By the time my parents arrived in North America, all the land was taken. There wasn’t any left to claim. The continent, from one end to the other, belonged either to private owners, the government or to Indians on reservations. We walked onto a playing field owned by others, and, like most Americans, had to fight for a place of our own. I will spend the better part of my adult life paying a banker for the fantasy of calling a sliver of the earth mine. When that banker is in danger of default, he can count on the government to bail him out; if I default, I become homeless.
Things...
March 18, 2012
I am profoundly ambivalent about American history. We tell ourselves that ours is a history of inclusion, yet we gloss over the acts of theft and genocide that drove the natives off the land. And never mind the periodic bouts of xenophobia from which we suffer. Or the tragic history of slavery and the still mixed messages we send to African-Americans. We’ve become a people, of sorts. Huzzah, huzzah.
But the dream of a people bound and equal under the law inspires even when reality falls far short of fulfillment. This is the land of Everyman, right? We’re a City of a Hill,...
March 15, 2012
If you are not from New England, odds are you don’t understand the significance of a town green. It is a city’s center, a haven, if you will, from the particular cares and concerns dividing a community. The town green is where the people can and do meet. New England towns typically have greens. They are part of the folklore of the region, a place where town meetings and congregational churches place a premium on civil cooperation and participation.
That’s the vanilla, Norman Rockwell vision of the world.
In New Haven, things are just a touch different. You see,...
March 13, 2012
Everyone, it seems, wants to be a pundit. That includes J. Harvie Wilkinson, III, a federal appellate judge and one-time contender for a seat on the United States Supreme Court. Judge Wilkinson decries the fact that we debate endlessly in this country the scope and meaning of the federal constitution. Let it be, he counsels. It is too dangerous a fire to stir.
In an op-ed piece in this morning’s New York Times, Wilkinson warns of our national obsession with constitutional conflict. We harm ourselves by seeking to define ourselves, he suggests. Why it would be better, I suppose he...
March 12, 2012
March 11, 2012
Michelle Alexander writes in this morning’s New York Times about mass incarceration and plea bargaining. She wonders what would happen if...
March 8, 2012
Lawyers who tell war stories are tedious bores. I mean, we all have stories to tell, right? What makes your story so special that I should stop what...
March 7, 2012
Any man married for more than a decade should have an intuitive grasp of the dignitary interests served by the right to remain silent when accused. I...
March 6, 2012
Here's the latest in the ongoing saga of the Bridgeport school board crisis. Unless you have followed the story to date, this will not make a lot of...
March 2, 2012
I hope Tanya McDowell will forgive us, someday, for our hypocrisy and cruelty. I hope her son will as well. But first she will have to serve her...
March 1, 2012
I have long grown accustomed to the facts of life known to all criminal defense lawyers: little people get run over and crushed in court. When a...