Blog Posts

I’ve been practicing law just long enough to know that I will never make sense of it all. It’s not that I am stupid, although my shortcomings are certainly an issue. The larger truth is that the law is irrational. It bumps, grinds and gyrates in ways that simply make no sense.
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One of the abiding convictions of criminal defense lawyers is that no one is the sum of their worst moments. The man or woman on whose side I stand may be accused of having committed a horrific act, and the act is all the world will know them by. But people are more than their mistakes. We all...

I suppose it is now official: Detroit has gone bankrupt, or, at the very least, has sought protection from its creditors in a federal bankruptcy court. What was once the nation’s fourth most populous city is now the biggest municipality ever to throw up its hands in financial...

So what do you make of juror B37 in the Zimmerman case? She was released from jury duty late Saturday night. By Monday morning, she had a book deal in place, and interviews scheduled with Anderson Cooper. Even her fellow jurors are now distancing themselves from her. What are the odds she...

George Zimmerman was acquitted of both the crimes of murder and manslaughter in Florida last week. Today, plenty of folks are angry about that. They believe he got away with murder. There are calls for federal prosecution of Zimmerman.





What...

Six women -- five white, and one Hispanic -- acquitted George Zimmerman Saturday night for the killing of Trayvon Martin. The jurors rejected both a charge of murder, which, under Florida law, required showing of hatred or animus, and manslaughter, which required a lesser showing of a lack of...

Forgive me if I think of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court as little more than an obscene joke. But what else are we to think of a court that permits only the government to appear to plead its case? That works in secret? That has never had a decision of its reviewed in any meaningful...

History, it is often observed, is written by the winners. Losers die, are marginalized, are forgotten. History, then, is often a partial truth. It is the thief ignoring the cries of the dispossessed, and finding solace in various themes of necessity, such as Manifest Destiny, the White Man’s...

Lawyers and judges mean well, at least most of the time. At least I think we do. But although courtrooms are theaters at which life-defining dramas are conducted, the law is blind to life's larger purposes. To explain things, we turn often to experts. To explain the twists and turns that lead some...

Each year, the Supreme Court ends its term with the crash and bang of major new decisions. By tradition, the court seems to save its most controversial rulings for last. This year, we waited until the very end to learn that the Defense of Marriage Act was unconstitutional. Now the court...