Thursday, October 03, 2024
Tuesday, September 03, 2024
Friday, August 09, 2024
New York's experiment with the Child Victims Act is a good example of the Law of Unintended Consequences. There are a lot of bad decisions coming out of it, and I am hard-pressed to see what good has resulted. To the extent that the victims are being compensated monetarily it is by way of settlements which, for the most part, are substantially smaller than gets reported, because the settlements are not reported. The "empty chair" verdicts are meaningless. It's a good example of "When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." The legislature believed that access to the tort system was the answer to a serious social problem, and as a result the courts are flooded with years and decades-old cases in which witnesses are mostly dead or unavailable, documents and other evidence no longer exists, and the remedy- money damages- is as best elusive. The culpable institutions and their insurers are faced with expenses that were never anticipated and are proving to be existential.
None of this exculpates the culpable, and it is important that the shocking reality of the extent the abuse that society ignored or enabled has been exposed, but when the dust finally settles what we will be left with is a body of jurisprudence that has been twisted and distorted in ways I can't even imagine.
Thursday, July 25, 2024
Dahlia Lithwick is essential. Here's an interview with retired Canadian Supreme Court Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella:
’ve always been struck in the legal profession by the idea that the phrase We’ve always done it this way is a valid rebuttal. I mean, that is not an answer. And one of the things that I am always struck by in the United States—not by everyone, but by many—is an unwillingness to look around the world and do a comparative analysis of what happens in other places. It’s amazing to me how all the other Western Supreme Courts talk to each other, meet with each other, share each other’s jurisprudence, cite each other’s jurisprudence, because we’re all dealing essentially with universal problems. You can look to see what other places are doing, and you learn from it. I learned how not to think about equality by reading American case law. I read every single decision that had ever been written about the 14th Amendment to find myself saying, Oh, I don’t like this.This nails it, I think. American exceptulaism has stiffled American jurisprudence. It is difficult to get students- let alone American lawyers, to consider that other systems might exist, let alone that they might be superior. The fact is that other jurisdictions have had the benifit of seeing our system in operation and have, for the most part, rejected all but the best parts of our tradition.
Wednesday, July 10, 2024
Tuesday, July 09, 2024
Elizabeth Nelson on Bob Dylan's Desire I have mixed feelings about this record: "Hurricane" is a bop, but even at the time it seemed like a questionable bit of advocacy; "Joey" is simply awful, "Oh, Sister" is nearly as bad, and so is "Isis". On the other hand, there are moments- “Black Diamond Bay" is one- where ol'Bob's sense of humor shows through, and it is always interesting when Dylan collaborates with someone. "You know, I do lyrics," Jacques Levy is said to have told Bob when approached about working together, and perhaps that's why the songs that rock rock as well as they do, and why the melodies that work are as strong as they are.
[I]n some ways Desire is the most explicit manifestation of the central literary irony of Dylan’s career: that the consummate barometer of social and cultural authenticity can’t be trusted with the facts about anything, least of all himself.
Wednesday, July 03, 2024
It's been a while since I've seen a Bob Dylan concert; reports from this tour suggest a quirky setlist, which might be fun. Of course ol'Bob is pretty unpredictable- would we want him any other way? A few years back I went to a show with a friend, who said: "It might be great or it might be terrible but either way it'll be great." That's about right.
