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March 8, 2010 Legal Ease
Tough Talk Spices Up Mundane ObjectionsFREE
I object! In fact, I do this all the time: in court, in person, in writing, to interrogatories, to requests for production, to deposition questions. The questions are stultifyingly familiar. The objections themselves are drearily rehashed and warmed over versions of other objections, to which the words “cut and paste” apply more readily than “draft and edit.” If I had a buck for every time I inserted the phrase “impermissible fishing expedition,” I could actually own a large tropical fish tank with exotic and alarming-looking multi-colored fish to entertain me with their smooth machinations.
Legally Conservative
What Does The Second Amendment Mean?FREE
In a few months, another and more far-reaching pronouncement on Americans’ Second Amendment rights is expected from the U.S. Supreme Court. Its 2008 opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller, which struck down the District’s ban on handgun possession as an unconstitutional encroachment on the individual right to keep and bear arms, was significant but of narrow application as Heller only involved limitations on federal authority.
One Hand Clapping
Second Circuit Nominee Has Political ConnectionsFREE
Sen. Christopher Dodd is a lame duck. He reads the polls. Last November, a Quinnipiac University poll put his approval rating at a dismal 40 percent; 54 percent of those polled disapproved of him. Democrat pundits breathed a sigh of relief when the senator announced he was folding his tent. The Democrats now stand a fighting change of retaining the seat in November.
So why is this lamest of ducks nominating people to serve as federal judge?
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 Guest Commentary
Overzealous Prosecution And Home Invasion StatuteFREE
On Feb. 11, a jury in Waterbury returned not guilty verdicts in a criminal case brought against one of my clients, who was charged with home invasion. The client was originally charged with first-degree burglary, third-degree assault and fourth-degree conspiracy to commit larceny. The state offered to allow the client to plead guilty to the burglary charge, which carried a five-year mandatory minimum sentence.
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.
Guest Commentary
Library Closings Could Cripple Trial Lawyers 
I recently attended a pre-trial in Hartford before Judge Trial Referee Jerry Wagner. Those of you who are in the Hartford court enough probably know that Judge Wagner is a book lover. He reads books and talks about books. He also repairs broken books. Although I have never seen it, he has a workshop at home – complete with presses and machinery and glues and paper – where he brings old books back to life.
Legally Conservative
Rethinking Words We UseFREE
The recent kerfuffle over the use by President Barack Obama and his top advisor of language considered insensitive to Americans with mental retardation and their families was not a bad thing. For me, and many others, I hope, it was an opportunity to give some thought to the language we use, even in jest, and whether our use of common words and expressions is in reality thoughtless.
One Hand Clapping
Time Is Right To Change Wasteful SystemFREE
Want to improve court efficiency, increase public satisfaction with the courts, and save money? Eliminate individual sequestered voir dire. We are alone among the states in picking jurors in this cumbersome manner. And I bet our court backlog is as old as any state in the nation. When I tell friends from other states how long it takes to get to trial in Connecticut, they are stunned.
February 22, 2010 One Hand Clapping
Criminal Defense Fees Can Cripple Middle ClassFREE
Are we prepared, as a society, to pay more than lip service to the presumption of innocence? If we are, then it’s time to we offered to pay for the legal defense of anyone accused of a crime. Anything less amounts to the most regressive tax of all, a tax which devastates the middle class while encouraging the growth of a government detached from the consequences of its actions.
human rights report
An Attack On Election LawsFREE
It was not only unexpected. It was unprecedented. With six members of the Supreme Court seated directly in front of him during his State of the Union speech, President Barack Obama excoriated the court’s recent First Amendment bombshell in these terms: “The Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests – including foreign corporations – to spend without limit in our elections.”
legal ease
Taking A Chance On The Big Dance
Over the stretch between Christmas and New Year’s, I received an invitation to the Barrister’s Ball. I was honored, of course, but having taken a few days off to recuperate from the holiday deluge of exorbitant expectations, closely followed by disheartening disappointments, to say nothing of indigestion brought on by the lobster, lemon bars and other breakfast confections on offer in the refrigerator, I had time to contemplate it thoroughly.
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.
Point Of View
Juvenile Court Judges Make Tough Decisions
I have sat in all the parts of the Superior Court in my 34 years on the bench. The most challenging was presiding over juvenile matters. It always evoked in me the conflicting emotions of despair and hope: despair over the circumstances of children’s lives, hope that my intervention or that of another could bring about change.
Legally Conservative
Reader Mail Shocks And Amuses FREE
Shirley Chisholm once famously observed that she experienced more discrimination because she was a woman than because she was black. Representing New York, Chisholm served seven terms in Congress and racked up an impressive string of other accomplishments during her life. I was only 9 years old or so when Chisholm delivered what I understand from the history books to have been a mind-changing exhortation about which of her immutable characteristics bugged her detractors the most. So I heard about it only when I reached adulthood.
One Hand Clapping
Just Who Is Normal? Maybe Not AnyoneFREE
It was inevitable, really. A new edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” is in the works. And with it will come yet new diagnoses and disorders. The tiny corner of psychic life reserved for the reasonable person just got smaller. Perhaps it’s time to admit that we’re all chained to pathologies of one sort or another.
The DSM is currently in its fourth revised edition.
February 8, 2010 One Hand Clapping
The Petty Stuff Can All Add UpFREE
I was standing on line in a courthouse the other day, waiting for my turn through the metal detector. These waits never really bother me. Courthouses can be violent places. I appreciate the job done by judicial marshals to protect my back.
But then someone waltzed by. The marshals said hello. The metal detector bleeped and belched. But no one stopped the walker. It turns out that he worked at the courthouse, in the public defender’s office.
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.”
Guest Commentary
Corporate Money May Enliven State Politics
While the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision recognizing the First Amendment right of corporations to spend money on political speech may swamp politics with more special-interest money, it’s hard to argue with it as a matter of constitutional law.
For news media corporations long have had that right and couldn’t exist without it; otherwise there would be no free press, just pamphleteers and bloggers. How can some corporations have the right and not others?
Legally Conservative
Spilled Chili And Other Liberal Nonsense FREE
As if the New York City Fire Department has nothing better to do, U.S. District Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis has ensured that it will be embroiled in court proceedings for years, at enormous public expense, and for unsound reasons. By judicial fiat, Garaufis invalidated FDNY hiring exams as discriminatory against African Americans.
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