The NY Times reported yesterday that a State judge and a Federal Judge made getting a vaccine a requirement to a deal with criminally accused person appearing before them. In the Bronx, State Supreme Court Judge Jeffrey Zimmerman was taking the guilty plea of a man accused of drug crimes, trespass, criminal contempt, and shoplifting. […]
OK, I see a lot of people on #lawtwitter and elsewhere posting tips for incoming 1L law students and for reasons I can’t explain even to myself I’ve decided to chime in. As an adjunct professor at two law schools for the past 12 years, including having taught the 1L Writing Class for 8 of […]
Tomorrow at the Nassau County Legislature, legislators will be debating an expansion of the County Human Rights Law. Now it took decades to get them to add Sexual Orientation to the list of protected classes so maybe they were finally getting around to adding Transgender as a protected class? Nope. Instead, four Democrats ae spearheading a […]
Online commentators and graduates of Twitter law school are screaming that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s overturning of the sexual assault conviction of Bill Cosby is a blow to the #MeToo movement and an insult to the women who came forward to testify and accuse him. While it certainly must be seen by those women as […]
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of a former high school cheerleader who argued that she should not be punished by her public school for posting a profanity-laced caption on Snapchat when she was off school grounds. The case involving a Pennsylvania teenager was closely watched to see how the court would balance the free speech rights […]
I was a guy in the courthouse halls you wanted to run into. I liked to chat people up; tell a joke or quick war story; ask for and give advice on a case, a judge, etc. As we are coming out of the pandemic with courts returning to live in-person appearances you would think […]
Where to begin with a discussion on SCOTUS’ 6-3 decision in Jones v. Mississippi that effectively reinstated Juvenile Life Without Parole (JLWOP or LWOP hereafter)? Do I point out that its author Brett Kavanaugh wept crocodile tears before Congress about how mean they were to hold him accountable for actions and indiscretions he did as […]
It’s an old legal adage and one of my favorites in law that “Bad Cases Make Bad Law.” While the phrase has been interpreted a variety of ways for me its meant that cases that arise out of extreme examples or unique situations often end up creating a law either from judicial decisions or by […]
The Supreme Court deciding not to hear a case is a regular occurrence. Getting SCOTUS to hear a case is exceedingly hard, and as Chief Justice, John Roberts has shrunk the Court docket to 1960s numbers. But what seems like a quiet little denial of certiorari yesterday is actually a not-so-cryptic message from the right […]