Blog Posts

Buried deep within Governor Jodi Rell’s proposed budget is a provision that would get a lawyer disbarred, where the lawyer foolish enough to act on it. But the governor is no lawyer. She is the head of the executive branch. And she is asking the Legislature to help her rob a fund created by...

Regular readers know for the past couple of months I have fallen headlong into the literature on the historical Jesus. Just why the interest dawned so late in my life is a mystery to me. It is more than a decision to revisit, in a public sort of way, the preoccupations of a much younger man. There...

As soon as dinner ended last night, my wife and I trundled up to our bedroom for an evening's pleasure. This night was even more exciting than most. A new book had arrived, and I was eager to begin it. There is no thrill quite so satisfying as learning something new.
Excited Delirium Syndrome:...

I will not go so far as to say that I wish I were a state employee. That would be going too far. I've been self-employed far too long to want to work for any else, much less the state. But check out the list of the state's top wage earners. There's good money to be made in public service....

Causation is one of law's slippier topics. Just because one event occurs after a prior event does not mean that there is a causal relationship between the two. Post hoc ergo proctor hoc is the Latin term for dispensing with such loose associations. The law sometimes relies on scientific experts to...

When a lawyer takes funds held in trust for a client it is called theft. The lawyer faces disbarment or even criminal prosecution. What happens when the state takes money held in trust? We may be about to find out in Connecticut.
Connecticut is, like every other state in the union, struggling...

I hope Connecticut’s Innocence Project takes on the case of Alfred Swinton. I am persuaded that the man was convicted of murder based on bogus science. A recent report by the National Academy of Sciences confirms my opinion. This report is must reading for the anyone concerned about the...

There is no impotence so profound, and quite so deflating, as that of the professional journalist. You sit amid the powerful and potent by day. And then you rush back to the office to report on what others have done. Some cannot resist the temptation to pretend that they are a player. Thus we end...

College basketball doesn't do much for me. So I do not come to the topic loaded with a disposition to believe that its heroes are good or admirable people. Watching University of Connecticut men's basketball coach Jim Calhoun discuss his salary at a recent press conference left me with one settled...

Let me get all the confessions out of the way first: Many years ago, I was an editorial writer for The Hartford Courant. After that, I hired and supervised a young trial lawyer named Dawne Westbrook in a law firm in which I was a partner. She is now a friend. And I have publicly supported her...