New Jersey Supreme Court Modifies rPC 7.5(e) to Permit Descriptive Law firm Trade Names
The New Jersey Supreme Court has relaxed its rule on law firm trade names. The court now permits descriptive names such as ""Millburn Tax Law Associates, John Smith, Esq." The name must include the last name of one or more lawyers. But names like "Budget Lawyers" or "Tax Fixers" which are comparative or suggestive of ability to achieve superior results would not be permitted. The Court has saddled its Advertising Committee with the task of monitoring and reviewing compliance.
Friday, August 21, 2015
`The Church is at your side' -Pope Francis to Muslim Immigrants
Jeb Bush said yesterday he would stop using the term "anchor babies" if someone showed him a better one. Babies would do for starters. As the GOP candidates sink deeper into the swamp, let's listen to Pope Francis at Lampedusa - a small island between Sicily and Malta to which many have fled from north Africa.-gwc
8 July 2013: Visit to Lampedusa - Holy Mass in the "Arena" sports camp | Francis
Immigrants dying at sea, in boats which were vehicles of hope and became vehicles of death. That is how the headlines put it. When I first heard of this tragedy a few weeks ago, and realized that it happens all too frequently, it has constantly come back to me like a painful thorn in my heart. So I felt that I had to come here today, to pray and to offer a sign of my closeness, but also to challenge our consciences lest this tragedy be repeated. Please, let it not be repeated! First, however, I want to say a word of heartfelt gratitude and encouragement to you, the people of Lampedusa and Linosa, and to the various associations, volunteers and security personnel who continue to attend to the needs of people journeying towards a better future. You are so few, and yet you offer an example of solidarity! Thank you! I also thank Archbishop Francesco Montenegro for all his help, his efforts and his close pastoral care. I offer a cordial greeting to Mayor Giusi Nicolini: thank you so much for what you have done and are doing. I also think with affection of those Muslim immigrants who this evening begin the fast of Ramadan, which I trust will bear abundant spiritual fruit. The Church is at your side as you seek a more dignified life for yourselves and your families. To all of you: o’scià!
This morning, in the light of God’s word which has just been proclaimed, I wish to offer some thoughts meant to challenge people’s consciences and lead them to reflection and a concrete change of heart.
The Game-Changing Iran Report That Bibi Fears - Opinion – Forward.com
J.J. Goldberg
The Game-Changing Iran Report That Bibi Fears - Opinion – Forward.com
by J.J. Goldberg
Israel’s military intelligence corps has given Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a surprising report assessing the opportunities and threats that the Iran nuclear deal poses for Israel.
What’s startling about the report is not its substance, which is mostly a predictable mix of standard arguments presented for and against the deal: No nukes for 10 years, which gives Israel time to develop new countermeasures, but then a quick path to a nuke after a decade; an accelerated regional arms race, plus new legitimacy for pariah Iran, but also (surprisingly) a reduced likelihood of Iran attacking Israel. The upsides aren’t perfect. The downsides aren’t unmanageable.
No, what’s remarkable about the report is the fact that it exists. Netanyahu has ordered every level of Israeli officialdom to muzzle any discussion of the deal’s possible upsides. Central to his strategy is his insistence that the deal is an unmitigated catastrophe. Orders are to depict it as so ruinous that no outcome is acceptable short of its absolute defeat.
The prime minister and his allies insist Israel is united behind his unequivocal rejection of the deal. The cowering silence of the political opposition has helped him nurture the myth. But it’s a myth.
Now comes word that his intelligence community is defying the gag order and telling him otherwise. The deal offers Israel both advantages and disadvantages, the spooks say. The disadvantages are not too calamitous for anyone to cope with them. For an outside observer, the logical conclusion is that Netanyahu’s fiery confrontation with the Obama administration is unnecessary. And destructive.
Read more: http://forward.com/opinion/319515/the-game-changing-iran-report-that-wasnt/#ixzz3jSNLu8Fi
Thursday, August 20, 2015
Talking About the Death Penalty, Court to Court - The New York Times
Seven years ago when the New Jersey legislature abolished the death penalty I organized a symposium at Seton Hall Law School. There former Chief Justice Deborah Poritz acknowledged that the systematic "proportionality review" she had led proved to be a failure. They could not squeeze the arbitrariness out of the decisions about who lives and who dies. The discretion of prosecutors, and of juries builds that into the system.
As Linda Greenhouse illuminates the Connecticut Supreme Court has bitten that bullet. The state's repeal was prospective. The state Supreme Court found that execution of any of the eleven on death row would be arbitrary and unconstitutional. - gwc
Talking About the Death Penalty, Court to Court - The New York Times
by Linda Greenhouse
As Linda Greenhouse illuminates the Connecticut Supreme Court has bitten that bullet. The state's repeal was prospective. The state Supreme Court found that execution of any of the eleven on death row would be arbitrary and unconstitutional. - gwc
Talking About the Death Penalty, Court to Court - The New York Times
by Linda Greenhouse
The Connecticut Supreme Court could have taken an easy route to finding the state’s death penalty unconstitutional in thedecision it issued last week. The State Legislature repealed the death penalty in 2012, but it made the repeal prospective, leaving 11 men on death row. The reason for the prospective-only repeal was obvious to all: Two of the death-row inmates, Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes, had committed a horrific home-invasion triple murder that shocked the state in 2007, and the prospect of barring their execution was unpalatable to Connecticut politicians and many members of the public.
As a matter of constitutional doctrine, the State Supreme Court might simply have found the distinction between those who committed murder before and after the repeal date of April 25, 2012, to be arbitrary — a violation of due process, equal protection or both. Taking the repeal law, signed by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, to embody the collective judgment of the people’s elected representatives that capital punishment is no longer an appropriate tool of criminal justice in Connecticut, on what basis could the state apply the death penalty to one class of murderers and spare another, with the two groups separated only by the date of offense?
The 92-page majority opinion in Connecticut v. Santiago, written by Justice Richard N. Palmer for four of the court’s seven justices, was much more ambitious than that, however, and in its ambition lies its significance.
On hearing that the Connecticut Supreme Court had invalidated the state’s death penalty, many people probably shrugged and thought, “O.K., that’s one little blue state that hardly ever executed anyone (a single execution in the past 55 years, if you’re counting) and that was already never going to add anyone new to death row. How important can this decision be?”
