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BurtLaw's Law And Everything Else
BurtLaw.Com	- LawAndEverythingElse.Com - Copyright (c) 2001 Burton Randall Hanson

"[F]or every specialist field...we should seek...suitable spokesmen...to act as a centre for information...." Carl Jung

10.02.2001-10.08.2001 Weblog & webzine on law and its relation to everything else - updated daily.

BurtLaw Daily Quick Links (Daily Weblog):

-- USSCt Fall Term 2001 - 2000-01 highlights (Cornell)

-- Photo: Bush preceded by security dogs (Yahoo)

-- How El Al does it (USAToday)

-- NRO drops Ann Coulter's column (WashPost)

-- Good column by Suzanne Fields (TownHall)

-- Good column by Adair Lara (SFGate)

-- John Bresnahan on Don Rumsfeld (RollCall) More

-- George Edmonson on Bob Barr (Cox)

-- Chelsea & Bill arrive at Oxford for frosh week (BBC)

-- Alistair Cooke's Letter from America (BBC)

-- Suing private school for one's later failure (UKTimes)

-- Mom, you're gonna be proud of me (MSNBC)

-- Seymour Hersh: what went wrong (NewYorker)

-- Indiana gov freezes state employee wages (IndyStar)

-- MN employees strike for higher pay (StPPP)

-- How Hugh Hefner got the news (PageSix)

-- Halberstam criticizes decade of fluffy TV news (MJS)

-- Poll: Blacks favor profiling to fight terror (BosGlobe)

-- Greenhouse opinion: the Court's fall term (NYT)

-- Confessions of a Taliban torturer (UKTelegraph)

-- A Brit profile of Powell (UKGuardianObserver)

-- Bin Laden's planned 2d wave (LATimes)

-- Police mistakenly shoot hero dog (TBTrib)

-- 80% of Dulles screeners not American (HumanEvents)

-- The bad guys fear women (NewRepublic) As I've said

-- Goldberg: Berlusconi is right (NRO)

-- Bush won't support nat'l ID cards (Yahoo)

-- McCain: keep religion in perspective (ArizStar)

-- Alistair Cooke's letter re Giuliani (BBC)

-- Latest from "10 Commandments Chief" (Yahoo) More

Earlier Daily Quick Links (Daily Weblog): [click here]

The war on terrorism. I am posting current original material relating to the events of 09.11.2001 and thereafter on this page. Earliest entries may be found here, and more recent ones here. If you wish to contact me, click here.

10.02.2001. Today, 10.02.2001, is a numerical palindrome.

Tony. If you've been impressed by the performance of Tony Blair, England's Prime Minister, during the current crisis, you're not alone. His latest speech reads as if written by Margaret Thatcher. That is a compliment. "Be in no doubt," he said, "bin Laden and his people organised this atrocity. The Taliban aid and abet him. He will not desist from further acts of terror. They will not stop helping him. Yes, we should try to understand the causes of terrorism, but let there be no moral ambiguity about this, nothing could ever justify the events of 11 September, and it is to turn justice on its head to pretend it could." (10.02.2001)

A conservative is a liberal who's been mugged. Or gotten a traffic ticket from a "photo cop." The House Majority Leader, Dick Armey (R - Texas) has been a leading opponent of the camera-ticketing systems, which manufacturers have marketed successfully to state lawmakers in a growing number of states. According to this report in Roll Call, Steve Elmendor, Chief of Staff to House Minority Leader, Dick Gephardt (D - Missouri), was so enraged upon receiving a $100 photo-cop ticket in the mail that he told Armey he wanted to join Armey's "crusade" (which, presumably, is a "secular" crusade not intended to offend anyone's religious sensitivities). (10.01.2001)

Homecoming. This week is Homecoming Week here in my town. Our homecoming consists of the usual parade of events. Coronation of Homecoming King and Queen. Bonfire

the night before the game. Parade at 4:45 the afternoon of the game - right past our house. Game Friday night at 7:30, just a short walk from here. Dance Saturday night. I prefer college football to pro football, and high school football to college football. High school football and homecoming.are two "fundamental things," as fundamental as caramel apples and hot dogs lathered with relish and mustard and ketchup. I don't doubt they're the sort of things some of our young American soldiers in foreign lands are longing for right now. (10.01.2001)

Ted Olson. Here's a link to Newsweek's profile of Ted Olson, the Solicitor General, whose wife, Barbara Olson, the conservative activist, died with the other passengers in the hijacking and piloting of the plane into the Pentagon on 09.11. Olson, understandably in emotional terms, has become a political partisan in recent days, something Solicitor Generals ought not do. Don't be surprised if Olson is President Bush's first pick for the Supreme Court, if a vacancy occurs within the next year. Olson has been a Bush loyalist and was a key figure on his legal team in the court battle over the Florida recount. It would be harder for Democratic senators to oppose him now than it would have been before 09.11. (09.30.2001)

BurtLaw Daily Poem. A triumph may be of several kinds by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886). For more poetry (on other subjects), click here and here.

