Welcome to Blawg Review #205, the Music of the Spheres edition.
The English composer Gustav Holst (1874-1934) was hugely prolific, but he is unquestionably best known for his orchestral suite, The Planets. Composed between 1914 and 1916, the work was popular from the start, much to the chagrin of Holst, who thought that it unfairly overshadowed other, more worthy compositions. Beginning in the 1960's, and particularly in the wake of the Space Age, the Apollo program to reach the moon, and the ultimate artistic affirmation of Space that is Stanley Kubrick's 2001:A Space Odyssey
The Planets is structured in seven movements, each themed to a mystical/astrological attribute attached by Holst to that movement's regnant planet. The Earth is omitted as is poor old Pluto, which had yet to be either discovered in or demoted from its place in the Solar System. For reasons of his own, Holst ordered the movements to move first toward the Sun -- beginning with Mars and proceeding to Venus and onward in to Mercury -- and then out and away to the edges of the System -- Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune in their proper astral order.
Blawg Review #205 is structured in seven movements, themed and ordered to parallel Holst's. As above, so below. Each segment is accompanied by a MIDI version of the relevant movement, courtesy of the Planets page at aquarianage.org. Proper orchestral recordings of the suite are numberless as the stars
Now, set the controls for the heart of the Sun and beyond as we boldly go where no Blawg Review has gone before: in to the strange new worlds of this past week's finest legal weblog posts. Whooosh!
The planet Mars and the Roman god for which it is named have always been associated with war and, as the Great War launched in Europe, Holst opened The Planets with orchestral music's most readily recognized and frequently imitated depiction of heartless, mechanized conflict. If you know one part of The Planets, this is likely the one. And what the makers of Hollywood preview trailers would do without "Mars" is terrible to contemplate.
Law is war by other means, right? Battlefield metaphors have been the stock in trade of litigators for as long as there have been battlefields, metaphors, or litigators. As an example, Walter Olson on PointofLaw.com noted this headline: "High Profile Plaintiffs Attorneys Start to Beat War Drums Over AIG Bonuses".
Even settlement negotiations can partake of the regalia of war, as when Victoria Pynchon of the Settle It Now Negotiation Blog considers the pros and cons of Pursuing a Divide and Conquer Negotiation Strategy.
Venus, the goddess, is more often associated with Love than with Peace, but Holst opts to set her namesake planet as a more direct counterbalance to the warrior rhythms of Mars (or, if you prefer, to the martial rhythms of war). Serene, stately, and peaceful it is.
In the world, good relations between the nations is a mark of Peace, and on those lines What About Clients? this week extended to palm of friendship south to Latin America, hosting a two-part discussion by guest-blogger Fernando Rivadeneyra, a partner in the Puebla, Mexico, firm of Rivadeneyra, Treviño & de Campo: "Reinventing" the Latin American Law Firm -- Part I and "Reinventing" the Latin American Law Firm -- Part II.
In the courtroom, jurors serve as peacemakers of sorts, given that their factual findings actually decide and resolve the issues before them. Why then, wonders Daniel Solove, do we treat jurors as second class citizens? Gideon, of the a public defender blog ponders jury selection and reduces it all to a single question: "Who Is This Guy?"
Speaking of jurors: should we be at all surprised that Anne Reed's Deliberations has been determined to be the best legal blog in Wisconsin? I am at peace with that notion.
Judges deserve credit as peacemakers as well. Last week's Blawg Review #204 host, Above the Law, provides an unusual instance, in which the judge leaves the bench to defend a witness attacked by the defendant. They have the video of this highly Alternative method of dispute resolution.
With the wind at his back and wings on his heels, Mercury is messenger of the gods, picking up a little extra change on the side as a corporate spokesmodel. The smallest and fastest moving of the planets, Mercury is represented musically as a spirit of increasingly speedy communication. While Holst painted this musical portrait of Mercury at the start of the last century, it is just as fitting a theme for the hoppity-poppity-nonstoppity iFaceBerry TwitterKindling world of today.
Communications technology is essential to contemporary lawyering, but also a subject on which contemporary lawyers can easily find cause to overthink. Take, for example, the "gripping issue of notice-provision terminology" noted at AdamsDrafting: should you refer to it as a "fax" or "facsimile" or "telecopier"?
Blogging is itself a mode of communication, even if directed to an audience of one. On his Compliance Building blog, Doug Cornelius observes: "I use my blogs to put my thoughts and ideas into a searchable place. I am happy that anyone takes the time to read any of them, but I think I am the biggest consumer of my blog material."