That was, frankly, my thought as well, and I picked up the decision — more than 200 pages, including concurring and dissenting opinions — with some reluctance and a sense of obligation. (My apartment building is across the street from the New Haven courthouse where crowds, gathered for the consecutive trials in the home-invasion murders, blocked the sidewalks for weeks in 2010 and 2011.) But I turned the pages with mounting excitement. In the breadth of its perspective on the history and current problematic state of the death penalty, in its cleareyed dissection of the irreconcilable conflict at the heart of modern death-penalty jurisprudence, the Connecticut Supreme Court not only produced an important decision for its own jurisdiction; but it addressed the United States Supreme Court frankly and directly. The decision engages the Supreme Court at a crucial moment of mounting unease, within the court and outside it, with the death penalty’s trajectory over the nearly four decades since the court permitted states to resume executions.
Next year marks the 40th anniversary of Gregg v. Georgia and the four other Supreme Court decisions that reviewed the new generation of laws the states enacted in an effort to comply with the 1972 decision that had invalidated all existing death-penalty laws. “These death sentences are cruel and unusual in the same way that being struck by lightning is cruel and unusual,” Justice Potter Stewart famously wrote in a concurring opinion in the 1972 caseFurman v. Georgia. The new laws that the Supreme Court upheld were supposed to avoid just such arbitrariness by limiting those defendants deemed eligible for the death penalty and by channeling juries’ discretion over when to impose it.
The problem, as the Connecticut Supreme Court demonstrates, is that it hasn’t worked. Of some 200 cases in the state that might have been charged as capital murder between 1973 and 2007, prosecutors sought the death penalty in some 130 and obtained death sentences in 12. “The selection of which offenders live and which offenders die appears to be inescapably tainted by caprice and bias,” the court said, pointing to “an inherent conflict in the requirements that the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, as interpreted by the United States Supreme Court, imposes on any capital sentencing scheme.”
On the one hand, the death penalty can’t be automatic, but has to result from specific findings about the crime and the defendant through a process that relies on specifically identified “aggravating factors.” That’s the effort to channel discretion and treat like cases alike. On the other hand, the jury must have absolute discretion to consider any “mitigating factors” that it deems relevant. That’s the effort to treat each defendant as an individual. The United States Supreme Court deems both efforts as constitutionally essential. But to quote from the Connecticut opinion:
“The question is whether this individualized sentencing requirement inevitably allows in through the back door the same sorts of caprice and freakishness that the court sought to exclude in Furman, or, worse, whether individualized sentencing necessarily opens the door to racial and ethnic discrimination in capital sentencing. In other words, is it ever possible to eliminate arbitrary and discriminatory application of capital punishment through a more precise and restrictive definition of capital crimes if prosecutors always remain free not to seek the death penalty for a particular defendant, and juries not to impose it, for any reason whatsoever? We do not believe that it is.”
Six weeks earlier, Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, dissenting from the decision that rejected a challenge to Oklahoma’s lethal-injection protocol, identified another inherent contradiction. Deploring lengthy delays that “both aggravate the cruelty of the death penalty and undermine its jurisprudential rationale” (the average delay between sentencing and execution is now more than 17 years, they noted), the justices said that the “special need for reliability and fairness in capital cases” means that substantial delay is inevitable. Justice Breyer, who wrote the 42-page dissenting opinion that Justice Ginsburg joined, said this: “In this world, or at least in this nation, we can have a death penalty that at least arguably serves legitimate penological purposes or we can have a procedural system that at least arguably seeks reliability and fairness in the death penalty’s application. We cannot have both.”
Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Court’s Free-Speech Expansion Has Far-Reaching Consequences - The New York Times
Adam Liptak has highlighted the dangers of the Supreme Court's aggressive use of the First Amendment. Citizens United's license to corporations is the most famous. But there are many other threats. As the FDA's retreat on graphic cigarette warnings demonstrated, public health now labors in the shadow of the First Amendment, as a recent Yale conference highlighted.
My dear late friend used to refer to the brilliant libertarian legal scholar Richard Epstein as "the greatest legal thinker of the 19th century". The nightmare of his triumph is coming true. As Yale Law School Dean Robert Post observes - the court's conservative majority is on the verge of pushing us back to the 19th century.
Conservatives are wrapping themselves in First Amendment absolutism. Liberals fall into this trap: they support freedom for those who harass patients at Planned Parenthood clinics, for example. Free speech absolutism dovetails neatly with the Federalist Society conservatives' basic objective: dismantle the regulatory state, repeal the New Deal. Think that's overstating it? Think again. - gwc
Court’s Free-Speech Expansion Has Far-Reaching Consequences - The New York Times
by Adam Liptak
WASHINGTON — It is not too early to identify the sleeper case of the last Supreme Court term. In an otherwise minor decision about a municipal sign ordinance, the court in June transformed the First Amendment.
Robert Post, the dean of Yale Law School and an authority on free speech, said the decision was so bold and so sweeping that the Supreme Court could not have thought through its consequences. The decision’s logic, he said, endangered all sorts of laws, including ones that regulate misleading advertising and professional malpractice.
“Effectively,” he said, “this would roll consumer protection back to the 19th century.”
The Real Argument Against the Iran Deal // Josh Marshall
Just to make my bias clear: we have without admitting it greatly increased Iran's power by removing Saddam Hussein. Iran - if it continues to be a non-nuclear weapon state - will improve its economy and reduce its isolation. That has a lot of pluses - but Israel's leadership apparently prefers a weak Iran and a strong Saudi Arabia. I'm no Mid-East expert but I find a lot more appeal in Iranian culture than Saudi. There is a democratic modern movement that is strong. They make good movies and educate women. I lean toward them. - gwc
The Real Argument
by Josh Marshall
***
The best argument against the nuclear deal is that it is better to keep Iran as a pariah state, with an abiding mutual hostility with the world's great power, the United States, and still enfeebled by US sanctions, even at the risk of Iran building a handful of nuclear weapons. For the way many Saudis see the world this isn't only the best argument, it's actually a decent argument. For the Israelis, it's considerably more complex. But there's some logic to it there as well. I certainly do not blame the Israelis for vastly preferring a world where Iran has zero nuclear weapons - let's not forget: THAT'S WHAT THIS DEAL DOES.
The Real Argument
by Josh Marshall
***
The best argument against the nuclear deal is that it is better to keep Iran as a pariah state, with an abiding mutual hostility with the world's great power, the United States, and still enfeebled by US sanctions, even at the risk of Iran building a handful of nuclear weapons. For the way many Saudis see the world this isn't only the best argument, it's actually a decent argument. For the Israelis, it's considerably more complex. But there's some logic to it there as well. I certainly do not blame the Israelis for vastly preferring a world where Iran has zero nuclear weapons - let's not forget: THAT'S WHAT THIS DEAL DOES.
