Adios. Adieu. Later. Auf Wiedersehen. Ciao. Na razie. Proshyai. Zai jian.

The fact that some of my blogging contemporaries such as Skelly at A&C and Feddie at SA are hanging it up have forced me to confront the fact that I have been largely neglecting this blog for the past year or so. Indeed, the fact that Ken had to point out that they were gone shows just how much I have been away from the blogosphere lately.

The reality that is staring me in the face is that I have pretty much moved on from blogging and my off-the-bench interests lie elsewhere these days. My father always told me that if I don't have anything to say, I shouldn't say anything at all and I just haven't had much to say lately that anybody would be interested in hearing so I think it is time ride into the sunset (I know that I tried this once before and I came back but I really think that this time I have gotten it out of my system).

I plan to continue lurking around the blogosphere and I will continue to be an avid reader of the likes of Steve, Ken, Greg, Glenn, Howard and Ann, to name just a few.

I'll leave the posts up since a lot of folks still apparently hit the archives.

Adios.

Goodbye House of Lords, Hello Supreme Court.

It's now official. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland will now have themselves a brand new Supreme Court.

On October 1, 2009, the new Supreme Court of the United Kingdom will replace the House of Lords as the highest court of appeal for Great Britain and the 12 "Law Lords" will then become justices.

The new Supreme Court will hear appeals from the Court of Appeal of England and Wales, the Court of Justiciary and the Court of Sessions in Scotland and the Supreme Court of Judicature in Northern Ireland. The new high court will also hear appeals from the highest courts of 30 British possessions, such as Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands and even a few otherwise independent countries like Jamaica but unlike our Supreme Court, the new British Supreme Court will have no power of judicial review over statutes since Great Britain has no written constitution.

The mother country does one up her former colony on this side of the pond in one respect - all of the proceedings of the new Supreme Court of the United Kingdom will be televised. I hope John Roberts and company are paying attention.

This law clerk brought to you by....

Apparently the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is OK with law firms footing the bill for judges' law clerks but personally I find it very troubling, both ethically and practically. The potential conflict of interest when a judge is involved in a case that also involves the law firm paying the salary of the judge's clerk's is obvious but perhaps less so is the fact that I, for one, would probably not be able to be as open or be able to have a free-flowing discussion in chambers about a case where I didn't feel that my clerk owed me and the court their full allegiance and loyalty.

News of the Weird.

When you think of things to be thankful for, "lizard tattoo on the penis" probably does not immediately leap to mind but it ought to be at the top of this guy's list since it probably kept him out of prison for a long time.

Lawyer asks court to require opponent to wear new shoes.

Heaven forbid that a lawyer be permitted to project "an air of unsophisticated honesty" to a jury.

Boing Boing Via Instapundit.

And we think we have problems.

How about a country ( a British possession no less) where all of the judges are feuding with each other and where they all have either been "arrested, suspended or mired in controversy?" And the judiciary isn't the only disfunctional branch of the government - the police chief was fired for being involved in a burglary of the newspaper office but has since been exonerated and is now suing (although it isn't clear where they are going to find a judge to hear the lawsuit).

Apparently, the situation is so bad that not even Scotland Yard can figure out what is going on. (This story certainly doesn't provide much information.)

Where is all this happening? Why in the place synonymous with avoiding taxes and hiding ill gotten gains, the Cayman Islands.

Via Instapundit.

Floridians protest beach integration.

Alright, I'll admit that while technically correct, that headline up there is a little misleading. It actually refers to these residents of Sarasota who don't like the idea of mixing brown sand with white sand on their beaches. I guess you could call them sand bigots.

This gives a whole new meaning to the concept of a "Gag Order."

I think that perhaps this judge has taken the idea a little too literally.

Perry Mason arrested for practicing law without a license.

Watching Perry Mason on TV back in the late 1950's and early 1960's was a major influence on me and a big reason why I wound up in this profession.

Oh, the shame of it!

Tequila and bean dip don't mix.

Take a bunch of men. Put them in a single room in a Texas motel. Add some high density flatulence and the result is silent but (almost) deadly.

The Time Travel Cheat Sheet.

No time machine should be without one of these (click on the image to zoom in).

Via Gizmodo.

So much for Congressional oversight!

The really sad part is that we now find this both unsurprising and funny.

Breaking News - Al Capone Charged with Tax Evasion!

