Seattle's Judge of the Year

The Seattle Times has this nice portrait of a Seattle trial judge who's not above taking lots of time, nearly an hour on the day before Thanksgiving, to politely get a seemingly uncooperative defendant to sign routine paperwork and submit to fingerprinting.

Maintaining your cool and a courteous demeanor when everyone else (often including you) is having a bad day, is the mark of a truly great trial judge. It appears that Judge Yu is definitely one of those. I congratulate her on an obviously well deserved honor.

A timekeeping bit of nostalgia.

This "Pong" clock brings back a lot of memories of blowing off law school classes to play this silly game. Hey, back in the '70's, this was the state of the art in gaming.

From Gamers Hell via Gizmodo.

Judge warns - beware of jury duty scam.

This story concerns a Missouri judge who has issued a public warning to his community about a "phishing" scam. These calls are circulating the country from individuals posing as officers of state and federal courts in an attempt to steal personal information that can be used for identity theft.

Typically, the scammer will call an individual claiming they work with a federal or state court and will inform the intended victim that he or she failed to show up for jury duty.

After threatening arrest, the caller will then ask for confidential information - such as a Social Security number, date of birth and credit card number - which they will then use to make purchases, obtain cash, raid bank accounts or even take out loans.

Harry Potter and the Half-Crazed Bureaucracy.

This is a law review article I wish I had written.

Is TV violence against women on the rise?

This article in the Denver Post by TV critic Joanne Ostrow, says "Yes".

An excerpt:

Much of the anti-women violence this season came in network pilots, which are used to sell a series to network executives and advertisers, and to hook viewers on a show.

The shows launched with a burst of violence against women at the hands of aliens, supernatural forces or more common human criminals. The trend was unmistakable. Women were abducted in a car, duct- taped and tortured in a cage ("Criminal Minds" on CBS); yanked from the shower to have a fetus torn from her womb (the now canceled "NightStalker" on ABC); and attacked by spiders unleashed by an assailant who then rapes and kills her ("Killer Instinct" on Fox). One woman spontaneously combusted while pinned to the ceiling of her baby's room by unknown forces ("Supernatural" on the WB).

"Exploiting the damsel in distress as a marketing tool - it's worked since Fay Wray (in 1933's "King Kong")," said Matthew Felling of the Center for Media and Public Affairs in Washington, D.C.

Exploiting women as a marketing tool may be effective, but it is a sad commentary on our society.

Clients from hell are not an American phenomenon.

Gavin at Diary of a Criminal Solicitor posts here about a recent client who was his own worst enemy.

His post brought back some memories of my own of a few clients past where decibel level was the key to the attorney-client relationship.

It looks like the jury trial in Great Britain isn't going away without a fight.

In an earlier post, now vanished into that great black hole where data goes when you least expect it, I noted that Great Britain, which has already abolished the jury trial in civil cases, was in the process of eliminating juries in some criminal cases.

However, according to this story from the BBC, some members of Parliament are objecting.

Activist judge rules for girlfriend.

The story from The Onion via Legal Ethics Forum.

Any comment I might make would be entirely superfluous.

Dilbert's Rules of Debating on the Internet.

Dilbert creator, Scott Adams has posted these rules for debating on the Internet:

1. Turn someone’s generality into an absolute. For example, if someone makes a general statement that Americans celebrate Christmas, point out that some people are Jewish and so anyone who thinks that ALL Americans celebrate Christmas is stupid. (Bonus points for accusing the person of being anti-Semitic.)

2. Turn someone’s factual statements into implied preferences. For example, if someone mentions that not all Catholic priests are pedophiles, accuse the person who said it of siding with pedophiles.

3. Turn factual statements into implied equivalents. For example, if someone says that Ghandi didn’t eat cows, accuse the person of stupidly implying that cows deserve equal billing with Gandhi.

4. Omit key words. For example, if someone says that people can’t eat rocks, accuse the person of being stupid for suggesting that people can’t eat. Bonus points for arguing that some people CAN eat pebbles if they try hard enough.

5. Assume the dumbest interpretation. For example, if someone says that he can run a mile in 12 minutes, assume he means it happens underwater and argue that no one can hold his breath that long.

6. Hallucinate entirely different points. For example, if someone says apples grow on trees, accuse him of saying snakes have arms and then point out how stupid that is.

7. Use the intellectual laziness card. For example, if someone says that ice is cold, recommend that he take graduate courses in chemistry and meteorology before jumping to stupid conclusions that display a complete ignorance of the complexity of ice.

You need only browse the comments section of some of the larger bogs (or even small blogs like this one) to see some of these rules in action.

Sun Tzu says, "A wise general lawyer reads the rules of war court."

Steve at Virginia Appellate News & Analysis interviews Sun Tzu on The Art of Appellate War.

One of Sun Tzu's maxims is "In war, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns."

In the sprit of Steve's clever post, I might paraphrase that as "In appeals, let your great object be persuasion, not lengthy briefs."