Verbal liberalism, verbal conservatism. Justice O'Connor made some critical statements about the death penalty and about our society's over-reliance on lawyers in a speech on 07.02.2001 to an organization of feminist lawyers at the Hilton in Minneapolis. But, in "votes" since then, she has continued "siding" with the majority of the Court in upholding death-penalty challenges. According to this report in the NYT of 09.29.2001, she has spoken once again, on 09.28, this time to some law students in NYC. In this speech she speculated that as a result of governmental responses to the events of 09.11"we're likely to experience more restrictions on our personal freedom than has ever been the case in our country." She also posed some rhetorical questions to the students: "First, can a society that prides itself on equality before the law treat terrorists differently than ordinary criminals? And where do we draw the line between them? Second, at what point does the cost to civil liberties from legislation designed to prevent terrorism outweigh the added security that that legislation provides? These are tough questions," she said, "and they're going to require a great deal of study, goodwill and expertise to resolve them. And in the years to come, it will become clear that the need for lawyers does not diminish in times of crisis; it only increases." I'm in a minority in my views, but I have been and am critical of judges giving speeches like this. Not to focus on Sandra Day, who's an o.k. judge, but in general speeches like this, of necessity, are wishy-washy. Worse, the wishy-washy statements are stereotypically judicial in prose style. Even worse, the statements are delivered in the usual judicial cadences, cadences that say, "I am filling the role of a judge and what I'm saying should sound profound. Because I am a judge, what I am saying must by definition be profound and should be treated as such." (About the last two points, I read recently a comment by Felix Frankfurter that judges should be judicial-minded but not always so judicial-sounding.) Finally, and again I'm speaking generally, judicial speeches, to the extent they say anything, are often, while not intentionally so, in some way misleading. Some judges, perhaps unconsciously, want to sound more "liberal" than they might seem to be in their rulings, e.g., their rulings upholding judicial executions. Verbal liberalism is the result. Pontius Pilate is the prototype, "washing his hands of the matter" of the judicially-sanctioned execution of Jesus Christ, laying the blame on the will of the crowd. On the other hand, other judges, perhaps unconsciously, often go on and on about the importance of judicial restraint. And then they go back to their chambers and somehow convince themselves that, by some happy coincidence, the Drafters of the Constitution had in mind what they themselves now have in mind. Perhaps I'm exaggerating to make a point. My point is this. It's o.k. for some judges, those who have something non-platitudinous to say, to give an occasional speech, assuming they're carrying a full load and are current in deciding cases. Holmes, who always wrote his opinions immediately after oral arguments were over, gave around 30 speeches in his 50 years as a judge. All but two of them (which are major addresses) are collected in a slim volume I have that is called The Occasional Speeches of Justice Holmes. Most all of them are still worth reading. Some, including one I read the other day and linked to, the Memorial Day Address in Keene, NH (click here), are among the greatest speeches ever penned. Most judges, however, would be better off staying in their chambers, doing the work we expect of them. After all, they already have a captive audience. And everything they say gets published, regardless of its merit. (09.30.2001)

Nobel Peace Prize. "We have reached a decision and it will be announced on Oct. 12." So said Geir Lundestad, the director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, referring to the Nobel Peace Prize. There is much speculation that the United Nations or Secretary General, Kofi Annan, will win the prize. [more] What a laugh. The U.N. and Annan were both big players at the recent anti-semitic, anti-American "conference" in Durban, in which the U.S. and Israel wisely did not participate. Of the Durban Conference, Alistair Cooke wrote: "I doubt there has ever been a conference called by the United Nations that was so well-meaning in intention as the one in Durban but also so ill-considered, so doomed in prospect, a conference more dominated, if not paralysed, by hate-mongering delegates and loony outdoor bigots whom the conference was supposed to pacify or reform...." [more] Some have even speculated that there is a "Durban connection" to the events of 09.11. Opinion (WorldNetDaily). I don't know the answer. But I do know that the "conference," including Annan's sanctimonious remarks, irritated me. Who should get the prize? Give it to the N.Y.P.D. and the F.D.N.Y., the folks who try their damdest to keep the peace and protect people on a daily basis, the folks who gave their lives on 09.11 trying to save the innocent victims of the hateful apostles of anti-Americanism and anti-semitism. (09.29.2001)

Reclusive, quiet leadership. In the days before 09.11 the press was running stories badmouthing Don Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, some even saying his days were numbered. Rumsfeld is a low-profile guy who sits at his desk and does his job. He's not the sort of guy who runs around like a chicken with its head cut off. He's not the sort of guy who, upon entering a room, notes where the cameras are and eases his way within their field of vision. He's not a self-promoter. He's living proof of the old adage, "Still water runs deep." At the outset of the Bush Administration last winter, as this article notes, he warned us we needed to increase defense spending and needed to "expect the unexpected from a new breed of enemies." Ever since then he's been "thinking outside the box" -- i.e., thinking creatively -- and struggling to get military leaders to do so in their contingency planning. There's a story about a new, inexperienced judge who announced he was going to clean up the court system. Learned Hand asked rhetorically, "With what, the vacuum in his head?" Rumsfeld knows what he's doing, as do Vice-President Cheney and Secretary of State Powell. Their voices are experienced and different. If the President acts wisely and effectively in the days, weeks, months, and years ahead, not a little of the credit will belong with these men -- and with the President for surrounding himself with battle-tested heavyweights. (09.29.2001)