It's Boston, not Chicago and it's 2009 not 1931, so isn't quite deja vu all over again and incidentally, the Capone in question happens to be a restaurant instead of a gangster but what the hell, it got your attention, didn't it?

In other news from Boston, apparently they have trouble learning English there, but the rest of the country already knew that.

Will smartphones bring the judicial system down?

Who didn't see this coming?

The New York Times reports that a federal judge had to declare a mistrial in a drug case when he found out that nine jurors were using their iPhones, Blackberrys and other internet-enabled cell phones to do their own research on the case.

With the jurors Twittering and posting their thoughts to Facebook, it is only a matter of time before criminal defendants figure out that their best strategy for an acquittal is to set up a Wikipedia page.

I am rapidly becoming a fan of changing the law to allow the use of jamming equipment for cell phone frequencies in places like courthouses.

This gives a whole new meaning to the idea of paperless courts.

The AP reports that an Ohio court will no longer accept case filings unless you bring your own paper because it can't afford to buy any.

No word on whether this applies to the courthouse restrooms as well.

" A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money!"

Of course these days we are throwing around the word "trillion" in front of the word "dollars" like we actually appreciate the difference.

Here is a good illustration.

Now that's what I call real money!

A tempest in a rice bowl.

A four year court fight that has yet to be resolved and has cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees would not be news if we were talking about an antitrust case or a patent fight, but a lawsuit over rice?

It seems that a Chinese restaurant is paying a premium for the exclusive right to sell white rice in a Rhode Island food court and wants the Indian restaurant in the mall to stop putting rice on its menu. Of course, it happens that rice is a staple of the cuisine of both China and India and the Indian restaurant says you can't have Indian food without rice any more than you can have Chinese food without rice and so it dyes its white rice yellow. The prolonged court fight is the result.

Ironically, the Chinese restaurant doesn't have a problem with the Taco Bell in the food court serving orange rice with its burritos.

From the Boston Globe

On Presidents' Day, George Washington gets his "Due."

It took 82 years but finally someone noticed that George Washington is misquoted on the pediment of what, thanks to Hollywood, is the most recognized courthouse in the world.

Carved over the columns of the New York Supreme Court's Manhattan courthouse built in 1927, are the words "The true administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government." What Washington actually wrote in a letter to our first Attorney General, Edmund Randolph, was "The due administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government."

The steps and facade of this courthouse have appeared in a many movies as well as the TV series "Law and Order" so Washington's misquote is now part of our culture.

Maybe buried somewhere in the 1071 page stimulus bill is some money to create at least one job for someone who knows how to use a chisel.

In other news...

The BBC reports that Sussex police are reopening the investigation of the disappearance of 16 year old Emma Alice Smith, who was last seen riding her bicycle 83 years ago, in 1926.

With the typical Bristish knack for understatement, a police official observed that, "Given the years which have passed this is inevitably a difficult task."

Talk about a cold case!

How do you know when it is time to take away Grandma's driver's license?

80 year old Mary Feeny of Indianapolis gave us a hint when, fresh from her hairdresser, she backed backed out her parking spot destroying a gas meter in the process and then on through the wall of a building housing an architectural firm. In an apparent effort to extricate her vehicle from the architect's waiting room, Ms. Feeny reversed course thereby wiping out a bush and striking four other cars. She then drove back into the same building she had just left and after reversing course yet again, managed to hit two additional cars.

From WISH-TV.

If I were in charge...

I teach a course on Constitutional Law as an adjunct professor at a nearby law school and during class recently, we had a lengthy discussion about to what extent the United States Constitution was operating the way the framers intended. I did not want things to degenerate into a partisan debate (I was only partially successful) nor did I want them to scrap the existing document and start over or otherwise do a wholesale re-write of Madison's work, so I asked them to try to set aside their partisan views and just consider what systemic or structural problems have been revealed in the 220 years it has operated that could be "fixed" relatively simply, yet would preserve or possibly restore the careful system of checks and balances envisioned by the framers.

After much discussion (and some dissension), I asked the students to come up up with constitutional amendments that would "tweak" the basic document in a way that they thought would implement the vision of the founders and do so in a way that would attract broad bipartisan support from the public. I found the exercise stimulating and I thought I would share here the three proposals that I liked the best along with the problem that is sought to be addressed. Some of this is not new but maybe more nationwide debate about some of these things wouldn't hurt:

28th Amendment
The President and the Congress, except in time of war declared pursuant to Article 1, Section 8 or when authorized by two-thirds of the members of both houses of Congress, shall ensure that no expenses of the United States be incurred nor funds expended during the fiscal year established by Congress which exceed the total revenues on hand and anticipated during such fiscal year

This proposed "balanced budget" amendment addresses the lack of any constitutional requirement for fiscal responsibility by the President or Congress. Almost all of the students recognized that even a government that prints its own money simply cannot indefinitely and continuously spend money that it doesn't have and won't collect for another generation or two.

