Tag
Legal
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2 Angry Men: On Eastwood, Trump, and the Law
In attacking law without attacking the real abuses of the criminal justice system, Juror #2 is a groundless assault on the only institution that can save us from all-out authoritarian rule.
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Against Civility
Donald Trump and his global populist counterparts, such as Farage in England, Orbán in Hungary, or Duterte in the Philippines, gain popularity through rhetoric …
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The High Power of the Lower Courts
In 2010 the National Rifle Association (NRA) and its legions of gun-rights supporters were on the verge of a constitutional revolution. …
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Is the Law Our Ally? Lessons from World War II
With Europe still reeling from the effects of World War II, the Allied forces set to work prosecuting a monumental trial …
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Chicago Law
Baltimore has The Wire, Newark, The Sopranos, and for seven seasons Chicago has had The Good Wife. The city with North America’s highest number of annual civilian deaths by cop and its very own Guantanamo-aspirant black-site detention facility, Homan Square, the city that has perfected machine politics, election fraud, felony embezzlement, and the pork that…
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The Future of Scalia’s Originalism
Speculation about Justice Antonin Scalia’s legacy has quickly gravitated to the staying power of his originalist approach to constitutional interpretation. Whether it will …
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A Letter to My Children about the Supreme Court’s Ruling on Obamacare
Want help in explaining the significance of the recent Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare to your kids? In what follows, a former Supreme Court law clerk, top appellate litigator …
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A Letter to My Children about the Supreme Court’s Ruling on Marriage Equality
Many parents struggle with how to talk to their kids about marriage equality. In what follows, a former Supreme Court law clerk, top appellate litigator …
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Why Is Drug Use Forbidden?
If the 20th was the century of the prohibition of drugs, the 21st has every chance to be the century of their liberation. An increasing number of initiatives—state, national, and international—have legalized or are trying to legalize the recreational use of marijuana. Colorado and Washington have, already, authorized its sale in specialized stores, and Alaska,…
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Race and Campus Rape: Equal Under the Law?
It took me five years to muster the strength to report my rape. It was still within the (five-year) limitation period, and I told my story to a Philadelphia prosecutor armed only with the evidence of my memory. I had been a 17-year-old freshman in college at the time of my assault and been dating…
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Comic Craft
Once upon a time—well, in 2007—a young hero—that is to say, a Swiss-American corporate attorney—traveled to a faraway land—okay, Dubai—to seek his fortune. Such is the silhouette of The Dog, the latest novel from Joseph O’Neill, best known as the author of Netherland. Here, in a satire of expatriate life in a Middle Eastern boomtown,…
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“We” Includes Me
In my world, which is populated by people obsessed with race, statistics about black men and boys are ubiquitous. Study after study lays out how few graduate from high school, how many wind up in prison, how few are employed, how many are killed by the police. I can find a number for nearly any…
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Pop Justice
Sonia Sotomayor is not the only Supreme Court justice with a good story to tell. The tales of Thurgood Marshall or Clarence Thomas are, in some ways, no less dramatic. But Sotomayor may be unique in that she sees the promotion of her story as her most essential mission as a Supreme Court justice: “It is…
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Animal Feelings
We read stories of how, after losing their companions, dogs and bunnies refuse to eat; ducks and horses exhibit nervousness and social anxiety; dolphins strand themselves …
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Dudes, Bodies, and Criminals
For those accustomed to the dry wit of judicial opinions, there is an undeniable charm to a novel that, within its first ten pages, paraphrases the 1966 Miranda v. Arizona US Supreme Court case with colloquial gusto: “The ACLU grabbed the case and 976 days later they were in front of the court that never…
