Legal Commentary

The Detroit Free Press reports this morning on the continuing debacle involving the Detroit City Council's attempt to remove Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick as a result of a series of alleged improprieties while in office.

The city's Law Department (raising the question, for another time, just who is the client) has hired Wayne State Law Professor Robert Sedler (left), who is filing a lawsuit on the mayor's behalf, claiming, as I understand it, that Robert's Rules of Order (the real ones, not Professor Sedler's) require a two-thirds and not a majority vote to approve removal proceedings.

The council's independent lawyer has obviously been bamboozled by the fact he's litigating with a professor (Professor Selder holds the Gibbs Chair in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties) into thinking that it's a philosophy department faculty workshop.  According to the Free Press, attorney William Goodman "called that argument 'hogwash' and derided Sedler's news conference as 'a bunch of woofing.'"