I don’t have a problem with appointing an openly gay person. Because they’re not going to try to put sharia law in our laws.
– Herman Cain, Republican presidential candidate, explaining why he would consider appointing an openly gay person to his cabinet, even though he would not appoint a Muslim to the federal bench or to his cabinet. (Gavel bang: Andrew Sullivan / The Dish.)
Ask the Tooth Fairy, son.
The phone’s been ringing off the hook here at the Circumcision Law Desk all weekend, so I apologize in advance if this post comes off sounding a bit distracted. Oftentimes, the intersection of foreskin and law is a lonely corridor filled with nothing but shattered dreams and crying babies.
A screaming anti-semitism comes across the sky.
Over the weekend, the New York Times published an article that did a pretty good job of illuminating where we are at in the pitched legal battle over circumcision. As mentioned at the end of the last dispatch from the Circumcision Law Desk, the forces of full-bodied penises have turned their attention to passing legislation that outlaws circumcision.
As Elie pointed out two weeks ago, San Franciscans will be voting this fall on whether to ban circumcision. And they’re not alone.
After the jump, find out what happens when people stop being polite and start trying to pass laws that outlaw circumcision and, in the process, piss off an entire religion (and blogger Andrew Sullivan)….
People read us at work — we’re a procrastination tool, a guilty pleasure. There are so many bored lawyers out there, just clicking refresh, refresh, refresh….
– Andrew Sullivan, noting the large lawyer readership of his blog, The Daily Dish, at a very interesting panel discussion last night on the future of the media.
Gone baby gone.
Protip: Don’t look up the Wikipedia entry for foreskin. Don’t do it even if you have to write a post about a baby who was given a circumcision against his parents’ wishes. Vera Delgado, the baby’s mother, had left the hospital to shower and get a change of clothes. Just long enough for Nurse Ratched and the gang to do the do. Delgado’s lawyer, Spencer Aronfeld, summed up the understandable reaction:
“It was horrific, quite frankly,” said Aronfeld. “The parents were very explicit they did not want him circumcised, and [the hospital] had asked the parents repeatedly.”
Since announcing Delgado would sue, Aronfeld said he has received countless supportive e-mail messages and seen social network postings from so-called “intactivists” who oppose circumcision.
“People who are passionate about not circumcising their children are sending me Facebook messages, like, “I love you. You are my hero!”
So the mother is suing the hospital. Of course (not of course), we all remember from law school (from Google) that Benjamin Cardozo wrote the seminal opinion in which an unwanted surgical procedure was legally classified as battery. And that’s exactly what the mother is suing the hospital for. All fine and well. Somebody messed up, and “Oops!” isn’t going to cut it.
But it’s not the dollar amount of $1 million that jumps out from the story….
Continue reading “Lawsuit of the Day: You Mad? Circumcised Baby Edition”
Apologies for not getting to this story earlier. Sometimes things fall through the cracks around here. (We were offline for much of Thursday and Friday, attending Lavender Law.)
Last week, a federal magistrate judge questioned the propriety of the U.S. Attorney’s Office moving to dismiss a marijuana possession charge against Andrew Sullivan. Yes, that Andrew Sullivan — the noted political pundit, author, and blogger (and proponent of marijuana legalization).
Judge Collings issued his saucy opinion (PDF) on Thursday. Later that day, the story was broken by The Docket. The case has also been covered by Gawker, Wonkette, and the WSJ Law Blog, among other outlets (links collected below).
So we won’t rehash what you’ve probably already read. But feel free to take our reader poll and to discuss the case in the comments.
Judge angered by special treatment for Andrew Sullivan [The Docket / MLW]
United States v. Sullivan [PDF] [U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts]
Andrew Sullivan’s Federal Pot Favors [Gawker]
Friendly D.A. Saves Andrew Sullivan From Life Sentence In Gitmo, For Smoking Marijuana [Wonkette]
On Marijuana, a Famous Blogger, and One Skeptical Judge [WSJ Law Blog]
We agree with Andrew Sullivan: Dahlia Lithwick did a superb job in her write-up of the Scalia-Breyer debate, which took place Tuesday night at the Capital Hilton. We attended as guests of the ACS, whom we thank for their hospitality.
For our fourth and final post about the evening — prior posts here, here, and here — we’ll quote liberally from Lithwick’s great Slate piece, with commentary of our own appended and interspersed.
It all appears after the jump.
* New Jersey politics: Never a dull moment. [Wall Street Journal via Instapundit]
* Did Nancy Grace go too far in her grilling of Melinda Duckett? [MSNBC via Andrew Sullivan; Crime & Federalism]
* If you royally piss off a judge with a recusal request, which he denies, can you try to get him recused again? [New York Times via DealBreaker]
* Congrats to Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Reynolds. [Andrew Sullivan]
* Man with “suspicious package” arrested outside Supreme Court building. Write your own punchline — it’s Friday after 5, we’re outta here. [SCOTUSblog]
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Ed. note: The Asia Chronicles column is authored by Kinney Recruiting. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates, counsels and partners in Asia than any other recruiting firm in each of the past six years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com.
Deal flow has clearly picked recently up for most US associates, counsels and partners in Hong Kong/China and Singapore. We are on the phone with a lot of these folks on a daily basis, many of whom we have known for years. Further, the head of our Asia team, Evan Jowers, and Kinney’s founder and president, Robert Kinney, frequently meet in person with leading US partners in Asia to assess their needs and keep on top of the inside scoop at as many firms as possible. The need for legal recruiting help in Asia from experienced recruiters appears to be live and well. In March, Evan and Robert were in Beijing at such meetings, in April, Evan was in Hong Kong, and for half of June Evan will be in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Thus its pretty easy for us to tell when there has been an across-the-market pick up in capital markets and corporate work.
On an average day in Asia when Evan and Robert visit firms, they typically have 5 to 9 meetings a day, mostly with US partners in the market. The reason they have these meetings is not simply because Kinney makes a lot of US attorney placements in Asia and that a particular firm may have openings; instead these are just visits with friends. After years of working together as business partners, the folks at Kinney are actually these peoples’ friends. The firms Kinney work closely with in Asia (which is just about every law firm – call us if you want to know the one firm in the world we will never place anyone with again, ever, and why) look forward to the visits, or at least act like they do. After seven years in the market, many of the client partners are former associate candidates. Also, these US partners see Kinney as a very good source of market information as well, because they know how deep their contacts are in the market and how frequently they are speaking to counterparts at peer firms.
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In a land that is right here and in a time that is right now, a technology has arisen so powerful that it can replace basic human document review. Is it time to bow down before our new robot overlords?
First, here’s a little story about me: my life in the legal world began as a paralegal. My first case was a GIANT patent infringement case that was already six years old and had involved as many as five companies, multiple US courts, the ITC and an international standards committee. I knew nothing about any of this.
On my first day, my supervisor (a paralegal with at least eight other cases driving her crazy) sat me down in front of a Concordance database with a 100,000+ patents and patent file histories. “Code these,” she said. I learned that “coding”, for the purposes of this exercise, meant manually typing the inventor’s name, the title of the patent, the assignee, the file date, and other objective data for each document. I worked on that project – and only that project – for at least the first six months of my job. After a week or so, time began to blur.
What I know, in retrospect and with absolutely certainty, is that as time began to blur, so did my judgment. So did my attention to detail. If you could tell me that I did not make at least one mistake a day – one inconsistent spelling, one reversed day and month, one incorrectly spaced title – I frankly would need to see your evidence. I would not believe it. The human mind is trainable but it is not a machine.
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