Rehnquist’s judicial philosophy was nihilistic at its core, disrespectful of precedent, and dismissive of … institutions that did not comport with his black-and-white view of the world.
– John A. Jenkins, writing in The Partisan: The Life of William Rehnquist (affiliate link), a scathing new biography of the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist.
[D]on’t make a bad situation worse by doubling down on useless degrees. As I argue, going to the average law school at full price because you can’t get a job with your English degree is like having a baby to try to salvage a crumbling relationship.
– Professor Paul Campos of the University of Colorado Law School, in an interview with Megan McArdle of the Daily Beast.
(Campos, our reigning Lawyer of the Year, has a new book out entitled Don’t Go To Law School (Unless): A Law Professor’s Inside Guide to Maximizing Opportunity and Minimizing Risk (affiliate link).)
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?”
Justice Scalia (left) and Judge Posner
I’m not going to get into this whole thing written for a glossy magazine.
– Justice Antonin Scalia, responding to a question about his thoughts on Judge Richard Posner’s somewhat critical review, in the New Republic, of the justice’s new book, Reading Law (affiliate link).
(We attended Scalia’s talk, which took place this afternoon and was sponsored by the New York City Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society. Additional highlights from the eminently quotable justice’s remarks, after the jump.)
Continue reading “Quote of the Day: The New Republic Isn’t That Glossy….”
William Baer
* “We’re all from the Ivy League. That seems to be more relevant than what faith we are.” SCOTUS Justice Clarence Thomas really knows how to make Article III Groupie’s heart sing. [New York Times]
* Dewey know why this failed firm’s bankruptcy team is cutting special deals with the former D&Lers who worked on the sale of the Dodgers? Like all things Biglaw, it all circles back to money. [WSJ Law Blog]
* What in William Baer’s past might lead the Senate Judiciary Committee to hold a closed meeting on his candidacy to lead the DOJ’s Antitrust Division? [Blog of Legal Times]
* In a heartwarming pro bono project, Proskauer Rose will be representing NYC in its attempts to evict an elderly newsstand operator from his kiosk in Greenwich Village. It really brings a tear to your eye, doesn’t it? [New York Post]
* Jerry Sandusky will be sentenced on October 9, and prosecutors are asking that he be classified as a sexually violent predator. Boy, that’ll be a fun title to have while he’s in jail for the rest of his life. [Bloomberg]
* “[A]t present, the large majority of law graduates — perhaps 80 percent — end up worse off after going to law school that they were before they enrolled.” Paul Campos is so cheerful in his book. [National Law Journal]
In his new book, Academy Award-winner Errol Morris has taken on one of the highest-profile murder case of the last 50 years.
Morris, known for The Fog of War, his documentary about Robert S. McNamara, just published his second book — A Wilderness of Error: The Trials of Jeffrey MacDonald (affiliate link) — a revival of the story of a young Army doctor convicted in 1979 of murdering his pregnant wife and two children.
Americans of a certain age (i.e., older than me) almost certainly remember MacDonald, whose story was told and endlessly picked apart on television, in Fatal Vision by Joe McGinniss, and The Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcolm. But Morris’s new book is perhaps the first serious investigative look at the idea that MacDonald may very well be innocent.
Morris’s book, which has already garnered positive reviews in the New York Times and the Atlantic, is at once a thrilling true crime story and challenging philosophical look at the tricky nature of facts and the importance of narrative in the American legal system.
Let’s hear more about the book and chat with Morris….
Continue reading “An Interview With Oscar-Winner Errol Morris, Author of ‘A Wilderness of Error’”
Justice Scalia (left) and Judge Posner
Over the past few months, Justice Antonin Scalia and Judge Richard Posner have been trading benchslaps. The most recent clash got going a few weeks ago, when Judge Posner wrote a harsh review for the New Republic of Justice Scalia and Bryan Garner’s new book, Reading Law (affiliate link).
Scalia surrogates rushed to the justice’s defense. One of his former clerks, Ed Whelan, wrote a series of posts for the National Review’s Bench Memos blog in which he criticized the Posner review. Justice Scalia’s co-author, Professor Garner, also responded forcefully to Judge Posner (who in turn responded to Garner, again in the New Republic).
