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 [...]
Just how important are ineffective assistance of counsel claims to the administration of real justice in this country? And if we conclude IAC claims are vital to rectifying injustices committed on criminal defendants by incompetent attorneys, how far is society prepared to go to correct the errors of incompetent counsel? The Supreme [...]
Sometimes the Supreme Court reaches out to decide issues not raised in the petition for certiorari. It is a rare occurrence. But it happened in Turner v. Rogers, No. 10-10. If you weren’t following the case, here are the facts: Michael D. Turner racked up large debts owed to his child’s mother [...]
I ran across a rather strange case in the Seventh Circuit involving several defendants on trial for various tax, mail and wire fraud counts. This was far from a routine tax case. To say the case was complex is kind of an understatement—there were over 1 million documents related to the trial. During the middle [...]
The forthcoming decision in Turner v. Rogers, No. 10-10, will represent one of those rare cases in which there is the very real chance that no one will win, at least long-term. The case pits the liberty of a man unable to pay his child support payments versus the cost that states would [...]