Guns / Firearms

Women of the internet are drooling over this man.

* Opening fire because a fast food place screwed up your burger order would be crazy. If they did it a second time? Well… [Lowering the Bar] * McCutcheon at work in North Carolina. Yay free speech! [Constitutional Accountability Center] * Texas prosecutor compares NAACP member to white supremacist. Because those are totally the same thing. [Houston Chronicle] * In case you’ve ever wondered who’d win a fight between DMX and Justice Frankfurter, here’s your answer. [Slate] * Having more fun with gun nuts. [Lawyers, Guns & Money] * We’ve discussed trial by combat’s past before, but is it still a real thing? Video below, including shout-outs to Professor Adam Winkler. [The Young Turks]

* Supreme Court justices are “basically rewriting the law,” sometimes years after the fact. As it turns out they’ve been quietly “changing the wording of opinions” — sometimes, even our legal idols make mistakes. [New York Times]

* Many law school deans at leading law schools are pretty pissed off about Justice Antonin Scalia’s latest criticisms of the legal academy. Please, continue taking “Law and Unicorns.” It’s a real class, we promise! [National Law Journal]

* Judge Randall Rader, who recently resigned as the Federal Circuit’s chief judge, released a memo to his colleagues apologizing for his scandalous recusals in a pair of patent cases. Poor guy. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Peter Alexander, Indiana Tech Law’s dean, has resigned less than a year after opening the school’s doors. The school’s interim dean doesn’t use capital letters in his name. That’s cute. [Journal Gazette]

* Très, très déclassé: Mahbod Moghadam, formerly of Dewey & LeBoeuf, was fired from Rap Genius after he inappropriately annotated suspected Santa Barbara shooter Elliot Rodgers’s manifesto. [Re/code]

The story behind SCOTUS litigator Tom Goldstein's Bilzerian experience with automatic weapons.

* “Ladies and gentlemen of the Jury, if my client was the shooter, why would he have left the witness alive to testify? He’s a man who finishes the damn job.” [ABA Journal] * Who would pretend to be a lawyer who is not? Apparently this public figure. [Legal Cheek] * Jill Abramson is out at the New York Times. Could the reason be her decision to lawyer up? [Law and More] * If you’ve hung around ATL long enough, you’ve heard us speculate that it just doesn’t make economic sense to attend most law schools. Here’s proof — only about 50 are even worth it economically. Which is hard to believe because I thought law degrees were worth $1 million. [TaxProf Blog] * Lawyers get depressed, and not talking about it makes it worse. [Everyday Health] * Seven-year-old kids are developing health problems from picking tobacco, because we let children work on tobacco farms apparently. [Slate] * The Asian American Bar Association will be conducting a trial reenactment of 22 Lewd Chinese Women next Wednesday. Register here! [AABANY] * As the new movie comes out, lawyers are really worked up over the Godzilla intellectual property. They need to hire Jorge Rivers: Godzilla Lawyer, whose ad appears after the jump (starring Thomas Lennon)…. [The Columbus Dispatch]

Don’t piss off this Supreme Court litigator -- he's got a very big gun!

Don’t piss off this Supreme Court litigator -- he's got a very big gun!

* Florida is woefully unprepared for a zombie apocalypse. [Lowering the Bar] * Congratulations to Sujit Choudhry on being named dean at Boalt Hall. [Prawfs Blawg] * Justice Scalia is a delusional hack. Well, that's not really news... [Salon] * Just how suspect was that referendum on Crimean annexation? Even the Russian government is questioning it. [The Volokh Conspiracy / Washington Post] * A look at how Lauren Giddings’s killer could have gotten free. [The Telegraph (Macon)] * The KABA and JABA have issued a joint statement on the lawsuit surrounding the Glendale, CA, Comfort Women Memorial. [Korean American Bar Association / Japanese American Bar Association] * A governor’s cronies get the plum state judgeships. That may not be surprising, but the negative impact it has on the quality of the judiciary deserves more attention. [The Center for Public Integrity] * I’d never heard of “The Full Kagan,” and I’m not sure I want to know what it relates to. [Excess of Democracy] * Much has been made of federal prosecutors failing to go after the “Too Big To Fail” banks. After the jump is a primer on why they haven’t. [Bloomberg TV]

