The resignation of Donald Trump’s chief personal lawyer, John Dowd, brings to mind an aphorism often discussed, but rarely publicly acknowledged, among lawyers: “You can lead a client to the courthouse, but you can’t make him think.”
Dowd, it appears, grew weary of preaching prudence to a man who views impudence as among the cardinal virtues.
Trump is at the center of more than the usual firestorm of controversy. As president, he has legal counsel intended to protect the interests of the presidency as an institution. He...
March 22, 2018
Burdens of proof matter in the criminal justice and the civil justice systems. In the criminal courts, the state must prove its allegations by the law’s highest standard: proof beyond a reasonable doubt. In the civil system, there is a lesser standard, what the law call’s preponderance of the evidence. No one walks into court, by virtue of merely making an allegation, and gets special status.
Not even people accusing others of sexual assault.
Hence, it makes no sense to call a person a victim merely because they’ve made an...
March 21, 2018
How dare I ask questions about text messages, alcohol consumption and what an accuser wore on the night she claimed she was raped by an acquaintance? That’s the media’s take away after last week’s acquittal of Saifullah Khan in New Haven. The former Yale student was accused of sexually assaulting a classmate on Halloween night in 2015.
Time magazine, Buzzfeed, The New York Times, and a host of other publications wrote about the trial. In the days following the verdict, reporters focused on isolated aspects of the case. Only one newspaper captured...
March 11, 2018
Not since Meg Ryan’s fake orgasm sitting across a diner’s table from Billy Crystal in “When Harry Met Sally” have we seen such disingenuous huffing and puffing about sex from Hollywood. The starlets are atwitter with allegations of being groped, and worse, by Harvey Weinstein, a man who launched more starlets than, well, forgive me, the Big Bang.
Really, people. Hollywood sells sex. We buy the fantasy. People get obscenely rich in the process. Is it any surprise that, assuming the allegations are at least in part true, those tiptoeing the line between fantasy...
October 13, 2017
September 19, 2017
All eyes are on China as bitcoin rises and falls on digital exchanges. The Wall Street Journal reports that just this past Friday, Chinese...
September 17, 2017
Bitcoin went on a rollercoaster ride last week, spiking in value on some exchanges just north of $5,000. Then J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon told the...
September 14, 2017
The First Amendment has for decades been interpreted to protect “inappropriate” speech, a fact well known to anyone who has sat for a bar...
July 24, 2017
From Washington, D.C., comes news of the most ingenious proof ever of the existence of God. It comes in the form of an apparent...
April 19, 2017
If ever anyone knew how potent a jury’s power to alter a life’s course, it was Aaron Hernandez. He killed himself days after...
March 22, 2017
Supreme Court confirmation hearings increasingly look like trysts between horny customers posing as suitors and a pre-paid prostitute. We ought to...