24 thoughts on “Wednesday Writs: Schoolboy Innuendo Edition

  1. L4: New York decided to move it to the fall of 2020 which makes law students have extra months of Barbri! What is interesting about New York is that the state does not let you do the moral character (read: background check and be honest about it) part of the application until you take the bar exam. If you take the bar exam in Manhattan, you need to pass the exam first before being allowed to submit your moral character application.

    California has not made a decision on the bar exam but my guess is that most states will choose to delay rather than concede against the examination, there is too much self-importance with power to do that. People who graduated from law school at Cal used to be able to practice in California without taking the bar examination but I don’t know when that changed. Wisconsin still allows this if you went to law school in Wisconsin.Report

    1. New York is also unique because they interview you for the moral character application and still insist on doing a big ceremony at the Appellate Courts rather than something done on the fly. So the typical process looks like this: July take bar exam, November find out pass, if pass file for moral character application, April next year get interviewed, and finally June get sworn in.Report

  2. I knew a guy who owned big cats, including tigers. It was a friend-of-a-friend situation, although I did go out to his compound a few times to meet the cats. It’s quite an experience to be inches from a from a tiger.

    One thing I learned: don’t lean against a panther cage. They can reach through the bars.

    Steve shouting “Don’t lean against …” just as a cat give me a gentle, playful hug. I suppose I should be glad it wasn’t hungry.

    Anyway, I just googled him and learned he passed last year: https://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/20190624/obituary-former-tarzan-actor-whose-600-pound-tiger-escaped

    He was an interesting fella. I don’t have a lot to say about all of the controversy. He loved his cats. They had a fair amount of space. I think a lot of people didn’t like the idea of him, with no concept of the reality.Report

  3. L2: Many Evangelical Christian and Ultra-Orthodox Jewish groups have been meeting en mass in defiance of the ban. Israel is also having a lot of trouble getting the Ultra-Orthodox to accept social distancing. My guess is that the government is going to win these cases on the grounds that social distancing rules are laws of general applicability rather than something meant to discriminate against religion.

    I posted this earlier but New York already busted the first Covid-19 speakeasy this week. There were dozens of people found in a Brooklyn bar called Miami II drinking and gambling.Report

    1. I’m genuinely torn about this. After all, freedom of religion is really fucking important. It’s not a general “nice to have” aspect of a free society. It’s damn foundational. It’s needed.

      On the other hand, this is a pandemic. It effects everyone.

      It is kind of busted that the only tool we have is to literally arrest people for worship. That has pretty awful implication.

      On the other hand, this is a pandemic, and in fact we don’t have better tools than arrest — if someone can think of something that isn’t “pie in the sky” “wouldn’t it be nice if…”, I’d love to hear it.Report

      1. I can’t think of any good options either. It’s either arrest them or overlook them and permit Professor Darwin to drop by the congregation to mete out some biological consequential-ism. But it wouldn’t just hurt the congregants to let that happen, they’ll take down a lot of innocent people too.Report

        1. That’s it. That’s the whole problem. If they were “snake handling” (or whatever), I would say leave them alone. It’s stupid, but they get to make choices. This, by contrast, effects the entire community.Report

      2. Since this is the United States and Israel we are talking about, I don’t think we have to worry about state authorities continuing a ban on mass religious gatherings after the Covid-19 pandemic is over. Freedom of religion is important but the law of general applicability principle is a long standing one. It’s how we prevent cult leaders from using freedom of religion to justify criminal acts like sexual assault or, more controversially I guess, illicit drug use as a religious right.

        The entire situation is kind of unique because the United States has a more larger group of atheists, agnostics, and people flat out hostile to religion than ever before. I suspect in earlier pandemics, mass religious gatherings would have just been accepting as an exception and the non-religious people would have kept silent as a minority. Since we have more non-believers than ever before and many of them are really anti-religious, there are a lot more protests at large scale religious gatherings.Report

        1. I would hope this is less about atheists existing and more about the common good. Moreover, I would fully expect the majority of religious people, and specifically Christians, to support a (temporary!) ban on religious gatherings, precisely because germs infect indiscriminately.

          This must not be “atheists versus religion,” because that’s not the point. It’s “community health and the common good versus gross irresponsibility.”Report

      3. Usually I am not one to think technology is the answer, but in this case I do think so. Veronica is right, religious freedom is a foundational aspect of our country. Being able to worship as you please is a very important part of many peoples lives, and attempting to push it out of the public sphere in a time of crisis is one of the things that could cause a backlash against many attempts to stem the tide of the disease.

        Right now, in the back of my house, my wife is leading a teleconfrence of her work people just to touch base, let everyone get the little gripes and whatnot of quarantine of their chests. This is a solution. Maybe not that communities prefered solution, but it is one that should be pushed, allowing people to practice their faith, albiet with some (preventitive) restriction. Zoom can handle, what, 300 connections? That would cover most of the churches that I know.

        I am not religous, so maybe I am missing something, but it is a place to start from at least.Report

        1. The concern is this: reasonable churches are already doing this. It’s obvious. The issue is those who insist on breaking this rule.

          We can say, “just use Zoom” (or similar products). Most will listen — and they already are. In fact, we didn’t really need to tell them. Once the facts came out about social distancing, it was an obvious conclusion.

          The issue isn’t the responsible religious groups. Instead, it’s the contrarian holdouts. The law wasn’t meant to defend only those who are rational. It was also meant to protect the nutters — since one person’s nutter is another person’s voice of truth.

          This virus fucking sucks. I don’t like it at all.Report

          1. Indeed, with a moments thought I should have seen all the issues that you brought up. And like you, I don’t know. Maybe, to reasure anyone that religeous liberty (the importand part) isn’t being stepped on, only the spread of the pandemic is being stopped, a forceful intervention of sorts needs to be staged.

            And if that didn’t work, quarentining as a group might be the next step. A simple “if you can’t play nice apart, than you get to play nice together” sort of thing.Report

        2. …my wife is leading a teleconfrence of her work people just to touch base, let everyone get the little gripes and whatnot of quarantine of their chests.

          Back in the day, when I was doing research on what could be done with IP multicast multimedia, one of the things I tried was a little “break room”. Attaching to that particular group indicated you were willing to let people interrupt you to chat. It wasn’t as good as face-to-face, but people preferred it to nothing.Report

    2. Drinking, gambling, and not conforming to social distance rules. At least one of the news reports listed that specifically. I suppose that public displays of affection will no longer be tolerated.

      On our wedding day, after the ceremony, I needed some piece of information from my wife. She was in one of the little rooms at the church changing from her wedding dress to regular clothes. I knocked and started to open the door when my new sister-in-law jumped in front of me and exclaimed, “She’s not dressed!” As I smiled and moved her aside, I said, “It’s all right, Gina. We’re married now.”Report

      1. I suppose that public displays of affection will no longer be tolerated.

        PDAs are fine between couples, or perhaps tight polycules. In the case of a couple, they are sharing risk, but largely between the two of them. By contrast, people crowded against a bar are sharing risk among all of them, many of whom will be strangers.

        The differences between these situations seems rather obvious.Report

  4. L1 – Does the ‘Bong Hits 4 Jesus’ case more or less cover the same balance of School Authority v Students’s Rights? (With largely the same ruling?)Report

    1. Yes, in a 5-4 split, Kennedy with the cons. With the added feature of a Thomas concurrence opining that free speech rights do not apply to students, at all, and Tinker should be overturned in its entirety.Report

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