try to weed out the worst comments, the ones I feel are dangerously wrong or misguided (remember, this is a law blog, and non-lawyers may read something and believe they can rely on its accuracy, to their grave detriment) or sufficiently offensive and annoying that I decide to make it disappear.

Some think this is part of what makes SJ work. Some do not.  Some do except when they are on the receiving end of a spanking, where I go from being their hero to the zero in a blink.  Volenti non fit injuria. except for them. Continue reading →

It may not be among the most common reasons for a car stop, but it happens often enough to raise again.  Officers driving with the windows of their cruiser down, smell marijuana and, upon that basis, stop a car.  It’s been raised innumerable times around the country, often being the subject of ridicule at the ridiculousness of the claim.

But other times, the judge does what Norfolk Circuit Judge Everett Martin did:

Officer Robert Frenier testified he was driving in the 3700 block of E. Princess Anne Road on Dec. 7 when he smelled marijuana through his patrol car’s vents. He said he and two other officers in his vehicle believed the smell was coming from the Dodge Neon in front of them.

“I don’t find it inherently incredible,” Martin said before finding the stop was legal. “I find it quite believable.” Continue reading →

Much as I thought I was done with discussion stemming from the “dirty old man” post, I was sent a comment posted at Nita Farahanny’s flavor which made me very sad, and compels me to discuss it one more (and hopefully last) time.

By a commenter who calls himself Nathan_M (and unfortunately, the WaPo lacks a means to link directly to a comment):

Wow, Scott Greenfield’s comment to the woman who was sexually assaulted at professional events is appalling.

If a client wanted advice on how to deal with a situation like that any competent lawyer  would provide something very similar to Kateality’s [sic] analysis. She has essentially nothing to gain and potentially a lot to lose form making a public allegation, which is admittedly unfair but we deal with the world as it is and not as it ought to be. Continue reading →

Radley Balko at WaPo provides us with yet another tale of monumental and pointless harm at the hands of a cop whose need for mindless control exceeded anything resembling human thought.

Police critic Will Grigg stitches together a series of news stories to construct an infuriating narrative from Utah.

When Mark Byrge had a minor traffic accident on a street in American Fork, Utah, he did the “responsible” thing by reporting the incident to the police. He has never stopped paying for that mistake.

Within a few minutes of receiving Mark’s call, a pair of American Fork cops arrived to document the damage to Byrge’s delivery truck from a collision with a tree branch that protruded into the street. Mark was cooperative – and he put up no resistance when the lead officer, Andres Gianfelice, placed him under arrest for an outstanding traffic ticket (as well as citing him for not providing proof of insurance).

That Gianfelice felt it necessary to arrest the guy who was doing right was bad enough. What follows, however, is where it turns into mindless insanity: Continue reading →

In a New York Times op-ed. Yale lawprof Bruce Ackerman argues that “dignity is a constitutional principle.”  It’s a provocative stand-alone notion, as it’s hard to argue against the notion of “dignity.”  Which is also why arguments so artfully phrased are so dangerous.

What is dignity? The dictionary definition says it’s “the state or quality of being worthy of honor or respect,” two more words to which we cling dear, and damn fine words at that.  Would it be controversial to say that all human beings are worthy of dignity?  Of course not.

And yet, what about pedophiles?  Well, not them. Or revenge porn purveyors?  Not them either. Murderers?  Certainly not them. But then, they’re all human beings.  But they’re human and worthy of dignity, right?  Well, some pigs are more worthy than others.

Ackerman’s op-ed begins with gay marriage, and goes through the rhetoric of racial equality, and then circles back: Continue reading →

This post has absolutely nothing to do with law, police, courts or décolletage. If that’s your only interest here, run away. Fly like the wind. There’s nothing here for you.

The wedding of the son of a dear friend of Dr. SJ and I is coming, and so I set out to find our wedding gift for him. We’ve known him since birth, and he’s a wonderful young man. His parents are great people, with whom we’ve shared good times and bad. When it came time to pick out a gift, there was no question what to get.  Antique sterling silver candlesticks.

Huh?  Is the groom into sterling candlesticks? Continue reading →