29th Amendment
No law shall embrace more than one object, which shall be expressed in its title. Nor shall any law be amended solely by reference to its title, but the act or the section amended shall be re-enacted and published at length.

The legislative process as currently conducted allows a single bill include, or be amended to include, any number of unrelated matters (read "pork"). This really muddies the waters when a Representative or Senator has to explain or defend a vote to their constituents. Thus, an up or down vote on a bill really matters little in terms of accountability for a Senator or Congressman.

30th Amendment
The provisions of this Constitution shall be construed according to the traditional canons used by the courts to construe statutes and other legislative enactments provided however, that the intent of any such provision shall be principally determined by reference to the plain and ordinary meaning of the words used unless otherwise defined herein and provided further that no subsequent amendment shall be construed to repeal or modify any other provision of this Constitution unless such repeal or modification is expressly provided for in the amendment as ratified.

The root of the controversy over the proper role of a federal judge is that the federal courts have increasingly different criteria to interpret constitutional provisions from those they apply to other types of law and thus have become a place where unelected officials, who hold their appointments for life, set national policy according to their own views instead of merely resolving constitutional issue according to the document as written and amended. As a result, the three way compact between the federal government, the states and the people has become malleable and unpredictable and policy views rather than judicial expertise have become the primary criteria by which federal judges are selected. This proposed amendment would require that the the same rules of construction used to interpret statutes, would be used to interpret the provisions of the Constitution. The theory here is that doing so would make it more difficult for judges (whether liberal or conservative - they all do it) to become the de facto "framers" of the Constitution and by the terms of the document itself, would have to defer to the plain language used as is done in construing statutes.

I know that some, if not all three of these proposals, would be controversial in some quarters. I also know that, given whose ox would be gored, none of these amendments are likely to find their way out of Congress to the states. Oh well, one can dream! Besides, the whole exercise was kind of fun.

Lawyer should get an "F" in History for his Closing Argument

This case has some age on it but I think it is still worth a blog post.

In a convoluted libel case, the appellant argued on appeal that the appellee's trial counsel delivered a prejudicial and inflammatory closing argument. But the bigger problem was that the argument—which invoked Jesus Christ, Julius Caesar, and the Mennonites— was about as wrong on the facts as you can get. Here’s an excerpt:

"You may remember when Christ was preaching the gospel, in the Holy Roman Empire that Julius Caesar was Emperor of Rome. As Christ was making his way toward Rome, the Mennonites and the Philistines stopped him in the road and they sought to entrap him. They asked Christ: ‘Shall we continue to pay tribute unto Caesar?’ And you will remember, in the Book of St. Matthew it is written that Christ said: ‘Render ye unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's."

Inspiring perhaps, but the lawyer made a few historical errors, including his timeline, which was a bit off. Not that much, just eight centuries or so. The appellate court pointed out folowing the faux pas:

The Holy Roman Empire did not come into existence until about 800 years after Christ. Julius Caesar, who was never Emperor of Rome, was dead before Christ was born. Christ was never on His way to Rome and the Philistines had disappeared from Palestine before the birth of Christ. The Mennonites are a devout Protestant sect that arose in the Sixteenth Century A.D. This phrase is noteworthy only because of the ease with which the speaker crowded into one short paragraph such an abundance of misinformation.

From Hall v. Brookshire, 285 S.W.2d 60 (Mo. Ct. App. 1955).

Obviously, the problem here is that this case was tried in the Dark Ages BW (Before Wikipedia).

Thanks to Judge James Barlow.

Will the new Solicitor General break with tradition? I'd say the odds are pretty good.

The Mad Law Professor asks the question. Will the new administration's Solicitor General, current Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan, break with the tradition of wearing a morning coat when appearing to argue cases in the Supreme Court of the United States?

Since she is the first woman to hold the post, I doubt that the formal ware worn by men since before the turn of the previous century, which includes stripped pants and a coat with tails, will find a place among the business suits in her closet.

Thus will a 138 year tradition come to an end. Of course, I think I would rather see that tradition end than see Dean Kagan wearing this outfit.