Peggy Noonan's 1998 essay. Peggy Noonan, the one-time Reagan and Bush (#41) speechwriter, wrote an essay for the 11.30.1998 issue of Forbes titled, "There Is No Time, There Will Be Time -- We live in such unprecedented comfort! But can it last?" The essay began with the sort of critique implicit in the famous statement by Senator Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts that "Nobody ever says on his death bed, 'I wish I had spent more time in the office.'" Noonan wrote: "Does family life spill over into work life? No. Work life spills over into family life. You do not wind up taking your son for a walk at work, you wind up teleconferencing during softball practice. This is not progress. It is not more time but less. Maybe our kids will remember us as there but not there, physically present but carrying the faces of men and women who are strategizing the sale." But the essay was striking for what followed, its prescient (we now know), mystical, Yeatsean sense of foreboding (see, e.g., Yeats' A Prayer for My Daughter), its sense that something not only could, but would, happen to "change things." She wrote:

When you consider who is gifted and crazed with rage...when you think of the terrorist places and the terrorist countries...who do they hate most? The Great Satan, the United States. What is its most important place? Some would say Washington. I would say the great city of the United States is the great city of the world, the dense 10-mile-long island called Manhattan, where the economic and media power of the nation resides, the city that is the psychological center of our modernity, our hedonism, our creativity, our hard-shouldered hipness, our unthinking arrogance. If someone does the big, terrible thing to New York or Washington, there will be a lot of chaos and a lot of lines going down, a lot of damage, and a lot of things won't be working so well anymore. And thus a lot more...time. Something tells me we won't be teleconferencing and faxing about the Ford account for a while. The psychic blow -- and that is what it will be as people absorb it, a blow, an insult that reorders and changes -- will shift our perspective and priorities, dramatically, and for longer than a while. Something tells me more of us will be praying, and hard, one side benefit of which is that there is sometimes a quality of stopped time when you pray. You get outside time....

While England slept, while America.... Long before he was President JFK wrote a book-length thesis called While England Slept -- about England's having been militarily asleep in the years before WWII. It now appears, as if we didn't know it, that America was militarily asleep in the 1990's. According to Joe Klein, writing in the New Yorker, "[T]here seems to be near-unanimous agreement among experts [that] in the ten years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, almost every aspect of American national-security policy -- from military operations to intelligence gathering, from border control to political leadership -- has been marked by...institutional lassitude and bureaucratic arrogance...." [more] It is, I believe, a telling fact that little attention was paid in the last Presidential campaign to foreign policy and national defense. I also believe that the lassitude and arrogance in our national security policy was but one external manifestation of a pervasive core superficiality that manifested itself in many other ways, including in our search after mammon -- mammon in the form of quick and easy profits, gas-guzzling SUV's, "lite" spirituality focusing on superficial self-realization (how many airheads have you heard repeat the cliche that they are "spiritual," not "religious"), escapist fun ("fun, fun, fun"), escapist travel ("I just love Provence and Tuscany"), "lite" self-promoting TV news, voracious consumption, etc. Why have so many people in the days following the attack found meaning in the W. H. Auden poem September 1, 1939? Perhaps the phrase "a low dishonest decade" in the first stanza resonates with them, as I think it should. There's an interesting (and long) profile of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., the historian, in First Things that I just read last night. Schlesinger was influenced in developing his "view of man" by the prominent Harvard theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, and by the influential Harvard historian, Perry Miller. The latter passed on to Schlesinger "insights into the dark power of the Augustinian strain in Christianity, the anguished awareness of human finitude, failure, guilt, corruptibility, the precariousness of existence and the challenge of moral responsibility." "Lite" naïve spirituality tries to "fly away" from, to ignore, to repress the realities of human nature. For ten years people like James Hillman, the depth psychologist, have been warning us that life without soul and depth is impossible. Sooner or later the sun toward which we fly melts our waxen wings and we crash. Gravity pulls us down to earth and to reality, and literally and figuratively we experience an "ashes time." We are offered the opportunity during this "ashes time" to learn once again the old lesson that everything has a price. We are offered the opportunity to learn once again what Jefferson tried to teach us, that liberty's price is eternal vigilance. I hope we will relearn these old lessons. I would be more optimistic than I am if I didn't detect already in the voices of so many people a kind of proud football-fan mentality that seems to think the solution to the mess we're in is as easy as saying "We're #1 and let's prove it to the world." Excessive pride, and a seeking after quick-and-easy artificial "high's," are what preceded the fall. (09.28.2001)