But the justice himself remained silent on all of this. When we reached out to both judges about the apparent tiff, Judge Posner denied any personal animosity, but Justice Scalia declined to comment.
Now Justice Scalia has broken his silence. And His Honor seems none too happy with Judge Posner’s book reviewing skills….
Continue reading “The Benchslap Dispatches: Justice Scalia on Judge Posner’s ‘Hatchet Job’”
A few months ago, I wrote a post entitled “Welcome to Zombie Law 101″ about a professor’s law review article that dealt with zombies. It was a fun, quirky piece, but I figured that would be the start and end of zombie law. Well, I was wrong. A new Kickstarter project helmed by attorney Joshua Warren is raising funds to create a zombie law case book. Yep.
Part of me thinks this is pretty cool. Nerdy, but cool nonetheless.
Although, I’m a little worried that continuing to cover zombie law could eventually lead to zombie lawyers, and no one wants that. (I object, Your Honor! Counsel is eating the witness’s face.) I guess we’ll cross that bridge, and loot liquor stores for food and weapons, when we come to it. For now, let’s learn more about the project….
Continue reading “Whoa, This Zombie Law Thing Is Kind of Taking Off”
Emily Dickinson: poet — and legal scholar?
There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away,
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry –
This Traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of Toll –
How frugal is the Chariot
That bears a Human soul
– Emily Dickinson, quoted by U.S. District Judge Denise Cote in today’s ruling, which approved a major e-book price-fixing settlement. Just yesterday, the case made headlines when Bob Kohn submitted an amicus brief — consisting entirely of cartoons.
Left to right: Bryan Garner, Antonin Scalia, and Richard Posner
The jurisprudential wrestling match between Justice Antonin Scalia and Judge Richard Posner is quickly turning into a WWE tag team battle royal. Tagging in to help Justice Scalia: Bryan Garner, one of the foremost authorities on legal writing and legal language. Professor Garner, of course, is Justice Scalia’s co-author on Reading Law (affiliate link).
Professor Garner is not happy with Judge Posner’s treatment of the book. Let’s hear what he has to say — and also speculate on how the Posner/Scalia tiff might affect Posner’s feeding of law clerks to Scalia….
Watch to find out what some of our subscribers received in their May box!
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We currently have a number of active openings for associate roles at US and UK firms in HK / China, Singapore and two new in-house openings. As always, please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com in order to get details of current openings in Asia, as well as to discuss the Asia markets in general and what we expect for openings later this year. Our Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney will be in Beijing the week of March 25 and Evan Jowers will be in Hong Kong the week of April 1, if you would like to meet them in person.
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:
• 2nd to 5th year mandarin fluent M&A associates needed in Beijing and Hong Kong at several firms;
• Korean fluent 2nd to 4th year cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 5th year Japanese fluent M&A associates needed in Tokyo;
• 4th to 6th year mandarin fluent cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 4th year M&A / cap markets mix associate needed in Singapore.
Also, we have the two below in-house openings:
Keep reading »
The last time I flapped my wings your way, I tried to make at least enough noise about your mobile phone to make you more than a little bit uncomfortable. I hope I did. If enough of us become anxious enough about the known and unknown unknowns and knowns in our mobile phones, then we can start making wise decisions about how to manage that information and its resultant investigations.
Today, I’d like to put a finer point on the last installment’s topic by asking a question that seemed to catch most attendees off-guard at a conference panel that I moderated last week: is there discoverable personal information in a mobile app? Our panelists’ answer was a uniform “yes” with one stating that, if he had to choose only one type of data that he could discover from a mobile phone, he’d choose app data. Why? Because there’s simply so much of it and because almost all of it is objective – not just user-created like an email – but machine-tracked like GPS, usage duration, log in and log out times, browsed web addresses, browsed actual addresses. Also, most of us seem to have the idea that data doesn’t actually “stick” to our mobile devices the way it “sticks” to our hard drives. Maybe there’s a disconnect based on the fact that our phones are mobile so we assume the data is mobile to?
Keep reading »
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