The New Yorker recently reviewed Jay-Z’s book explaining his discography (“Decoded”) alongside “The Anthology of Rap,” a nine-hundred-page compendium published by two English professors who argue that rap should be considered a form of modern poetry.
I won’t touch that argument; poets and English professors are notoriously violent.
But one part of the article bears
[Update: Judge Massiah-Jackson upheld the verdict and overruled the defendants’ post-trial motions. Now comes the appeal to the Pennsylvania Superior Court.]
[Update 2: The Pennsylvania Superior Court reversed, citing three grounds: an error in the jury instruction, the need for Dr. Booth to produce an expert report before trial, and
A few months back, Judge Richard Posner and Professor Albert Yoon posted their draft of What Judges Think of the Quality of Legal Representation, their forthcoming paper in the Stanford Law Review.
Legal scholarship is prone towards omphaloskepsis and metadiscourse, so it’s refreshing to see a paper coming out based on real, honest-to-goodness
Bench trials, in which the judge decides both the facts and the law, are often considered to be less demanding than jury trials, but as I finally come to the surface for air after several days submerged in the preparation of a "Proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law" for a bench trial that
[UPDATE: The lawyer called me and asked to "restart" our relationship, including by removing the more provocative elements, so I did. Water under the bridge.]
Yesterday I received an email which said:
Pursuant to New Jersey Rule of Court 1:4-8, please allow this correspondence to serve as notice that Defendants intend to file
Modern society has two means by which it assesses truth or falsity: science and law. Just as Einstein recognized "there is no logical path to the [elemental laws of the universe]; only intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of experience, can reach them," Holmes taught "the life of the law has not been logic; it has been
[Update: I somehow missed Ron Coleman’s earlier take on the article, but it’s required reading if you’re interested in the subject. Coleman and Walter Olson both seem on board with, as Olson words it, "steering rights owners into agency complaints or arbitration as an alternative, or at least precondition, to court action."]
Via
Trial lawyers traffic in justice. When the American Trial Lawyers Association decided that decades of insurance industry funded propaganda attacking "trial lawyers" had paid off, they changed their name to the American Association for Justice. (Frankly, I would have preferred they changed their name to The Justice League of America, but I suppose
Last month, the Seventh Circuit’s Electronic Discovery Pilot Program Committee released its report on phase one of its Electronic Discovery Pilot Program. Initiated as a “multi-year, multi-phase process to develop, implement, evaluate, and improve pretrial litigation procedures that would provide fairness and justice to all parties while seeking to reduce
Trial lawyers — both defense-side and plaintiff’s-side — are always looking for an edge.
Every aspect of the trial has to be planned in advance, with multiple levels of contingency planning for when testimony, rulings or evidence goes awry. That’s a given, but it’s not enough.
There’s a whole cottage industry of jury consultants