November 2011
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“Indeed … this actually creates an incentive for Republicans to be even more irresponsible — if GOP officials believe the public will blame the president for the breakdown of the American political process, even if it’s not Obama’s fault, Republicans will keep up their destructive tactics. The unstated goal is to put a simple-but-misguided concept in voters’ minds: Washington stinks, Obama’s the president, we want a better Washington, so must need a new president.”
—Political Animal - Overestimating presidential power
Works cited
“JSTOR: An Error Occurred Setting Your User Cookie.” JSTOR: An Error Occurred Setting Your User Cookie. N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Nov. 2011
“Occupy Wall Street was always about something much bigger than a movement against big banks and modern finance. It’s about providing a forum for people to show how tired they are not just of Wall Street, but everything. This is a visceral, impassioned, deep-seated rejection of the entire direction of our society, a refusal to take even one more step forward into the shallow commercial abyss of phoniness, short-term calculation, withered idealism and intellectual bankruptcy that American mass society has become. If there is such a thing as going on strike from one’s own culture, this is it. And by being so broad in scope and so elemental in its motivation, it’s flown over the heads of many on both the right and the left.”
—Matt Taibbi (via pieceinthepuzzlehumanity)
“Maybe it’s not obvious because until now, most of the people wielding pepper spray on crowds have been cops? Maybe it’s because many people haven’t really been paying attention to the fact that the OWS crack-down is an outgrowth of the increasing militarization of the police (including pepper spraying for jay-walking)? Who knows why people haven’t figured this out. What I do know is that by becoming accustomed to the idea that outsized force is acceptable for the police to get their way, we opened up the door for ordinary citizens to believe that they get to be violent to people who irritate them by being rude, being strange, or, in the case of the pepper-sprayed Wal-Mart, having the nerve to get to the limited bargain good before the woman wielding the pepper spray could get there.”
—pandagon.net
“The more they are trained to apply force, the more often it will be applied. The more force they have to apply, the more they will apply. The more they are militarized, the more they will act like Delta Force operatives in Tora Bora rather than street cops in Des Moines. The farther American police go in this direction, the more ordinary citizens will get that unsettling feeling that leads your more radical friends to declare that we live in a Police State controlled by storm troopers. Because to an alarming extent, they are starting to have a point. Bearing in mind that police are public servants, why has this gone unchecked?”
—Ginandtacos.com
“It seems to me that those practitioners who attack legal scholarship often have a view that it is a waste of time to think normatively or deeply about a particular legal issue. Their view is that all that matters is to read about the case holdings. But in many areas of law, there is quite a dynamism. Consider information privacy law — my field. The law is often unsettled in many areas, with contradictory opinions being issued all the time. New issues keep popping up. Courts may not talk about the normative implications, but I’m certain they are thinking of them as they craft their decisions. Being able to understand the normative implications of taking the law in different directions is very helpful for an attorney — at least in my field.”
—Concurring Opinions » The Relationship Between Theory and Practice
“There is a value in critiquing legal decisions and laws, even if the critique winds up remaining in dissent. Why do justices bother to write dissents? After all, it often takes decades if not 40-50 years for the Supreme Court to change the law. They write dissents in the hope that one day the Court will see things differently. They write them to make a record. There is a value in criticizing legal opinions and laws even if it doesn’t immediately result in a change. Indeed, many of the critiques of legal decisions and laws that I read in legal scholarship are very powerful ones. Courts and lawmakers should pay more attention, as the scholarship often reveals logical flaws in reasoning, clear errors in applying precedent, assumptions that are based on faulty facts, assumptions that are wrong based on empirical evidence, or assumptions that are contrary to widely-accepted conclusions in science or social science. Courts and legislatures may hide their heads in the sand, but that shouldn’t be a justification for criticizing legal scholarship — it should be a basis for criticizing courts and lawmakers.”
—Concurring Opinions » The Relationship Between Theory and Practice
“In this context, to complain that the Occupy movement needs specific proposals is laughable. We have a non-responsive government. Is there anyone who thinks that if the Occupy movement produced a five point proposal that our corporate lackeys in government would rush to adopt it? Of course, there are obvious moves to be made (a constitutional amendment depriving corporations of their power would be at the top of the list), but what is needed is an even larger movement demanding democracy .”
—We Have Lost Our Democracy and Getting It Back Will Require More than Brave Young People Sleeping in Tents - ReligiousLeftLaw.com
“Both critiques hit Segal for the same defect in the article: His assumption that future lawyers only need to learn practical skills and technical details and that they do not need to learn substantive law or how to identify, analyze, and work with substantive law. They need to know how to draft a contract, but they don’t have to know anything about contract law; they need to know what papers to file to commence a merger, but it is not that important to understand the law that governs the details of the deal. They need to know how to conduct discovery, but it is not that important to understand the rules that control how discovery operates (not to mention that governs the case itself, which dictates how discovery goes). This is a common refrain in the critique of legal education from non-lawyers, from some practicing lawyers, and even from some in the clinical-education community (where some argue that students need not have any background in the applicable substantive law to work in a clinic). But this is more than weird; it is incoherent.”
—PrawfsBlawg: Skills without substance
“Segal seems to be saying that the “particulars of practice” do not include knowing how to apply legal rules to facts. Note that he does not say, or imply, that this is valid but overdone. He attacks the case method, because it uses old cases and ignores practical stuff. In short, his is just another brief for the age-old cry of “just teach us the black-letter law.” That, however, is exactly what a good teacher must not do. It is not possible to understand legal nuance — the practical questions of how to apply the law to one’s clients’ needs — without having looked at different cases.”
—Neil H. Buchanan
In Defense of Teaching About Old Things -- and In Defense of Teaching →
dorfonlaw.org
What I am really saying, of course, is that the case method is a valid (not the only valid, but a valid) and valuable way to teach the law. Segal seems to be saying that the particulars of practice do not include knowing how to apply legal rules to facts. Note that he does not say, or imply, that this is valid but overdone. He attacks the case method, because it uses old cases and ignores practical stuff. In short, his is just another brief for the age-old cry of just teach us the black-letter law. That, however, is exactly what a good teacher must not do. It is not possible to understand legal nuance the practical questions of how to apply the law to ones clients needs without having looked at different cases.
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UC Davis Pepper Spray: 4 Camera Version →
ritholtz.com
Barry Ritholtz, ritholtz.com
This simultaneous 4 camera shoot (2 at first, then 4 then 3) is really a fascinating example of citizen journalism. It is both stunning and appalling that the UC Davis Campus Police would spray peaceable protestors in the United…
“Rather than react defensively to the current mood of reconsidering legal education, I hope we can try to think constructively about how to maintain the trajectory of modernization and improvement that has been under way for some time. I hope we can also continue to make the case for why the many people who will find themselves in need of legal representation will be better off if their lawyers have mastered much more than a narrow set of skills. If and when the state is standing between you and your health, your loved ones, your belongings or your freedom, you will want much more than someone who knows how to fill out the forms.”
—David Segal’s Paper Chase and Some Musings on Legal Education | brazenandtenured–law politics nature and culture