* This guy used a cellphone jammer in his car to keep his commute interruption free. Guessing he’s not a lawyer. [Slate] * Let’s lay off Justice Scalia for his latest screw up. Because Justice Stevens screwed up once too. Oh, well, that settles it then. I think the real point is Scalia completely whiffed trying to make a hugely bitchy argument, but we’ll let the Scalia lovers have their moment. [The Volokh Conspiracy / Washington Post] * Not for the faint of heart. Audio of a guy killing two unarmed teens. Obviously they were breaking into his house, but his wingnut psyche is laid bare in his rambling justification for shooting first and never asking questions. He’s charged with first degree murder because the grand jury just wasn’t buying his story. [Gawker] * Meanwhile, the guys who really need guns can’t find where they left them. [Legal Juice] * The long-running “Commentgate” story from New Orleans — where federal prosecutors allegedly used anonymous comments to sway public opinion on their cases — has ended with the prosecutors agreeing to a ban from federal court. [Times-Picayune] * Did anybody know Donald Sterling’s son was suspected of shooting a guy in an argument? And the D.A. that the elder Sterling ran fundraisers for decided not to prosecute? Yeah, I’d missed that. [Bessette Pitney] * Martin Scorsese’s nephew is basically a bit player in one of his crime movies. [New York Daily News]

Want to see a funny video segment about a controversial way of providing legal services to gun owners?

Could what happened yesterday in Salt Lake City happen anywhere?

Justice Stevens tries to rewrite the Second Amendment and creates a Frankenstein's monster of constitutional vagueness.

* Dentons still has the urge to merge with a U.S. firm, and now it’s trying to tempt Patton Boggs away from Squire Sanders with a “serious overture.” Bow chika bow wow. [The Lawyer]

* Despite all the outrage over Albany Law’s faculty buyouts, some have already accepted the package offered. Looks like anything’s possible for the right price. [Albany Business Review]

* Guess which law school is cutting tuition by a whole lot? Some hints: it’s in New York and it’s been selling off real estate. We’ll have more on this later. [Wall Street Journal (sub. req.)]

* Perhaps this could be considered a gift of provisional accreditation: Alberto Gonzales, U.S. Attorney General in President George W. Bush’s administration, is now dean at Belmont Law. [The Tennessean]

* Take a look at this new paper by Professors Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld on race and culture in law school admissions. Actually, it’s fake, but it’s sad that it could, in theory, be very real. [Washington Post]

* Zac Efron is going to star as a Yale Law grad forced by criminals to work in the world’s largest Biglaw firm in a film adaptation of John Grisham’s book, The Associate. OMG, he’s so cute. [Hollywood Reporter]

* Our thoughts go out to the families of those wounded and killed during the Fort Hood shooting. [AP]

* Beef: it’s what’s for dinner (at the D.C. Circuit). [How Appealing] * “The Likelihood A Robot Will Steal Your Job, In One Picture.” Good news for lawyers, not-so-good news for paralegals. [Kotaku] * An interesting perspective from Professor Faisal Kutty: “Why Gay Marriage May Not Be Contrary To Islam.” [Huffington Post] * And from Willkie partner Francis J. Menton: “Argentina Is Joined In The Supreme Court By The Coalition Of Weasels.” (I’m guessing Willkie doesn’t represent many foreign sovereigns in fights against their creditors; that seems to be Cleary Gottlieb’s niche.) [Manhattan Contrarian via Instapundit] * A CLE event that offers a lot of bang for the buck. [National Firearms Law Seminar] * If you’ll be in Philadelphia tomorrow night, watch a bunch of Penn Law students beat up some punks from Wharton — for a good cause! [Wharton vs. Law: Fight Night; promotional video after the jump]

* Here’s a blast from the past: Susan B. Anthony’s indictment for voting in the 1872 election. Turns out she was a woman. Who knew? [Slate] * The New Yorker has a cartoon that hits the current state of Biglaw right on the head. [The New Yorker] * People arguing for Crimea’s right to secede and join Russia may want to check out how much support the pro-Russia party got the last time they voted. [Volokh Conspiracy / Washington Post] * Key lessons that lawyers can learn from Google. Sadly, “make your logo a cool doodle” didn’t make the list. [Adam Smith, Esq.] * The long-serving Chief Deputy County Clerk of New York resigned after being disciplined. But what in the world was really going on over there? The web is tangled indeed. [WiseLawNY] * Idaho considering allowing guns on campus. Because armed students can stop campus shootings. It’s not like trained professionals ever make shootings worse. Rank amateurs should be just fine. [Chronicle of Higher Education]

Small-firm columnist Carolyn Elefant shares her thoughts on one firm's new approach to business development.

