I understand that times are hard for lawyers statewide. Receipts are down, the public defender’s offices of the state are swamped, and judges are concerned lest the judicial system be capsized by a tsunami of pro se litigants. We aren’t immune from the ebbs and lows of the business cycle after all.
But what I do not understand is a rigid adherence to empty form. I take special aim this week at Martin Zeldis, the Chief of Legal Services for the state’s Division of Public Services. I am not sure what has changed in his office in recent months, but something has. A...
March 10, 2011
"It would be a disgrace to us if amongst us men should burn a rattlesnake or a mad dog. The badness of the victim is not an element in the case at all. Torture and burning are forbidden, not because the victim is not bad enough, but because we are too good.... It is evident, however, the public opinion is not educated up to this level."
William Graham Sumner
So begins the preface to Walter White’s, Rope & Faggot: A Biography of Judge Lynch. The book was first published by Alfred A. Knopf...
March 7, 2011
If you cannot imagine enjoying, of even finding wise counsel, in a book recommending a return to something like polytheism, you are not alone. I have difficulty enough contending with the lingering specter of monotheism: one god, or, more precisely, the loss of any sense of one God, is heartache enough.
But something about King Menelaus’s admiration for his wife Helen has always intrigued me. At a feast in honor of Telemachus, Odysseus’s son, Menelaus listens with rapt appreciation as his wife, Helen, the very Helen of Troy, recounts her passionate embrace of Paris, and...
March 7, 2011
The law is, and always shall be, a late-comer to any crisis. By the time legal doctrines and rules evolve, take shape and respond to a crisis, the crisis is often passed. We lawyers are forced sometimes to look to other professions to learn more about what is going on in our own midst. I read this morning’s front-page piece in The New York Times on psychiatry, "Talk Doesn’t Pay, So Psychiatry Turns Instead to Drug Therapy," with a shock of recognition, followed by a sinking, despondent sort of feeling.
A man walks into his psychiatrist’s office, He wants to talk...
March 6, 2011
March 4, 2011
I am lucky I came of age many years ago. Were I a college student today, I am sure I would be expelled, or perhaps even imprisoned. College was a...
March 4, 2011
I was in New Haven the other day, crossing the street near one of the courthouses.
"Gimme your money," a voice said. He was young, black, and...
March 3, 2011
Christopher Murphy wants to be a United States Senator, so it is understandable that he will tilt at windmills from time to time. But his poking at...
March 1, 2011
Just how tight is the market for legal fees just now? Tight enough that some private defense lawyers are complaining that too many defendants are...
February 28, 2011
I don’t write about it much here because, frankly, I don’t get to spend much time at it, but one of my avocations is as bookseller. My...
February 28, 2011
I suspect that my days as a country lawyer are numbered. The economy is that bad. Although I have only anecdotal information to support the following...