Justice Antonin Scalia
The only time you’re going to have an opportunity to study a whole area of the law systematically is in law school. You should not waste that opportunity. Take the bread-and-butter courses. Do not take “law and women,” do not take “law and poverty,” do not take “law and anything.”
– Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, advising students during a speaking engagement at the University of Wyoming Law School that they should avoid “frill courses” during their time in school.
Is Kagan turning to the dark side?
The news from the Supreme Court this morning isn’t about affirmative action or campaign finance or health care for Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Today’s news is the gossip that (conservative) Antonin Scalia and (liberal) Elena Kagan apparently enjoy each other’s company. In our polarized political climate, it’s news that Scalia and Kagan have gone hunting together, without trying to kill each other.
Yeah, you heard that right, hunting. Scalia took Kagan hunting. Scalia has now corrupted one of the liberal justices into murdering defenseless animals for sport. When reached for comment, Scalia said of Kagan “I could feel her anger. It gives her focus, makes her stronger.”
Kagan can’t go out like this. If she’s going to start killing things for amusement, it’s got to be part of a deal where she makes Scalia do something, I don’t know, compassionate and human. You know? Or at the very least, she’s got to take him to a gay bar in Chelsea or something….
This past Wednesday, Judge Richard Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit delivered the Madison Lecture on Judicial Engagement at Columbia Law School. The lecture series, sponsored by the CLS chapter of the Federalist Society, brings distinguished jurists to Columbia to discuss topics relevant to the federal judiciary and the administration of justice.
(Perhaps we should put “at” Columbia Law in quotation marks; Judge Posner actually appeared via video conference. That shouldn’t surprise, coming from a judge who lists The Matrix as one of his favorite films.)
In his talk, entitled “How I Interpret Statutes and the Constitution,” Judge Posner was his usual candid self. He offered commentary on two recent books about statutory and constitutional interpretation — books that he’s not a fan of.
Yes, readers. There will be benchslaps….
Continue reading “Judge Posner on Statutory Interpretation: This Is How We Do It”
Supreme Court justices are inevitably controversial figures. As we all know, they rule on the most important issues of the day, which gives them power to affect all Americans’ lives in significant ways. It’s hard to think of those who sit on the highest court in the land as anything resembling you and me.
But there’s at least one great equalizer. A game of hoops? No. SCOTUS has that covered too. We’re talking about parking tickets…
Continue reading “Which Supreme Court Justice Got In A Little Trouble With Law Parking Enforcement?”
Justice Stephen Breyer
I’d forgotten how cute first-year federal clerkship girls are. Damn! I’m definitely getting ass tonight.
– Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, commenting on the “epic f**king rager” hosted by fellow Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Unfortunately, the party was broken up by the police after Justice Antonin Scalia reportedly used the DOJ’s Facebook page to invite “everyone who views the writ of certiorari as essential to a robust judiciary” to “come get shwasted at RBG’s place.”
(In case you couldn’t tell, this quote comes from The Onion, a satirical news site, but that in no way takes away from the overall awesomeness of imagining Supreme Court justices “drink[ing] [their] asses off.”)
In a few hours, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama will meet in Denver, Colorado, for the first of three presidential debates (though the second is a town hall debate; are those really “debates?”). As lawyers, you likely possess more than a passing interest in the events of the evening.
You are also Above the Law readers, which means you likely possess more than a passing interest in reckless self-destruction through the massive consumption of alcohol.
As a lawyer, drinker, and college debate coach who gets way too into these things, I have constructed a drinking game to shepherd you through the process of viewing tonight’s debate….
Continue reading “A Lawyer’s Guide To Getting Drunk During Tonight’s Presidential Debate”
* This San Francisco attorney had a nice visit to the up-and-coming superpower across the Pacific. And by “nice,” I mean the Chinese tried to kill him and the U.S. State Department made things worse. [San Francisco Chronicle]
* I’m sure there’s some sort of serious social commentary here about how gay marriage is good or bad, but I can’t figure out what it would be. Either way, this poor kid has had quite the rough go of it. [Althouse]
* Monster Energy Drinks are under investigation from an as-yet unnamed state attorney general. Because apparently some people were unaware that drinking something that looks like liquid uranium may be unhealthy. [About Lawsuits]
* The suspect in this multimillion-dollar scam graduated from Harvard Law in 1972. You stay classy, Cambridge. [ABC]
* Glenn Reynolds explains why everyone just needs to suck it up and pay income taxes. [Instapundit]
* Justice Scalia is interviewed again about his new book. Shockingly, no one took any shots at Judge Posner this time! [LA Review of Books]
Scalia v. Posner meets Mean Girls
* Someone was finally able to liken the Scalia v. Posner debate to a suitable situation: bitchy mean girls fighting each other in a middle school cafeteria. Seriously, only the inclusion of “like” throughout the entirety of the dialogue could’ve made it better. [lawprofblawg]
* Who pays your law professors’ salary? The obvious answer is law students, since professorial wallets are padded by tuition dollars. But what happens when IBR comes into play and loan debts are forgiven? Then the answer shifts to the taxpayers. [PrawfsBlawg]
* When Derek Boogaard of the New York Rangers died, everyone was expecting that a lawsuit would be filed, but no one really thought that it would be one based on contract law. [New York Law and Legal Analysis Blog]
* What kind of case “really turn[s] on” everyone’s favorite First Amendment lawyer? Free speech cases that are riddled with challenges, of course, and questions about what does and doesn’t constitute porn. [Vegas Inc]
* You must be wondering where Above the Law fell on this ranking of the 15 Most Influential Law Blogs. We won’t give it away, but let’s just say that we now share something in common with Cooley. [Business Insider]
* “[S]ome dude with the munchies is getting a little legal education.” That’s what we thought when one of our top searches last week was “pictures of tacos” — and not even “duck tacos,” but regular ones. [Search Party]
How festive!
* You can kiss your dreams of seeing Prop 8 being taken up by the Supreme Court goodbye if the justices decide to proceed with “more cautious DOMA challenges.” [Slate]
* Well, at least one person is getting annoyed by the endless back and forth between Posner and Scalia. But that’s just one person. We’ll continue to beat that horse until it’s extra dead. [Althouse]
* Is this like the new WebMD, but for law? With prompts like, “Can that crazy neighbor buy a gun?,” it looks like a suitable place for legal hypochondriacs to call home. [myRight]
* Oh yay, I don’t like to get into election law and politics, so it’s a good thing that The Simpsons did all my work for me on this one: “Stopping all Americans from voting is for the protection of all Americans.” [PrawfsBlawg]
* Kat over at Corporette wants to know what your top five tailoring alterations are — because after all, it’s pretty hard to dress for success in Biglaw if your pants are dragging on the floor. [Corporette]
* You’d have to be super-dee-duper high to think that disguising your pot plants as Christmas trees in the middle of the desert to throw the police off your tracks would actually work. [Legally Weird / FindLaw]
Justice Scalia (left) and Judge Posner
Responding to a Supreme Court Justice who calls one a liar requires special care in expression.
– Judge Richard Posner, in a cover email introducing his written response to Justice Antonin Scalia’s recent “You lie!” accusation.
(More about this tiff, which we’ve been covering quite closely here at Above the Law, after the jump.)
Continue reading “Quote of the Day: A Time-Out in Posner v. Scalia?”
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The US associate openings we have in law firms are in the usual areas of M&A, cap markets, FCPA / white collar litigation, finance, and project finance. The most urgent of our top tier (top 15 US or magic circle) law firm openings in Asia (among many other firm openings that we have in Asia) are as follows:
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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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