Blog Posts

I will count 2011 a good year, despite the dire economy. It was a year of focusing, getting lean, re-examining priorities. As 2011 ends, I am uncharacteristically optimistic. Despite a world of trouble, the sum of it all seems to represent a gathering storm. There’s a certain energy in the...

Asking five law school professors to debate how best to educate lawyers is like asking a bartender which alcohol best promotes abstinence: So long as the patrons keep buying drinks, the bartenders are happy. A truly sobering debate won’t take place in a bar.
So what was the New York...

I think I might have joined the American Bar Association many years ago, when I had no idea what lawyering involved. But the desire to belong soon passed and my membership lapsed. Half a dozen years ago or so, a hapless telemarketer from the ABA called. The call caught me off guard. "Do I sound...

I feel bad for Chris Hoffman. I really do. He is in the untenable position of serving as spokesman for a privatized public school. The New Haven Independent is having a field day with Hoffman. One wishes he could just look at the camera and say what he must be thinking: This is an oxymoron, a...

I take it as a given that Bradley Manning was one of the sources of the classified material Wikileaks published about our war efforts in Afghanistan and the seamier side of American diplomacy. Hence, the military hearings underway laying bare the association between the two men hardly surprises....

I’ve never been to Maricopa County, and from what I read, I wouldn’t travel there for pleasure. The county, home of Phoenix and Scottsdale, is the domain of Joe Arpaio, the county’s sheriff. He’s a rough and tumble lawman torn straight from the pages of a B-grade western. If...

Someone in the backroom of Dannel P. Malloy’s press shop has great ambition for the governor. They think he’s got the potential to go all the way. Come 2016, the Democrats will be looking for a new hero. Who better than a man who overcame a learning disability, teasing, with roots in a...

Newt Gingrich promises that if elected president he will ignore the rulings of the Supreme Court, or, presumably, those of any other court, if he disagrees with them. I’ve news for Newt. His sentiments are passe. Millions of Americans already regard the posturing of the political class, and...

I am a sucker for the presumption of innocence. I believe in it. I earn my living standing behind it. For reasons all my own I am drawn to those in need of it. Show me a person accused of a crime, and I have new friend.
So I was prepared to write a piece about the raw deal Jerry Sandusky...

There was much relief, and a dark, morbid sort of celebration, in New Haven the other day among those craving the death of Stephen Haves and Joshua Komisrajevsky, the villains in what will forever be known as "the Cheshire case." Both men were tried and convicted. Mr. Hayes has been sentenced to...