Star Trek

Non-Sequiturs: 06.06.13

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* A recovering attorney is starting a cake pop business. Never had a cake pop? Then you’re dumb. Or, I guess, diabetic. Sorry if you’re diabetic. [Kickstarter]

* Wondering what happened to the survivors of the crash of the USS Vengeance in the new Star Trek movie? This is how their trials would likely go down. [The Legal Geeks]

* If you’re looking for a new dean for your law school, look no further. [Law Prof Blawg]

* Student debt is crushing the business dreams of a Tulane law grad. Apparently she just can’t make her payments running her sorority recruiting business. Wait a minute? I thought “sororities” handle “sorority recruiting.” [Bloomberg]

* New York City feels hipsters everyone needs to be warned not to wear bowling shoes outside. [Lowering the Bar]

* As promised, the second installment of an interview with biochemist attending Yale Law School. [Science to Law]

* Before rising 3Ls realize nobody is coming to interview them, maybe we should point them towards the Schola2Juris program of Waller Lansden? It’s application period opens on June 7th. [Schola2Juris]

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Prenda Boldly Benchslapped Where No One Has Gone Before

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When an opinion opens with a quote from The Wrath of Khan, something is about to happen.

What followed was a straightforward benchslap littered with Star Trek references. More than a little fitting that an opinion about allegedly illegal porn downloads would focus on the pop culture universe most closely associated with 40-year-old virgins.

It’s not the cohesive, brilliant opinion about strip clubs that we recently got out of Judge Fred Biery. Instead, the opinion draws wry smiles for laying out nothing but a string of references to Star Trek seemingly designed just to prove to his fellow nerds that the Judge knows Star Trek.

Which, in a sense, makes this opinion the most “Star Trek” thing ever…

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Quote of the Day: Is Justice Sotomayor a Trekkie?

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Does the statute cover depictions of violence against Vulcans?

– Justice Sonia Sotomayor, asking whether video violence against “an image of a human being” could be extended to human-like figures, during oral arguments for Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association.

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Legal Citation of the Day: Pointy Ears Under a Ten-Gallon Hat?

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Appropriately weighty principles guide our course. First, we recognize that police power draws from the credo that “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” Second, while this maxim rings utilitarian and Dickensian (not to mention Vulcan21), it is cabined by something contrarian and Texan: distrust of intrusive government and a belief that police power is justified only by urgency, not expediency.

21 See STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN (Paramount Pictures 1982). The film references several works of classic literature, none more prominently than A Tale of Two Cities. Spock gives Admiral Kirk an antique copy as a birthday present, and the film itself is bookended with the book’s opening and closing passages. Most memorable, of course, is Spock’s famous line from his moment of sacrifice: “Don’t grieve, Admiral. It is logical. The needs of the many outweigh . . .” to which Kirk replies, “the needs of the few.”

– Texas Supreme Court Justice Don R. Willett, concurring, in Robinson v. Crown Cork and Seal.

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