The ABA Journal reports here that "[m]ore than half of Americans are angry and disappointed with the nation'’s judiciary."
From World Net Daily: "If you are nostalgic for the days when the Ten Commandments were posted in public buildings, you might want to consider visiting the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians."
Via Skelly at Arbitrary & Capricious by way of a Majikthise (please tell me that isn't pronounced "magic thighs") post entitled "Praise the Lord and pass the Methamphetamine" comes this link to a report that Ashley Smith, the woman who says she persuaded suspected Atlanta courthouse gunman Brian Nichols to release her by talking about her faith in God, discloses in a new book that she also gave him methamphetamine during the hostage ordeal.
For all of you conspiracy theorists out there, Moscow News (Russia not Idaho) has this report which quotes a Pocatello (Idaho not Russia) meteorologist to the effect that Hurricane Katrina was actually the work of the the Japanese crime organization known as the Yakuza using equipment developed by the old KGB. The motive? Making a killing in the futures market and getting some back for Hiroshima.
Hello prospective law students. As I stand before this group today, you and I have something in common. We have all made a poor life decision, the decision to attend law school. But unlike you, I, as a 3L, am too close to the end to rectify my situation, but you all are not. Come Monday, you will step foot into this building and you will officially become a law student. If I were you, I would do some heavy soul searching this weekend and decide if you really want to do that. Take it from me, you do not.Of course, what Mike doesn't say is that you can answer "No" to any or all of those questions and still have a pretty satisfying career in the law - you just won't be rich.
But if you must see for yourself, I suggest you just come to class for two weeks and see how you like it. You can still get a full tuition refund after two weeks. Treat those two weeks as a test drive. You can do the reading for classes if you want, but I wouldn't recommend it. If you are called on, just tell the professor you are taking a test drive. After all, no one expects you to put gas in a car during a test drive. But give it two weeks, and if you really want to be here...well, don't say I didn't warn you.
I know some of you are scoffing at me right now. You see a big firm in your future, with a six-figure salary and a comfortable lifestyle. But ask yourself, do you really want it? Sure, the money is great, but do you really want to put in 80+ hours weeks of high stress legal work? Do you want to develop an ulcer and a drinking problem? Do you want to cheat on your loving significant other with a skanky paralegal because you are in such need of validation, her menthol and perfume odor is as sweet as a bed of roses? Because the life of a big firm associate is not easy. You won't have time to enjoy that big salary because you will spend all your time at the office. Your senses will be numbed by endless hours toiling in front of law books. You will become so devoid of feeling that you will have to resort to hardcore S&M just to get sexual gratification, because that will be the only way you can even feel anymore.
And if you are one of the "lucky" ones to make it as a partner, are you prepared for that? Are your prepared to go thorough a messy divorce from your formerly loving significant other, and lose most of the stuff you accumulated through your endless toil as an associate? Are you prepared to become a souless bastard who's life revolves around arcane statutes and pain and suffering of others? Are you prepared to look at your daughter's face after you missed her piano recital because "Daddy had to file for another continuance, because Daddy is trying to get as much money from the client as he can before the client realizes he has no case"? Are you prepared to live an isolated existence, so consumed by your own greed and desire that you end up dying alone and miserable? And when you die, are you prepared to be dragged to hell by creepy little ghouls, like in the movie Ghost, when the bad guy got impaled by that giant shard of glass?
If you can answer yes to all of these questions, you will do just fine. Thank you, and best of luck with law school.
But we should not be so smug. While our appointment process does not have the same problems as that of the United States, we also miss out on some of the benefits. In a sense we suffer from a problem at the opposite extreme: where they have too much scrutiny, we have too much secrecy.Suggesting that they are not exactly enamored of our selection process, the article goes on to say: "We can and should look at the flaws of the US system as a warning that a more open and public process brings its own problems.
This story via Ananova:
From Rueters, Britain's much abused and derided traffic wardens have a new weapon in their struggle with irate car drivers -- DNA evidence.
Separated at birth?
Eleven months ago National Geographic magazine predicted the effect of a future hurricane striking New Orleans.The storm hit Breton Sound with the fury of a nuclear warhead, pushing a deadly storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain. The water crept to the top of the massive berm that holds back the lake and then spilled over. Nearly 80 percent of New Orleans lies below sea level, —more than eight feet below in places, —so the water poured in. A liquid brown wall washed over the brick ranch homes of Gentilly, over the clapboard houses of the Ninth Ward, over the white-columned porches of the Garden District, until it raced through the bars and strip joints on Bourbon Street like the pale rider of the Apocalypse. As it reached 25 feet (eight meters) over parts of the city, people climbed onto roofs to escape it.I wonder if subscriptions are now up among government officials.
Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste. Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued. It took two months to pump the city dry, and by then the Big Easy was buried under a blanket of putrid sediment, a million people were homeless, and 50,000 were dead. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.
