Blog Posts


Gen. Keith Alexander: Hacker Supreme

Did you catch the news that Eric Holder and the geniuses at Justice persuaded a grand jury to indict five members of the Chinese military? The superhackers are charged with computer crimes: they've been snooping in the electronic entrails of American corporations, by golly. That's a federal...

Let's Get Serious About Jury Duty

Here’s a tip: If you want to avoid jury service, simply tell the judge you have a pre-paid vacation planned. No one will seek to verify if what you are saying is the truth. Vacations are the get-out-of-jail card for potential jurors. It works every time.
Of course, the real question is...

The Elegance of Anarchism

"[T]he great emancipatory gains for human freedom have not been the result of orderly, institutional procedures but of disorderly, unpredictable, spontaneous action cracking open the social order from below." Thus concludes James C. Scott's brief celebration of the joy and necessity of anarchism,...

When The Fifth and Sixth Amendments Collide

The Fifth Amendment provides that no one can be compelled to testify against himself. In other words, a person cannot be required to speak if his statements would tend to implicate him in a crime. The right is what lawyers call a testimonial privilege, and it is related to other areas declared off...

NSA v. USA. Who Will Win?

I confess to being among those who regard the reach of the surveillance state with a tired sense of inevitability: I’ve long since grown accustomed to the notion that the government can, and does, record everything. It’s not that I do not value privacy; I just feel that worrying about...

Why A Second Trial?

“Congratulations,” the caller, another lawyer, said. “You hung ‘em up; I’d call that a win.”


“Thanks,” I replied. “But I am not so sure. We’ve got to try it all over again in October.”
My client stands...

An Honest Look at Punishment

Robert Ferguson's book on the American criminal justice system, Inferno: An Anatomy of American Punishment (Harvard University Press, 2014) ought to be must reading for every legislator, judge and prosecutor in the United States. You will note that I did not include criminal defense lawyers in the...

Green Haven's End Game

Perhaps the single most important moment in the debate about whether to approve the Green Haven condominium association project on Bethany’s Halter Farm property took place more than a year ago. That’s when Patsy Weiner, then a member of the town’s Planning and Zoning Commission,...

A Killing in Milford

Death comes swiftly, with a crushing finality, leaving the living numb with grief and overcome with loss. Our comings and goings remain stunning mysteries. When a life is taken at the hand of another, anger rises like a tidal wave.
So we are angry today at Christopher Plaskon. “I did...

Prison for a Troubled Teen?

One measure of our humanity is how we treat the least among us. The future will judge us harshly, I am afraid. This is especially so regarding our prisons. We’ve taken a punitive turn in social philosophy, and have created penal colonies in our midst. What’s worse, we’ve fallen in...

© Norm Pattis is represented by Elite Lawyer Management, managing agents for Exceptional American Lawyers
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