How extortion mills (courthouses) work

How extortion mills (courthouses) work
By Carey Wedler

A couple weeks ago, [Carey Wedler] spoke with victims of the state's force and fines on their way out of court. Here we discuss [with Dustin Kelly] why the government does whatever it wants and whether or not its services are worth the hassle.

Judge Posner suggests changes to improve jury trials

Posner says Bluebook is '560 pages of rubbish,' suggests changes to improve jury trials
American Bar Association (ABA) Journal
By Debra Cassens Weiss
March 29, 2016

Judge Richard Posner acknowledges his reputation as a "naysayer" and "faultfinder" yet proceeds to find fault with The Bluebook (it is "560 pages of rubbish") and the uneven quality of trial lawyering.

Lawyers often differ greatly in quality, and that distorts the trial process, according to Posner, a judge on the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. A uniform system of lawyer pay—funded by the government—could reduce uneven quality, Posner says in an article (PDF) for the Green Bag. His one-paragraph pay suggestion is part of a broader analysis of problems with jury trials and appellate litigation.

"Differences in the quality of lawyers wouldn’t matter a great deal," Posner writes, "if, for example, they were compensated as judges are: with a uniform government salary unrelated to outcomes or the relative wealth of the respective parties in a case. (The analogy is to a ‘single payer’ system of medical care.) There would then be no contingent fees and no $1,100 an hour billing rates. My pay isn’t docked if I’m reversed by the Supreme Court, and neither do I get a bonus if the Court affirms a decision of mine."

Posner goes on to quote a commentator who says commercial lawyers are working in a "zero-sum tournament" in which additional legal effort purchased by a party increases the chances of winning, rather than generating more justice. In a footnote, Posner says he wouldn’t limit the critique to commercial lawyers.

Posner calls the legal profession "complacent, self-satisfied" despite a legal system that has proven ineffectual at dealing with a host of problems. Among them: problems in delivering useful legal training at bearable cost, and in providing representation to "the vast number of Americans who are impecunious or commercially unsophisticated (so prey to sharpies)."

Posner goes on to propose changes that could improve jury trials. He endorses judges appointing neutral experts in cases involving difficult technical issues, giving jurors transcripts of testimony that can be read simultaneously with the testimony, and allowing trial judges to do Internet research (as long as lawyers can contest the results).

Posner also suggests that judges eschew pattern jury instructions that are "largely unintelligible to jurors." Posner says he writes his own jury instructions when he conducts trials as a volunteer in his circuit’s district courts.

Posner also dislikes The Bluebook. He has his own instructions on citation format, consisting of two pages in an office manual he gives to his law clerks.

"The first thing to do," Posner writes, "is burn all copies of the Bluebook, in its latest edition 560 pages of rubbish, a terrible time waster for law clerks employed by judges who insist, as many do, that the citations in their opinions conform to the Bluebook."

Posner also criticizes appellate opinions, which "tend to be overlong, crammed with irrelevant facts and repulsive legal jargon." Read more

What is Obviously Wrong With The Federal Judiciary Yet Eminently Curable
19 GREEN BAG 2D 187, Part I, by Richard A. Posner

The problem when capitalists make nothing but money
The Times Literary Supplement, by Paul Collier 

The Green Bag Official website; Green Bag literature; The Green Bag Wikipedia
The Bluebook A Uniform System of Citation; Bluebook Wikipedia
 Baby Blue (PDF) is a free alternative to the Bluebook

The End of Lawyers, Period.

The End of Lawyers, Period.
The ABA Journal Online
Legal Rebels 
By D. Casey Flaherty
March 3, 2016

The law does not exist for the purpose of keeping lawyers employed. I cribbed that line—and many others—from Richard Susskind back in the days when there was still a question mark punctuating The End of Lawyers?

I think it is fair to say that Susskind has gotten past the interrogative. In his latest book, The Future of the Professions, he and his son, Daniel, write "we foresee that, in the end, the traditional professions will be dismantled, leaving most (but not all) professionals to be replaced by less expert people and high-performing systems."

If that is not clear enough, consider:

"Our expectation is that, over time—by which we mean decades rather than overnight—there will be technological unemployment in the professions. In other words, there will not be sufficient growth in the types of professional task in which people, not machines, have the advantage to keep most professionals in full employment."

Similar pronouncements in other sectors has given rise to a general sense of automation anxiety, where worries of a jobless future lead to headlines like "A World Without Work" that in turn engender further headlines like "Americans Are More Afraid of Robots Than Death." There is plenty of counterprogramming that relies on the Luddite Fallacy and the automation paradox to assure us that on net, technology increases the demand for human labor and to explain that the automation of tasks rather than jobs will change, not eliminate, work.

