Always Positive, Sometimes Right

Thank Goodness
Those blasted activist judges.

How dare they consider “most elementary notions of justice and morality?”

Steve Pearlstein, writing in the Washington Post, expressed the dismay over U.S. Distinct Judge Jed Rakoff’s cavalier approach to the law:

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had it up to here with activist judges who think they can overturn decades of legal precedent and ignore well-established norms of legal behavior in the pursuit of vague ideals like “justice” and “morality”.

Whom do they think they are?

Before discussing the ruling by Judge (more. . .)

Charles Dickens’ Mr. Bumble had harsh words for the law in the context of marital rights: “If the law supposes that… the law is a [sic] ass—a idiot.” Every once in a while, however, in spite of itself, the law produces justice. When this happens the public should rejoice and some jurists wonder what went wrong.

Take the case of Troy Davis, a death row Georgia inmate. Mr. Davis was convicted in 1991 for the 1989 murder of a Savannah police officer. During the years following (more. . .)

Another view of the Gates-Crowley matter.

Far too much has been written about the confrontation between Harvard’s Henry Louis Gates and Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge, Massachusetts, police.  In all of the discussion, an important Constitutional issue is being totally ignored.

Assuming, arguendo, lapsing into Latin as we lawyers are prone to do (otherwise how could the hourly rate be justified), that Professor Gates did call Sgt. Crowley a racist, make reference to the officer’s “mama”, was generally obnoxious did that warrant an  arrest for “disorderly (more. . .)