Criminal Law Library Blog

TOP STORIES:

U.S. Supreme Court
Supreme Court Rules Guantanamo Detainees Have Habeas Rights
Jun 12, 2008, 09:49 am CDT

"The U.S. Supreme Court has delivered a stunning defeat to the Bush administration in a ruling that gives detainees at Guantanamo Bay a right to challenge their detention in federal courts... "

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Legal Ethics
Lawyers Defend Long-Distance Supervision of Overwhelmed Associate
Jun 9, 2008, 12:15 pm CDT

Judiciary
Son of 9th Circuit Chief Judge Says He Maintained Racy Website
Jun 12, 2008, 05:40 am CDT

Trials & Litigation
Lawyer Bans Opponent from Hotel in Hard-Fought IP Case
Jun 9, 2008, 03:46 pm CDT

Law Schools
Stanford Law School Drops Letter Grades
Jun 11, 2008, 12:56 pm CDT

Law Firms
More than 30 Thacher Lawyers Quit in Last 6 Months
Jun 11, 2008, 03:25 pm CDT

Legal Ethics
South Florida Law Firm's Website Worries Ethics Experts
Jun 9, 2008, 11:35 am CDT

Associates
Associate Advice: Start Early on Client Development, Stay Late at the Office
Jun 10, 2008, 08:59 am CDT

Evidence
Jury Can Learn Bratz Doll's Creator Used 'Evidence Eliminator'
Jun 11, 2008, 06:10 am CDT

Legal Technology
Online Social Networking Lessons for Lawyers
Jun 10, 2008, 02:16 pm CDT

Posted by David Badertscher | Permalink | Email This Post | Comments (0)

Posted In: Commentary and Opinion , Constitutional Law , Criminal Law and Justice , Lawyers and Law Librarians, News Humor Etc. , News from Organizations

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[From an article in the March 17, 2008 The National Law Journal by Tony Mauro of the Legal Times]

There’s a video out there you may want to see – a web site called “LawProse Inc” on which 8 of the 9 U.S. Supreme Court justices speak about answering questions, writing briefs, arguing before the Court, and their own relationships with written words. For instance, Chief Justice Roberts thinks “lengthy citations to Web sites that are now common in briefs are an ‘obscene’ distraction ‘with all those letters strung together.’ ” Also he doesn’t like overly-long briefs, “I have yet to put down a brief and say ‘I wish that had been longer.’” Justice Breyer is bothered by the same thing, “If I see (a brief that is) 50 pages, it can be 50 pages, but I’m already going to groan,” but “If I see 30, I think, well, he thinks he has really got the law on his side because he only took up 30.”

“Justice Kennedy hates it when lawyers turn nouns into verbs by tacking on ‘-ize’ at the end, as in ‘incentivize.’ Such showy, made-up words, he sniffs, are ‘like wearing a very ugly cravat.”

“Justice Antonin Scalia can’t stand it when briefs refer to a precedent ‘and its progeny.’ He growls, ‘I think it was wonderful the first time it was used. It is trite now. Terribly trite. Get some other expression.’ Scalia also thinks that lawyers are wasting their time when they write a summary of their argument at the beginning of a brief. ‘I mean, why would I read the summary if I’m going to read the brief?’ “ But Justice Thomas disagrees: he says it’s ‘like giving you, you know, what’s going to be on TV next week.’ ”

The site also reveals that Justice Alito’s father was a one-time English teacher and he would “ ‘pick apart every sentence and every word’ of his school compositions. Justice Stevens' mother was also an English teacher and Justice Ginsburg learned writing from Vladimir Nabokov while at Cornell.

“Justice Souter refused to talk to Garner (the interviewer). ‘He just prefers not to go before a camera.’ ”
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*This is a June 1, 2008 posting on In Chambers...A Commonplace book of interesting legal things, Compiled by boppanny@aol.com.

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Posted In: Commentary and Opinion , Lawyers and Law Librarians, News Humor Etc. , The Judiciary

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The following was first posted on the InChambers weblog compiled by boppanny@aol.com, May 2008.