Harvesting the neighbor's crop. There's an old tradition in rural Minnesota, in rural America, perhaps in most societies. If a farmer has a heart attack or his wife is ill or if he dies, the neighbors form crews and help tend the crops. During WWII, local businessmen formed crews and worked in the late afternoon and early-evening to help short-handed farmers tend their crops. Of late in NYC it's been some big law firms who've needed help. Arguably, neighboring law firms are more in competition with each other than neighboring farmers are. Nonetheless, the events of 09.11 seem to have brought out the "old farmers" inside many of them. "Lawyers," for example, "have gone out of their way to help those whose offices were destroyed or rendered unusable." They actually have been "extremely kind." [more] (09.28.2001)

Strict constructionist. In recent days we've heard a bit about the history of "code names" for military operations. The best article I've read on the subject was in the Moscow Times (click here). It was based on an unclassified 1995 article by Gregory Sieminski, a U.S. military intelligence officer. Sieminski quotes Churchill as saying, "The world is wide, and intelligent thought will readily supply an unlimited number of well-sounding names which do not suggest the character of the operation or disparage it in any way, and do not enable some widow or mother to say that her son was killed in an operation called 'Operation Bunnyhug' or 'Operation Ballyhoo.' Operations in which large numbers of men may lose their lives ought not to be described by code words which imply a boastful or overconfident sentiment." According to the Times' article, "These days, code names are publicly declared (so they are technically considered nicknames, not codes), and are designed to achieve specific and subtle public relations goals." There are "code names" and "code words" and "code phrases." In the law, "strict constructionist" is one of the most-often used code phrases. The phrase, when used to describe an appellate judge, is supposed to convey on one level that the judge, in interpreting and applying the constitution or a statute, will act in a neutral manner, looking to the objective text of the governing language and not read his or her personal opinions on partisan political issues into the text. But increasingly commentators have argued that, at least when used by Republican Presidents and Presidential candidates, the phrase is a code phrase meaning "a judge who, if given the opportunity, will vote to overrule or restrict Roe v. Wade." An article in the New York Times yesterday (click here) quotes a memo William Rehnquist wrote in 1969 as an assistant attorney general, a memo that President Nixon or his advisers presumably read before appointing Rehnquist to the Supreme Court in 1971. In the memo Rehnquist confided what he really meant when he used the term: "A judge who is a 'strict constructionist' in constitutional matters will generally not be favorably inclined toward claims of either criminal defendants or civil rights plaintiffs." Give the guy credit for being honest and forthright in his confidential memos. Don't give him credit for his fashion sense. Rehnquist wore "a pink shirt with a psychedelic necktie" to his first meeting with Nixon, who thought he looked like a "clown." (09.28.2001)

Birth, death. "Joy mixed with numbing grief yesterday as a family celebrated the baptism of a baby boy -- and mourned his father's death at the same time. A priest baptized 1-month-old Robert Phillip Spencer, then held the infant during a wrenching memorial service for his missing dad, Robert Andrew Spencer." More (NYDailyNews). We're going to be reading more reports like this, and many stories of young widows giving birth to babies conceived before 09.11.2001. Since 09.11 I've been taking most of my lake walks at Lake Harriet rather than Lake Calhoun. Lake Calhoun's clientele are "younger" and more "with it." I think I'm drawn to Harriet these days because it's more of a family lake and I maybe need, in some way, to see the mothers pushing the prams on sunny weekday afternoons. On my son's 25th birthday, on 09.15, the words that came to me were "Children are a gift of God." My neighbors, Tim&Lo, certainly believe that. They have been in the Westchester area outside NYC all month to help welcome into the world their first grandchild, the daughter of John Schroedel and their daughter Jenny. I received an e-mail from John the other day with a pic of him holding the lovely new baby, Anna Pepper, born 09.21. Yesterday, sitting in the sun by the fountain in downtown Edina reading some letters of Wallace Stevens, the great lawyer and poet, I came across this line from a letter Stevens wrote on May 4, 1948: "[T]he physical never seems newer than when it is emerging from the metaphysical." In the margin, I wrote: "For example, a baby." There's an old Norsk saying I've always liked about newborn babies that I translate: "It's a remarkable thing about Life! How small it begins but how far it can go! When you look at the newborn baby and think of the grown individual -- what a difference!" Is this still a good world for babies? Some adults say no and choose not to have kids. But I believe babies make the world better, just by being born. And they seem to want to be born, regardless.... Or so Robert Frost, and other poets, have speculated, directly or indirectly. See, e.g.,Frost's Trial by Existence and Stevens' The Poems of Our Climate. (09.28.2001)

Birth, death -- and maybe some play in between? "Throughout the metropolitan area and across the nation, the tradition of recess has been quietly disappearing. The phenomenon started building in the 1990s and then picked up momentum as increased academic demands put a time squeeze on the school day...." From Many schools pull plug on recess -- lack of playtime generates debate, by Bonnie Miller Rubin (Chicago Tribune). If I were running for class president, PTA president, or school board -- any one of them -- my slogan would be the same, "A Vote for Me is a Vote for Recess." (09.27.2001) More and more....