But Israel's generals do not think Iran will launch an unprovoked first strike against Israel to bring on the end times. That's not Israel's real problem. Setting aside the abiding issue of the Palestinian conflict, Israel's real problem is that Iran subsidizes and arms proxy armies to Israel north and south. The situation with Hamas and Gaza is considerably more complex than that. But with Hezbollah it very much captures the situation. Hezbollah is a vastly more lethal force than anything Hamas has or can do in Gaza. In any case, it is obviously a complex reality. But the point is simple enough: a legitimized and wealthier Iran which does not change its behavior presents real challenges to all its neighbors.
Now, when I say this is the best argument, I'm not saying it's a good argument. I think it's shortsighted and based more on emotion than reason. But it's an argument that has a logic behind it and one that does not rely on nonsensical or tendentious claims. It's just one that few are willing to argue out loud.
With Benjamin Netanyahu, there's little reason to think he has a Plan B or a rational plan for what comes afterwards if he wins this battle. Nothing about the man would suggest he does. He's all tactics, with little thought for what comes decades, let alone years later. Everything is for the moment.
Now, when I say this is the best argument, I'm not saying it's a good argument. I think it's shortsighted and based more on emotion than reason. But it's an argument that has a logic behind it and one that does not rely on nonsensical or tendentious claims. It's just one that few are willing to argue out loud.
With Benjamin Netanyahu, there's little reason to think he has a Plan B or a rational plan for what comes afterwards if he wins this battle. Nothing about the man would suggest he does. He's all tactics, with little thought for what comes decades, let alone years later. Everything is for the moment.
Monday, August 17, 2015
The bail trap : New York Times magazine highlights link between bail and pleas
Sentencing Law and Policy: New York Times magazine highlights link between bail and pleas
This cover story from today's New York Times magazine is headlined "The Bail Trap," and this pull-out quote appearing in the article captures why sentencing fans ought to pay attention to bail reform efforts: "Across the criminal-justice system, bail acts as a tool of compulsion, forcing people who would not otherwise plead guilty to do so." Here is a bit more from a lengthy article that merits a full read:
In 1689, the English Bill of Rights outlawed the widespread practice of keeping defendants in jail by setting deliberately unaffordable bail, declaring that "excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed." The same language was adopted word for word a century later in the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
But as bail has evolved in America, it has become less and less a tool for keeping people out of jail, and more and more a trap door for those who cannot afford to pay it. Unsecured bond has become vanishingly rare, and in most jurisdictions, there are only two ways to make bail: post the entire amount yourself up front — what’s called "money bail" or "cash bail" — or pay a commercial bail bondsman to do so. For relatively low bail amounts — say, below $2,000, the range in which most New York City bails fall — the second option often doesn’t even exist; bondsmen can’t make enough money from such small bails to make it worth their while.
With national attention suddenly focused on the criminal-justicesystem, bail has been cited as an easy target for reformers. But ensuring that no one is held in jail based on poverty would, in many respects, necessitate a complete reordering of criminal justice. The open secret is that in most jurisdictions, bail is the grease that keeps the gears of the overburdened system turning. Faced with the prospect of going to jail for want of bail, many defendants accept plea deals instead, sometimes at their arraignments. New York City courts processed 365,000 arraignments in 2013; well under 5 percent of those cases went all the way to a trial resolution. If even a small fraction of those defendants asserted their right to a trial, criminal courts would be overwhelmed. By encouraging poor defendants to plead guilty, bail keeps the system afloat....
Sunday, August 16, 2015
Julian Bond, Former N.A.A.C.P. Chairman and Civil Rights Leader, Dies at 75 - The New York Times
Julian Bond, Former N.A.A.C.P. Chairman and Civil Rights Leader, Dies at 75 - The New York Times
by Roy Reed
Julian Bond, a former chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, a charismatic figure of the 1960s civil rights movement, a lightning rod of the anti-Vietnam War campaign and a lifelong champion of equal rights for minorities, died on Saturday night, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. He was 75.
Mr. Bond died in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., after a brief illness, the center said in a statement Sunday morning.
He was one of the original leaders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, while he was a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta.
He moved from the militancy of the student group to the top leadership of the establishmentarian N.A.A.C.P. Along the way, he was a writer, poet, television commentator, lecturer, college teacher, and persistent opponent of the stubborn remnants of white supremacy.
He also served for 20 years in the Georgia Legislature, mostly in conspicuous isolation from white colleagues who saw him as an interloper and a rabble-rouser.
Iran Deal: Overture to the Middle East Grand Opera « LobeLog
When one excerpts something from a fairly long article by one of america's leading foreign policy lights, disappointment is certain. So read the entire piece about the "Mideast mess" - gwc
Iran Deal: Overture to the Middle East Grand Opera « LobeLog
by Robert E. Hunter (former U.S. Ambassador to Nato)
Iran Deal: Overture to the Middle East Grand Opera « LobeLog
by Robert E. Hunter (former U.S. Ambassador to Nato)
Winners and Losers
The United States ultimately loses something, both in its own politics and even more in US standing in the world, when Americans divide fundamentally along party lines regarding matters of critical foreign policy and security interest. Even if Obama “wins,” the United States is already doomed to “lose” something inestimable in the eyes of others, friend and foe alike, in failing to demonstrate not just a common sense of purpose on this one matter, the Iranian nuclear program, but also that we know how to pursue our national interests in the vast and tormented territory that is the Middle East. Who can honestly argue that, in the decade since the extremely ill-advised US plunge into war in Iraq, we are “better off,” both in the region and in our standing in the world in general? Who can seriously argue that either the George W. Bush or Barack Obama administrations put together a coherent set of policies regarding the region with a chance of being effective, not just for US interests but also those of friends and allies?
Had President Obama done a better job of reaching out on these and other issues, to both supporters and opponents alike, he would not now be looking like a latter-day Woodrow Wilson, whose inadequacy in engaging the Congress and the nation meant that approval of the League of Nations never had a sporting chance. Unlike Wilson, Obama is likely to prevail, at least on this one issue. But if he had not run the most isolated White House of all Democratic administrations, getting approval for the JCPOA would almost certainly be easier than it is proving to be, if not a “slam dunk.”
But all that milk has been spilled, even though serious, knowledgeable people warned for years that it would happen.