Ken Cuccinelli's latest endeavor seeks to give gun owners peace of mind that they can use their guns without worrying about defense costs.

* Of course there’s a gender pay gap in Biglaw, but none of the firms are going to tell you about it. We’ll be discussing the results of the annual National Association of Women Lawyers survey later today. [ABA Journal]

* In case you’ve been sleeping under a rock, Texas struck down its ban on gay marriage, but stayed the ruling pending appeal. Seriously, of all places, this happened in Texas. Yeehaw! Ride ‘em, cowboys! [New York Times]

* Well, there goes that whole “judgment proof” argument. An insurer must defend the Temple Law student who shot a Fox Rothschild partner’s unarmed son under his parents’ homeowners insurance policy. [Legal Intelligencer]

* New Mexico Law didn’t like what it found after auditing its SBA’s off-campus bank account. FYI: the SBA apparently isn’t supposed to spend money on bars, liquor, and restaurants. Who knew? [Albequerque Journal]

* “I don’t want to pay for someone else’s peculiar behavior.” Amanda Knox’s ex-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, is changing his tune about his former flame as their appeal date gets closer and closer. [CNN]

* Judge orders guns returned to blind guy. David Sedaris has a great routine where he talks about the few stupid jurisdictions that let the blind participate in gunplay. Well consider Florida stupider: this is a blind guy who previously shot 15 times at his cousin while drunk and has since killed his friend — not only while drunk, but after a “10 a.m. beer run” — and he’s getting his guns back. [Raw Story] * An intrepid, but hopelessly clueless jailhouse lawyer is taking it upon himself to free Gucci Mane. Fight on, you hero! [Global Grind] * Area Man Coasting By On Good Looks, Work Ethic, In-Depth Knowledge Of Virginia Real Estate Law. [The Onion] * It seems Ray Rice took out all the aggression he feels over having Joe Flacco as a quarterback by allegedly knocking his fiancée unconscious. By “allegedly,” I mean, “I’m not saying, but it was in an Atlantic City casino and videotapes show it from every angle.” Anyway, here’s a good primer on the differences between assault, simple assault, and aggravated assault in the state of New Jersey. [The Legal Blitz] * Speaking of Rutgers players, the merger between Rutgers-Camden and Rutgers-Newark into Rutgers-Both Law School is on track for 2015. [Philadelphia Inquirer] * So it’s a great time to go to law school! If you thought 2007 was a great time to go to law school that is. [Gawker] * Here’s an innovative way to fight illegal music downloads: the band Gridlink is running a contest encouraging users to upload bogus versions of their songs to gum up the works in exchange for a free, official copy of the latest album. [Handshake Inc.] * The lawyer who may topple Chris Christie is a defense lawyer who stymied the rotund Republican during his tenure as U.S. Attorney. That must be sweet. [Newark Star-Ledger] * Passionate about public-interest law? Here’s your chance to win a paid one-year fellowship with Save the Children. (Our very own David Lat is one of the contest judges.) [BARBRI] * The University of Pennsylvania Law School Entertainment and Sports Law Society is hosting the Penn Law Sports Law Symposium presented by the Heisman Trust this Friday, February 28th from 9:30am-6:00pm at the Law School in Philadelphia. Jim Delaney will be there to talk about how the Big Ten would go bankrupt if one cent of their billions in revenue were diverted. Tickets at the link. [ESLS]

* With the impossible body ideal of Barbie gracing the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Cover, perhaps we should consider the positives that Barbie has contributed to women over the years. Missing is the rare, vacuous “math class is tough” Barbie. [The Careerist] * A five-year-old writes the cutest response to the IRS. [TaxProf Blog] * Professor busted for taking upskirt pics. His defense? How else was he going to prove the girls weren’t wearing underwear? Touché. Touché. [The Smoking Gun] * The reasons to quit your Biglaw job. Now in listicle form! [Buzzfeed] * The Supreme Court has a chance to take a stand against prosecutorial misconduct. Will they take it? [The Atlantic] * If you’re violating your probation, be sure to videotape it and post it on YouTube. There’s no way your probation officer will see it. [IT-Lex] * More insight into the world of contracting and America’s emerging economic model. [Law and More] * On April 11-12, 2014, the Marquette University Law School will hold a symposium entitled “Judicial Assistants or Junior Judges: the Hiring, Utilization and Influence of Law Clerks.” Our own David Lat will be there, along with such luminaries as Judge Posner, Judge Sykes, Joan Biskupic, and Tony Mauro. [Marquette University Law School]