Category: Fractal Weirdness

Why Prison?

Yesterday, I was raptly following the sentencing of Matthew Keys as it was live-tweeted by Sarah Jeong. If you haven’t read the dozens of articles about it today, the short story is Mr. Keys was sentenced to 2 years in federal prison, for sharing his login info online — info...

Paranoia from the PBA President

Over lunch today, the head of one of the NYPD’s powerful police unions* emailed a shrill “open letter” to the press, blaming the “armchair rhetoric” of columnists and pundits for the worsening relations between the police and the communities they serve.  Here’s the email: To all arm-chair judges: If you have...

A Modest Proposal

Yesterday, the New York Senate voted to pass “Brittany’s Law,” to create a new public registry of offenders. Think “sex offender” registry, only for anyone convicted of any violent felony. People with a conviction in their past would have to register for ten years or more (under penalty of another...

Undoing overcriminalization

So I saw this opinion piece in USA Today by Glenn Harlan Reynolds, titled “You Are Probably Breaking the Law Right Now: When lawmakers don’t even know how many laws exist, how can citizens be expected to follow them?” It joins a growing tide of public awareness about overcriminalization in the U.S....

Drawing the Line

Everyone knows that drunk drivers cause deadly car accidents. This is because alcohol impairs one’s ability to drive safely. So it is against the law to drive under the influence of alcohol. Everyone knows that texting while driving causes deadly car accidents. This is because texting distracts your attention from...

Understanding the law

A lot of the law is extremely formulaic. True, human intelligence is required to spot issues, devise strategies, and (most importantly) persuade decisionmakers. But in its actual application, the law is often little more than a series of IF-THEN decisions. A computer could be programmed to do it. This is...

A PhD in Law?

Yale Law School has announced that it will now offer a PhD in Law — apparently the first time a doctoral program in law has been offered in the United States. One can only ask “what for?” Ostensibly, the purpose of a PhD is to advance human knowledge. You get that...

Making a Mockery

As our first bureau chief, a wise and gifted man, would often say to us: “Oy.” Last Friday, we blogged about how this Rakofsky fellow had done something very foolish.  After being reported to have done some pretty bad lawyering, and being roundly disparaged by the blawgosphere as a result,...