Saturday, August 15, 2015
Head of Group Opposing Iran Accord Quits Post, Saying He Backs Deal - The New York Times
Head of Group Opposing Iran Accord Quits Post, Saying He Backs Deal - The New York Times
by Michael R. Gordon
by Michael R. Gordon
WASHINGTON — When the bipartisan advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran decided last week to mobilize opposition against the nuclear deal with Tehran, Gary Samore knew he could no longer serve as its president.
The reason: After long study, Mr. Samore, a former nuclear adviser to President Obama, had concluded that the accord was in the United States’ interest.
“I think President Obama’s strategy succeeded,” said Mr. Samore, who left his post on Monday. “He has created economic leverage and traded it away for Iranian nuclear concessions.”
As soon as Mr. Samore left, the group announced a new standard-bearer with a decidedly different message: Joseph I. Lieberman, the former senator from Connecticut and the new chairman of the group.
Friday, August 14, 2015
Disqualified - Senator Schumer as Democratic Leader
Why is Charles Schumer opposing the Iran agreement? James Fallows suggested that he would only do have come out if he thought it would not kill the deal. Possible but opportunistic, if true. If not then just plain old bad judgment. I wrote to him and told him he has lost my vote. FWIW.
Marshall explains why - as the President says - the question is not even close on the agreement's merits. Why then does he oppose it? Josh Marshall, TPM Publisher/Editor offers his take. - gwc
Disqualified // Talking Points Memo
***I think Schumer should be disqualified on the basis of this decision alone. In fact, I would personally find it difficult to ever vote for Schumer again as my Senator, though I doubt he’ll lose much sleep over that since he is amazingly entrenched as New York’s senior senator.
I say all this with some regret since I’ve always liked Schumer. And I should make clear that I see fidelity to a President of one’s own party - even on an issue central to his presidency - as a non-issue in this case. The issue is that this agreement is a matter of grave importance. And Schumer’s position is wrong. Indeed, what makes it an issue for me is that it is more than wrong. His stated arguments are simply nonsensical and obviously tendentious. In this case, Schumer’s ample brain power stands as an indictment against him. There are plenty of senators who are voting against this deal because of a combination of bellicosity and partisan fervor. And there are a good number of them who either cannot or do not care to apply a real logical analysis of the question at hand. Let’s put that more bluntly, they’re either lazy or dumb. And of course this general point applies to senators on both sides of the aisle.
But Schumer is neither lazy nor dumb. And that’s why his decision is really unforgivable.
He argues for instance that even if even if the agreement keeps Iran from building nuclear warheads for a decade (false time frame, by the way), this deal makes things worse because the nuclear Iran ten years from now will be a supercharged Iran made more powerful and bold by sanctions relief.
This is a stupid argument.
North Korea remains under strangling sanctions and barely has an economy at all. That has not prevented it from building a robust nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program. Especially if you believe that Iran wants nuclear weapon for doomsday purposes, getting nuclear weapons with a more vibrant economy 10 years from now hardly makes a difference. And, yes, as long as we’re on the point, the ten year time frame is bogus.
Schumer also calls the 24 days canard “troubling”. Again, here Schumer’s own smarts indicts him. He’s not that dumb. We shouldn’t accept Fox News arguments as legitimate points of argument from someone who aspires to be Senate Majority Leader.
Finally he notes that the deal only makes sense if you believe that Iran will become more moderate and less belligerent under the deal. Again, a bad faith argument.
I think there are actually good reasons to think the consequences of the deal may lead to that outcome. To at least grant that this is a possibility one need only look at the fact that the Iranian reformers we allegedly love are all for it and the hardliners in the regime are all against it. But the deal is actually more important if you have the most dire read of the regime and its future. If you do think the worst, is it better to put in place what is unquestionably the most rigorous inspections and surveillance regime ever devised or leave the Iranians entirely free to start building nuclear weapons immediately? The answer to this question is so blindingly obvious it really ends the debate.
As I argued in another post a few weeks ago, I think the biggest lesson of the Iraq War is that if the alternative is war, it is almost always better to kick cans down the road rather than “resolve” them now. Not always. But almost always. Because wars destroy a lot of stuff and kill lots of people and create mammoth collateral damage - human, diplomatic, economic, everything - the consequences of which take years and decades to grapple with. Especially when you are the stronger power, we need to make real what is usually spoken simply as a bromide that war really is the option of last resort. If we’re the weaker power or if we could beat Iran on the battlefield today but couldn’t ten years from now, maybe we can’t kick the can down the road. But that’s obviously preposterous. Iran is at best a regional military power. We have the biggest and strongest military in the world. All options remain open to us, basically forever.
As I said above, the “10 year” timeline is almost as bogus as the 24 days canard. But even if it were true, keeping Iran’s nuclear ambitions bottled up for a decade would be a great deal. Nothing prevents us from threatening war or doing anything else when the bogus time limit expires.
But what about keeping sanctions on or tightening them and demanding a better deal?
Again, Schumer’s smarts indicts him. The sanctions have worked because the global powers have all backed them. Those powers backed them to force a deal something like this. They will not continue sanctions or tighten them when the goal of the sanctions, in their view, has already been met. This is not 1960 or even 1980. Sanctions by the U.S. alone won’t do it.
It has become de riguer to say that this deal has problems or isn’t perfect but it’s worth taking or better than the alternatives. That’s really a cop out by those who aren’t willing to make a more honest argument. Unless one’s definition of a good or perfect deal is one where you get everything you want, entirely on your own terms, this judgment is wrong. The way to evaluate a deal is whether you get the things you need and whether you made the most efficient use of the pressure and power you had to bring to bear. On these terms, it’s a pretty good deal.
So why did Schumer oppose the deal? I think he moves in circles, personal and financial, where this deal is simply anathema and he doesn’t feel he can or wants to buck that opinion. He may also believe he can have his cake and eat it too - vote against, satisfy, and stay good with key supporters and not block its adoption. This is actually what I see as the most likely answer. He may also feel uncomfortable enough on this hot seat that he simply won’t look at the logic of the situation.
I can know and frankly I don’t care. The bright line is that he’s smart enough to know better.
I’ve heard some say that this creates tension for him “on the left” in his quest to become Minority or Majority Leader. This is silly pundit talk. This isn’t the public option. This isn’t something supported by the foreign policy “left”. It’s very basic and mainstream and necessary. The fact that the neoconservatives who gamed the country into the Iraq disaster favor it does not change that.
Democratic senators who don’t reconsider support for Schumer as the leader of their caucus are making a big, big mistake. He should be ruled out of consideration for the job.
