Want to change a life? Make the community safer? Save taxpayer dollars? Incarcerating someone for one year costs around $35,000--as I wrote about yesterday in The Atlantic.com--it's the equivalent of a year's college tuition. It also leads to more crime in the long run as the national recidivism rate for returning prisoners hovers around 66%. [...]
I forgot to post my humorous, but surprisingly true attempt to compare jailhouse lawyering to working as an associate at a Biglaw firm. The post is over at Above the Law (you can read the post here). I had always wanted to write something for Above the Law because I think they provide a valuable service to [...]
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that the SEC is considering a recommendation that the agency’s commissioners propose a rule mandating disclosure of corporate political spending. Under such a rule, publicly traded companies would need to report all political spending, including any lobbying activity conducted on behalf of the company. Current rules do not [...]
Judge Posner has been in the news a lot lately (reviewing tearing apart Justice Scalia's new book here). He is normally known for being a pragmatic judge, which is why his recent opinion is so bizarre. In United States v. Williams, Judge Posner's pragmatism was instead replaced with a cavalier attitude towards the right to counsel and towards [...]
I have just the best friends. Last week, a few friends hosted a LAW MAN book party for me at WilmerHale in Washington DC. The event was hosted by WilmerHale Attorneys Seth Waxman and Noah Levine, UW Law Professor (and my ConLaw teacher) Ronald Collins, Davis & Wright Attorney Robert Corn-Revere, and my good [...]
Much has been made about the sorry state of legal education. Students are graduating with huge loads of debt and dwindling job prospects. The press has hit this topic so much as of late that the number of LSAT takers has dropped considerably. So, what does that mean for those pre-law students who did take the [...]
Law Professor Stephen Wermiel has a great post over at SCOTUSblog on what happens at the Supreme Court during the summer. Professor Wermiel notes that: In recent years, the Court has received between 7500 and 8000 cert. petitions per year: from July 2011 to July 2012, for example, 7712 new petitions were filed. There were 7857 [...]
There are a number of story lines running through my memoir, LAW MAN: criminal justice, love, faith, redemption, and family. But one of the other major story lines, and quite honestly the hook that got the book published, is my story about the Supreme Court. For those of you unfamiliar with how I became acquainted [...]
I haven’t had much opportunity to blog the past couple of weeks because Annie and I have been busy with book promotion. On August 7th, my memoir LAW MAN: My Story of Robbing Banks, Winning Supreme Court Cases, and Finding Redemption landed at bookshelves around the country. And in the past two [...]
Over at the ACS blog, Nicole Flatow interviewed attorney and State Appellate Defender Valerie Newman about her experience arguing before the Supreme Court on behalf of the respondent in Lafler v. Cooper. Rarely, do we hear an unvarnished take on what it is like for attorneys to argue before the high court. Speaking of the [...]