I have an assignment for an aspiring historian: Locate the moment in American history when ordinary people began to fear one another more than they feared the potential of government to abuse its power. I am sure the moment exists. I see signs of it everywhere. Consider the case of how a national identification card reflects this redirection of our fears.
We are living in the world George Orwell wrote about, a place in which Big Brother not just watches, but controls the ability of ordinary people to take care of themselves. Requiring a national identification card, or requiring that...
January 10, 2012
When I watch Orly Tatiz and Georgia State Representative Mark Hatfield, a Republican, explain why they think President Barack Obama’s name should be struck from the Georgia primary ballot I am at once inspired with a wish that the South had won the Civil War: The species of idiocy espoused by these two inspires such revulsion that I wish they lived in another country. But we are joined at the Constitutional hip. So I call these two birthers fellow citizens, and I marvel that anyone in their right mind could waste their time on the nonsense they espouse.
The two will be on...
January 8, 2012
Murder-for-hire preoccupied me at week’s end. It’s not that I was in the market for a killer, mind you. But I’ve defended people accused of the crime from time-to-time, and every once in awhile I get a heads up from law enforcement that someone has put a price on my head. No, at week’s end, the issue was front and center because a defendant stood in open court and boasted that he had put a contract out on a former client of mine.
It is easy to dismiss the talk of a person who boasts to the world that he wants someone dead. Talk is, after all, cheap, and...
January 7, 2012
The course I recall best from law school was Carol Weisbrod’s family law class at the University of Connecticut. At the time, I did not appreciate it. In fact, I thought it down-right bizarre, even offensive. You see, she used science fiction as part of the pedagogical material. At the time, I wondered what that had to do with the precise metes and bounds of the law, and with the tidy world of justice. Now I think she was onto something. Reason is overrated.
The rawest of passions are on display in the family courts. I suspect that is because any divorce is one part murder, one...
January 5, 2012
January 3, 2012
I’ve often wished that the general public could see what goes on behind closed doors in the criminal courts. All that is generally reported is...
January 2, 2012
I expect the trial of the year will be United States of America v. Julian Assange. Of course, Assange has not yet been charged. He is not even in the...
January 1, 2012
President James Garfield did not have to die. It appears as if the medical care he received killed him. Even so, Charles Julius Guiteau fired the...
December 31, 2011
I will count 2011 a good year, despite the dire economy. It was a year of focusing, getting lean, re-examining priorities. As 2011 ends, I am...
December 27, 2011
Asking five law school professors to debate how best to educate lawyers is like asking a bartender which alcohol best promotes abstinence: So long as...
December 23, 2011
I think I might have joined the American Bar Association many years ago, when I had no idea what lawyering involved. But the desire to belong soon...