Marshall explains why - as the President says - the question is not even close on the agreement's merits. Why then does he oppose it? Josh Marshall, TPM Publisher/Editor offers his take. - gwc
Disqualified // Talking Points Memo
by Josh Marshall
***I think Schumer should be disqualified on the basis of this decision alone. In fact, I would personally find it difficult to ever vote for Schumer again as my Senator, though I doubt he’ll lose much sleep over that since he is amazingly entrenched as New York’s senior senator.
I say all this with some regret since I’ve always liked Schumer. And I should make clear that I see fidelity to a President of one’s own party - even on an issue central to his presidency - as a non-issue in this case. The issue is that this agreement is a matter of grave importance. And Schumer’s position is wrong. Indeed, what makes it an issue for me is that it is more than wrong. His stated arguments are simply nonsensical and obviously tendentious. In this case, Schumer’s ample brain power stands as an indictment against him. There are plenty of senators who are voting against this deal because of a combination of bellicosity and partisan fervor. And there are a good number of them who either cannot or do not care to apply a real logical analysis of the question at hand. Let’s put that more bluntly, they’re either lazy or dumb. And of course this general point applies to senators on both sides of the aisle.
But Schumer is neither lazy nor dumb. And that’s why his decision is really unforgivable.
He argues for instance that even if even if the agreement keeps Iran from building nuclear warheads for a decade (false time frame, by the way), this deal makes things worse because the nuclear Iran ten years from now will be a supercharged Iran made more powerful and bold by sanctions relief.
This is a stupid argument.
North Korea remains under strangling sanctions and barely has an economy at all. That has not prevented it from building a robust nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program. Especially if you believe that Iran wants nuclear weapon for doomsday purposes, getting nuclear weapons with a more vibrant economy 10 years from now hardly makes a difference. And, yes, as long as we’re on the point, the ten year time frame is bogus.
Schumer also calls the 24 days canard “troubling”. Again, here Schumer’s own smarts indicts him. He’s not that dumb. We shouldn’t accept Fox News arguments as legitimate points of argument from someone who aspires to be Senate Majority Leader.
Finally he notes that the deal only makes sense if you believe that Iran will become more moderate and less belligerent under the deal. Again, a bad faith argument.
I think there are actually good reasons to think the consequences of the deal may lead to that outcome. To at least grant that this is a possibility one need only look at the fact that the Iranian reformers we allegedly love are all for it and the hardliners in the regime are all against it. But the deal is actually more important if you have the most dire read of the regime and its future. If you do think the worst, is it better to put in place what is unquestionably the most rigorous inspections and surveillance regime ever devised or leave the Iranians entirely free to start building nuclear weapons immediately? The answer to this question is so blindingly obvious it really ends the debate.
As I argued in another post a few weeks ago, I think the biggest lesson of the Iraq War is that if the alternative is war, it is almost always better to kick cans down the road rather than “resolve” them now. Not always. But almost always. Because wars destroy a lot of stuff and kill lots of people and create mammoth collateral damage - human, diplomatic, economic, everything - the consequences of which take years and decades to grapple with. Especially when you are the stronger power, we need to make real what is usually spoken simply as a bromide that war really is the option of last resort. If we’re the weaker power or if we could beat Iran on the battlefield today but couldn’t ten years from now, maybe we can’t kick the can down the road. But that’s obviously preposterous. Iran is at best a regional military power. We have the biggest and strongest military in the world. All options remain open to us, basically forever.
As I said above, the “10 year” timeline is almost as bogus as the 24 days canard. But even if it were true, keeping Iran’s nuclear ambitions bottled up for a decade would be a great deal. Nothing prevents us from threatening war or doing anything else when the bogus time limit expires.
But what about keeping sanctions on or tightening them and demanding a better deal?
Again, Schumer’s smarts indicts him. The sanctions have worked because the global powers have all backed them. Those powers backed them to force a deal something like this. They will not continue sanctions or tighten them when the goal of the sanctions, in their view, has already been met. This is not 1960 or even 1980. Sanctions by the U.S. alone won’t do it.
It has become de riguer to say that this deal has problems or isn’t perfect but it’s worth taking or better than the alternatives. That’s really a cop out by those who aren’t willing to make a more honest argument. Unless one’s definition of a good or perfect deal is one where you get everything you want, entirely on your own terms, this judgment is wrong. The way to evaluate a deal is whether you get the things you need and whether you made the most efficient use of the pressure and power you had to bring to bear. On these terms, it’s a pretty good deal.
So why did Schumer oppose the deal? I think he moves in circles, personal and financial, where this deal is simply anathema and he doesn’t feel he can or wants to buck that opinion. He may also believe he can have his cake and eat it too - vote against, satisfy, and stay good with key supporters and not block its adoption. This is actually what I see as the most likely answer. He may also feel uncomfortable enough on this hot seat that he simply won’t look at the logic of the situation.
I can know and frankly I don’t care. The bright line is that he’s smart enough to know better.
I’ve heard some say that this creates tension for him “on the left” in his quest to become Minority or Majority Leader. This is silly pundit talk. This isn’t the public option. This isn’t something supported by the foreign policy “left”. It’s very basic and mainstream and necessary. The fact that the neoconservatives who gamed the country into the Iraq disaster favor it does not change that.
Democratic senators who don’t reconsider support for Schumer as the leader of their caucus are making a big, big mistake. He should be ruled out of consideration for the job.
- Firearm Prevalence and Homicides of Law Enforcement Officers in the United States //American Public Health Association
So much for the NRA's claim that an armed society is a safe society. More guns, more cop killings. And I would hazard a guess that the more guns the more likely police are to shoot. - gwc
American Public Health Association - Firearm Prevalence and Homicides of Law Enforcement Officers in the United States
Objectives. In the United States, state firearm ownership has been correlated with homicide rates. More than 90% of homicides of law enforcement officers are committed with firearms. We examined the relationship between state firearm ownership rates and law enforcement officers occupational homicide rates.
Methods. We obtained the number law enforcement officers killed from 1996 to 2010 from a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) database. We calculated homicide rates per state as the number of officers killed per number of law enforcement officers per state, obtained from another FBI database. We obtained the mean household firearm ownership for each state from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System.
Results. Using Poisson regression and controlling for factors known to affect homicide rates, we associated firearm ownership with the homicide rates for law enforcement officers (incidence rate ratio = 1.044; P = .005); our results were supported by cross-sectional and longitudinal sensitivity analyses. LEO homicide rates were 3 times higher in states with high firearm ownership compared with states with low firearm ownership.