BurtLaw Featured Sites. The battle over civil litigation reform. One of the most-read weblogs/webzines on the internet is Overlawyered.Com, edited/written by Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Olson's view is that ours is a legal system that "too often turns litigation into a weapon against guilty and innocent alike, erodes individual responsibility, rewards sharp practice, enriches its participants at the public's expense, and resists even modest efforts at reform and accountability." While I don't agree with everything Olson says, I think his basic critique is correct. For example, like Olson, I get irked when the settlement class action lawyers negotiate "on my behalf" entitles me to coupons I'll never use and them to cash to pay them for their costs and effort. More... The ATLA (American Trial Lawyers Association), a politically-potent lobby, is doing its best to counter the influence of critics like Olson. It has launched a site in which it presents what it calls The Other Side of the Story. Earlier featured sites.

BurtLaw Daily Quote. "The deadliest enemies of nations are not their foreign foes; they always dwell within their borders. And from these internal enemies civilization is always in need of being saved. The nation blessed above all nations is she in whom the civic genius of the people does the saving day by day, by acts without external picturesqueness; by speaking, writing, voting reasonably; by smiting corruption swiftly, by good temper between parties; by the people knowing true men when they see them, and preferring them as leaders to rabid partisans or empty quacks." William James (1842-1910), from Memories and Studies (1911). More quotes: here and here.

BurtLaw Places. Crane's Beach at Ipswich, MA, an hour's drive north of Boston and Cambridge, a beach that Justice Holmes himself said has "the look of magic." Click here.

The war on terrorism. As I stated earlier, I am posting current original material relating to the events of 09.11.2001 and thereafter on this page. Earliest entries may be found here, and more recent ones here.

Unlicensed, uninsured motorists - 17 million of 'em. Robert Miniter has an Op/Ed piece dated 09.10.2001 in the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal making a plausible argument that illegal aliens -- of whom there are an estimated six to nine million -- should be allowed to obtain driver's licenses. He notes, although it is not the point of his piece, that there are an estimated 17 million unlicensed drivers, a very high per cent of whom are illegal aliens and presumably almost all of whom are uninsured. One in five fatal accidents involves an unlicensed (and therefore uninsured) driver. "As a result," says Miniter, "auto insurance rates for law-abiding Americans are artificially higher. Insurance companies have learned the hard way that unlicensed, uninsured drivers rarely pay up -- so you do." While Miniter at that point moves on to other matters to support his main argument, I would like to stop at that point and remind everyone that there is a sensible solution to the problem of high insurance rates we all pay because there are so many uninsured motorists. It's called pay-at-the-pump auto insurance. Many insurance companies, oil companies and personal injury lawyers apparently don't like the idea, as the popular consumer finance writer Andrew Tobias found out in promoting his version of the plan in California. But it is an idea that I think merits careful consideration by lawmakers. Since everyone has to buy gas to drive, motorists who now drive without insurance could not escape paying. Moreover, they, like everyone else, would pay according to their use of fuel. Therefore, an additional benefit of the plan, among several, is that it would encourage use of fuel efficient vehicles. The idea is explained here in detail. (09.10.2001)

BurtLaw Featured Essay(s): "[W]e talk about art -- and write about art -- so poorly. If you eliminated all the easy, lazy superlatives -- beautiful, wonderful, powerful, amazing, incredible -- from use in any context relating to art, the silence would be deafening. People would stare at each other and stammer and gesticulate, and feel utterly at a loss to describe what they just experienced. This is all the more a problem when the art form, such as music or dance, has no verbal element. In the face of silence, we always have clichés, comfortable, ready at hand, and so meaningless as to be infinitely adaptable...." Herewith, an essay by Philip Kennicott, Maybe It's Your Platitude, that lists the top 50 clichés about art, including the ever-popular "Art is a universal language," "Art captures the eternal human spirit," "Art brings us closer to our fellow man," "Art makes us better people," and "Art is timeless." Also of interest: movie clichés - cliché finder - sports clichés - political clichés.

Bozzy & Dr. J. My friend, Justice John E. Simonett, introduced me to James Boswell's Life of Johnson. It's a terrific book. I find it interesting that few people these days read anything that Johnson himself wrote. I tried and didn't find it worth the effort. But Johnson the person remains interesting, primarily because of Boswell's portrait of him. Boswell was a lawyer and kept a detailed journal throughout his life. The discovery of those journals was one of the major literary events of the 20th century. I've read a couple of volumes of them. I'm looking forward to reading more of them. There's also a new biography of Boswell, reviewed here, that looks worth reading. More...

When "governments" (including courts) buy computers. In his weekly radio address on 08.25.2001, Pres. Bush announced that OMB (Office of Management and Budget) was "releasing a report identifying 14 long-neglected management problems in the federal government...." As an example, he said that "the United States government is the world's single largest purchaser of computers and other technologies for gathering and using information. In 2002, we will spend $45 billion on information technology. That's more than we've budgeted for highways and roads. Yet so far, and unlike private sector companies, this large investment has not cut the government's cost or improved people's lives in any way we can measure." I am encouraged by this sort of talk, and I hope the President follows through on it. In 2000, when I was a candidate for judicial office, I publicly addressed this same basic issue.... [more] (08.26.2001)

Cheerleading competitions and the "rule of law." When word got out that the faculty sponsor of the cheerleading squad at Brazoswood High School in Brazoswood, TX had told the supposedly impartial judges which girls she wanted them to select, parents of rejected girls threatened legal action. What to do to right this wrong? More...

