Blog Posts

The Sunday New York Times nailed what’s wrong with legal education in this country: The legal academy educates lawyers by long exposure to professors who don’t practice law. The chattering class teaches theory, not practice. Mere practitioners are scorned. We have nothing to teach. We...

Just where do I apply for my First Amendment license? It turns out you need one in Connecticut if you want to get a complete view of the evidence in the Joshua Komisarjevsky case.
Connecticut prosecutors hope to persuade a jury of twelve that Komisarjevsky should be put to death for his...

I sat down to lunch the other day several tables removed from a gaggle of middle-age white guys in expensive suits. The folks I was meeting arrived late, so I had a chance to listen in on their conversation. Here is an annotated report.
"Have you been following the protest on Wall...

It comes as a surprise to many people to learn that the federal courts do not recognize a right to privacy as a matter of constitutional law. But it is true. In large part, that is because at the time the Constitution was drafted, few would have thought it necessary to include such a right in the...

Twice in twenty-four hours I recently drew criticism from folks I respect. So I am doing a little soul-searching.
I was on a panel in New Haven sponsored by the American Civil Liberties Union discussing the challenge new technologies pose to privacy. One of the panelists was a fellow...

I spent a lot of time this past summer studying the behavior of starlings, and trying to figure out what makes instantaneous communication among a large group possible. Hundreds of thousands birds can fly in massive, non-choreographed, but seemingly coordinated and breathtakingly beautiful...

I have, from time to time, been known to lose my cool in court. I’ve fumed at judges, witnesses, even marshals. On one occasion I was sent abruptly to the lockup for words spoken to a marshal by a judge who thought due process was a board game. Courtrooms make me tense. There’s a lot on...

If you don’t think race and class matter in policing, consider the case of Denise Nappier in Hartford, Connecticut. She was stopped and detained by the police the other night for driving a nice car in a housing project. She is a woman of color. The cops claimed that she could not produce...

I operate on what I call the first-date rule when it comes to potential clients. It cost me a client the other day. I am blaming an unlikely matchmaker.
The first-date rule operates in the following manner: A client is referred to you. You meet the client, or speak with them on the...

I generally avoid writing about the so-called "blawgosphere" – the universe of bloggers who write about the law. There’s an inbred quality to such writing that destroys interest in the subject matter. It is said that those who can’t do teach. What of the cast of lawyers who write...