[From Mark Levin’s book, “Men in Black”]

“Robert C. Grier (U.S. Supreme Court Justice). Appointed by James Polk in 1846, Grier suffered paralysis in 1867 and thereafter began a slow mental decline. Grier’s case is most troubling because he was the swing vote in one of the more important cases of his era, Hepburn v. Griswold, which struck down the law allowing the federal government to print money. “Grier’s demonstration of mental incapacity during the conference discussion was such that every one of his colleagues acknowledged that action had to be taken.”

“Nathan Clifford (U.S. Supreme Court Justice) . Clifford was appointed by James Buchanan in 1858. After a period of mental decline, Clifford suffered a stroke in 1880 just before the beginning of the October term of 1880. ‘Justice Miller described the situation bluntly: ‘Judge Clifford reached Washington on the 8th [of] October a babbling idiot. I saw him within three hours after his arrival and he did not know me or any thing, and though his tongue framed words there was no sense in them.’ Clifford kept his seat until his death in July 1881.”

“Henry Brockholst Livingston (U.S. Supreme Court Justice). Appointed by Thomas Jefferson in 1806, Livingston had killed a man in a duel before his appointment to the Court.”

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Posted In: Commentary and Opinion , Lawyers and Law Librarians, News Humor Etc. , The Judiciary

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TOP TEN STORIES OF THE WEEK:

Legal Ethics

Judge Smacks Law Firms & Partner With $150K Sanctions, But Spares 2 Associates

Apr 29, 2008, 03:14 pm CDT
"A federal bankruptcy judge in Massachusetts has sanctioned two law firms and a name partner a total of $150,000 for incorrectly claiming that their client owned a mortgage that had in fact been reassigned at least twice.."

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Law Professors

Law Prof Sues Students, Says They Defamed Him by Calling Him a Racist
May 1, 2008, 05:47 am CDT

Lawyer Pay

Skadden, Wachtell Top AmLaw 100
May 1, 2008, 01:07 pm CDT

Legal Ethics

Lawyer Who Made Snarky Comments Ordered to Write Civility Article
Apr 30, 2008, 06:12 am CDT

Terrorism

Mistakenly Revealed Logbook Has Lawyers Convinced They Are Monitored
Apr 28, 2008, 05:36 am CDT

Legal Ethics

Lawyer Who Wouldn't Stop Talking Suspended From Federal Practice
Apr 30, 2008, 08:41 am CDT

Criminal Justice

Suit By 308-Pound Inmate Says He Is 'Literally Being Starved to Death'
Apr 28, 2008, 07:55 am CDT

Law Firms

Paul Hastings Deals With Aftermath of Secretary's Murder Outside Office
Apr 29, 2008, 06:03 am CDT

Careers

Worried Partners Secretly Seek Business Development Help
Apr 28, 2008, 02:45 pm CDT

Criminal Justice

18th Innocent Man Freed in 1 Texas County; Officials Vow Change
Apr 30, 2008, 06:15 pm CDT

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Posted In: Commentary and Opinion , Lawyers and Law Librarians, News Humor Etc. , News from Organizations

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TOP TEN STORIES:

Associates
For Some Associates, Work is Slow, Delayed or Nonexistent
Apr 14, 2008, 05:46 am CDT
Associates at big law firms were flying high last year when starting salaries skyrocketed to $160,000. Now some are in for a bumpy ride...

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Law Schools
A Tuition Secret: In Law School, It Pays to Be Above Average
Apr 16, 2008, 06:10 am CDT

Law Firms
Beware of E-Mail Bearing O'Melveny Name
Apr 15, 2008, 06:23 am CDT

Pro Bono
350 Lawyers Trek to San Angelo, Charging 'Billables for the Soul'
Apr 16, 2008, 04:54 pm CDT

Entertainment & Sports Law
Law Firm Strikes Out as Yankees 'Sponsor'
Apr 16, 2008, 06:47 am CDT

Law Schools
Columbia Sends Highest Percentage of Grads to Top Law Firms
Apr 14, 2008, 07:27 am CDT

Legal Ethics
Lawyer Who Made Lewd Courtroom Gesture Sentenced to 90 Days in Jail
Apr 17, 2008, 07:11 am CDT

Careers
McKenna's Roadmap to Partnership and Rainmaking
Apr 14, 2008, 02:05 pm CDT

Legal Ethics
Lawyer Suspended for Failing to E-File
Apr 15, 2008, 12:28 pm CDT

Careers
A Lawyer Finds Office Casual Is Still Rather Dressy
Apr 17, 2008, 08:28 am CDT

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[From an article by Tony Mauro in the January 29, 2008 issue of Legal Times]

“One way to get a rise out of usually reticent federal judges is to ask them about the sentencing mess -- and particularly, the Supreme Court's role in muddying the waters with a series of difficult-to-follow sentencing decisions since the beginning of this century. Frustration and anger will often spew forth."

