How Much Is A Life (Or A Leg, Arm, Finger) Worth?
Posted: August 11, 2013 Filed under: General Law Leave a commentGenerally speaking, the notion of putting a monetary value on a human life is repugnant to our social and religious mores. Human life is priceless, right?
But the truth is that we attach monetary values to lives (and limbs) every day. In wrongful death actions, in personal injury actions, in workers’ compensation cases, judges, jurors and workers’ comp. commissioners are required to place a monetary value on a lost life or limb. This process has become, well, almost routine.
Should We Preserve, Or Ditch, The Constitution?
Posted: July 22, 2013 Filed under: General Law, Legal History Leave a commentOh, how I love C-SPAN! It covered, and has made available for viewing on its website, a thought-provoking panel discussion at Princeton University earlier this month. The topic: Is The American Constitution Worth Preserving? Did the Founding Fathers bequeath us a timeless document, capable of addressing all problems for all ages, or is the Constitution an archaic, inefficient instrument in dire need of revision?
The Growing Law School Disaster, Ctd.
Posted: July 18, 2013 Filed under: General Law 1 CommentI’ve written in the past about the growing concern many people have about the high cost of law school relative to the increasingly poor job prospects for new graduates. The topic continues to generate serious debate.
What To Do About The Sandy Hook Photographs?
Posted: June 2, 2013 Filed under: General Law 2 CommentsOver the past several weeks the public has witnessed a very serious debate about how to balance two very important values: the right to privacy and the public’s “right to know.” Specifically, the debate has centered on the tension between the right of Sandy Hook families to avoid having photographs of their deceased children splashed over the Internet, and the public’s right of access to public documents under the state’s freedom of information laws.
The Three-Fifths Compromise: Immoral Bargain Or Unavoidable Evil?
Posted: May 27, 2013 Filed under: General Law, Legal History 2 CommentsMore than twenty years ago I began writing a book on dilemmas. Actually, it is more of a collection of dilemmas (the product of a tortured mind and soul), which I hope to publish as an eBook in the not-too-distant future. One of the dilemmas I collected was the “three-fifths compromise”–one of several deals the Framers made with the Southern, slave-holding states, to persuade them to sign on to the new Constitution. Under the three-fifths compromise, the number of representatives allocated to each state in the House of Representatives was based on the number of free citizens “and three fifths of all other persons” in each state. Southerners wanted all slaves counted; Northerners wanted none, hence the compromise.
The Limits Of Leadership: Structural Impediments, Ctd.
Posted: May 17, 2013 Filed under: General Law | Tags: structure Leave a commentProfessor Sandy Levinson continues to highlight political punits who lambast the president and members of Congress for individual failures of leadership, while failing to recognize structural flaws in the design of the U.S. Constitution that are at least equally, if not more, responsible for the inability of our government to solve the pressing problems we face.
Is Harry Connick Jr. An Originalist?–Interpreting Musical And Legal Texts
Posted: May 16, 2013 Filed under: General Law 2 CommentsLawyers and judges are interpreters of legal texts: constitutions, statutes, regulations, judicial opinions and so on. Singers are interpreters of musical texts: notes of varying duration written on different lines and spaces of a treble or bass clef, and lyrics of course.
Do the “rules”–I use that term very loosely–that govern the interpretation of legal texts apply to musical texts and vice versa? How are the acts or processes of interpreting legal and musical texts similar? How are they different? Does one “perform” a legal text the same way a musician performs a musical text?
Star Trek And The Law, Ctd.
Posted: May 10, 2013 Filed under: General Law | Tags: star trek Leave a commentI think I may have died and gone to heaven. A U.S. District Court judge has actually prefaced his opinion with a memorable quote from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982): “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” (Spock)
The Limits Of Leadership: Structural Impediments To The Exercise Of Presidential Power
Posted: May 9, 2013 Filed under: General Law | Tags: sanford levinson, structure Leave a commentThe political pundit class has recently taken to criticizing President Obama for his lack of effective leadership, particularly on issues like gun control. The pundits argue that poor leadership skills are responsible for the defeat of such legislation.
Prominent among these pundits is Maureen Dowd, who wrote a scathing column in the New York Times, in which she said of the president:
[He] thinks he can use emotion to bring pressure on Congress. But that’s not how adults with power respond to things. He chooses not to get down in the weeds and pretend he values the stroking and other little things that matter to lawmakers.
The Public’s Right To Record Police Activities
Posted: April 27, 2013 Filed under: General Law | Tags: first amendment, police, recording police 18 CommentsLast Tuesday, April 23, the Connecticut Foundation for Open Government (“CFOG“) sponsored a panel discussion on the public’s right to record police activities. It was my honor, as the president of CFOG, to moderate the panel discussion, which featured Chief States Attorney Kevin Kane, South Windsor Chief of Police Matthew Reed, Mickey Osterreicher (General Counsel for the National Press Photographer’s Association), Ben Solnit of the ACLU of Connecticut (sitting in for Sandy Staub, ACLU legal director), and Mario Cerame, creator of www.righttorecord.com, a blog that covers this issue. We had a great discussion. For anyone interested in this topic, video of the discussion is available here on CT-N. Read the rest of this entry »
Appealingly Brief! 