Virginia

A Law Student Plays the Race Card — and Gets Busted, Big Time

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Johnathan Perkins

It’s time for more race-related drama from UVA Law School. Back in February, Elie wrote about a UVA Law party that featured Confederate flag decor. Now I will tell you about a 3L’s fabricated tale of racial harassment by university police.

(Yes, Lat’s writing this story. So you can relax, UVA folks — at least for now. Maybe Elie will take a crack at it on Monday.)

In late April, Johnathan Perkins, a third-year law student at UVA, wrote a letter to the editor that was published in Virginia Law Weekly, the law school’s student newspaper. In his letter, Perkins claimed that he was harassed by UVA university police while walking home from a party, purportedly on account of his race (he’s African-American). Perkins said he was moved to share the story “because it is important for my classmates to hear a real-life anecdote illustrating the myth of equal protection under the law.”

The trouble is, it was anything but a “real-life anecdote,” as Perkins himself recently confessed….

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Non-Sequiturs: 05.05.11

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Kesha - er, Ke$ha.

* Kesha’s publicist really needs to talk to Kesha’s lawyers about filing lawsuits that make Kesha Ke$ha look lame. [Thomson Reuters]

* You don’t really think you’re going to get a law school to roll over and pay $40 million to snookered students like a cooking school would? Crappy law schools might not be training great lawyers, but they can certainly afford to hire some. [Inside Scoop SF]

* How to subpoena information put on Facebook, or as I like to call it: “How to ruin it for everybody.” [An Associate's Mind]

* “A less gilded future”: an overview from The Economist of the state of the legal economy. [The Economist]

* Chief Judge Kozinski isn’t the only one who loved the new movie Atlas Shrugged. [Dealbreaker]

* Monica Goodling gets a public reprimand by the Virginia state bar. In other completely pointless actions, I just high-fived a Mexican for Cinco de Mayo. [Virginia Lawyers Weekly]

* Speaking of which, I’ve had too many tequila shots today to get hyped up about the Confederate flag. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Seriously guys, take the hint, it’s Cinco de Mayo — it’s okay to sneak out from work and have a drink with friends… assuming you still have friends. Here are some fun facts and music to get you in the mood. [Christian Science Monitor]

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Quotes of the Day: When Ken Cuccinelli and the New York Times agree you screwed up, you screwed up.

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King & Spalding’s willingness to drop a client, the U.S. House of Representatives, in connection with the lawsuit challenging the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was such an obsequious act of weakness that I feel compelled to end your legal association with Virginia so that there is no chance that one of my legal clients will be put in the embarrassing and difficult situation like the client you walked away from, the House of Representatives.

– Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, in a letter firing the law firm of King & Spalding.

A second quote of the day, from the New York Times, after the jump.

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Recent Bar Exam Results: Open Thread
(And: Is the New York Board of Law Examiners Threatening Me?)

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‘Tis the season for bar exam results. If you took the bar in February we’re sorry, your score should be on its way.

Several states have announced since our last open thread, which covered Illinois and Kansas. Last week, scores came out for Florida, Massachusetts, and Virginia. Scores have also been out for a while from Missouri and Idaho (where the names of the February bar passers fit on one page).

Congratulations to those who passed; keep your head up if you failed. Please share your stories of triumph or sadness — and mention other states I might have missed — in the comments.

The New York State February bar results are still not in. But do you remember what happened the last time the New York Board of Law Examiners (BOLE) tried to release the results of the test? The results to last July’s NY Bar Exam were accidentally released online at the exact moment a number of readers happened to be looking for results. BOLE then tried to depublish the results and pretend that the mistake never happened. But they were flummoxed by the “CTRL – Print Screen” skills of myself and others. So the July bar results ended going up live on Above the Law, and NY BOLE eventually had to admit its mistake.

Well, it seems that six months later, NY BOLE is still reluctant to admit that they simply screwed up. Instead they’re trying to act like ninja computer hackers are after their lucky charms or something….

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(And: Is the New York Board of Law Examiners Threatening Me?)“

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The Wheels of Justice (Scalia): Will Nino Fight His Traffic Ticket?

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In my earlier story about Justice Antonin Scalia’s fender-bender on the George Washington Parkway, I tossed out a question: What kind of car does Justice Scalia drive?