"U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf of the District of Nebraska channeled that frustration into a remarkable David Letterman-style Top 10 list, just published along with articles by other judges in the inaugural online companion to the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law. Kopf, a 1992 appointee of President George H.W. Bush, writes that he devised the list ‘with tongue partly in
cheek’ and declined to comment on it when we called him on Friday. But it's a provocative jaw-dropper that may get Kopf scratched off the holiday card list at the Supreme Court. Here's just a sampling from what Kopf calls, ‘The Top Ten Things I Learned From Apprendi, Blakely, Booker, Rita, Kimbrough and Gall.’ "

10. Following the Court's approach, always put off to tomorrow what you can do today.

9. You don't need experience in actually sentencing people in order to totally screw up the law of sentencing. It is telling and painfully obvious that not a single Justice ever had to look a federal defendant in the eye while not knowing what law to apply.

8. Footnote 9 in Blakely (‘The Federal Guidelines are not before us, and we express no opinion on them.’) is the biggest practical joke in the history of American law...

5. Some sentencing judges used to take the Supreme Court seriously, but that got harder and harder beginning with and following Apprendi...

3. Justice Scalia's dictum should be rewritten this way: The rule of law is the law of rules except when it isn't...

1. There are a lot of really good, hard-working people ‘in the field’ plus tens of thousands of defendants who deserved far better than the seven years of ‘water boarding that ensued between Apprendi and Gall.’ ”
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"A nuisance may be merely a right thing in the wrong place, - like a pig in the parlor instead of the barnyard."

[George Sutherland, Euclid v. Ambler Really Co., 272 U.S. 365, 388 (1926)]
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Thanks to, In Chambers: A Commonplace of Interesting and Legal Things Compileed by boopananny@aol.com, March 2008.

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[From “The History of an American Obsession: The Lie Detectors” by Ken Alder.]

“Despite this warning, the search for Momus’s window has continued down the centuries. The Greeks developed a science of physiognomy to assess people’s character from their facial features and gestures. On the assumption that anxious deceivers generated less saliva, uspected liars in ancient China were asked to chew a bowl of rice and spit it out. Judges in India scanned for curling toes. One pious Victorian physician suggested that God had endowed human beings with the capacity to blush so as to make their deceptions apparent. Today, you can pick up the basics of body language for a few bucks on almost any library resale
table – ‘Who’s Lying to You and Who’s Lusting for You!’ – along with guides for potting tricksters when you travel abroad. Popular manuals, updated with the latest findings of neuroscience, advise you how to track the eye movements and hand gestures of your spouse, boss, and stockbroker.

“Yet experts on deceit – the sort of psychologists who regularly ask Americans to lie to one another in laboratories – tell us that the vast majority of us are very bad at detecting deception, despite our confidence in our own powers. IN 2006, one review of the available research concluded that people can successfully sort truth-tellers from liars only 54 percent of the time, or about as well as blind guesswork. Surprisingly, the more intimately we know the deceiver, the worse we do. Even cops, judges, and psychologists – those citizens
professionally licenses to sort truth-tellers from liars – don’t get it right much more than half the time.”
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Thanks to: In Chambers: A Commonplace of Interesting and Legal Things Compiled by boopanny@aol.com.

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The Supreme Court may have its own police force, its own museum curator, and even its own basketball court, but unlike the courts of yore it has no Jester. As a result, the responsibility of delivering humor within the hallowed halls of One First Street falls squarely on the backs of the nine Justices themselves.” So, which Justice is the best at it? Well, before last year we had no way of knowing because the court reporter did not indicate which Justice asked a question or was speaking. But in the 2004-2005 that ended; now the Court Reporter reveals the names of the speaking Justices. And you might have guessed who won: Justice Scalia. He instigated 77 laughing episodes during the term. In last place was Justice Thomas; he instigated 0 episodes.
Justice Breyer was right behind Scalia with 45, Kennedy was third with 21, Souter had 19, Rehnquist had 12, Stevens 8, O’Connor 7, and Ginsburg 4.

