Archive for July, 2008
Favorite Line I’ve Read Today
…acknowledging that some judges think legislative history is valid. If you have to use it, Scalia said, “Do it boldly, as though it makes sense.“
A remark by Justice Scalia at a road show of sorts with legal writing wunderkind Bryan Garner to promote their book Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges, discussed before […]
Video: Why Courts are Not So Keen to Proceed Pro Se, Exhibit A
via the Rising Jurist. Michael Gaines apparently made the most of his opportunity to speak before being sentenced for spitting on two detention deputies. His assault was treated more seriously as Gaines is HIV positive. He was sentenced to 13 years.
Judge Pilshaw’s blog: Michael Gaines sentencing
KAKE-TV: Sedgwick County Courtroom Scene Of Outburst
Letter from Groucho Marx to Warner Brothers
From Barry Barnett’s Blawgletter, comes the rather entertaining letter sent by Groucho Marx to Warner Brothers threatened suit over the impending release of A Night in Casablanca (1946), which bore a less than vague resemblance to another Warner Bros. property, Casablanca (1942). It concludes with this classic tirade against lawyers:
I have a hunch that his […]
Pinkerton and Teles on the Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement
Steven Teles at Johns Hopkins recently published The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement: The Battle for Control of the Law. He talks with James Pinkerton about the subject of his work on Blogging Heads TV.
Blocking You People Out
Aside from time, quiet is the great luxury of the law student. I’m convinced that law students and lumberjacks are now singlehandedly keeping the foam earplug industry afloat (Slate provides their history, and a guide). I find earplugs useless. Rather than blocking unwanted sounds, they merely muffle their nuisance making it all the more aurally […]
Video: No Legal Recourse
Ah clients, surely legal ethics would be stuck in the stone ages without them.
Legal Library: New York’s Poop Scoop Law: Dogs, the Dirt, and Due Process
The New Yorker’s Scooped details the story of “Section 1310 of the New York State Public Health Law, which formally decrees, “It shall be the duty of each dog owner . . . to remove any feces left by his dog on any sidewalk, gutter, street, or other public area,””
Michael Brandow, a freelance dogwalker in […]
Gerry Spence Blogs
Gerry Spence is an icon of modern criminal defense lawyers, the author of numerous books, and now, apparently, a blogger. I thoroughly enjoyed the reports on Spence’s defense of Geoffrey Feiger and reading Spence’s unique and by most accounts extremely effective approach to trials in books such as How to Argue & Win Every Time […]
In Defense of Just Hanging Out
A bunch of us from the old section got together last night at a local sushi joint. It was great to see everyone who made it out and of course it had been far too long since the last time we did it. Evening students in particular are acutely aware of the extravagance of ‘wasting’ […]
Question and Answer with Lt. Col. Bircher, Army’s Electronic Warfare Futurist
Once I got over the fact that the United States Army not only has an Electronic Warfare division, but a “Proponent’s Futures Branch” within that division, it occurred to me that Lt. Col. John Bircher has perhaps one of the coolest jobs in the world. He responds to the denizens of slashdot in this post […]