Criminal Law

369. "Trust us"

Posted on November 02, 2008
California's Proposition 5, which would do all sorts of strange things to the state's Penal Code, changing the way Californians actually live, has predictably been overshadowed by Prop 8, which has only symbolic importance for its most ardent, passionate and aroused supporters...

368. "I have not been convicted"

Posted on October 31, 2008
Senator Ted Stevens declared yesterday in a debate that "I have not been convicted.”  And never mind that he was convicted of seven felonies. I can think of two explanations for his logic: he's clinically insane; or, he's so confident his convictions will be reversed on appeal that he considers them as good as reversed already...

367. Life's a Blitch

Posted on October 25, 2008
On Wednesday a Tennessee judge, Ronald E. Darby, was indicted. He sits on the court of General Sessions - what used to be called JP court, hearing misdemeanor and small claims cases - in Benton County, up in the northwest part of the state, not so very far from the southern tip of Illinois...

366. What's the matter with Minnesota?

Posted on October 23, 2008
How can a state that produced Scott Fitzgerald, Giants in the Earth and my father produce politicians like these? First the Congresswoman. Now the Minnesota Supreme Court candidate. First there's Congresswoman Michele Bachmann. Her remarks about Obama and other Congress members got the press...

To access this complete feed in the blog feed reader login or register for free.

365. Incoherence watch

Posted on October 18, 2008
I recently ran across the profile of the eponymous hero of the Brennan Center for Justice, which begins:Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. is universally regarded as one of the most influential and liberal justices of the second half of the 20th century...

364. Fifth Circuit sleaze

Posted on October 11, 2008
This blog has recently been sadly remiss in documenting the many judges in this great land who put their reputations on the line - and, oftentimes, succeed is successfully blowing them up - merely for the honor of a mention here.My friends, I offer no excuses but when elected I will immediately fire somebody for it...

363. We deserve better

Posted on October 04, 2008
A long, long article in last Sunday's Times Magazine began: "Every generation gets the Constitution that it deserves."  That, I guess, explains Plessy v. Ferguson and the whole legal structure of Jim Crow.  The article, entitled "When Judges Make Foreign Policy," continues with the following helpful summary of attitudes about international law:One view, closely associated with the Bush administration, begins with the observation that law, in the age of modern liberal democracy, derives its legitimacy from being enacted by elected representatives of the people...

362. Mere reality

Posted on September 30, 2008
On Monday morning in Tijuana, 12 bodies were found piled up on the street.  The grisly discovery capped four days of violence that has shaken the sprawling Tijuana metropolitan area and forced Baja California state officials to plead for more federal police to help control the city...

361. Normalization

Posted on September 29, 2008
Tanae and her cousin, Mishay Williams (Mishay), were standing on the porch outside Tanae's house.  [FN3. Tanae was 14 years old and Mishay 12 years old at the time of trial.] ...  Tanae's 16-year-old brother, Deron Calhoun (Calhoun), and their mother walked to an ice cream truck at the corner of 41st and Naomi Streets...

360. Do the hustle

Posted on September 28, 2008
Okay, here's a new one on me.  I wonder how long this sort of thing has been going on: Two Rhode Island lawyers, including the brother of Providence's mayor, and a co-conspirator were sentenced in U.S. District Court in Boston for conspiracy to obstruct justice, obstruction of justice and making false statements...

359. Best shot

Posted on September 26, 2008
The Sixth Circuit recently issued a routine little opinion, U.S. v. Mayberry.  I'm not sure why they bothered to publish it.  I guess it says something new about federal sentencing (all I know about the subject is that it would be unconstitutional if any state did the same)...

358. Instant evolution's gonna get you

Posted on September 25, 2008
A few weeks ago, the comic strip Pearls Before Swine - written by a recovering lawyer, Stephen Pastis - featured Pig, Rat and Goat standing behind a table or wall or something, all looking the same way.  (In Peanuts,  the wall had stones and they rested their elbows on it, but then Schulz hadn't gone to law school...

Big changes coming

Posted on September 22, 2008
I recently signed a contract for a second book to be published in 2009.  (Here's information about the first.)  The newer new book, to be called For the Sake of Argument: Life in the Law, will be published by Kaplan Publishing, the trade-book division of the big test-prep company...

We're all going on a summer holiday ...

Posted on July 18, 2008
... vigilantes can look for Joel Jacobsen in Archangel, Qom and Santiago.  Back next week.

357. Disposable people

Posted on July 13, 2008
I've always thought of the criminal law as a reflection of society's attitude toward the weak.  And even if you weren't weak before you were attacked, there's nothing quite like a bullet to weaken you.  At least in the Western states, with the "no duty to retreat" ethos, our courts are gung-ho about encouraging people to take care of it themselves...

356. In the same old voice

Posted on July 05, 2008
It's interesting to note how much a reader reveals about him- or herself by leaving a comment at this blog.  For instance, the "difference" feminists, inspired by Carol Gilligan's Ina Different Voice, have taught us that heartfelt expressions of emotion are characteristically feminine, and yet the pseudonymous comment left at post 304, by far the most emotionally-naked ever left on the site, somehow strikes me as written by a male...

