Wednesday Writs for May 29

Em Carpenter

Em was one of those argumentative children who was sarcastically encouraged to become a lawyer, so she did. She is a proud life-long West Virginian, and, paradoxically, a liberal. In addition to writing about society, politics and culture, she enjoys cooking, podcasts, reading, and pretending to be a runner. She will correct your grammar. You can find her on Twitter.

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14 Responses

  1. PD Shaw says:

    [L1] Possibly meaningless aside, the SCOTUS did not rule that the 1st Amendment had any applicability to the states until [. . . looks it up . . .] 1925 in Gitlow v. NY.

    [L6] I did not know the meaning of that term (death recorded), though if I was writing a book on this topic, I would have looked for media coverage of the executions because the whole point of execution in that period was the publicity.

    [L7] Lawyers should not be judged by their clients.Report

  2. Pinky says:

    L6 – I keep reading about this, but does anyone know how central these “executions” were to Wolf’s thesis?

    And speaking of things getting dropped in later editions, what happened to L2-L4?Report

  3. George Turner says:

    A fun, if horribly misguided case in Britain

    Boris Johnson held public office during the referendum campaign which began on 15th April 2016. He was Mayor of London until 9th May, and an MP throughout the whole period. There is no question that these were “public offices.”

    Next, Mr Ball says he lied during the campaign. With the instincts of a good prosecutor he is concentrating on the simple and memorable statement that “we send £350M a week to the EU.” It was not true, he says, because it failed to take account of the “Fontainbleau abatement,” the agreement whereby Britain’s notional gross annual payment of £18B (or about £350M a week) was reduced by £5B to £13B (about £250M a week). Importantly, says Mr Ball, the £5M was not a sum sent back from Brussels (a rebate), it was never sent at all (an abatement). What’s more, given the number of times the £350M figure was corrected, Mr Johnson must have known it was not true. So it was, he says, a plain and simple lie to say that £350M a week was sent to the EU.

    Clearly, says Ball, it was a lie about a very important issue, and dishonesty of that sort by someone holding public office constitutes, he says, the offence of “misconduct in public office.”

    He’s trying to use a very old and vague British common law that would fine Johnson an unlimited amount of money and put him in jail for life. However, by the standard he’s trying to establish, every incumbent who runs for office would get life in prison for misstating some fact or figure, or overstating a policy’s benefits or understating its costs. “Lord of the Flies” wasn’t supposed to be a prosecution guide for British lawyers, but that’s the best that could come winning his case.Report

  4. Kolohe says:

    here’s something curious that made the news yesterday because of celebrity culture.

    A guy (not Ashton Kutcher) is on trial for murder committed in 2001 that he arrested for in 2008 (because he allegedly left similiar evidence at an attempted murder that year).

    But he’s only going on trial now, 11 years later. Do you think this *very* long delay is this mostly the work of the defense (because he’s also accused of yet another murder in Texas in the 90s)Report

  5. Since marijuana is legal in Washington state, and he was charged with possession of meth, I’m assuming Wilson’s butt balloons were full of meth, not pot.Report

  6. The Scopes trial also drew reporters from all over, the most famous being H. L. Mencken. And it was later fictionalized as the play Inherit The Wind, later made into a pretty good movie.Report