I read this morning's newspapers with more than the usual fascination. The sight of protestors on the streets of Egypt thrills me, even though I do not know what comes next. Reports of economic despair, a lack of social mobility and opportunity, and a regime out of touch with the demands of ordinary people are explanation enough for the unreast. I am not yet prepared to call this a revolution. Nothing has changed yet. Repressive measures can still crush this popular uprising. Indeed, the voice of those who want security above all are already to be heard. Vigilantes roam the streets. Violence...
January 30, 2011
One of the legislative geniuses in the Virginia State Senate thinks he has found a sure-fired way to reduce the cost of dealing with violent sex offenders. Rather than spend scarce funds holding them in psychiatric hospitals, he proposes a simple and more elegant solution: castration.
Senator Emmett Hanger is all about fiscal austerity and getting tough on crime. But this proposal is simply sick. It is the equivalent of a Tea Party suggestion to reduce government waste by requiring that every third lawmaker undergo a lobotomy. Government can’t do much mischief if the governors...
January 28, 2011
Governor Dannel P. Malloy should be bold in proposing reform in the state’s courts. It is not that the judiciary is opposed in principle to change. But bench and bar are inherently conservative. They cherish the status quo, even if the current manner of doing business is wasteful. Someone needs to take a leadership role. Who better than a new governor?
All it would take would be a simple piece of legislation to reduce the backlog of cases in the criminal and civil courts, cut the cost to both plaintiffs and defendants of taking a case to trial, and, as a result, improve public...
January 27, 2011
I am in the business of offering hope, but there are hopeless situations, cases in which there is nothing that can be done. Accepting that is hard for me, but it is far harder on the man or woman viewing me as their last best hope. They abide in their sorrow, while I move on to another case. I never hear the stars of the bar talk about hopelessness. The literature of the bar's elite is generally of the self-congratulatory sort, with boast of cases won, impossible odds bested.
But what do you tell a man serving what will undoubtedly be the rest of his life behind bars after a plea of...
January 24, 2011
January 22, 2011
The economic slowdown has finally trickled down to street lawyers. Clients now struggle to pay even modest fees. There is little by way of easy...
January 21, 2011
I saw another of the law’s dismal and predictable set pieces last week. As always, a trial court blessed the mess and called it justice. When...
January 17, 2011
I was born mid-way through the baby boom, that great torrent of folks tumbling from the womb between the end of the Second World War and the...
January 16, 2011
Let me see if I get this straight: Jared Loughner is an unhinged loner, a madman who, inspired by voices only he could hear, erupted in a destructive...
January 16, 2011
I hate the Texas Bar Association. You should too. So should everyone who cares about whether people accused of a crime can find a lawyer to represent...
January 15, 2011
The end came swiftly: Yesterday, Waterbury State's Attorney John Connelly resigned, ending a 30-year career as one of Connecticut's most colorful and...