Man not dead - will sue. Film at 11.

A Connecticut man who was struck by lightning and who was mistakenly pronounced dead by an ambulance crew plans to sue.

I wonder what the damages are for not being dead in Connecticut.

From Newsday.

When Sending Out Your Jammed Printer For Repair, First Remove the Counterfeit Money.

If people this stupid could make $160,000 conterfeiting, imagine what slightly less moronic criminals could get away with.

From AZCentral.com.

Can perceptions of judges be both pervasive and wrong?

In this post over at Balkanization, Brian Tamanaha comments persuasively on the perceptions (or misperceptions) many people including his students have about judges and the way they go about the job of judging.

He observes that "[e]verywhere you look it seems to be almost taken for granted that the personal values or political views of judges have a determinative impact on their decisions." That view is certainly evident in a recent ABA survey I commented on here.

My favorite part of Professor Tamanaha's post is this quote:

There is no doubt that judges have the power to issue decisions that are based on their personal views, and the skill to couch these decisions in legal argument (the law is indeterminate in this sense at least). And there is also no doubt that certain legal standards by their nature call upon value-based decisions or evoke personal responses from judges. That is a far cry, however, from asserting that judging is just personal politics cloaked in law.

I agree with what Prof. Tamanaha has to say and I have made some of the same observations here and here.

There is no question that there are some judges out there who see themselves as being on a "mission from God" (to quote Dan Akroyd in his Ellwood Blues persona) and who are therefore inclined to adopt an "end justifies the means" approach to judging in order to remake society as they think it should be. I will also grant that since judges are human beings, they cannot help seeing every case through the filter of their humanity and life experiences. Every judge would prefer that the widows and orphans prevail over the slumlords but sometimes the opposite result is compelled by the application of the law. When that happens, should the judge ignore the law to serve their personal sense of justice?

It requires constant discipline to be a judge. The discipline to avoid substituting your judgment about what appropriate public policy should be, for that of officials elected by the people for that very purpose. It isn't easy to resist the temptation to use the power you have and I suppose it is harder to maintain the necessary discipline when you have a lifetime appointment and never have to periodically account to anyone for the way you do your job. This is all the more reason why judges at all levels should be chosen carefully and vetted thoroughly.

Could "Come to New Jersey -- it's not as bad as it smells" become that state's new slogan?

Remember "You have a friend in Pennsylvania" or "Virginia is for Lovers?"

Reuters reports here that, not to be outdone by its sister states, New Jersey is holding a contest for a new state slogan to replace "New Jersey and You: Perfect Together."

With a deadline of today, some of the suggestions:

New Jersey and You, Going Broke Together.
Come to New Jersey -- It's Not as Bad as It Smells.
You Pay, We Play: Compliments of NJ Politicians.
Welcome to New Jersey; Expect Delays.
New Jersey -- a State of Confusion.


New Jersey natives Robert DiNiro and Joe Pesci suggested "New Jersey: You Got a Problem With That?"

Personally, I always liked Joe Piscopo's line from Saturday Night Live - "You're from Jersey? What exit?"

Reading the newspapers so you won't have too.

From the BBC:

It looks like America gets to control the Internet that it designed and built a little longer.


From the Times of London:

Middle class "too superior" for police.


From Rueters via Yahoo News:

It would appear that a sense of humor isn't likely to be found in Kazakhstan.

With A3G exposed, the sun seems to have set on UTR.

Howard Bashman at How Appealing quotes Seventh Circuit Judge Richard A. Posner on the issue that is burning up the blawgs - "What happened to A3G/David Lat?"

For those just tuning in, one of the more popular legal blogs in recent years has been Underneath Their Robes (UTR) and its proprietress, Article III Groupie (A3G). On Monday, Jeffrey Toobin revealed in the New Yorker that A3G's secret identity is David Lat, a Justice Department Attorney in Newark, New Jersey.

Judge Posner notes that he predicted that A3G was male and now predicts that the blog won't survive that disclosure. He is apparently right again since A3G's once popular blog is now password protected and effectively off-line.

I will miss such classic posts as the Male and Female "Superhotties of the Federal Judiciary" and "Cribs" of the judicial elite.

Update: Daniel Solove at Concurring Opinions has posted his thoughts on this subject here and Jaded JD has a thoughtful post on the lesson here for those who expect everyone to blog under their real identities.

I have certainly been dissuaded from revealing that in actuality, I am a paralegal in a Fairbanks, Alaska real estate firm. (Why do I have the feeling that you aren't buying that?)

This is why we should never take a written constitution for granted.

For some 800 years, the Common Law of England recognized the defenses of autrefois convict and autrefois acquit. These ancient legal principles respectively prevented retrial for the same offense after a conviction or after an acquittal.

Because of the long history of these twin doctrines as part of the common law, James Madison, the principle author of our Constitution saw no need to provide for such protections in the original document. However, in an apparently prescient move, a majority of the states required these protections and others be included in a "Bill of Rights" as a prerequisite for ratification of the Constitution. Thus, these common law principles became the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Sixth Amendment.