355. The misuses of history

Posted on July 02, 2008
"Historians have long winced at the crude ways that literary scholars and others have wrenched writings out of their historical contexts for aesthetic and other present-minded purposes."  That's from Gordon S. Wood's collection of book reviews (or, really, essays using book reviews as take-off points), The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History, which is far more entertaining than any description can make it sound...

354. Almost unfair

Posted on June 29, 2008
The end of the Supreme Court's term had me feeling a strange and unexpected emotion: pity.  These nine people seem so badly out of their depth that criticizing them seems almost unfair, like making fun of your local public-access-TV host and perennial candidate for office...

Whatever Happened to Justice?

Posted on June 28, 2008
Please pardon the Lemon Pledge smell, but this blog had gotten dusty.  I've been away on a top-secret mission but now that the deal has been announced in Publishers Marketplace and the advance check has been deposited, even a lawyer such as myself, with a lawyer's steel-tripwire readiness to anticipate the absolute worst that could happen, can just about believe things are going to work out...

353. Unbalanced

Posted on April 06, 2008
While recently clearing a layer of wood-pulp debris from my office ("Don't toss that!  It might come in handy some day."), I came across a law review article by Richard D. Friedman, Framer of the current sixth amendment.  Friedman has written a few gazillion articles about the confrontation clause -- in fact, it's difficult to find a recent article about the confrontation clause that he didn't write -- but this one was published before the March, 2004 constitutional convention that amended the amendment...

352. Diminished capacities

Posted on March 30, 2008
It's time to pay another visit on Alabama Circuit Judge Stuart Dubose.  (See post 191 and post 306.)  The Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission filed a pretty spectacular complaint, but it was topped by Judge Dubose's answer -- which was then topped by the Alabama Supreme Court...

351. Legal traditions

Posted on March 20, 2008
In 2003, the Supreme Court sternly set its face against overtly racist policies in the Dallas DA's office.   It would no longer tolerate blatant racism in jury selection practices in 1963.   (See post 312.)   Yesterday the justices just as firmly went on record opposing the jury selection process in a single Louisiana trial in 1996...

350. Magical thinking

Posted on March 18, 2008
In the Davis v. Washington decision of a couple years ago (see post 127), Justice Scalia's opinion for the Supreme Court contained a footnote explaining that suppression of evidence under the sixth amendment has no deterrent effect on police officers:Police investigations themselves are, of course, in no way impugned by our characterization of their fruits as testimonial...

349. Spitzering in the sticks

Posted on March 15, 2008
Although I try to avoid focusing on parochial interests -- and, to be frank, there's something liberating about writing about people who don't have the power to revoke my license to practice my profession -- nonetheless Albuquerque's ex-Presiding Judge John Brennan has already rated a mention, thanks to his  arrest for cocaine possession...

348. Less is more, more, more

Posted on March 11, 2008
Courtesy of the always-worthwhile New York Supreme Court Criminal Term Library - I keep thinking there must be a clever pun in there somewhere; I mean, it's the name of a blog, isn't it? - here's an NPR story about privatizing the police:In the past, remote communities like this one [i...

347. Intellectual dishonesty watch

Posted on March 09, 2008
A few weeks ago I suggested, at tedious length, that the patron saint of all that is twinkly, Irish and liberal about the American judiciary appeared in public badly underdressed at certain points during his long career.  (See post 337, post 338, post 339 and post 340...

346. Constitutional algebra

Posted on March 05, 2008
During the past week I've been preoccupied with preparing a PowerPoint talk about Crawford to a training conference for victims' advocates and allied professionals.  It's not easy trying to make Crawford make sense to non-lawyers (or to lawyers, either, but then you don't need to: lawyers have been trained to accept without questioning arbitrary pronouncements from the Supreme Court)...

345. Incapacitative effect

Posted on February 24, 2008
The February 27 New Republic has a review of a book about neoconservatives that includes a passing reference to "the madmen at AEI", meaning the American Enterprise Institute.  On the same page, just one column over, is a long, meandering review by someone described as "a psychiatrist [and] a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute...

344. ABCs of judging

Posted on February 13, 2008
We met Florida's Judge Michael E. Allen in post 272.  He got in trouble with the otherwise-rational Florida Judicial Qualification Commission by poaching on its turf.  As the Commission explained in its complaint, it's unethical for a judge to let the public know about what goes behind the smooth blond wood paneling  of its appellate courts, because the judge is supposed to tell the Commission instead...

343. Judge Woody

Posted on February 11, 2008
Really, the competition for a featured place in this blog is getting out of hand.  I want to assure all my judicial readers that, whatever you might think, it's not necessary to go to the lengths of Las Vegas Judge Nicholas Anthony  Del Vecchio to get your name featured here...

Bloggers, promote your law blog by nominating your blog for inclusion in USLaw.com's Law Blog Directory and RSS Reader. Benefits described.