The perils of ignoring our boys. Last week the novelist, Doris Lessing, delivered a "give 'em hell" speech that attacked the vitriolic, hot-air brand of feminists who seem to think something is gained by dissing men in general. She warned about the effects of this nonsense on the psyches of both men and boys, as well as the effects on society. [more] Richard Morrison, writing in The Times of London, does a good job of expanding on Lessing's comments. He says, in part: "Preoccupied with the task of creating a 'level playing-field' for girls, we have fatally ignored the problem boys. And 'fatal' is not too dramatic a word in this context. In the 15-to-24 age group, males are five times more likely to attempt suicide than females, four times more likely to be addicted to drugs or alcohol, and nine times more likely to be sleeping rough on the streets. If they also happen to be black, badly educated and from poor homes, the scales of life are weighed even more cruelly against them." It seems to me that the situation in the UK parallels that in our country in many ways. At one point Morrison says, "It’s as if the very qualities that differentiate boys from girls are being suppressed by offical diktat." Doesn't that ring a bell? [more] For some of my views, click here, here, and here. (08.21.2001)

Chivalrous lawyers win coupons for consumers, cash for themselves. I'm not one to question the motives of any of the lawyers who prosecute class action law suits to benefit consumers, etc. I'm willing to concede that most, maybe all, of them are indeed chivalrous soldiers in a civil crusade for justice for ordinary folks who've been wronged (and may not even know it). But I'm always irked when the settlement they negotiate on my behalf entitles me to coupons I'll never use and them to cash to.... More....

Slopping out may be on the way out. Nelson Mandela, who knows of what he speaks, has said that "no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails." Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which went into effect in 1999, provides that no one should be subject to inhuman and degrading conditions. One such practice that, surprisingly to me, still exists in prisons and jails in certain European countries is the practice known as "slopping out." More....

Those nice guys you meet in church. During my years as a research attorney at the Minnesota Supreme Court I worked on a number of appeals in sexual abuse cases in which it came out that the convicted defendant's modus operandi was to meet the women and/or children he victimized at social gatherings of single parents. Nick Hornby, author of High Fidelity and How to Be Good, also wrote a novel titled About a Boy, reviewed here, in which a relatively benign fellow perfects the "single-mom scam" to "market" himself as a sensitive guy to (and thereby "score" with) attractive gullible single mothers. Here's a link to a real-life story about a less-than-benign Maine guy convicted of sexual assault who has used churches throughout the state to meet the women and young girls he has assaulted. It's sad to say but believers, like buyers, must beware.

Our voyeuristic society. At times, especially in the winter when I need a cinematic escape from the cold weather of Mpls, I say it's my favorite movie -- Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954). It's a literally-hot movie that's about romance and love and suspense --

and a lot of other things, including voyeurism. James Stewart plays an aging commitment-phobic globe-trotting playboy photo-journalist who finds himself in the middle of a heat wave confined to his apartment recuperating from a broken leg. With no t.v. to watch (it's 1954) and nothing much to do except play the grouch during daily visits by his nurse (Thelma Ritter) and his high-society high-fashion girl friend (Grace Kelly at her absolute loveliest), he becomes a voyeur, watching the.... [more] (08.09.2001)

Is our criminal justice system "criminally unjust"? Wendy Kaiminer, writing in the Sept. 2001 issue of The American Prospect, argues it is: "When people start identifying with the victims of law enforcement, they stop accepting its systematic abuses. Laws against medicinal marijuana are vulnerable because their targets include respectable citizens....Imagine the political consequences of subjecting affluent whites to the same degree of police surveillance and abuse that poor blacks and Latinos endure. The war on drugs is a war on minorities, partly because police pay relatively little attention to drug-law violations by whites." [more] Also worth reading: "Hard-Time Kids" by Sasha Abramsky, who argues: "We are a country reeling under a changing definition of childhood, shifting views about redemption and rehabilitative potential, and an increasingly pre-Enlightenment notion of punishment as an emotional catharsis for victims and an automatic response to violations of the moral code." [more] For some of my views on the issues discussed in these pieces, click here and here. (08.10.2001)

Bill of Rights Golf - The Game. Professor Doug Linder, University of Missouri-Kansas City Law School, has devised an online computer game that you can play right now. It tests your knowledge of hornbook Constitutional Law, the kind law students learn and lawyers tend to forget. It's called Bill of Rights Golf. At the end of your round, drop by the James Madison Clubhouse and quaff a beer or two.

