Wednesday Writs: In Which Em Goes A’Linking
Authority of Law outside the United States Supreme Court. Photo by by Matt H. Wade via Wikimedia Commons.
L1: Another 2020 election challenge bit the dust this week as SCOTUS declined to hear a case involving the alleged unreliability of Pennsylvania’s vote-by-mail procedure. Justice Thomas wrote a dissent because of course he did (though even he concedes the case had no potential to overturn Trump’s loss,) as did Alito, joined by Gorsuch.
L2: In the second part of a double whammy for Trump, the Supreme Court also gave Manhattan prosecutors a greenlight to obtain the former president’s financial records.
L3: Also losing at SCOTUS this week: Stormy Daniels, whose appeal in her failed defamation case against Trump was declined, with none of the justices feeling the need to expend time explaining why.
L4: Confirmation hearings are underway for US Attorney General nominee and former Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland. Here’s a recap of the highlights.
L5: Illinois will become the first state to eliminate cash bail by 2023. Advocates say whether you stay in jail before your trial or not should depend on your risk to the public, not your ability to come up with money. Law enforcement and prosecutors are unhappy about the new law, but have not yet presented a decent argument to me as to why, all other things being equal, a person of means is less of a threat than a poor person charged with the same crime.
L6: The governor of New Jersey signed a bill legalizing -and, of course, regulating – the possession and use of marijuana by people over the age of 21. Proponents are hopeful federal legalization is on the horizon under the Biden administration.
L7: Virginia’s plan to get kids back to school includes temporarily mandatory in-person learning, vaccinations for teachers, and options for parents. If passed, the bill won’t take effect until after the school year ends, and sunsets in August of 2022.
L8: There are certain key words I use when scouring the web to find links for you (almost) every week, one of which is “legal”, which usually turns up some local news stories about DUI arrestees with blood alcohol levels above the “legal limit”. I normally just scroll by, but this one defies reality.
L9: It’s not every week I can include a link and say hey, I know this guy, but … I know this guy. He was friendly, kind of obnoxious … the verbose type most other attorneys roll their eyes at and being verbose among lawyers is an accomplishment. He’s been giving appointed defense counsel a bad name, billing the state for fees adding up to more than 24 hours in a day. Then he hopped the border and headed to South America for 4 years to avoid prosecution. Kudos to the local hard-ass judge who wouldn’t accept the misdemeanor plea agreement
Speaking of Virginia, I can’t remember if you already covered this in an earlier WedWrit
From AP, http://apnews.com/article/virginia-death-penalty-repeal-governor-c98c16a996037a4d1e1d497787b7e6f1
Virginia Lawmakers vote to abolish death penalty. Governor Northam is expected to sign it this week.
This is a bfd, and something I always thought Virginia would be among the last to do. It’s also the first real evidence of me of Virginia actually ‘blue-ing’ politically, rather than just being fed up with George W Bush, uninspired by Mitt Romney, and completely alienated by Donald Trump.Report
L5: The mental health argument by LE was a rather odious one, given how regularly police mistreat the mentally ill.Report
Not really a case law sort of link, but an important study of the legal system, of the “well duh” variety:
https://www.npr.org/2021/02/24/970538084/how-judges-work-experience-can-impact-court-rulings-and-legal-precedent
Report
Ergo, judges should have a well rounded body of experience before putting on the robe. Makes sense. Perhaps that should be a pre-req?Report
Note, however, that ideological self-selection likely plays a role here, so it’s hard to say how much of this is due to a causal effect of prior work experience.
In particular, the fact that there’s a stronger effect for former prosecutors than for former corporate lawyers suggests self-selection as a bigger factor. Prosecutors and public defenders make similar amounts of money, so I would expect a large ideological difference between the two, on average. On the other hand, some left-leaning people might go into corporate law just because it pays so well.
Furthermore, nothing here tells us which side is right. Maybe former public defenders are unfairly biased against employers.Report
In fact, since the study is based on a sample of judges appointed by Obama, I’m fairly confident that it’s driven by the more left-wing judges being unduly biased against employers rather than the more moderate judges being unduly biased against employees.Report
L4: I was stunned by footage of the Merrick Garland hearing. Did everyone else know he’s white? That name – I just always assumed he was black.Report
I assume you are trolling here . . . badly . . . what with all the video of him from his failed SCOTUS nomination running about . . . .Report
No trolling. I never saw the footage.Report
“Stunned”? Why? Mildly surprised that a questionable assumption you should have known better than to make — and should REALLY have known better than to ventilate in public — turned out not to be true, maybe. But “stunned”?
And, yes, lots of people knew he was white.Report
I stand by “stunned”. Merrick Garland. It did not occur to me that he’d be white.Report
Again, why?Report
I don’t know. Maybe Merrick – Eric – I pictured Eric Holder? Or the name sounds Southern (I’m thinking of Garland County Arkansas), and Southern names are common among blacks? Maybe that’s why I was stunned. It just didn’t even occur to me.Report
I just always assumed that (((Abraham))) Lincoln had a yarmulke under that stovepipe hat.
Imagine my surprise.Report
Judy Garland.Report
Garland Greene.Report
Well done.Report
Garland is a Jew, so his whiteness depends on a lot in a given moment.Report
I knew he was white, but Jewish is news to me.Report
His name never struck me as particularly black. With the obvious exception of African surnames, there are really only a handful of majority-black surnames in the US (90% of Washingtons are black!), and Garland isn’t one of them.
Besides, if he were black, criticisms of the Republicans’ refusal to confirm his nomination would have focused almost exclusively on that angle.Report
Good point.Report
[L8]: Doing Oregon proud, that fellow! Interestingly, Madras, the city where the arrest of the how-the-hell-is-this-dude-not-dead-already driver occurred, is the site of one of Oregon’s largest prisons.
Seriously, how do you get a BAC that high? A breathalyzer can be distorted if you, I dunno, gargle with a double-shot of 100+ proof, but this was in the guy’s blood.Report
If I’ve read the article properly, they’re asserting his BAC was at least 0.72%. That’s way up into “How can you still be alive?” territory. Literally — people are known to die from alcohol poisoning at 0.35%.Report
Yep. 9x.08=.72…. insane he’s not dead.Report
It’s like how you get to Carnegie Hall — practice. He’s probably been building up his tolerance for at least 10,000 hours.Report
I wonder if alcohol tolerance is mediated by tolerance to higher BAC levels or by faster metabolism of alcohol that keeps BAC levels lower.Report
My understanding is the former, though IANAD. But while .72 is bananas, it’s not uncommon to see BAC levels of drunk drivers that for the average person would mean “unconscious or dead”.Report