One of the most amazing developments in the legal blogosphere last year was the emergence of the Hercules and the Umpire blog, because it was written by an actual sitting federal judge. It wasn't just warmed-over pablum, nor was it some sort of scholarly legal blather. Instead, like a classic blogger from the early days, a federal judge just started telling us what it's like to … [Read more...] about Keep Talkin’ Judge
Legal
A Few Ways to Look At Criminal Lawyers
(This post started with a few ideas, and then got all long and rambling, but I don't have time to make it shorter. Sorry.)A few years ago I had a toothache, and I made an emergency appointment with my dentist.Her diagnosis was that the tooth's pulp was infected around the nerve, and her treatment procedure required a lot of painstaking work using her carefully-honed … [Read more...] about A Few Ways to Look At Criminal Lawyers
Paying For Prosecutions in Virginia?
Over at Crimlaw, Virginia prosecutor Ken Lammers writes about the state's law allowing private prosecutions. It's a fascinating concept, and Ken goes into a bit of detail, but it comes down to this: So, basically, if doubly approved by the judge and the public prosecutor, the hired gun prosecutor can take part in the case as long as he is under the control of the Commonwealth … [Read more...] about Paying For Prosecutions in Virginia?
A Modest Solution for Handling Multi-Format Legal Briefs
After reading Daniel Sockwell's article about writing legal briefs that you expect a judge to read on an iPad, Scott Greenfield is a little bummed out over the suggestion to eliminate footnotes: Initially, Sockwell’s point about eliminating footnotes is a critical one, not just because they’re hard to read on a tablet but because that means footnotes won’t be there to be used. … [Read more...] about A Modest Solution for Handling Multi-Format Legal Briefs
A Challenge for Prosecutors
Over at Crime and Consequences, Kent Scheidegger writes about one of the philosophical problems with the exclusionary rule: For many years, the U.S. Supreme Court has been pruning back one of the most repugnant notions of criminal procedure -- the idea that a clearly guilty criminal can suppress rock-solid reliable evidence of his crime on the basis of how it was obtained. If … [Read more...] about A Challenge for Prosecutors