America is waiting for a message of one kind or another, and that message often takes the form of political speech. SCOTUSBLOG provided a thorough rundown of the issues and argument surrounding Hillary: The Movie. California Defamation Law Blog, meanwhile, offered handy procedural tips when suing because the defendant called you a Communist. And Downtown Lawyer Jodie Hill reports that the 8th Circuit has found that specialty personalized license plates are private speech protected against viewpoint discrimination under the First Amendment.
Ireland is having its own wrangles with political speech, after an unidentified sly boots of an artist not only painted satirical, near-naked portraits of the Irish Taoiseach (that's Prime Minister to we backwards English-speakers) Brian Cowen, but managed somehow to smuggle them on to the walls of upstanding cultural bastions the like of the National Gallery of Ireland and the Royal Hibernian Academy. The political authorities have been decidedly heavy handed in their efforts to track down the painterly perpetrator, to the extent of exacting an apology from the national television network for having covered the story at all and dispatching the constabulary to a Dublin radio station to demand information on the cartooning culprit's identity and whereabouts. Naturally, the entire situation has been christened "Cowengate." All of which is by way of prelude to a recommendation of the thorough review of the state of play and the legal questions presented offered by Eion O'Dell at cearta.ie: Cowengate and Freedom of Expression.
And what of old fashioned face to face conversation? Kevin O'Keefe strongly recommends it: Visiting one client at a time is a moving experience.
Jovial Jupiter is as much about awe and nobility as about jollity. After Mars, Jupiter's is the best known segment of The Planets, its central theme trotted out for hymns and processionals and other occasions of serious seriousness. For our purposes, though, the stuffy bits can be ignored as we seek out law-related posts with an element of the Pleasures of This World.
Where might pleasure lie? In the sparkling translucency of a fine Pinot Noir, perhaps, or the burly bruised purple of a fruit-bomb Shiraz? Robert Parker, whose judgments on matters wine-related can single-handedly change the course of rivers (of wine) and determine fate of nations (of wine drinkers) was once, wouldn't you know it, a lawyer. Bitter Lawyer has an interview with the man himself, including the answer to the question "What should law students buy if they've got $12 to spend?" See: Robert Parker, Vintage Lawyer.
Of course, to take pleasure in a scintillant glass or frosty beverage one must first be able to purchase it, something not so easily done in many jurisdictions. Here is a most informative (and amusing) video on the byzantine bizarreries of the alcoholic beverage laws of one state, Virginia, via Radley Balko's blog, The Agitator:
Jollity: you laugh until you cry.
Music, the thematic backbone of this week's Blawg Review, may also give pleasure, being as it is reputed to be the food of love and soother of savagery. Whatever pleasures we listeners may be deriving, the prospects for the business of making money by getting people to pay for music is not particularly jolly. These are men of constant sorrow. The recently-launched Lawyer 4 Musicians blog focuses on the legal end of the business of music and this week turned to the major labels' latest attempt to rethink their revenue models: You Spin Me Right Round: Like a 360 Record Deal. [There's appropriate video accompaniment, likely to convince you that the current 80's nostalgia boom will never last, or shouldn't.]
Why Holst linked Saturn with old age is something of a mystery, as it is not a traditional association. The Planets' fifth movement depicts advancing age as a long, resigned but not depressive trudge to the destiny that awaits us all, which leads as well to the question: what sort of legal blog posts will fit nicely into this section?
Well . . . Nothing says "old age" like a birthday, as we were reminded over the weekend by the mysterious Editor of Blawg Review. Ed. apparently got Barenaked for the occasion. That he hints at this rather than sharing it more directly is an exercise of discretion for which we can all be grateful.
The elderly, and particularly the retirement savings of the elderly, were a particular target of convicted Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff -- no spring chicken himself. On that note, let's spend a few moments contemplating corruption, which may or may not be connected to the advancing age of the allegedly Corrupt.
Madoff himself seems to have squandered the savings of . . . an equally dubious individual: Walter Olson of Overlawyered discovered that Eric Turkewitz reported that Madoff's victims include one Morris Eisen, a one-time notorious New York personal injury attorney whose work habits included the repeated and elaborate fabrication of evidence. Prior to taking his losses with Madoff, Eisen was disbarred and served a number of years in prison. He can offer Madoff tips on getting along behind bars, perhaps, if he is in the mood to share.
The world of Art is now alleged to have its own Madoff equivalent, in the person of formerly high flying gallery owner Lawrence Salander, now the target of some 100 counts of grand larceny, falsifying business records, scheming to defraud, and on and on. Donn Zaretsky's Art Law Blog is all over this story.