[From an article entitled Laugh Track by Jay D. Wexler in “The Green Bag,” Vol. 9, No. 1, p.59]

Source: http://www.inchambers.us/

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I just received the following news item from Lawrence Savell which I am delighted to post. It adds a dimension to the blog which we can all appreciate. If any of you would like to send me either news items or longer articles I will be happy to consider them for posting.

...now to the featured item!

Dear Mr. Badertscher: First, thank you for your excellent law blog. Second, I thought your readers might enjoy a lighter news item, and I am therefore also writing to request that you please consider mentioning the release of my indie music label LawTunes' (www.LawTunes.comhttp://www.lawtunes.com) latest humorous lawyer-created, law-related album, "The Lawtunes: Live At Blackacre."

Compared to our three prior efforts, "Merry Lexmas From The Lawtunes," "Legal Holidaze," and "The Lawyer's Holiday Humor Album," the new CD, "The Lawtunes: Live At Blackacre," is a broader take on the law, lawyers, and legal practice through ten original rock-and-roll tunes in an album not limited by content or style to any particular season. It even includes a few "love songs," although expressed in the language of an attorney. Premised as a "live" concert at "Blackacre," the legendary parcel of land so often referenced in eternally-painful law school examination questions and scholarly legal treatises/articles, the new album includes:

1. "(She's An) Electronic Discovery": There's probably no "hotter" topic in the law today than the review and production in litigation of e-mail and other electronic documents. But that context and its developing terminology (including data accessibility, preservation, spoliation, retention policies, metadata, embedded images, the recent Federal Rules of Civil Procedure amendments, and the leading Zubulake line of cases) are appropriated with gusto to tell the tale of a lawyer falling in virtual love.

2. "Lawyers' Blood Is Typo": A lawyer is called upon after-hours (assuming there is such a thing anymore) to provide guidance to a "client" seeking a reliable life partner, and explains why he is qualified to do so.

3. "Della Street": A tribute to the most famous of legal secretaries, in a style appropriate to when "Perry Mason" first aired.

4. "LawMan": A hard-pounding and blunt explanation of exactly what it is that lawyers do.

5. "Orderin' In": The pleasures of working late and eating at your desk. To the extent there are any, this song extols them.

6. "Cadillac Cab": The big-city law firm/corporate perk with double-edges, as detailed herein.

7. "Little Bluebook": A lawyer frustrated in love desperately seeks guidance from the legal citation style manual, invoking a generous helping of the jargon of that treatise.

8. "Livin' Life In Six Minutes": A new acoustic version of a popular Lawtunes song lamenting the reduction of legal practice (and life) to billing increments of tenths of an hour.

9. "Everywhere There Is A Client": As close to an anthem for lawyers as there is, explaining some of why lawyers do what they do.

10. "Santa's G.C.": Well, old habits die hard. The album concludes with this whimsical tale about a lawyer who goes in-house to become General Counsel at Santa, Inc.

As composed, recorded, and produced by this practicing litigation attorney, the songs incorporate a broad spectrum of popular/classic rock-and-roll styles. Like its predecessors, the CD is available at www.LawTunes.com, either solo or all four in partnership as the "LawTunes Jury Boxed Set."

LawTunes' efforts are dedicated to the proposition that lawyers' zealous representation of clients and furtherance of the public good can be only enhanced by a healthy willingness of lawyers to poke fun at themselves appropriately on occasion. They contribute to the effort to make people think a little differently about lawyers, and show that attorneys are not necessarily humorless, boring, or incapable of self-deprecation (success on at least the last item is guaranteed).

Further information, cover scans, and song clips are available at www.LawTunes.com. I very much appreciate your consideration. Thank you.

Lawrence Savell
LawTunes
savell@lawtunes.com
(212) 408-5343

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Posted In: Lawyers and Law Librarians, News Humor Etc.

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