Blog Posts

Word that U.S. District Judge Janet Arterton will soon take senior status makes this a good time to ask Senators Richard Blumenthal and Christopher Murphy why it is that no criminal defense lawyer ever makes the cut for nomination to the federal bench. It's been so long since a defender was...

As read to the Planning and Zoning Commission Wednesday night:
My name is Norm Pattis. I live in Bethany, and I also own Whitlock Farm Booksellers, located at 20 Sperry Road. I have lived in Bethany with my wife for the past ten years. I am a newcomer, still falling in love with what...

Massachusetts Judge Joseph Johnson has imposed a gag order on the parents of Justina Pelletier, preventing them from raising public questions about why their daughter remains in custody in the Bay State. It is not at all clear to me why the parents have not contested this gag order. Perhaps they...

"The lord is my shepherd; I shall not want."
Oh, that it were true, that there were a shepherd to stand beside me in the well of this court, when I want so much, so often, and with such desperation. I have become the good shepherd to the man beside me. He has placed his entire trust in me,...

We call trials a search for the truth, but the fact remains that what juries see at trial is often only the tip of the iceberg. Just beneath the surface, a massive and sometimes ugly reality supports the public display of testimony presented in open court. This is especially so in criminal cases,...

We’re awash in lawyers. There are roughly 40 of them for every 10,000 people in the United States. Connecticut ranks third among the states with about 58 per 10,000 people. Only New York and Massachusetts have a greater concentration. The District of Columbia, not a state, but a universe unto...

POSTED: 08/28/13, 6:09 PM EDT |



We’re awash in lawyers. There are roughly 40 of them for every 10,000 people in the United States. Connecticut ranks third among the states with about 58 per 10,000 people. Only New York and Massachusetts have a greater...

“[T]he great emancipatory gains for human freedom have not been the result of orderly, institutional procedures but of disorderly, unpredictable, spontaneous action cracking open the social order from below.” Thus concludes James C. Scott’s brief celebration of the...

“Cowardly. “Evil.” “Beneath contempt.” I heard these words over and over and over again in the days following this week’s bombing at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, an attack which left, at last count, three people dead and more than 100...

I spent the other day reading a book my wife gave me for Christmas, Dave Eggers’ Zeitoun. It’s the report of one family’s ordeal in the wake of Katrina, the hurricane that devastated New Orleans in 2005. Although the book was written in 2009, and won awards, it escaped my...