Giving generously to charity is a frequent privilege of the old and well off, and both givers and getters of charity are nervously eying the President's proposals to limit charitable tax deductions. Donn Zaretsky, again, is tracking the issue as it may affect donations of art: President Obama Stands By Proposed Charitable-Deduction Limits.
It is a canard whose age is measured in centuries: old men in power, aging judges for instance, are inherently suspect. As with most canards and over-generalizations, it is a statement that is overall untrue, but for which there are sufficient examples that its broader untruth is lost in the hurly-burly of vivid exceptions. As, for instance, when Austin criminal defense lawyer Jamie Spencer catches out some [aging? we'll assume it arguendo] judges whose decisions, it seems, Can Be Bought: Guilty Judges Say Thanks But No Thanks to Guidelines.
Some lawsuits live to a ripe or overripe old age as well. Dickens' Jarndyce and Jarndyce in Bleak House
Holst's Uranus enters the scene with a flash and a bang, then struts and frets through a series of rapid fire tricks and turns. As with Saturn and old age, the connection between Uranus and Magic meant something to Holst, but is less than clear to the rest of us. In any case, ol' Uranus puts on a whallopin' show before departing in as unsettling a fashion as he came.
The obvious place to turn for posts to include in this segment is the Law and Magic Blog, a blog that is all about . . . ? Anyone? Yes, you there in the back: "Could it be . . . Law and magic"? Yes. Yes, that's exactly right. Give yourself a cookie. And among the legally magical news on the Law and Magic Blog this week, readers could learn that a down economy is a good market for psychics and that the operative standard of care when at the controls of a plummeting jet is: "Don't Pray, Pilot the Plane."
Not magical, perhaps, but also up in a down economy: commercial mediation, according to Geoff Sharp of mediator blah. . . blah . . . .
What if by some miracle you could take a large personal injury liability, say for the death of a hundred innocents in a nightclub fire, and transform it [presto! change-o!] in to something more palatable, such as an expense covered by federal stimulus money. Watch in amazement as Carter Wood of PointofLaw.com reveals the trick, as performed by the State of Rhode Island.
Holst's "Neptune" is an amorphous wash of elegant sound, emulating the distant and unknowable qualities of that far off planet as the suite drifts ethereally to its conclusion. It is often said that Holst here invented the "fade out" as a method of concluding a piece. This movement calls for an offstage female chorus, which continues to sing wordlessly and more and more quietly after the instruments of the orchestra have dropped out, until the sound disappears altogether. Holst's instructions actually call for the chorus to be in another room, and for the door from the concert hall to that room to be closed to cap the long diminuendo to the silence of empty space. (The MIDI version above really does not do the effect justice; you should by all means track down the real thing to hear how well the trick works.)
In the realm of the mysterious, I can point to my own stock in trade: the construction and interpretation of the English language as used, sometimes oddly, in contracts of insurance. Stephen D. Rosenberg of the Boston ERISA and Insurance Law Blog has been thinking long and hard on this topic recently and this week offered his latest thoughts on Deconstructing the Language of Insurance Policies. Additional hope for the perplexed in this field comes from the news that Martin Grace and company at the RiskProf blog will be making their wished for return this week. (There has been a good deal of attrition and suspension in the insurance blogging ranks this past year, Decs&Excs included, so the recent return of David Rossmiller and the promised return of RiskProf are welcome developments.)
Looking for a topic more mysterious than insurance? How about federal preemption doctrine in drug and device product liability litigation? The mind boggles. Fortunately, new insights were provided this week by Jim Beck and Mark Herrmann at the Drug and Device Law blog, reviewing a recent address on the subject by former Yale Law dean, now Judge, Guido Calabresi: Calabresi on Preemption.
Intellectual property is not the sole property of intellectuals, but it can easily sow confusion among those who are not among its adepts. Jeff Pietsch of The IP Law Blog assists the confused in his continuing series of trademark basics, this week explaining the concept of trademark dilution. Like a good scotch, a good trademark should not be excessively diluted.
A final conundrum before we part: Why do large and seemingly successful law firms suddenly go *poof*? John Wallbillich of wiredGC takes on a recent example of the phenomenon when he considers Proximate Cause and Law Firm Dissolution.
