A friend of mine likens the publication of a book to the birth of a child, a peak experience that yields powerful feelings. I’ve yet to hold my newest baby, but last night I noticed that Amazon now lists it. Taking Back the Courts can be pre-ordered; it is set for release later this week.
I blasted a note about it all on Twitter last night, and have received several nice notes, both public and private. There is a strange sort of helplessness that accompanies the launch of a book. It feels less like the birth of a child than sending a loved one off to school for the very first...
June 7, 2011
Our youngest son is mid-way through medical school. At dinner the other night, he and my wife were discussing the controversy surrounding neckties in hospitals. It turns out that physicians, though scrupulous about washing their hands between patients, aren’t quite as careful with their ties. A wagging tie can transfer bacterial infection from one bed, one patient, to another. Hospitals are very dangerous places for sick people, he reported gravely. He is considering bow ties as professional attire.
I listened to this conversation as I do so many between he and my wife: they are...
June 6, 2011
Even non-lawyers know about hearsay. The word pops up often in casual conversation, as in, "that’s just hearsay." Folks want to dismiss such statements as carrying little weight.
The lawyer’s definition of hearsay is as follows: "An out-of-court statement made for the truth of the matter asserted." Thus a man walks in all agog. "I’ve heard they’re selling cheese on the dark side of the Moon," he says. That statement cannot be used to prove that there is a cheese sale. It just isn’t reliable. What he heard outside of court, that there is a sale on the...
June 5, 2011
Engagement is the key to success for those looking to make a lasting impression in the electronic world. Link to others, comment on their comments, talk nice about them in what you write, do all this and, well ... what exactly? I’ve never quite understood the dynamics of it all. What’s more, I am deeply suspicious of the on-line "community" and its emerging norms of conformity. No mob scares me quite so much as a self-righteous mob. I guess I sacrifice readers by not playing by the rules. Alas.
So I was intrigued my a lawsuit filed by a young lawyer named Joseph Rakofsky....
June 5, 2011
June 4, 2011
I first saw John Edwards speak in New Haven many years ago, the first time he took his presidential ambitions out for a walk in New England. There...
June 2, 2011
Preventive detention. Read the words. Repeat them aloud. Say them louder. Write them on a pad of paper. Then scrawl them on a piece of cardboard with...
June 2, 2011
It actually felt like summer the other day: a long, languid sort of day with sunshine, no place to go, and fields humming with life. After a winter...
May 29, 2011
I recall a few fist fights when I was a kid that had me angry enough to kill someone. Indeed, had a gun been readily at hand, I just might have...
May 26, 2011
I was stunned into something approaching silence the other night as I listened to the audience at a community group meeting in New Haven rage about...
May 21, 2011
I don’t know what level of trickery, or simple intellectual dishonesty, permits the Senate to accuse some judges, but not others, of...