Blog Posts

I write today to thank on old friend for teaching more about the practice of law in a single moment than I learned in three years of law school. His name is Jon Travis Brooks. I am not sure where he is now. We were students together decades ago. One of his passions was diplomatic history. His...

New Haven’s Mayor John DeStefano took to the air waves this morning to defend the City’s actions yesterday on the New Haven Green. He’s defending his police chief, Dean Esserman, against charges that Esserman jumped the gun in efforts to evict protestors from the Green. I take...

I stood in a public place yesterday and watched two tearful parents say goodbye to an American hero. The young man was leaving for a year. Odds are, he will return safe and sound. But the world is a dangerous place. There are no guarantees. They were sending him into harm’s way.
His...

I am profoundly ambivalent about American history. We tell ourselves that ours is a history of inclusion, yet we gloss over the acts of theft and genocide that drove the natives off the land. And never mind the periodic bouts of xenophobia from which we suffer. Or the tragic history of slavery and...

I have long grown accustomed to the facts of life known to all criminal defense lawyers: little people get run over and crushed in court. When a defendant errs, he is prosecuted, sanctioned, held accountable. When the government errs, an exception to the rule defining the error saves the day. We...

I’ve never fully understood what universities are seeking to accomplish with their various honor codes. Yes, it is important to teach students the values of citizenship in a community of scholars. But aren’t transparency and a sense of fair play also important?
Every so often,...

Friends and colleagues profess confusion: Why would I do it, why cross a line that seems to separate good from evil? Some are angered: How could I do it? One woman wrote publicly to tell me how disappointed she was in me: I did not take her case against members of the East Haven Police Department,...

I am not sure what is going on in the Connecticut Office of Adult Probation lately, but my telephone has been ringing off the hook. Until recently, probationers appear to have been given a fair amount of freedom to travel interstate. All of a sudden, there’s been a crack down. Folks who were...

Here are some excerpts from the latest star on Twitter. A prize to the person who can name the clerk. My bet? There is no such clerk. Someone is just having a whole lot of fun.

Article III Clerk
@ArticleIIIClerk United States
Current law clerk for a Senior U.S....

There was much relief, and a dark, morbid sort of celebration, in New Haven the other day among those craving the death of Stephen Haves and Joshua Komisrajevsky, the villains in what will forever be known as "the Cheshire case." Both men were tried and convicted. Mr. Hayes has been sentenced to...