Conclusions. High public gun ownership is a risk for occupational mortality for law enforcement officers in the United States. States could consider methods for reducing firearm ownership as a way to reduce occupational deaths of LEOs. (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print August 13, 2015: e1–e7. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2015.302749)
Read More: http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2015.302749Objectives. In the United States, state firearm ownership has been correlated with homicide rates. More than 90% of homicides of law enforcement officers (LEOs) are committed with firearms. We examined the relationship between state firearm ownership rates and LEO occupational homicide rates.
Methods. We obtained the number LEOs killed from 1996 to 2010 from a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) database. We calculated homicide rates per state as the number of officers killed per number of LEOs per state, obtained from another FBI database. We obtained the mean household firearm ownership for each state from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System.
Results. Using Poisson regression and controlling for factors known to affect homicide rates, we associated firearm ownership with the homicide rates for LEOs (incidence rate ratio = 1.044; P = .005); our results were supported by cross-sectional and longitudinal sensitivity analyses. LEO homicide rates were 3 times higher in states with high firearm ownership compared with states with low firearm ownership.
Conclusions. High public gun ownership is a risk for occupational mortality for LEOs in the United States. States could consider methods for reducing firearm ownership as a way to reduce occupational deaths of LEOs. (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print August 13, 2015: e1–e7. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2015.302749)
Read More: http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2015.302749
American Public Health Association - Firearm Prevalence and Homicides of Law Enforcement Officers in the United States
Objectives. In the United States, state firearm ownership has been correlated with homicide rates. More than 90% of homicides of law enforcement officers are committed with firearms. We examined the relationship between state firearm ownership rates and law enforcement officers occupational homicide rates.
Methods. We obtained the number law enforcement officers killed from 1996 to 2010 from a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) database. We calculated homicide rates per state as the number of officers killed per number of law enforcement officers per state, obtained from another FBI database. We obtained the mean household firearm ownership for each state from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System.
Results. Using Poisson regression and controlling for factors known to affect homicide rates, we associated firearm ownership with the homicide rates for law enforcement officers (incidence rate ratio = 1.044; P = .005); our results were supported by cross-sectional and longitudinal sensitivity analyses. LEO homicide rates were 3 times higher in states with high firearm ownership compared with states with low firearm ownership.
Conclusions. High public gun ownership is a risk for occupational mortality for law enforcement officers in the United States. States could consider methods for reducing firearm ownership as a way to reduce occupational deaths of LEOs. (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print August 13, 2015: e1–e7. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2015.302749)
Read More: http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2015.302749Objectives. In the United States, state firearm ownership has been correlated with homicide rates. More than 90% of homicides of law enforcement officers (LEOs) are committed with firearms. We examined the relationship between state firearm ownership rates and LEO occupational homicide rates.
Methods. We obtained the number LEOs killed from 1996 to 2010 from a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) database. We calculated homicide rates per state as the number of officers killed per number of LEOs per state, obtained from another FBI database. We obtained the mean household firearm ownership for each state from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System.
Results. Using Poisson regression and controlling for factors known to affect homicide rates, we associated firearm ownership with the homicide rates for LEOs (incidence rate ratio = 1.044; P = .005); our results were supported by cross-sectional and longitudinal sensitivity analyses. LEO homicide rates were 3 times higher in states with high firearm ownership compared with states with low firearm ownership.
Conclusions. High public gun ownership is a risk for occupational mortality for LEOs in the United States. States could consider methods for reducing firearm ownership as a way to reduce occupational deaths of LEOs. (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print August 13, 2015: e1–e7. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2015.302749)
Read More: http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2015.302749
Thursday, August 13, 2015
Napoli Bern Attys Settle Feud Over Fate Of 9/11 Firm - Law360
Napoli Bern Attys Settle Feud Over Fate Of 9/11 Firm - Law360
Law360, New York (August 13, 2015, 5:50 PM ET) -- New York personal injury attorneys Paul K. Napoli and Marc J. Bern on Thursday reached a settlement in their heated dispute over the fate of their embattled firm Napoli Bern Ripka Shkolnik LLP, which is known for representing 9/11 workers, an attorney for Bern confirmed.
The attorneys have been embroiled in a contentious fight over control of their firm since at least Oct. 1, with both Napoli and Bern accusing each other of unethical conduct regarding the firm’s management. Settlement details were not immediately available Thursday.
In a July 20 hearing, New York Supreme Court Judge Eileen Bransten had urged the attorneys to contact a mediator and attempt to settle the dispute.
Judge Bransten said each attorney has accused the other of soliciting Napoli Bern’s current clients while branching off to start their own firms. She warned them during the hearingthat they could end up in jail if they tried to poach clients away from the embattled firm, saying the firm was still in operation even though its founders were fighting.
“From the start of this process, Marc Bern’s top priority has been to make sure that the interests of the firm’s clients are protected," Bern's attorney Clifford Robert of Robert & Robert PLLC told Law360 on Thursday. "Today’s settlement allows Marc to focus on what he does best: making sure that injured people are able to secure justice. Putting these distractions behind us will enable Marc and his team of skilled lawyers to continue their efforts on behalf of the firm’s more than 20,000 clients."
Law360, New York (August 13, 2015, 5:50 PM ET) -- New York personal injury attorneys Paul K. Napoli and Marc J. Bern on Thursday reached a settlement in their heated dispute over the fate of their embattled firm Napoli Bern Ripka Shkolnik LLP, which is known for representing 9/11 workers, an attorney for Bern confirmed.
The attorneys have been embroiled in a contentious fight over control of their firm since at least Oct. 1, with both Napoli and Bern accusing each other of unethical conduct regarding the firm’s management. Settlement details were not immediately available Thursday.
In a July 20 hearing, New York Supreme Court Judge Eileen Bransten had urged the attorneys to contact a mediator and attempt to settle the dispute.
Judge Bransten said each attorney has accused the other of soliciting Napoli Bern’s current clients while branching off to start their own firms. She warned them during the hearingthat they could end up in jail if they tried to poach clients away from the embattled firm, saying the firm was still in operation even though its founders were fighting.
“From the start of this process, Marc Bern’s top priority has been to make sure that the interests of the firm’s clients are protected," Bern's attorney Clifford Robert of Robert & Robert PLLC told Law360 on Thursday. "Today’s settlement allows Marc to focus on what he does best: making sure that injured people are able to secure justice. Putting these distractions behind us will enable Marc and his team of skilled lawyers to continue their efforts on behalf of the firm’s more than 20,000 clients."