When did this calamity happen? It hasn't —yet. But the doomsday scenario is not far-fetched. The Federal Emergency Management Agency lists a hurricane strike on New Orleans as one of the most dire threats to the nation, up there with a large earthquake in California or a terrorist attack on New York City. Even the Red Cross no longer opens hurricane shelters in the city, claiming the risk to its workers is too great.
"The killer for Louisiana is a Category Three storm at 72 hours before landfall that becomes a Category Four at 48 hours and a Category Five at 24 hours, —coming from the worst direction," says Joe Suhayda, a retired coastal engineer at Louisiana State University who has spent 30 years studying the coast. Suhayda is sitting in a lakefront restaurant on an actual August afternoon sipping lemonade and talking about the chinks in the city's hurricane armor. "I don't think people realize how precarious we are,"
Suhayda says, watching sailboats glide by. "Our technology is great when it works. But when it fails, it's going to make things much worse."
Former Chicago Bear kicker Robert R. Thomas is the new Chief Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court. 
Ken over at CrimLaw has posted here about his expectations of what a "conservative" court such as the ones in his state would/should do when interpreting a constitutional provision or a statute. Although he seems to have his tongue a little bit in cheek, his post did stimulate some thoughts of my own on the subject.I'll get off the soapbox now.
- In 98% of the cases decided, the judge's "philosophy" has no impact at all on the outcome of the case because (a) the law is settled and virtually all judges of whatever shade of conservative to liberal philosophy honor their obligation to be bound by the precedent of higher courts and/or (b) respect for the principle of stare decisis. I can't improve upon the late Chief Justice Rehnquist on the rationale for the latter point - "That is the principle that once an issue has been decided, it should stay decided. You can't constantly be re-litigating things without doing a lot more damage than just leaving them in place."
- For the most part, even the most "activist" of judges will defer to the legislature on non-constitutional policy matters, whether they agree with the policy or not.
- When construing statutes, the vast majority of judges of all philosophical stripes, try very hard to discern the actual intent of the legislature by following the various traditional principles of statutory construction. As Ken's post points out, the legislators don't always make this easy and that is no doubt the reason for both Chancellor Otto von Bismarck's famous quote that one should never see either sausages or laws being made and also the reason that the reference work used by almost all courts, Sutherland's Statutory Construction fills four volumes not counting supplements (at least the edition in my law library does). Many statutes are poorly written, convoluted and can often be held up as an example of how to flunk a fourth grade Language Arts class. Nonetheless, I don't know of many examples of an appellate judge simply substituting their own draft of a statute for whatever came out of a legislature. Legislative intent, like beauty, may often seem to be in the eye of the beholder but the courts really do try to adhere to it in interpreting statutes, even if they don't like the result. Also, Ulysses Grant once said that he knew of no better way to get rid of obnoxious laws than their stringent enforcement.
- Believe it or not, even "activist" judges have a great deal of respect for, and give deference to, people who are actually elected by their constituents to represent their interests. This is mostly true even in states where the judges are also popularly elected and have their own "constituents."
- Most layman don't know about, and many lawyers who should know better don't appreciate, the nuances of the standard of review in each case. Cases in this country are resolved under an adversary system of justice and that means that the lawyers have to make judgment calls for their clients including deciding on both trial strategy (what legal theory to advance and supporting evidence to offer) and trial tactics (whether to object or not and on what grounds). Appellate courts don't review the lawyers' decisions for errors. They only review the decisions of the trial court for error and if you didn't give the trial court the opportunity to get it right by stating your position clearly and providing the trial court with the legal foundation of that position, you generally won't get much sympathy on appeal - from either a "liberal" or a "conservative" judge.
- In a very, very small fraction of the total number of cases, a constitutional question is presented, the outcome of which isn't controlled by clear precedent, and the judges have an opportunity to actually "make" the law. Only in those very few cases (although they obviously have impact far beyond their numbers) are most appellate judges presented with a real opportunity be an "activist" if they are so inclined. Some judges obviously are so inclined and therefore these are the cases that all the fuss is about.
- Believe it or not, reasonable minds can differ about many of these things and the differences often have nothing to do with overall judicial philosophy. We are a very result oriented society and therefor if you like the result of a case, you tend to assume that the judges involved did as well and you would often be mistaken. The best appellate judges never think about the bottom line result or advancing abstract philosophical concepts, they only think about what result is compelled by a proper legal anaysis.
- In short, I (and the vast majority of all the appellate judges I know), quite often find myself writing or joining an opinion that affirms a trial court for a decision that is a long way from representing what I would have done had I been the trial judge or upholding a statute that enshrines a policy I don't personally agree with. The discipline for any appellate judge is to be consistent in applying things like the rules of court, the standard of review or the rules of statutory construction and letting the chips fall where they may.
The New York Times obituary of Chief Justice William Rehnquist paints a picture of a brilliant, witty, even quirky jurist who left an indelible mark on American jurisprudence.
