As a (relatively) young lawyer, I once attended a party with my husband, an architect, at which I was accosted by another architect who very clearly was not fond of lawyers. He demanded to know what we were going to do about "all these d — d frivolous lawsuits!" When I asked him how he defined "frivolous" he looked at me…
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Category Archives: Criminal Justice
Gun Power
There is a difference between knowing something intellectually and knowing it viscerally. My husband and I just took a European holiday with two other couples. Each couple had a rental car. This particular day we…
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Government Terrorism
When the media first reported that a White House functionary — later identified as Craig Livingstone -had obtained files containing personal information on Bush Administration employees, a lot of us felt queasy. The image of some partisan operative gloating over private information he might use to benefit his patrons and…
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How do we do?
My mother used to tell me that there is a right way and a wrong way to do things. (Lawyers say the same thing, only we call the right way "due process of law.") I thought of my mother?s admonition when I saw a recent article about the drug testing..
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Our Insane War on Drugs
On March 15th, the Indianapolis Star ran a headline: "U.S. Poised to Become Top Jailer Worldwide." The article dutifully reported the results of a study by the Sentencing Project, documenting what criminal justice professionals all know?that thanks to prosecutions for drug offenses…
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