Connecticut Law Tribune: Advice Of Counsel

March 8, 2010

Advice of Counsel
The Municipal Pension CrisisFREE
Connecticut Magazine ran a recent article outlining the impending crisis in municipal pension funds across the state. Nationwide, public pension funds have dropped from being roughly 85 percent funded to approximately 65 percent funded in the last two years. Pennsylvania recently enacted a “loan fund” and modifications to their investment standards because certain municipalities had become “severely distressed” as their funding had approached 50 percent.

March 1, 2010

Advice of Counsel
Hard Truths About NumbersFREE
What lessons should U.S. lawyers draw from our experiences during the first decade of the 21st century? General retrospectives have focused on cataclysmic events such as Hurricane Katrina and the attacks of Sept. 11 or on the historic elections in which George W. Bush prevailed through an unprecedented Supreme Court decision and in which we elected our first African-American president.

February 15, 2010

Advice of Counsel
Unintended ConsequencesFREE
Let’s end lifetime supervision of convicted murderers and replace it with a system that releases them back into the community, unsupervised, after serving a fixed sentence. And let’s do this in the name of promoting public safety. Does anybody believe the public would support this? Yet, in 1981 the Connecticut General Assembly did just that. The General Assembly got tough on crime by passing truth-in-sentencing laws and abolishing “good-time” credits that could shorten prison time served.

February 8, 2010

Advice of Counsel
What Is ‘Absurd’?FREE
A little more than six years ago, the Connecticut Supreme Court decided the matter of State v. Courchesne. The majority of the justices held that sometimes a state statute doesn’t mean its precise literal translation. The justices said “the legislative process is purposive” and that the proper interpretation of a statute should involve a “reasoned search for the intention of the legislature.”


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