A few years ago, Justice Scalia drove a BMW. Is Nino still partial to Bimmers, or has he switched his automotive allegiances?

Now we know the answer — and more about the accident, including whether Justice Scalia was at fault….

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Justice Scalia Gets Caught in a Fender-Bender

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The wheels of justice might have taken a wrong turn today. It seems that Justice Antonin Scalia had some minimum contacts — with another vehicle, on a highway outside D.C.

According to a Supreme Court spokesperson, Justice Scalia was involved in a minor car accident this morning, while heading in to One First Street to hear oral argument in Wal-Mart v. Dukes. The accident took place on the George Washington Parkway (a tricky road to drive on, as I know from my time spent in Washington).

Justice Scalia — my personal favorite among the justices, for his brilliance, wit, colorful personality, and unmatched writing skill — was thankfully not injured. He made it on to the bench in time for the Tuesday oral argument session.

What kind of car does Justice Scalia drive?

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Do You Really Need Confederate-Flag Decor at Your Law School Party?

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When you think about it, naming the band "Massa-Bossmans" would have been more ambiguous.

On Friday we wrote about the settlement agreed to by Cure Lounge, a club in Boston that was accused of discriminating against African-American patrons. In the comments, it seemed like some of our Southern readers where all too happy to point out that this example of racist behavior took place in the North.

Lord knows I’ve never said that racism is an exclusively Southern phenomenon. But I’ve met enough Southerners to know that they sometimes feel unfairly maligned just because of their Confederate past. Sure, I could argue that only Southerners would come up with the name like “Lady Antebellum” for a band — and only Southerners would defend that name as “merely” referring to a time before the Civil War, as if I’m supposed to be the idiot who forgets what was happening in the South before the Civil War. But whatever, the point is taken, modern racism exists North and South, East and West, probably in relatively equal “amounts,” if such a thing could be quantified.

But still, you have to give the South credit. When they go for it, they always seems to have more flair. They have a — what’s the word? — one might say “cavalier” way, at least at UVA Law, of going about racial intolerance.

It would be charming, if it wasn’t so damn disgusting…

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Musical Chairs: Georgetown Associate Dean Named New Dean of Richmond Law

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The past few weeks have brought lots of news on the law school dean front. Last week, Chapman Law selected a former congressman as its next head. Earlier this month, Pepperdine Law picked up a judge as its latest leader.

Today the University of Richmond School of Law — a top 100 law school, per U.S. News (#86, to be precise) — announced its new dean. Like most law school deans, she comes not from Congress or the bench, but from the ranks of legal academia — Georgetown Law, more specifically….

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Recent Bar Exam Results: Open Thread
AZ, CT, MI, PA, VA, WA — any others?

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Nice torso -- no wonder he gets lucky.

Almost a month has passed since our last open thread devoted to bar exam results. So we have some catching up to do.

It’s not yet November, so California and New York test takers still have some time left to wait. But if you took the Massachusetts bar exam, release of the results is imminent, according to Stuff To Do During BarBri.

(Random aside: BAR/BRI isn’t the only provider of bar exam preparation services. For a comparison of BAR/BRI, Kaplan PMBR, and BarMax, see here — including the comments.)

Stuff To Do During BarBri attributes the Massachusetts mailing, said to be taking place tomorrow, to “the grape vine allegedly originating in the Massachusetts Superior Court.” So at this point it’s still rumor.

But we do have confirmed news of bar exam outcomes from other states….

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AZ, CT, MI, PA, VA, WA — any others?“

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Virginia Lawsuit Against Health Care Reform Allowed to Continue

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Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli can take his legal attack on the health reform legislation one step further. Today Judge Henry Hudson (E.D. Va.) denied a Health and Human Services motion to dismiss — which means we’re headed for discovery. The WSJ Law Blog reports:

The ruling represents a setback that will force the Obama administration to mount a lengthy legal defense of the law. The suit, filed by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, alleges that the law’s requirement that its residents have health insurance violates the Commerce Clause of the Constitution…

In his opinion, Judge Hudson ruled: “The guiding precedent [on the Commerce Clause] is informative but inconclusive.”

At times like these, it’s important to remember that the Democrats have 255 votes in the House and 59 votes in the Senate, but only four votes on the Supreme Court…

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