Donald Trump Talks Like a Third-Grader - Jack Shafer - POLITICO Magazine
Donald Trump Talks Like a Third-Grader - Jack Shafer - POLITICO Magazine
Donald Trump isn’t a simpleton, he just talks like one. If you were to market Donald Trump’s vocabulary as a toy, it would resemble a small box of Lincoln Logs. Trump resists multisyllabic words and complex, writerly sentence constructions when speaking extemporaneously in a debate, at a press conference or in an interview. He prefers to link short, blocky words into other short, blocky words to create short, blocky sentences that he then stacks into short, blocky paragraphs.
The end result of Trump’s word choice is less the stripped down prose style of Ernest Hemingway than it is a spontaneous reinvention of Ogden’s Basic English, the pared-down lexicon of 850 words selected by early 20th Century linguist/philosopher C.K. Ogden as the bedrock of a new world language. In the August 6th Republican candidate debate, Trump answered the moderators’ questions with linguistic austerity. Run through the Flesch-Kincaid grade-level test, his text of responses score at the 4th grade reading level. For Trump, that’s actually pretty advanced. All the other candidates rated higher, with Ted Cruz earning 9th grade status. Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee, and Scott Walker scored at the 8th grade level. John Kasich, the next lowest after Trump, got a 5th grade score.
Trump’s low grade at the debates wasn’t a fluke. His comments from an August 11 press conference in Michigan earn only a 3rd grade score.
Flattening the English language whenever he speaks without a script, Trump relies heavily on words such as “very” and “great,” and the pronouns “we” and “I,” which is his favorite word. As any news observer can observe, he lives to diminish his foes bycalling them “losers,” “total losers,” “haters,” “dumb,” “idiots,” “morons,” “stupid,” “dummy” and “disgusting.” He can’t open his mouth without bragging about getting the Clintons to attend his wedding, about how smart he is, the excellence of his real estate projects, the brilliance of his TV show, his generous donations to other political campaigns and so on. In a freakish way, Trump resembles that of Muhammad Ali at his prime—except the champ was always kidding (even when he was right) while Trump seems to believe his claims (and often is wrong). Or perhaps he is afflicted with binary vision disorder, which renders all within his eyeshot either great or rotten.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/donald-trump-talks-like-a-third-grader-121340.html#ixzz3ik47qfig
Donald Trump isn’t a simpleton, he just talks like one. If you were to market Donald Trump’s vocabulary as a toy, it would resemble a small box of Lincoln Logs. Trump resists multisyllabic words and complex, writerly sentence constructions when speaking extemporaneously in a debate, at a press conference or in an interview. He prefers to link short, blocky words into other short, blocky words to create short, blocky sentences that he then stacks into short, blocky paragraphs.
The end result of Trump’s word choice is less the stripped down prose style of Ernest Hemingway than it is a spontaneous reinvention of Ogden’s Basic English, the pared-down lexicon of 850 words selected by early 20th Century linguist/philosopher C.K. Ogden as the bedrock of a new world language. In the August 6th Republican candidate debate, Trump answered the moderators’ questions with linguistic austerity. Run through the Flesch-Kincaid grade-level test, his text of responses score at the 4th grade reading level. For Trump, that’s actually pretty advanced. All the other candidates rated higher, with Ted Cruz earning 9th grade status. Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee, and Scott Walker scored at the 8th grade level. John Kasich, the next lowest after Trump, got a 5th grade score.
Trump’s low grade at the debates wasn’t a fluke. His comments from an August 11 press conference in Michigan earn only a 3rd grade score.
Flattening the English language whenever he speaks without a script, Trump relies heavily on words such as “very” and “great,” and the pronouns “we” and “I,” which is his favorite word. As any news observer can observe, he lives to diminish his foes bycalling them “losers,” “total losers,” “haters,” “dumb,” “idiots,” “morons,” “stupid,” “dummy” and “disgusting.” He can’t open his mouth without bragging about getting the Clintons to attend his wedding, about how smart he is, the excellence of his real estate projects, the brilliance of his TV show, his generous donations to other political campaigns and so on. In a freakish way, Trump resembles that of Muhammad Ali at his prime—except the champ was always kidding (even when he was right) while Trump seems to believe his claims (and often is wrong). Or perhaps he is afflicted with binary vision disorder, which renders all within his eyeshot either great or rotten.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/donald-trump-talks-like-a-third-grader-121340.html#ixzz3ik47qfig
Tuesday, August 11, 2015
China reforms environmental damage appraisal
China reforms environmental damage appraisal
Unified codes would guide field agents in making consistent assessments for cases
China is reforming the way compensation is determined for environmental damage as legal cases involving pollution are increasing quickly and unified national assessment standards are needed, experts said.
The Ministry of Environmental Protection presented a draft reform plan to the national leadership this year and already has conducted pilot projects in several cities, according to a report released by the ministry on Monday.
The ministry will compile technical standards and general principles on environmental damage assessment to be used by agents in the field, and will create models to assess damage once pollution is found.
Unified codes and technical standards are urgently needed as cases involving environment pollution are climbing due to a low threshold for registering cases and growing attention from the public, said Ma Yong, a researcher working at a law center under the Supreme People's Court's environmental tribunal.
An objective and balanced assessment is essential to determining just compensation, but the current system is unworkable, Ma said on Monday.
"Assessments on the same environmental pollution case made by different agents can be quite different, creating a challenge for the courts trying to make a determination," he said.
A farmer in Zibo, Shandong province, for example, sued a nearby chemical plant for polluting his orchards and nursery seeds in 1994. Disagreements on the damage assessment and compensation plan have delayed the case's conclusion and it is still open this year, he said.
Chang Jiwen, a researcher on environmental policies at the Development Research Center of the State Council, said the connection between the environmental authority and the judiciary is not ideal, especially in the area of damage assessment.
In addition to the unified technical standards and models, the ministry also will promote a better connection between the two authorities in the future and organize an expert committee on environmental damage assessment. The committee will include experts from many related fields including environmental and engineering, said Chang who has attended the preparation meetings.
The ministry also will guide local governments and agents to do assessments to establish cases that can be used as examples.
One such assessment involves pollution in the Tengger Desert in northern China. In March, Ronghua Industry & Trade Co, located in Gansu province, discharged untreated sewage and contaminated about 18 hectares, causing damage estimated at 3.56 million yuan ($573,000).
The company was fined 3 million yuan and paid an extra 180,000 yuan in discharge fees, the provincial government said.
Related news
Environment ministry sets out cleaner strategy for assessments2015-08-09
Unified codes would guide field agents in making consistent assessments for cases
China is reforming the way compensation is determined for environmental damage as legal cases involving pollution are increasing quickly and unified national assessment standards are needed, experts said.
