Dahlia Lithwick

* You can go to jail for possession, but if you actively aid and abet drug cartels, you can walk away with a fine worth 5 weeks of your income. It also helps if instead of “poor” you’re a bank. Hooray for “Too Big To Hold Accountable For Anything!!! [Rolling Stone] * Disney has gotten fed up with “mockbusters,” films that jack the studio’s logo to confuse people into buying a different DVD. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve been itching to check out this new flick September: Osage County. [Jezebel] * Dahlia Lithwick explains that too many schools feel the cure for the trauma of school shootings is… creating more trauma. [Slate] * Chief Judge Theodore McKee of the Third Circuit rules that the government can detain you for carrying Arabic flashcards. This doesn’t even make racist profiling sense: “bad guys” would already know how to speak Arabic, right? [The Raw Story] * Defendants need to understand that getting an acquittal requires them to expend some personal effort, too. [Katz Justice]

Which of these legal education reform proposals do you agree with? And what is your favorite idea for fixing law school?

* J. Lo has apologized for singing Happy Birthday to a repressive dictator. Many are questioning the decision to serenade an alleged violator of international human rights law, but I’m just confused why J. Lo didn’t opt for the new, copyright-free birthday song? But people are being way too tough on the President of Turkmenistan. Don’t be fooled by the rocks that he got, he’s still Gurbanguly from the block. [Breaking Energy] * NYU Law Professor Barry Friedman and Dahlia Lithwick wonder if the progressives have another liberal agenda item to push after marriage equality. The authors cite issues like voting rights and opposition to the death penalty as traditionally liberal causes marginalized by progressives. It strikes me this article makes a lot more sense if you replace the word “progressive” with “Justice Kennedy.” [Slate] * DLA Piper’s decision to hire Lee Smolen has raised more than a few eyebrows given the firm’s commitment to ethical billing policies. [Hellerman Baretz] * Did the ABA just recommend an ethical violation? [New York Personal Injury Attorney Blog] * After a week of landmark rulings and Biglaw layoffs, the importance of clerking cannot be understated. [Judicial Clerk Review] * The Supreme Court Term feels like a distant memory, but now’s a good time to look back on it with added perspective. Courtesy of MoloLamken, here’s a great guide to the big business cases of the Supreme Court Term just ended. Download or print it, then read it at your leisure. [MoloLamken] * An attorney left the rat race to open a pea company. But these don’t look like the peas you tried to hide under your mashed potatoes, they look like serious snack food. [Kickstarter]

Truth is almost never a defense on Twitter. You cannot, and probably should not, speak the truth whenever the mood strikes. Even if it is about a man who doesn't know how to spell his own first name...

What do Above the Law readers think about Obamacare?

The Ninth Circuit has issued a landmark ruling on gay marriage. Or, if you prefer, a ruling on marriage equality. We knew this ruling was coming because the Ninth Circuit kindly informed us in advance that its opinion would be issued. Now, let's find out how the three-judge panel ruled in Perry v. Brown (formerly known as Perry v. Schwarzenegger)....

The latest issue of New York magazine contains a very interesting profile of the U.S. Supreme Court’s newest member, Justice Elena Kagan, penned by Dahlia Lithwick. Here’s the bottom-line summary of the piece (via Ezra Klein): “While Kagan is assuredly a liberal, and likely also a fan of the health-reform law, a close read of […]

There’s some good news this week for those people whose blood boils at the mention of Citizens United. The Supreme Court proved that it is not always sympathetic to the rights of corporations — and is even willing to have some fun at their expense. Chief Justice John Roberts penned a tongue-in-cheek opinion lambasting AT&T […]

There’s been so much talk of Biglaw women and baby making floating around the blogosphere this week that I think there must have been a “repopulate the species” action memo in US Weekly. Existentially, I blame the season. It’s January, and childless professional women just went through another holiday season getting bombarded with images of […]

A prudential perspective, because it appeared in Slate’s advice column, Dear Prudence (alongside an inquiry from a woman dating a wonderful man who unfortunately has a “micropenis”): Dear Prudence, I am just a little over a year away from becoming a lawyer, and I’m miserable because I hate it. I wasn’t forced into the profession. […]

* Professor Larry Lessig’s review of The Social Network. [New Republic] * Dahlia Lithwick’s review of the big new Brennan biography, by Seth Stern and Stephen Wermiel. [New York Times] * Molly Wei, one of the two Rutgers students involved in the Tyler Clementi case, feels “attack[ed]” — but she’s hanging in there. [Celebitchy] * […]

The drafters could have written the Constitution as a list of specific rules and said, “That’s all, folks!” Instead, they wrote a document full of broadly written guarantees…. — Time magazine columnist Adam Cohen, criticizing Justice Antonin Scalia’s approach to constitutional interpretation. (Gavel bang: Dahlia Lithwick.) (Please note that Quotes of the Day are selected […]

The prospect of Lady Justice blindfolded and on roller skates is simply too terrifying to contemplate. — Dahlia Lithwick

We spent a fair amount of time last week in lovely Charlottesville, Virginia, where we spoke at the University of Virginia Law School (coverage of our talk appears here and here). We spent lots of quality time with UVA Law students — at dinner, at a karaoke bar, and walking around the beautiful grounds. One […]

Some of you think we give Dahlia Lithwick, the legal affairs writer for Slate, a hard time. And it’s true that we often disagree with her (even if we always acknowledge her writerly talent). But we do find ourselves agreeing with much in her latest piece, criticizing recent critiques of the news media by several […]