Another life rule: Never pass up an opportunity to quote George Santayana.

Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

The legal bubble burst in 2007, when talk of New York Biglaw to $190,000 changed to will Biglaw survive? Since then, things haven’t recovered back to 2007 levels, so the Future of Reinvent the New Normal of Law crowd have indulged in a laundry list of changes supported by empty rhetoric, prognostications of flying cars with ABS (the brakes, not the Alternative Business Structures used to conceal the unlawful practice of law), and people with no institutional memory deciding that it all makes sense to them.

At the Wall Street Journal Law Blog, however, Jacob Gershman was struck by the analogy between what happened with dentists and what has been happening with lawyers over the past six years. Continue reading →

Far be it for some northerner to question the choices made by the fine people who hum Sweet Home, Alabama.  If you people want to prove Neil Young right, knock yourselves out.  But Yankee-entitlement allows me to get down on my fellow New Yorker, Nino Scalia, and so I shall.

What the hell is wrong with you, Nino?

The Supreme Court of the United States denied cert in Woodward v. Alabama, where a jury, by 8-4 vote, decided not to kill Mario Woodward for murdering police officer Keith Houts.  In most places, that would be the end of it. But not Alabama. Continue reading →

When the Supremes decided Padilla v. Kentucky, that non-citizen defendants were entitled to be advised of the immigration consequences of a plea before deciding to take it, they answered the pressing question of whose job it was to do so with the anticipated “dump it on the defense lawyer.”  After all, it was a burden, and who better to burden?

In a trio of cases, the New York Court of Appeals has held that immigration consequences are no longer “collateral” to a plea (which apparently suggests that somebody in Albany finally put away the pocket part that includes Padilla), but rather integral to the decision to cop out.

Our resolution of this issue is grounded in the right to due process of law, the bedrock of our constitutional order. That guarantee, most plain in its defense of liberty yet complex in application, requires us to strike a careful balance between the freedom of the individual and the orderly administration of government. Continue reading →

What do the following people have in common?

Retired Federal Judges

Robert J. Cindrich was appointed to the federal bench in 1994 and served as a United States District Court Judge for the Western District of Pennsylvania for ten years.

David H. Coar was appointed to the federal bench in 1994 and served as a United States District Court Judge for the Northern District of Illinois for sixteen years.

William Royal Furgeson, Jr. was appointed to the federal bench in 1994 and served as a United States District Court Judge for Western District of Texas and the Northern District of Texas for nineteen years. Continue reading →

Years ago, before the world wide web was even a twinkle in Tim Berners-Lee’s eye, clients would come to my office and tell me what happened during their interaction with police.

“Why did you do that?” I would ask.

They would explain to me some variation of the “lady down the street” told them that’s what they should do, because that was the law.  The law.

But now we have the web, the internets, all the accumulated information of humankind at our fingertips, and surely with unfettered access to every statute, decision, article, post, commentary, everyone now knows better?  The law, now open 24/7 for your reading pleasure. Continue reading →

Jim Dwyer, who is the closest writer to Jimmy Breslin around, admitted in the New York Times to committing a crime.

Walking down Eighth Avenue a few weeks ago, I made sure my backpack was fully zipped shut. Inside was a modest stash of pot, bought just an hour or so earlier. A friend knew someone in that world, and after an introduction, then a quiet, discreet meeting, I was on my way to the subway. Never before had I walked through Midtown Manhattan with it on my person. There were four cookies in vacuum-sealed pouches — “edibles” is the technical term — and then a few pinches of what was described as “herb.” Continue reading →

Four days after James Holmes shot up an Aurora, Colorado movie theater, Fox News reporter Jana Winter revealed Holmes’ private diary showing him to be utterly insane.  Had the prosecution accepted Holmes’ plea of guilty, this would have been a footnote to the story, but this was big and guilty wasn’t good enough. They needed a 13th dead man, and so the case went on.

At first, the government demanded that Winter reveal her source, as somebody clearly did the dirty by revealing evidence to a reporter in the face of a gag order. But things changed, when it became clear that the private diary was disclosed by a “corrupt detective” whose credulity will be central to the defense at trial.  The defense may not have much, but the identity of who the liar within law enforcement may be is as critical a piece of evidence for the defense as there is. Continue reading →

In a troubling reaction to a legal argument made against a Massachusetts law, that shooting “upskirt” photos is protected by the First Amendment, a lawprof abandoned thought to emotion.  Via Gideon at A Public Defender:

In what has become a hallmark of the site, Above the Law yesterday “posted” about a fascinating Massachusetts case and managed to distill it down for their LCD readership: man argues that upskirt photography is protected by the First Amendment.

That led a LawProf Jessica Smith to redistribute the same article with a comment appended:

No bounds to zealous advocacy? MT @atlblog: Lawyer argues for Constitutional right to be pervert & take upskirt pics http://t.co/WjRnYGE3bb

— Jessica Smith (@ProfJessieSmith) November 7, 2013 Continue reading →

Proposition 6 in the last New York election proposed to raise the retirement age for some New York judges from 70 to 80 years of age.  It lost. Well, not just “lost,” but was slaughtered by a margin of 61% to 39%.  Chief Judge Lippman raised the proposition for sound reasons, the need for judges to handle the caseload crushing the system and to end the anachronism of a relatively young retirement age and the only retirement age imposed on any government official.

That rule is out of date, Judge Lippman says, enacted just after the Civil War, long before the age of modern medicine, when merely living to 65 was considered a feat. The age limit has deprived the New York courts of great legal minds in their prime, he says, among them former Chief Judge Judith Kaye. Continue reading →

At the Careerist, Vivia Chen posts of a survey that some might see as evidence that men aren’t just greedy, blood-sucking opportunists who want only to accumulate vast wealth to prove their masculine worth.

According to a newly released survey by Citi and LinkedIn, more men than women place a higher priority on love, marriage, kids, and the whole domestic kit and caboodle. Yup, you heard right: Men are the true guardians of family values!

If you detected just the faintest hint of sarcasm in there, your meter is working perfectly. Continue reading →