Blog Posts

You might think they are contradictory, but I tell you the notions are wholly consistent. We can and should have an independent judiciary. We should also permit juries to nullify the law. The world would be a better place if we appointed judges for life, and set jurors lose. Ordinary citizens might...

Score another victory for what I call the regal species of judicial activism, the school of through that holds the king can do no wrong. By a vote of 5-4, the United States Supreme Court once again granted a prosecutor immunity from a federal law suit on grounds of prosecutorial...

Several weeks ago, The New York Times carried a front-page story entitled, "Drawing U.S. Crowds With Anti-Islam Message." I clipped the piece and set it aside for later reading. My intention was to ridicule the focus of the article, a woman who goes by the pseudonym Brigitte Gabriel. It’s too...

I don’t know why the government is prosecuting Barry Bonds. It seems like a waste of limited resources. Yes, I believe that the former big-league slugger took steroids. I also think it is likely he lied to a grand jury and to federal agents. But in the larger scheme of things, does this...

What do you do when a judge won’t sign a warrant? If you are a person accused, you breath a sigh of relief and thank the heavens for an independent judiciary. But what if you are a police officer, and the judge refuses to bless your handiwork? What happens then? In Connecticut, you threaten...

In my next life, I want to be a prosecutor. I want to live in a fantasyland without consequences. I want to make mistakes, and never be held accountable for them. I want to stand tall for justice, and then do whatever I think is right. I want the right to demand that others be held accountable,...

This week’s Connecticut Law Tribune features an interview with F. Lee Bailey, who, at 77, remains sharp as a tack. The interview saddened me, in a necessary sort of way. Bailey’s now pressing the case for the merits of alternative dispute resolution. Trial is too costly for most Americans, he...

Should Ophadell Williams have ever been let anywhere near the steering wheel of a tour bus? Somehow, this question is now being asked by those looking for answers about why the World Wide Travel bus he was driving earlier this month crashed on I-95 in New York, killing 15 folks on their way...

This current New York Review of Books features a savage review of All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age, a new book by Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly, by Garry Wills. Entitled "Superficial & Sublime," Wills is impressive as always with his...

Although I grew up in Chicago and Detroit, I became a New Englander the day I started to read Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. Decades later, I still see the paperback pages recounting his planting of peas and beans. Something like destiny led me to my current home, situated well off the beaten...