Best decision? In my opinion, the decision in this case, written by the redoubtable Justice Rosalie E. Wahl, is far and away the most objectively beneficial criminal law decision of the Minnesota Supreme Court in the last 30 years. [more]

"Counselor, would you repeat your objection -- I was thinking about my hair." USA Today reports on the results of a survey about what's on the minds of women. According to the survey, "women" -- and presumably this includes female judges and lawyers and legal secretaries -- spend an average of 43 minutes a day thinking about.... [more]

Law and Dogs. Pat Murphy, 50, a Boulder, CO plant ecologist, wants the dog-waste-pickup laws enforced. He's gone about it in a methodical, even scientific way. On one day in March he used a GPD (global positioning device) to locate precisely each of 661 piles of dog doo at a middle school yard in Boulder, then.... [more]

Raising teens: what the researchers agree on. The folks at the Center for Health Communication at the Harvard School of Public Health have released a 101-page report titled Raising Teens: A Synthesis of Research and a Foundation for Action. The report "pull[s] together current research on the parenting of adolescents and distill[s] from it key messages for the media, policy makers, practitioners, and parents." The Report puts "particular emphasis on identifying those conclusions about the parenting of adolescents about which there is widespread agreement among researchers and practitioners." It identifies "Five Basics of Parenting Adolescents, with a list of strategies for each." and lists "Ten Tasks of Adolescence...delineat[ing] the main aspects of adolescent development that parents and other adults need to be aware of and support." You can download it or order "one" free copy here. More and more

Dick Nixon, America's greatest bowling president. ...Truman had a bowling alley installed in the White House, but Ike, an obsessive-compulsive golfer, tore it out. Dick righted that wrong, as he did so many others, by having another one installed. Undoubtedly, nobody ever bowled wearing a necktie (or walked on a beach in a suit) better than Dick. And

no one ever bowled so many games in a row: legend has it that he once bowled 20 games in a row (!), all by himself, with the loyal White House staffer who managed the alley keeping his score and keeping him company. [more] Who knows how many crises (six? maybe more) Dick solved while bowling by himself. And who can blame him for scratching occasionally (see foot on the line in photo right), given that he was balancing the weight of the Free World on his shoulders as he released the ball.... [more]

Thoughts on racial profiling and "'consent' searches." It is curious, and I think telling, how easy it is for police to spot and stop and search black drivers [click here and here] when it is so difficult for taxi drivers to spot and stop for black passengers [click here]. New Jersey is considering barring its law enforcement officers from conducting so-called consent searches of motorists during routine traffic stops. See, e.g., this news report and this one. Justice Esther M. Tomljonovich of the Minnesota Supreme Court, in her prescient concurring opinion in a 1997 case, State v. George., broached the possibility of "reject[ing] the concept of consent to search in the context of routine traffic stops and so-called voluntary street encounters." I have come to the conclusion that Governor Ventura and the Minnesota Legislature ought to do just that, prohibit state and local law enforcement officers from conducting consent searches in these contexts. The virtue of this proposal is that, at minimal cost and without the need for more "studies," it would eliminate the incentive of officers to stop motorists, regardless of race, on flimsy grounds in the hope of obtaining "consent" to search. Such a policy would go a long way toward eliminating stops based on racial- and other impermissible types of profiling. Police want us to believe we can trust them to eliminate bias as a factor in stopping motorists. Maybe so. But the routine asking for "consent" to search from stopped motorists of any race is a separate, independent insult to free citizens of a free country. Updates: a) G. Callahan & W. Anderson, The Roots of Racial Profiling, Reason Magazine, Aug-Sept 2001. b) James Forman, Jr., The Conservative Case Against Racial Profiling, The New Republic, 09.10.2001 issue, on how profiling hurts kids.

"What does the Herfindahl-Hirschman index measure?" That's the first of 71 questions on the last version of the infamous trivia quiz U.S. Circuit Court Judge Danny Boggs gives his law clerk applicants. I know the answer to the first question because the "Herfindahl" in the HHI is my late mom's late cousin, Orris Herfindahl, who died trekking in Nepal. Click here for the latest story about Judge Boggs & his clerks, three of whom have appeared on Who Wants to be a Millionaire, click here for the quiz, and click here for the answers.

Funny-papers lawyer. Ruben Bolling started drawing his Tom the Dancing Bug comic strip for the student newsweekly, The Harvard Law Record, while he was a student at Harvard Law, from which he graduated in 1987. The strip, which blends social and political commentary, now appears in syndication in many newspapers. Bolling also draws "Tom" cartoons for The New Yorker, Salon, and the "Week in Review" section of the New York Times.

"Imagination and Insurance." "From 1918 to 1941, the main office of the Hartford Insurance Company on Asylum Avenue in Hartford, Connecticut, 'a solemn affair of granite, with a portico resting on five of the grimmest possible columns,' housed two most unusual employees. Upstairs in a big corner office, a Harvard graduate bond-surety lawyer, who became (in 1934) a vice-president of the company, and, on the side, wrote poetry. Downstairs, in the fire insurance division, a fire prevention specialist, an engineering graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who on the side practiced linguistics...." [more] For more poetry, click here, here, and here.

