Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day: The Justice League Can Actually Help You Learn About Justice!

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What better way to illustrate the rules of evidence than to explore whether (and why) things that Professor Xavier read in your mind would be admissible in court and whether Spider Man could testify in his mask? What better way to explore the “functional/informative” split in trademark law than to ask whether Captain America’s round shield might be the subject of a trademark, or just the design on its face? What better way to explore corporate law than to explore the sort of legal entity the Fantastic Four and the Justice League of America should look to form in order to minimize liability and streamline their decision-making process?

– SciFi author Cory Doctorow, commenting on the interesting legal issues presented in The Law of Superheroes (affiliate link), a book penned by lawyers James Daily and Ryan Davidson, who write the Law and the Multiverse blog, which is up for ABA Blawg 100 honors in the “For Fun” category.

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Quote of the Day: Well, This Gives a Whole New Meaning to the Phrase ‘Oral Argument’

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A trademark cock-a-doodle-don’t.

We think that the Board did not err in concluding that the distinction between COCKSUCKER and COCK SUCKER is a distinction without a difference. So too the association of COCK SUCKER with a poultry-themed product does not diminish the vulgar meaning – it merely establishes an additional, non-vulgar meaning and a double entendre.

This not a case in which the vulgar meaning of the mark’s literal element is so obscure or so faintly evoked that a context that amplifies the non-vulgar meaning will efface the vulgar meaning altogether. Rather, the mark is precisely what [appellant] Fox intended it to be: a double entendre, meaning both “rooster lollipop” and “one who performs fellatio.”

– Circuit Judge Timothy Dyk, affirming on behalf of a three-judge panel of the Federal Circuit the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board’s prior affirmance of an examiner’s refusal to register the mark “COCK SUCKER” for rooster lollipops.

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Quote of the Day: It’s the End of the World as Law Schools Know It…

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Paul Campos

There is a zealous faith in American culture that higher education always pays for itself, but it’s like the subprime mortgage scandal without securitization. When people realize it’s a worthless degree, the system is going to collapse.

– University of Colorado Law School Professor Paul Campos, author of the blog Inside the Law School Scam and the book Don’t Go To Law School (Unless) (affiliate link), commenting on the unsustainability of the current law school model.

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Quote of the Day: But How Much Do They Charge?

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The client always has more leverage but certainly, for the high-end work, the firm is calling the shots.

– Kent Zimmermann, a consultant with Zeughauser Group, commenting on the premium hourly fees charged by Biglaw attorneys in sought-after practice areas like mergers and acquisitions, corporate finance and securities, white-collar defense, and litigation.

(That’s interesting, but what were the highest and lowest rates for partners and associates in 2012? We’ve got that info, and more, after the jump.)

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Quote of the Day: Keep Waiting
(And: Justice Kagan Disses A Top Law School)

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There are four of us [on the Court] from New York City. We have every borough covered except for Staten Island; we’re waiting for that Staten Island judge.

– Justice Elena Kagan, speaking last night with Leon Wieseltier of The New Republic for the seventh annual Yitzhak Rabin Memorial Lecture, “Law and Justice,” at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue in Washington, D.C.

(Read more about Justice Kagan’s remarks, in which the former Harvard Law School dean called a certain T14 school a TTT, after the jump.)

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(And: Justice Kagan Disses A Top Law School)“

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Quote of the Day: She Really Is a Wise Latina!

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It was a long time ago, and a funny story. For the record, neither one of us used Quaaludes.

– Kevin Noonan, Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s ex-husband, commenting on the gift he presented to his ex-wife, then a Yale Law student, on their wedding night: a bag of disco biscuits. Sotomayor claims she refused to pop the pills, and instead suggested that her husband flush them down the toilet.

(The anecdote appears in Justice Sotomayor’s forthcoming memoir, My Beloved World (affiliate link), scheduled for publication next month.)

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Quote of the Day: The Word ‘REGULATED’ Is Also in the Second Amendment, If We’re Being Technical About This Nonsense

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An 18th century firearm.

One doesn’t have to be a historian to realize that a right to keep and bear arms for personal self-defense in the 18th century could not rationally have been limited to the home.

– Judge Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit, overturning an Illinois law prohibiting loaded weapons from being carried in public.

(Perhaps if Posner were a historian, he’d have remembered the whole “a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state” clause that precedes our supposedly inviolable rights to carry around loaded hand cannons that pack the lethality of half of the Continental Army.)

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Quote of the Day: Scalia Skis the Slippery Slope

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If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things?

– Justice Antonin Scalia, in an appearance yesterday at Princeton to promote Reading Law (affiliate link), responding to a gay student who asked the justice why he draws parallels between laws against sodomy and laws against bestiality and murder.

(So, is homosexuality the new killing it? Read more, after the jump.)

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Quote of the Day: Don’t Be the Black Sheep of Law Schools When It Comes to Transparency

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[S]chools don’t have to go so far as to declare such specifics to the world as having a sheep farmer and a professional poker player in their graduating class to make some salubrious steps toward being a bit more forthcoming.

– Sarah Zearfoss, Michigan Law’s Senior Assistant Dean for Admissions, Financial Aid, and Career Planning, commenting on the need for increased transparency in the employment statistics law schools present to prospective students who peruse their websites.

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Quote of the Day: But Isn’t It Time for Them to ‘Get Theirs’?

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Tom Goldstein

Still, who am I to say these cases are a mistake? I am straight and married. And I am white and well off. I got mine.

– SCOTUSblog founder Tom Goldstein, commenting on the many gay marriage “test cases” that might get heard this Term by the Supreme Court. SCOTUSblog has a liveblog up right now, waiting for possible certiorari grants and denials in these cases.

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