I've been reading the press reports about Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's jury selection in Boston with a growing sense of ambivalence. Tsarnaev, you will recall, is the surviving suspect in the 2013 bombing at the Boston Marathon.
I have for decades been opposed to the death penalty, and the specter of the federal government's insisting on a death in a state that has long eschewed capital punishment is chilling.
What of the great laboratory of "federalism," where the states are free to tinker with justice, and to teach the feds a thing or two? This prosecution looks perilously close to Big...
January 27, 2015
Power, Moises Naim tells us, is everywhere on the decline: whether in the realm of corporations, the effective military reach of the state, or religion—leaders don't have the unquestioned clout they once enjoyed. This presents great opportunities for innovation and creativity. It also presents tremendous peril in that our ability to respond collectively to such challenges as climate change is diminished.
What does the decline of power mean for the courts? Naim, a former editor of Foreign Policy magazine, doesn't address that issue. Consider fully informed juries.
Power,...
January 24, 2015
Dying scares me less than suffering. Perhaps that’s because I’ve reached an age at which I attend more funerals than weddings. But I can imagine nothing more terrifying than to be forced to suffer. So my heart goes out to Cassandra C., the young 17-year-old kidnapped by the state and forced, against her will, to undergo chemotherapy.
Yes, I said kidnapped.
The word was chosen with care, and is calculated to rankle Joette Katz and her colleagues at the Department of Children and Families. The law may be on the department’s side as to Cassandra, but so much the...
January 24, 2015
Jesus wept at the gravesite of Lazarus, the Gospel of John reports. Theologians debate the meaning of those tears. Some take it as source of sorrow over the tyranny of death, a master over us all. Others see it as his frustration over the blindness of those who failed to recognize his divine mission and power as son of God.
Whatever the source of these tears, the gospel reports Lazarus walked out of the tomb. Jesus had worked a miracle, bringing the dead back to life.
A depiction of Mohammed’s tears appears to promise nothing but more death. This week’s cover of the...
January 14, 2015
January 11, 2015
I've never really thought of Dwight Eisenhower, the 34th president of the United States, as a prophet. The former general, politician and university...
January 2, 2015
The gods smiled on our clients in 2014, and for that reason alone, I will count the past year a success: On behalf of all five of the lawyers at the...
December 31, 2014
Criminal trials often demonstrate a truth the novelist George Eliot knew: “People are almost always better than their neighbors think they...
December 31, 2014
The deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner offer a chance to reconsider the law on police use of deadly force. Under current Fourth Amendment law,...
December 24, 2014
German and British troops laid down their arms on Christmas Eve, 1914, in the bloody fields of the Western front during World War I. Ordered to...
December 24, 2014
Ferguson, Mo., state's attorney Robert McCulloch admits he presented evidence he knew to be false to the grand jury considering whether to charge...