Fathers and kids. I occasionally "do a Google" on familiar names. Among the things I found doing one on my law-student daughter's name the other day was this piece in a University of Colorado alumni publication by William C. Marolt, CEO/President, U.S. Olympic Ski Team, Park City, Utah, recommending three books to kids about to go to college and their parents: "1.Letting Go: A Parents' Guide to Understanding the College Years by Karen Levin Coburn and Madge Lawrence Treeger, 2. The Real Freshman Handbook: An Irreverent & Totally Honest Guide to Life on Campus by Jennifer Hanson, 3. 101 Things a College Girl Should Know, from a Big Sister Who's Been There by Stephanie Edwards." J.HA's book has done well enough that the publisher, Houghton-Mifflin & Co. of Boston, is planning a revised, updated second edition. More...

Female boss means softer workplace? It was reported recently that women are close to being in the majority among students in American law schools. Some have suggested that more women in the profession will mean the practice of law will be less adversarial. This may happen. Then again it may not. I do know that appointing a woman as boss won't necessarily make a workplace better or more humane. One female lawyer I know who has worked in a number of different settings told me once that not one of the women she'd worked under had been a good manager. A feminist, she referred to one of them as "that bitch." I've had lots of bosses. Best boss I ever had was a woman. Then again, worst boss I ever had was a woman. More...

Law and Norwegians: All of my ancestors were Norwegian -- including the Harveys, who were from the place depicted at right, Horvei (Americanized to Harvey), Evanger, Voss, Norway. The photo was taken at my request in the summer of 1999 as a courtesy by a generous Vossinger named Svein Ulvand, who maintains a truly wonderful website devoted to Voss, on which he posts a new picture every day. [more] One of my Vossinger great-grandmother Ragnhilda Harvey Herfindahl's grandchildren was Orris Herfindahl, who died, too young, while trekking in Nepal. Circa 1960 he wrote the essay, "What is Conservation," which has been called a "classic" in the field of environmental philosophy and resource management. [more] The so-called "Herfindahl Index," used by the trustbusters in the U.S. Dept. of Justice, is named after him. [more] For more on "Law and Norwegians," click here.

Law and writing, legal secretaries. a) There was an interesting article in the NYT the other day [click here] on the silly battle that opposing camps of appellate judges are waging about the "right" way to write an opinion deciding an appeal. Purists or traditionalists favor the approach of generally citing prior decisions in the main body of the opinion, not in footnotes. In recent years that approach has been challenged by devotees of a legal-writing guru, Bryan Garner, who writes books (too many, I think) and gives MCLE seminars on how to write legal prose... I have been amused in recent years by all the judges and lawyers (usually not very good writers) who run around not only trumpeting Mr. Garner's books and seminars but trying to coerce other judges and lawyers (some of whom are good writers) to read the books and attend the seminars.... [more] b) "Alot" or "a lot"? Paul Brians maintains a site explaining common errors in English usage. You wouldn't write "alittle" and you shouldn't write "alot." There's a lot of useful information here, for judges, lawyers, secretaries, and others who want to be "correct." [more] For more on legal writing, click here.

Click on "kiss" (left) for a collection of poems about "luv."

Click here and here for picks of the most romantic movies of all time, a few of which have lawyers and judges, those poor, unromantic souls, as characters.

Click here for some stuff about law and love.

Games people play...at work. In one monthly study WWW.Pogo.Com, which features scores of online games, led the Nielsen list of "stickiest" web sites visited by people using their work computers. Its audience size? Over 1,750,000 people. Average time spent on site per person? Slightly over two hours. E-Bay wasn't as "sticky" among workers (average time per person: 1:57 hours), but its audience was over 7,500,000 people. One wonders how many visitors to these sites were lawyers. One wonders if any clients got billed for those hours. :-) a) Slapping judges. A large number of disappointed Democrats apparently have visited this site, which I don't endorse, to play a game that I admit having played, a game that involves trying to help Al Gore become President by "slapping" those U. S. Supreme Court Justices whose "votes" ultimately had the effect of awarding the election to Geo. W. Bush. b) Tossing Cows. I understand from the feedback I've gotten that a number of people who regularly visit BurtLawEtc. have become addicted to the ancient and honorable Norwegian sport of cow tossing. As I've emphasized, you may participate without fear of prosecution for violating any cruelty-to-animal statutes or ordinances because the cows you fling are far away in Norway, and Norway doesn't have jurisdiction over you! You need not be a Norwegian or "a rube" to participate. If you score higher than 450 (out of 500), you beat me. If you're good, the best time to play is Sunday, when the previous week's highest scores are erased from the scoreboard. My 450 was up there briefly a few weeks ago. I was "in the zone" when I attained that score. If you do poorly, well, you may be asked, as my daughter was, whether you're Swedish. [click here] c) Hangman. When I was a kid, we played games using a blackboard or a scrap of paper, games like Battleship...and this one, Hangman. Now you can play it on the boss' dime on your office computer. Click here.