History seems to have proven Madison wrong. On April 4, 2005, the British Parliament abolished these common law prohibitions against double jeopardy and this story in the London Guardian reports on the first case where a defendant is being retried for murder 14 years after he was acquitted of the crime.

Thanks to CrimLaw for the link.

At MIT, even the student pranks are cerebral.

MIT students, have completed an exhaustive study of whether or not "aluminum helmets serve as the protective measure of choice against invasive radio signals... whether from outside or within the cranium...."

Their findings:

The helmets amplify frequency bands that coincide with those allocated to the US government between 1.2 Ghz and 1.4 Ghz. According to the FCC, These bands are supposedly reserved for "radio location" (ie, GPS), and other communications with satellites.

I suppose that means if you wear aluminum foil on your head, you will never get lost (even though everyone you meet will tell you to do exactly that).

That's one way to pay for all those extra minutes and roaming charges.

When it comes to multitasking, it's hard to beat the woman who can rob a bank and never interrupt her cell phone conversation.

I'll bet all those minutes on the cell phone ate up her ill gotten gains.

Remembering Veterans.

This holiday was originally called Armistice Day, and was established to honor Americans who had served in World War I. It falls on November 11, the day when that war ended in 1918, but it now honors veterans of all wars in which the United States has fought.

Veterans are ordinary men and women who routinely accomplish extraordinary things.

Thank you for always answering the call.

That will teach him!

Already sentenced to two life sentences plus 99 years in prison, Stephen Terry Bolden got another 5 days tacked on for contempt for telling the judge he was being "real rude" to him.

Odds & Ends from around the web.

There is no redeeming automotive value to this flatware, but it definitely falls into the category of “stuff to get the car nut who has everything."





Beer makes your brain grow but the downside is that those extra cells prefer alcohol.








Ok. It's official. According to this, women have a better sense of humor and appreciate a good joke better than men. That would explain why my wife married me.

Does someone you address as "Senator/Colonel/Judge" have a conflict of interest?

USA Today reports here about a case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces involving Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who is also an Air Force Reserve colonel appointed two years ago to the lower Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals.

Lawyers for Airman 1st Class Charles Lane are seeking to throw out Lane's cocaine conviction on the grounds that Graham, one of three appellate judges who reviewed his case, is "constitutionally and ethically disqualified" to serve.

In court papers, Lane's lawyers argue that "Senator/Judge Graham cannot be an impartial and disinterested judge" because he is "politically accountable to his constituents for anything he does." Graham declined to comment on the case's merits. "We'll live with whatever the court says," he said.

"Hello, you have reached customer defendant service. Press 1 if you are charged with burglary....."

Gavin at Diary of a Criminal Solicitor reports that the British Legal Services Commission is beginning a pilot program to determine whether it is feasible to offer legal advice to those arrested and in custody at a police station through a call center.

If they actually go through with this, I suppose it is only a matter of time before this is outsourced and you wind up talking to a solicitor in Bombay.

It's official - fighting is an integral part of the sport of hockey.

Steve at Virginia Appellate News & Analysis and who apparently is a big hockey fan, reports on the case of Norfolk Admirals v. Jones from his state which apparently officially declares that fighting is part of the sport of professional ice hockey.

Personally, it never occurred to me that there was any question about it. I remember an old joke about going to a fight when a hockey game broke out.

I thought it was the right to bare ARMS.

A federal judge on Friday denied a request from a group of Mendocino women who wanted to protest topless on the grounds of the state Capitol.The group, Breasts Not Bombs, had scheduled a protest for noon Monday and argued that their right to protest topless was protected by the First Amendment.

From the San Francisco Chronicle.

What does 7-11 put in those things?

The Washington, DC Police Department is investigating an early-morning fight that supposedly started over a burrito.

Police said a man inside the store didn't have enough money to pay for his burrito and left the store to get more. While he was outside, another of the store's patrons decided to buy that burrito.

An eyewitness said when the man came back into the store, he became livid that someone had bought his burrito and the fight escalated from there.

Police said the fight then spilled outside the store and at some point, the girlfriend of the original purchaser opened a car door and released a 75- to 80-pound pit bull, which bit three men, including an innocent bystander.

Via NBC4.com

I'll bet the dog wound up with the burrito.

Dress for success - NOT!

A man suspected of stealing discs from a video store was tripped up by his baggy pants, falling twice before police captured him.

From the Associated Press.

Albanian Air Force for sale - It has distinguished itself by killing 35 Albanians, no enemies.

From Reuters:

"Albania's antiquated air force of Soviet-designed MiG aircraft, which killed 35 Albanian pilots but no enemies, is finally on its way to the museum and the scrapheap. 'If anyone wants to buy them, they are welcome,' General Pellumb Qazimi told Reuters. 'The Chinese-built versions were dangerous,' said Perikli Teta, Albania's air force engineer-in-chief."