Now, as Blawg Review #205 fades into distance and silence and the infinite mystery of space . . ., Decs&Excs thanks you for reading and leaves you with this final observation, which is an eternal verity and no mystery at all:
~~~
Photo Credits:
"Orrery Closeup," by Flickr user Binks , showing the orrery at the Long Now Foundation, San Francisco;
"Mars" by Flickr user andy z;
"The morning star rises" by Flickr user jpstanley;
"Mercury Transit 2006," showing the planet Mercury crossing the face of the Sun, by Flickr user Ethan Allen;
"jupiter_2008-06-18_008" by Flickr user alsand;
"The ringed planet" [Saturn, obviously] by Flickr user jpstanley;
"Uranus," NASA/JPL photo from Voyager 2 probe, Jan 25, 1986, posted by Flickr user topquark22; and
"Neptune" by Flickr user ringsofsaturnrock.
All photos used under Creative Commons license.
~~~
Meanwhile, a brazen and beefy Blawg Review #204 is to be had this week courtesy of the legal tabloidologists at Above the Law. Get thee hence post haste, then hasten back here post hence.
Charon, the ferryman who transported souls across the River Styx to the realms of the dead in the myths of the Greeks, was appropriated by Dante to serve that same purpose in a more Catholic and more punitive version of the afterlife in the Inferno. Charon, in consequence, knows a little something about Sin. It is thus a right and proper thing that Blawg Review # 193 hosted by Charon QC has been built, and very well built, upon the theme of the Seven Deadly Sins.
It is a sterling effort. If weblogs had pages, it would be a riveting page-turner. It is so good, in fact, that notwithstanding my own three-year tenure hosting "April Fool's" editions of Blawg Review at that other weblog, I feel not the least bit huffy or territorial over Charon's appropriation -- an entirely appropriate appropriation on the occasion of Twelfth Night -- of the Feast of Fools in his lengthy and jocular introductory segment. Charon is to be commended for setting a Blawg Review standard to which future hosts can only dream of hoping to wish to aspire. Bravo! Now go read it.
Hellooooo. Is anyone there? Is anyone here? Anything happen while I was out?
If nothing else, Blawg Review has continued to happen week after week and, it being what we in the trade often refer to as the End of Another Year, the Anonymous Editor of Blawg Review has taken the occasion of Blawg Review #192 to solicit the votes of Blawg Review hosts past, present, and future, for the 2008 Blawg Review of the Year. Having hosted Blawg Review editions here and elsewhere in each of the past three years, and having lined up to do so yet again in a very few months, I now rise to cast my ballot.
Ed.'s invitational post provides a convenient gateway to each of this year's 51 editions, and I have been duly diligent in visiting or revisiting them all prior to making my selection. Especially impressive this year? The array of International sites -- by which we UnitedStatesers ("Americans" isn't strictly the right term, given that there are at least two continents with "America" in their names and that we share the Northern one with another nation state or two) mean blawgs not originating in the United States of [Northern] America -- hosting Blawg Review, and the equally grand array of Recidivist Blawg Review Hosts who, undaunted by their direct knowledge and personal experience of the daunting task it is to be a Blawg Review Host even once, have returned to the hosting fray with more vigor than ever.
All have won, and all should have prizes, and readers, but I have imposed on myself an altogether arbitrary limit of five nominees. Those nominees are, in chronological order:
Decs&Excs will be hosting Blawg Review for a fourth time at the end of March, on a theme no doubt to be selected in a hasty frenzy at the last possible moment. In the meantime, it is high time that I should end my unbloggerlike hibernation and return to at least quasi-regular posting on this site. Any number of insurance-related weblogs seem to have grown unusually quiet these past months, their disappearances as mysterious as those of the dinosaurs or Judge Crater. Enough. Let the resurgence begin here!
Here's wishing each and all a spirited, comfortable and prosperous 2009.
Blawg Review has information about next week's host, and instructions how to get your blawg posts reviewed in upcoming issues -- or perhaps to host one yourself. Blawg on.
~~~
Illustration: The Olympic Gateway at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, created for the 1984 Olympic games by the late Robert Graham. Photograph by Flickr! user grifray, used under Creative Commons License.
Avast! ye law-lubbing swab!
Passed the Bar-nacle Exam, have ye?
Familiarized yerself wi' Davey Jones' Res Ipsa Loquitur, ye say?
Sailed the Chapter Seven Bankrupt Seas, even?
Schooled y'are in yer directions, an' knows the diff'rence between yer Tort and yer Starbucks?
Ye've got yer compass, and ye habeas yer corpus, an' ye carry yer non compos mentis in a waterproof Shelley's case, ye tell me?
And are ye prepared to sign the ship's Articles an' sail wi' the likes of us . . . in Perpetuity? Well, ye can't: thar's a Rule against it, ain't there? [Har har]
But tell me true now: It be Blawg Review ye've really come seekin', eh? Thought as much.
