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.
Creating federal precedent for a public health quarantine would forever darken constitutional doctrine in this country. Long after the COVID-19 crisis has passed, and it will, we will be left with precedent more terrifying than the virus itself.
During the...
March 28, 2020
A bold new body of law will emerge from the COVID-19 crisis. Expect expanded police powers for states, a re-striking of the balance between state and federal governments, and a re-examination of what is reasonable in terms of the Bill of Rights. Expect all that.
But beware the real danger – an algorithmic coup d’etat.
It all starts with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
Abraham Maslow proposed the hierarchy in 1943 in a paper entitled, “A Theory of Human Motivation.” He argued our needs could be arrayed ...
March 27, 2020
“Grandpa, what did you do doing during the war?”
I can imagine a time, a few years down the road, in which a grandchild asks about the COVID-19 pandemic, caused by the virus, we are told on the news day after day, that has “changed everything.”
I won’t have much to say about how I’ve spent the first week or so.
The honest answer: “I slept.”
I’m neither a health-care worker nor the provider of a service that is really all that essential in a public health crisis....
March 25, 2020
It was a scene right out of a thriller. A man diagnosed with an infectious disease walks out of a hospital and is suddenly at large in the community. He is homeless. There is no telling where he went. Officers search for hours, fearing that he is infecting others as he lurches from one location to another.
The man is found, and he is taken into custody.
But it wasn’t fiction. The man in question is a 50-year-old homeless person. He walked out of Yale-New Haven Hospital Sunday night after being diagnosed as infected by COVID-19....
March 25, 2020
November 25, 2019
Forgive me if I am not prepared to sacrifice the right to speak freely to the sensibilities of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and to comedian Sacha...
August 8, 2019
Suppose money were no object: Would you declare in your will that, upon your death, every effort should be made to preserve your body,...
June 28, 2019
How do you represent those people?
The question is common enough for criminal defense lawyers. In the past few weeks,...
November 13, 2019
UNITED STATED STATES DISTRICT COURT DISTRICT OF CONNECTICUT
CAMERON L. ATKINSON, Plaintiff, :
v.
FACEBOOK, INC., : MARK...
March 18, 2020
Things are getting a little crazy, and, I suspect, they will get crazier by the day until we either get control of the viral infection...
October 10, 2019
I understand and accept the syllogism, I really do:
"All men are mortal.
"Mr. X is a man.
"Therefore Mr. X is...