Blog Posts

I’m noticing something like a new rhythm as the weeks roll into the first month of COVID-19 pandemic. It seems that about once a week, I run out of courage, and collapse into a puddle of something approaching tears. Today was such a day.
For the most part,...

It is only a matter of days until COVID-19 takes root in one of Connecticut’s prisons, infecting both guards and inmates. The results will be catastrophic. Inmates and prisoner activists are experimenting with lawsuits and administrative requests to provide relief before disaster...

Bill Gates for president?
Why not? He’s the perfect choice in a crisis. He’s the functional equivalent of a Roman dictator. No, I am not talking about Nero, or Caligula, or even Julius Caesar.
Think Cincinnatus – the 6th century BCE...

I’m not sure what the new normal will look like for litigators in the wake of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, but several things seem obvious enough.
First, I doubt seriously that any juries will be selected until sometime in 2021.
Why? No one is...

Things are tense in the prisons. As the COVID-19 virus sweeps across the land, there are calls to release prisoners, and concerns about the welfare of prisoners, guards and the communities in which the prisons are located.
Have we warehoused men and women in fertile...

We’re forced, suddenly, to make explicit what we do all the time – make cost-benefit decisions about how to allocate scarce resources. Economists call such choices decisions about marginal utility. What value do we get for the next dollar we spend? What do we forego by...

Lost amid the chaos of preparing for, and coping with, the Covid-19 pandemic is an honest assessment of what to do with prison inmates. At least it appears that way in Connecticut, where, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, about 16,000 people are imprisoned. (I’ve heard...

For years, I’ve been haunted by the message of a slender volume written in 2014. Only China survived the challenges imposed by climate change. It did so because it alone had the ability to mobilize itself against the threat.
Western societies, western...

Have you noticed something different about CNN in the past few weeks?
Sure, its round-the-clock coverage of the COVID-19 coverage is repetitive, urgent and filled with expert opinion and commentary. You’d expect nothing less from the cable network. I know I can...

The president has spoken, sort of, announcing hours ago on Twitter that he is considering a quarantine order for portions of New York, Connecticut and New Jersey. I write from Connecticut, an easy drive from New York City. My message is simple: Don’t do it, Mr. President.
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