Well, yer appeal's been heard and ye've come to the proper place. And properly warned ye be, sez I.
But here ye'll find no more o' yer namby-pamby "Blawg Review," savvy?
No, matey, that be fer the lace and waistcoat gentry, an' the lords o' the Admiralty an' such-like luckless landlocked lumpers, wi' their clerks an' their cubicles an' their quills an' their copiers.
No, me hearty: for the likes o' us -- bold 'n' dangerous sorts that we be, don'cha know -- hencefor'rd this be . . .
But enough of these Saturday matinée accents.
Welcome, readers, to Blawg Review #153, the 153rd Edition of the traveling 
"blog carnival for everyone interested in law."
This marks the third year that it has been my pleasure to host Blawg Review at Decs&Excs, and I welcome new and returning readers aboard my humble vessel as we set a random course through the inlets and archipelagos of recent posts relating to the law or originating with lawyers.
And now, let us be about the piratical business at hand -- or "at hook", as the case may be.
Our theme and the breadth of coverage for which Blawg Review stands compel us to begin with a topic otherwise rarely seen on this weblog: criminal law. We have no posts to link actually involving pirates, in the traditional non-intellectual property sense, but we can present a selection of items dealing with more shorebound offenses.
The major development of the week was the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Medellin v. Texas, which has been portrayed as a significant rebuff to the Bush administration and the administration's strange bedfellow, the International Court of Justice. Ken Lammers' CrimLaw post provides one of the most compact summaries of the decision that I have seen:
The International Court of Justice can demand new trials for foreign citizens in the US who weren't told they could contact their embassy or consulate. President Bush can order that States will comply with the ICJ.
However, the States don't have to pay any attention to either of them. The part of the Vienna Convention which the ICJ and President tried to enforce is not self enforcing. In other words, when the treaty was approved by the Senate and signed by the President it did not state that it would become law within the signatory countries. Therefore, in order for the treaty to have force of law within the U.S. the Congress had to pass a law enforcing it.
Posts on the case number in the hundreds. Here is a random selection:
Kent Scheidegger of Crime and Consequences writes, "Despite all the wailing and gnashing of teeth . . ., the holding is not all that remarkable."
SCOTUSBlog reported the decision, then offered commentary here, and here.
Howard Bashman's How Appealing also provided a lengthy compilation of reactions.
Volokh Conspiracy member Ilya Somin was another who offered Reflections on Medellin -- "yet another nail in the coffin of the Bush Administration's claims that the executive has virtually unlimited power over foreign affairs" -- concluding that the Court is probably correct to have ruled in favor of the State of Texas, but that Texas still behaved rather badly in the whole affair.
Other criminal posts of note:
On the South Carolina Appellate Law Blog, Bill Watkins is concerned that the Supreme Court "has made trial practice for the ordinary lawyer much more difficult" by restricting trial judges' discretion in ruling on the race-neutrality of challenges to potential jurors.
And from the Innocence Project blog, a central question: "How many innocent behind bars? Nobody knows."
Now, favorable winds drive us on to the sort of insurance, tort and liability issues that most commonly concern this site.
Wind and water are constant concerns of the buccaneer -- and of insurance companies, as Ted Frank pointed out at Point of Law.com: "Are Insurance Companies Getting Hosed in the Wind vs. Water Controversy?".
The Drug and Device Law blog reports a troubling collision of product liability and employment law-- Big Pharma vs. Big Labor? -- in which it is apparently not a firing offense to manipulate drug testing results.
Adam Liptak's NY Times piece on foreign countries' view of the American fondness for punitive damages -- in a nutshell, it adds to the impression that we are a scary and unstable nation -- drew links and comment from many blawgs, including Dan Hull at What About Clients?, Erik Turkewitz on his New York Personal Injury Law Blog, and Dan Markel of the collective PrawfsBlawg.
Extra points for synergy: Carolyn Elefant manages to combine the Medellin and punitive damage threads in a single post at Legal Blog Watch as examples of Globalization of Law Practice, In Ways We Don't Expect.
Curt Cutting of the exemplary California Punitive Damages blog posts a link to Video Clips from Hearings on a Bill to Cap Punitive Damages, for one simple reason:
Yes, this is somewhat old news, but hey, it isn't often that we can link to a video about punitive damages.
So stipulated.
Earlier in the week and also on the CalPuniBlog, which is covering all the bases on its topic of choice, Lisa Perrochet reported on a potential punitive damage award against "celebrity" Kid Rock -- who in some ways resembles a pirate, I suppose. Some lawyers will post anything to increase their blog traffic.