The Ministry of Environmental Protection presented a draft reform plan to the national leadership this year and already has conducted pilot projects in several cities, according to a report released by the ministry on Monday.
The ministry will compile technical standards and general principles on environmental damage assessment to be used by agents in the field, and will create models to assess damage once pollution is found.
Unified codes and technical standards are urgently needed as cases involving environment pollution are climbing due to a low threshold for registering cases and growing attention from the public, said Ma Yong, a researcher working at a law center under the Supreme People's Court's environmental tribunal.
An objective and balanced assessment is essential to determining just compensation, but the current system is unworkable, Ma said on Monday.
"Assessments on the same environmental pollution case made by different agents can be quite different, creating a challenge for the courts trying to make a determination," he said.
A farmer in Zibo, Shandong province, for example, sued a nearby chemical plant for polluting his orchards and nursery seeds in 1994. Disagreements on the damage assessment and compensation plan have delayed the case's conclusion and it is still open this year, he said.
Chang Jiwen, a researcher on environmental policies at the Development Research Center of the State Council, said the connection between the environmental authority and the judiciary is not ideal, especially in the area of damage assessment.
In addition to the unified technical standards and models, the ministry also will promote a better connection between the two authorities in the future and organize an expert committee on environmental damage assessment. The committee will include experts from many related fields including environmental and engineering, said Chang who has attended the preparation meetings.
The ministry also will guide local governments and agents to do assessments to establish cases that can be used as examples.
One such assessment involves pollution in the Tengger Desert in northern China. In March, Ronghua Industry & Trade Co, located in Gansu province, discharged untreated sewage and contaminated about 18 hectares, causing damage estimated at 3.56 million yuan ($573,000).
The company was fined 3 million yuan and paid an extra 180,000 yuan in discharge fees, the provincial government said.
Related news
Environment ministry sets out cleaner strategy for assessments2015-08-09
EH Dionne. War or diplomacy?
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/obama-vs-cavaliers-unilateralism?utm_source=Main+Reader+List&utm_campaign=926497217c-August+11_Now_at_Commonweal8_11_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_407bf353a2-926497217c-91269733
Judge Kopf calls it quits on blog
http://m.nationallawjournal.com/module/alm/app/nlj.do#!/article/1751700046
Monday, August 10, 2015
Participation and Procedure by Alexandra D. Lahav :: SSRN
The elementary model of the attorney client relationship is principal-agent, a private matter. But the tort system serves a larger public function. through it government promises a reliable system of recourse for wrongs. Particularly in personal injury cases the wrong is very personal. Yet aggregation of cases - a practical necessity - changes the negotiating lawyer into a broker for many, diluting the attorney-client bond. The lawyer becomes a principal, the client a commodity. Alexandra Lahav explores the issues. - gwc
Participation and Procedure by Alexandra D. Lahav :: SSRN
Abstract
How much participation should a procedurally just court system offer litigants? This question has always been especially difficult to answer in complex litigation such as class actions and mass torts because these cases involve so many litigants that it would be impossible for each of them to be afforded the kind of individualized hearing that we associate with the day in court ideal. To address the problem, we need to go back to first principles and ask what purposes participation in litigation is meant to serve. Participation serves two purposes: as a predicate to litigant consent and to engage public reason. This Article, written for the Clifford Symposium honoring Judge Jack Weinstein, argues that the public reason rationale offers the best normative underpinning for participation in large-scale litigation and demonstrates how public reason can be realized through procedural innovations such as those Judge Weinstein has pioneered.
Participation and Procedure by Alexandra D. Lahav :: SSRN
Abstract
How much participation should a procedurally just court system offer litigants? This question has always been especially difficult to answer in complex litigation such as class actions and mass torts because these cases involve so many litigants that it would be impossible for each of them to be afforded the kind of individualized hearing that we associate with the day in court ideal. To address the problem, we need to go back to first principles and ask what purposes participation in litigation is meant to serve. Participation serves two purposes: as a predicate to litigant consent and to engage public reason. This Article, written for the Clifford Symposium honoring Judge Jack Weinstein, argues that the public reason rationale offers the best normative underpinning for participation in large-scale litigation and demonstrates how public reason can be realized through procedural innovations such as those Judge Weinstein has pioneered.
The Meeropol Brothers: Exonerate Our Mother, Ethel Rosenberg - The New York Times
"never let them change the truth of our innocence"said Julius Rosenberg. Around the world people rallied behind that slogan to save the two Brooklyn Communist Jews convicted as atomic spies for Russia. Now their sons acknowledge that Julius was guilty of conspiracy - to help the USSR develop a nuclear weapon. The information transmitted was trivial but the offense proved fatal.
What is the importance of the Rosenberg case? First it was part of the anti-communist hysteria at a peak in the era when the Soviet Union was working to develop a nuclear weapon to counter the U.S.- the only country that had ever used one. Once the Russians had "the bomb" we were crawling under desks at Abby Lane School in case the Russians dropped the bomb on Levittown. There were public bomb shelters.
The Rosenbergs were Comnunists, loyal to the homeland of socialism - a loyalty incomprehensible to most Americans. The Rosenbergs were Russian, Jewish, Commie rats. That the trial judge - Irving Kaufman was Jewish scarcely blunted symbolism of their ethnicity. They were executed in a torturous way - the electric chair. No mistaking the symbolism of husband and wife going together to their deaths like that.
The orphaned Rosenberg children have had to acknowledge bitter truths. But they are persuasive in arguing that their parents were no mortal threat- and that their mother was so peripheral that her prosecution was wrongful. - gwc
The Meeropol Brothers: Exonerate Our Mother, Ethel Rosenberg - The New York Times
by Michael and Robert Meeropol
OUR parents, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, were executed on June 19, 1953, after being convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage. That was the formal legal charge, but in the public’s mind they were executed for providing our archenemy, the Soviet Union, with the ability to destroy our country with atomic bombs. Theirs was the most sensational case of the McCarthy period.
Last month, the grand jury testimony of our uncle David Greenglass, who died last year, was made public, the latest in a trove of material released since 2008 after we and others filed a legal action. Back then, we concluded that our father was legally guilty of the conspiracy charge, but not of atomic spying, and we maintain that neither of our parents deserved the death penalty.
The newly released 46-page transcript — along with previously released testimony and other records — demonstrates conclusively that our mother was prosecuted primarily for refusing to turn on our father. We now call onPresident Obama to acknowledge that Ethel Rosenberg was wrongly convicted and executed.
Sunday, August 9, 2015
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