Blog Posts

Expect an interlocutory appeal from United States District Judge Jeffrey White's denial of John Yoo's motion to dismiss. And should the Ninth Circuit reject that appeal, expect a petition for certiorari to the United States Supreme Court. Then buckle your seat belt and await a ruling on the...

Were Sigmund Freud alive and well, he’d despair over the state of criminal justice in Connecticut. We’ve criminalized desire to such an extent that many of us are now criminals at some point or another. And rather than put the brakes on a system run amok, lawmakers are finding more and...

No person can be a judge in their own case. That is a venerable maxim at law. But we turn the law on its head when it comes to crime. We empower victims to speak for the state. The result is often the anriest, the most distraught, the most undone person in the room gets to call the shots. That's...

This is a tale of two court systems, both committed to preserving the same set of rights, and both dedicated to the pursuit of justice. While I am no monist, and believe that many roads can all lead to the same destination, I know that were I accused of a crime, I would much prefer the procedure in...

HAY-ON-WYE – Luis Moreno-Ocampo is a man of quiet and unassuming dignity. He is now mid-way through the first term in a job new to the world. He is the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court in the Hague. He spoke to several hundred folks at the Hay-on-Wye Festival in Wales last...

By the time you read this, I should be in Heaven. This is not to say that I expect to be dead. Were that the case, the destination is far from certain. In my case, I suspect sweet death to be followed by a locale with enormous and eternal heating bills.
No, I expect to be in Wales, attending...

Twenty people were put to death during the Salem witchcraft trials in 1692, one of them pressed to death by heavy stones placed atop him until his ribs snapped and he suffocated. He just wouldn't enter a plea, even of not guilty to the charges. So long as he held his silence, authorities would not...

I was just taken to task in a private email over the piece I wrote on Harold Koh. Once again, the reader reminded me, I let my own sense of self-righteous hurt blossom into an unthinking attack on a good man. Koh deserves a reassessment, I am told. He is an activist and advocate with a heart.
I...

I think my wife has a thing for Harold Koh. She’s not alone. One of our neighbors also glows at the mere mention of the name. They were talking about Koh the other day, and I had to leave the room. What’s he got that makes groupies of women in late middle age?
Koh was just confirmed...

A long time ago, a client and a good friend gave me a painting: It was a Norman Rockwell of a young man reading the law, apparently on break from the more pressing concerns of earning a living. I think of Abraham Lincoln.

What sort of lawyer was Lincoln?

Julie Fenster's The Case...