Cal Biz Lit's Bruce Nye yearns for the Bad Old (Pre-Prop 64) Days. Well, not really. Click through to read the story of a most terrible misrepresentation, which the plaintiff never actually heard, which did him no harm, and which he nonetheless chose to use as the basis for a "deceptive practices" claim anyway. This was not a successful gambit on his part. Bruce's post includes bonus mambo content, should you care for that sort of thing.
The Constitution is the unquestioned law of the land and the Captain is the unquestioned Authority on his ship, and for advocates of the "unitary executive" theory the President of the United States ("the Decider") holds comparable Constitutional authority to command, well, just about everything. So why is it, asks Marty Lederman at Balkinization, that when it comes to the awesome powers of the Federal Reserve even the present administration is suddenly awash with "Fair-Weather Unitarians?"
While we are on the trail of "fixing" the investment and capital markets, Professor Bainbridge adopted a cool-eyed and skeptical view of Senator Obama's big financial regulation speech.
Senator Obama has been taking some heat recently for associating with his controversial pastor of choice, but Presidential candidates have overcome far worse companions in the past. Below is an eyewitness portrait of future President Andrew Jackson (at right) consorting most amiably with Jean Lafitte (left), the notorious Pirate of the Gulf:
In other Constitutional posts we return to Howard Bashman, who noted yet again that "free speech" is still an evolving concept and that, at least in the State of Vermont, the right of privacy is in the air.
Pirates are not, as a rule, the most reasonable of men. Victoria Pynchon's Settle It Now Negotiation Blog poses a serious -- sometimes deadly serious -- question of related interest: How Do You Negotiate with a Sociopath? The simple answer is "don't," but there is much more to her post. The post includes bonus Sopranos content, should you care for that sort of thing.
Speaking of settlement, Scott Greenfield's Simple Justice advised that Settlement Demands Have Their Risks -- specifically the risk of a conviction for misdemeanor extortion, as happened to an overzealous young lawyer in New Hampshire. Scott's follow-up, with reflections on the non-lawyer public's frequentand vocal distaste for we legal professionals, is here.
If only from watching too much television, we are all familiar with the institution of the "teaching hospital," an institution devoted as much to the hands-on education of upcoming physicians as it is to healing the sick. At Concurring Opinions, Deven Desai proposes a thought experiment and asks: "Why Not A Teaching Law Firm?"
Pirates are wary of authority, and solo and small-firm lawyers (such as your host) often carry an innate suspicion of or distaste for BigLaw institutions. But even those unfortunate enough to have to man the oars of a large law firm can benefit from blogging, as Kevin O'Keefe [Real Lawyers Have Blogs] reports in his latest survey of the State of the AmLaw 200 blogosphere.
At Law21, Jordan Furlong suspects some large firms of manipulation of "Best Employers to Work For" lists as they seek an edge in misleading to their doom hiring the most promising young lawyers.
And there we have it: the piratical Blawg Review #153. But you know and I know that it is a truth universally acknowledged that No Pirate Story Ends With Just One Episode! So there must be more, must there not? And indeed there will be, albeit without the pirates, because tomorrow is April 1, which can only mean the appearance of a differently-themed Bonus Edition of Blawg Review at my other bloggy establishment, the freely associating and culture-oriented a fool in the forest.
[UPDATE (040108): Here is a link to the April Fool's Blawg Review Appendix 2008.]
Until tomorrow, here's wishing you fair winds, safe harbors and ample booty. It has been a pleasure doing justice with you.
~~~
Blawg Review has information about next week's host, and instructions how to get your blawg posts reviewed in upcoming issues.
~~~
Illustrations from divers public domain works (i.e., not themselves pirated) via Project Gutenberg, in particular:
Shirley Temple:
Golly gee, Mr. Disney! What are all these little statues for?
Walt Disney:
Well first, Shirley, I need to ask you politely to take your dimpled mitts off of that large statue, because that one's mine. Heh, heh.
But as for those little ones: you and I have been asked to hand these out to the seven legal weblogs that Declarations & Exclusions is nominating for the prestigious title of 2007 Blawg Review of the Year.
As the Anonymous Editor of Blawg Review has explained in the Official Rules, this year's winner will be selected by the votes of all those weblogs that have hosted, or are scheduled to host, one or more editions of Blawg Review. Each host can nominate however many he or she chooses from Blawg Review editions 89 through 140, and the edition receiving the most nominations by January 14, 2008, will be declared the winner.
Shirley Temple:
Jeepers! It's sort of a Blawgers' Choice Award, isn't it, Mr. Disney?
But doesn't Colin Samuels always win in this category?
Walt Disney [nervously]:
Heh, heh. He certainly does, Shirley. But this year when he wins, it'll be the result of free and fair elections -- which, as we all know, makes everything okay.
So, shall we find out who the nominees are?
Shirley Temple:
Let's do it, Mr. Disney! And like I always say, everyone's already a winner when it comes to Blawg Review!
Walt Disney:
You bet, Shirley! So now, here's two-time Blawg Review host George Wallace, the non-anonymous editor of Declarations & Exclusions -- and of its sibling site, a fool in the forest, itself the home to two editions of the April Fool's Blawg Review Prequel -- to announce his nominations for 2007's Blawg Review of the Year.
[Muffled, courteous applause]
George Wallace:
Thank you, Miss Temple. Thank you, Mr. Disney. And thank you, Anonymous Editor of Blawg Review, wherever you are, for overseeing another terrific year of Blawg Review.
I have to admit I have sometimes been remiss this year in reading each edition as it was published, but the invitation to proffer nominations in this category gave me the impetus I needed to go back and visit or revisit every one of the eligible editions. And I must say, it really drove home to me what a profusion of talent, imagination and gumption the legal blogosphere contains. Miss Temple is right: they are all winners already.
[Wild applause]
All right then. The hour grows late and we all want to get to the big Blawg Review afterparty, and some of us probably need to be in court in the morning, so here we go.
[Portentous rumbling from the scary orchestra]
Declarations & Exclusions is proud to nominate, in reverse chronological order, these hosts and their editions of Blawg Review as the best of the best in 2007:
- Colin Samuels for Infamy or Praise: Blawg Review #137, completing his trilogy of editions inspired by Dante's Divina Commedia;
- Eric Turkewitz for New York Personal Injury Law Blog: Blawg Review #134, inspired by the New York Marathon;
- A dual nomination to Diane Levin for Online Guide to Mediation: Blawg Review #130 [northern hemisphere] and, in New Zealand, to Geoff Sharp for mediator blah...blah...: Blawg Review # 130 [southern hemisphere], spanning the globe to bring us the constant variety of legal weblogs;
- Anne Reed for Deliberations: Blawg Review #127, inspired by the jury system and all that it entails;
- George Lenard for George’s Employment Blawg: Blawg Review #124; Labor Day Special Historical Edition, truly a labor of love by a lover of Labor;
- David Gulbransen for his collegial and eleemosynary "Course Guide" edition of Blawg Review #122; and
- Kevin A. Thompson for Cyberlaw Central » Blawg Review #93, a product of the vast Illuminati conspiracy.
Let's congratulate them all, shall we? Thank you and good night!
[5 minute standing ovation, followed by effusive rioting in the streets as the scary orchestra plays on. . . .]
Welcome to Blawg Review #102, the official 102nd Edition of Blawg Review, the traveling "blog carnival for everyone interested in law." This Edition follows hard on the heels of this year's April Fool's Blawg Review Prequel, which appeared yesterday at my more whimsical personal and cultural weblog, a fool in the forest.
This year both the Prequel and this official Blawg Review edition are constructed around illustrations from Stultifera Navis, the 1497 Latin translation of Sebastian Brant's 1494 satirical German text, Das Narrenschiff, or, The Ship of Fools. These woodcuts come courtesy of Sebastian Brant's Stultifera Navis, The Ship of Fools, maintained by the University of Houston, Copyright © 2000, University of Houston Libraries, and are reproduced pursuant to a Creative Commons license.
Now, please enjoy a rambling and unsystematic stroll through the labyrinths of the law as we look at a small sample of the legal weblogs posted this week:
When is it unethical for a lawyer to be helpful? Apparently, when the lawyer drafts a document for use by a pro se litigant, at least in the courtroom of one Federal Magistrate Judge in New Jersey. Mike Cernovich of Crime & Federalism jumped on the story this week, decrying it as a case of "Slamming the Courthouse Doors Shut." Mike links another report at Aaron Larson's The Stopped Clock: "Unbundled Legal Services And Ghastly Legal Opinions."
As one might expect, David Giacalone had wind of this story last week, and offered his own ghostwriter update at shlep. [He also announced the laudable shlep's dormancy, moving his principal online activities back to f/k/a/.]
In yesterday's Prequel, I noted several posts relating to dubious regulation of lawyer advertising. Here comes another, again courtesy of the overweening self-importance of the powers behind the New York Bar: Randy Braun of Juz the Fax asks, under New York's regulations,"Is A Business Card An Advertisement?" [Earn bonus points by answering Randy's follow-up question: "What IS it with those awful and ubiquitous 'scales of justice' logos anyway?"]
At Sui Generis, Nicole Black offers Tips for Teens: Have All The Sex You Want . . . but don't take pictures.
At Overlawyered, Walter Olson reported a case of "no good deed goes unpunished" ("California Good Samaritan out of luck") and David Nieporent pointed to an Ohio attorney whose profitable "creative" construction of a consumer protection statute finally wore out the patience of the appellate court ("Quitting while you're behind").
New horizons in government surveillance: Scott Greenfield of Simple Justice suggests you're never alone with a cellular phone because the FBI may be there, too.
Returned to active posting after an extended hiatus, Blawg Review #54 host Brandy Karl of bk! begs leave to explain why you need to use Zotero right now!. Zotero is a highly-useful reference manager plug-in for the Firefox browser, and Brandy is simply wild for it, so much so that she posted about it twice over this past week.
Denise Howell has been pondering the dynamics of group blogs, freedom of expression, and who should bear responsibility for despicable threats in "a big, scary world . . . populated in part by a tragically high proportion of psycho- and sociopaths" on Lawgarithms. Part 1 is here; Part 2 -- in which Denise is misquoted by the BBC (*sigh*) -- is here.
Des Moines patent lawyer Brett Trout of Blawg IT asks a good practical question: "Got Cyber Insurance?."
Doug Simpson's Unintended Consequences weblog focuses "on the collision of law, networks and disruptive technologies." In practical terms, that means that his focus over the last year or more has turned increasingly to issues surrounding climate change. This week he reported on congressional testimony by the chair of the Catastrophe Insurance Working Group of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners [NAIC] on National Disaster Insurance.
In traveling the highways and byways of the law, I learned early that there are two groups of people you really want to have on your side: court clerks and legal secretaries. Members of these groups who are on your side are indispensably useful; unhappy members of those same groups can throw stones in your passway till the proverbial cows come home, step on your toes and make a mess of the carpet. PT-LawMom, who is "constantly amazed at the hubris of young associates," offers tips on currying favor with the curmudgeonly legal secretary.
Freedom! Stephanie West Allen of idealawg advises lawyers to "take a close look at those stone cold habits" because "[t]he difference between conscious autonomy and groping enslavement is our power of choice." As a lifestyle choice, "groping enslavement" sounds pretty icky to me, but chacun a son gout, eh?
A fresh example of lawyers behaving badly comes from Prof. Shaun Martin's California Appellate Report: Here, the 9th Circuit sussed out that counsel had falsified a critical date by the simple expedient of photocopying the docket sheet so that part of the left side did not copy. Voila! Suddenly an entry dated "3/17/00" becomes an entry dated "7/00," elegantly solving counsel's timing problem until the court catches on. Professor Martin Predicts:
"I have little doubt that [lawyer] Roy's looking at a suspension from the practice of law -- if not disbarment -- up the road. We tend not to like deliberate efforts to defraud the court, dontchaknow."
Regular as clockwork and twice as likely to tick you off: it's Tax Time! April 15 [April 16 this year, actually] is nipping at all our heels, and the pseudonymous Taxgirl! is here to help, with posts on the tax consequences of home sales and advice on positions you really shouldn't oughta be trying to take in your dealings with the gentle souls at the Internal Revenue Service.
Taxes aren't pretty, but witnesses sometimes are. John Keats was such a sensitive soul he thought the crockery spoke to him: one Grecian Urn in particular advised "Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty." But does the same principle apply in court? At Deliberations, Milwaukee-based attorney/jury consultant Anne Reed thinks it does, and offers her thoughts on Beauty and the Juror: Part I, Part II.
Finally, as we leave these fools behind for now, I recall to you this exchange between King Lear and his Fool,
Fool: If thou wert my fool, nuncle, I'ld have thee beaten for being old before thy time.
LEAR: How's that?
Fool: Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise.
which I offer as an excuse to break with protocol and to link for a second time a post already linked in last week's fine and equine Blawg Review #101: I mean, of course, David Giacalone's very long, very thoughtful, very wise and very important discussion at f/k/a/ of The Graying Bar. It's a post for, you should pardon the expression, The Ages.
That said, I thank each of you for joining me for this week's double-dipped edition of Blawg Review.
It has been a pleasure doing justice with you.
~~~
Blawg Review has information about next week's host, and instructions how to get your blawg posts reviewed in upcoming issues.