Automation anxiety is fairly acute in legal (or, maybe, it just seems that way because that is where I spend my time). The 2015 Altman Weil Law Firms in Transition survey (PDF) asked managing partners if a law-focused Watson would replace timekeepers—just as technology has displaced legal secretaries, seemingly permanently. Only 20 percent responded that computers will never replace human practitioners. That was down from 46 percent when the same question was posed to the same group in 2011, the year Watson first won Jeopardy! As always, there is counterprogramming like the recent New York Times’ Bits blog post "The End of Lawyers? Not So Fast." that, among other sources, cites to a draft study Can Robots Be Lawyers? which, while not yet for quotation, seems destined to conclude that the popular accounts of the potential displacement of lawyers by automation are a bit overblown. Read more

Hideaway from politics

Kiesza is a fine antidote to Trump and his gilded glamour. Hideaway, now an international hit, was filmed by Kiesza’s brother in Brooklyn on the second take.

Kiesza trained for a career in ballet until a knee injury, studied classic piano, and served in the reserves of the Royal Canadian Navy. Kiesa Rae Ellestad (born January 16, 1989), better known as Kiesza, is a Canadian singer and multi-instrumentalist from Calgary, who has most recently worked in New York City and London. Wikipedia

Interview with Kiesza, by Kelly Alexander on Virgin Radio Montreal.

Trump’s pitch: His gilded glamour

Trump’s pitch: His gilded glamour
Stars and Stripes
By Virginia Postrel
Special to The Washington Post
March 20, 2016

Why would anyone vote for Donald Trump? One popular theory holds that his supporters are bigots angered by America’s changing racial mix. Another is that they’re salt-of-the-earth working folks left behind by the loss of manufacturing jobs, alienated from the moneyed ruling class and irritated by the tyranny of political correctness. Or some combination thereof.

These theories, which contain elements of truth, emphasize Trump’s dire assessment of present-day America and his followers’ discontent. They focus on negative sentiment. But an important part of the story is Trump’s positive allure — the way the candidate taps into, and projects, the most fundamental outlines of the American Dream.

Conventional explanations miss the glamour of Trump’s message.

The word "glamour" originally meant a literal magic spell that makes people see things differently than they are. Understood correctly, glamour is not a particular style — different styles seem glamorous to different people — but, like humor, a form of communication that creates a specific emotional response. Glamour generates a feeling of projection and longing: "if only." If only I could walk that red carpet, drive that car, wear that dress, belong to that group, have that job, be (or be with) that person … if only I could have that life.

The feeling is universal, but the manifestation is particular: One person’s glamorous vacation may be a busy trip to Paris, while another dreams of the solitude of a mountain cabin. What you find glamorous depends on who you are — and who you yearn to be.

To tastemakers and TED talkers, Trump may seem impossibly vulgar, with his braggadocio, teased hair and preference for well-done steaks. But one definition of "vulgar" is "of or relating to the common people," and a lot of folks find Trump their kind of tycoon: a totem of success in whom they can imagine their ideal selves. "Trump is the big time, the bright lights, the fancy everything, and wealth and fame and all things I am not but would like to be," said supporter Michael Stuart Kelly, who runs an Internet marketing company. Kelly believes that the candidate appeals to "good, intelligent, productive people who dream big, even when they can’t live it." Unlike moguls who inspire resentment, Trump encourages his audience to imagine sharing his success.

Even more than fashion and film, the real estate and travel industries — where Trump has made most of his money — employ glamour as a tool of persuasion and sales. With carefully crafted words and imagery, marketers invite customers to project themselves into a different, better setting and, through it, a different, better life. Stay in a Trump hotel, the corporate website promises, and you won’t just get a nice room and good service. You’ll enjoy "a lifestyle where you can do more, experience more and live life without boundaries, limits or compromise." Glamour is much more than luxury. It promises transformation.

In this way, Trump combines powerful charisma, which draws audiences to enlist in his cause, with the glamorous salesmanship of a real estate brochure. At times the appeal is so explicit, it’s meta: "We need somebody that can take the brand of the United States and make it great again," he said in announcing his candidacy.

His branding efforts permeate everything he says, with his repetition on the campaign trail of certain words: "win," "respect," "strong," "powerful," "rich," "leader" and, of course, "build." The right words can cast a spell, even if they don’t really make sense. "We are going to do something so good and so fast and so strong, and the world is going to respect us again, believe me," Trump told supporters after his win in New Hampshire, letting them fill in the blanks with their own desires. (It’s a trick well-honed during his business career. He once asked a vendor: "What should I call my next project? Celestia? Empyrean? Royal Imperial Regal?")

Like all forms of glamour, this salesmanship transmits an artificial sense of grace. It conceals effort, costs, difficulties and flaws: the constant maintenance that keeps the golf course pristine, the wear from real-life traffic on the white rug, the sand in the bathing suit, the jet lag, the family squabbles. Like the performance of a magic trick, glamour relies on the suspension of disbelief.

On the campaign trail, the candidate portrays himself as a maker. "Who can build better than Trump? I build; it’s what I do," he said, defending the practicality of his proposed border wall. For his supporters, the attraction is not just the possibility that the wall will be built but the belief that their candidate is a doer, someone whose abilities transcend the quotidian and inadequate skills of the political class currently in power. The builder image carefully omits the fact that these days, Trump doesn’t make his money by erecting new high-rises or resorts. Instead, he’s turned himself into what branding consultant Robert Passikoff calls "a human brand extraordinaire." He licenses his name to other developers as a lifestyle promise, which turns out to add significant value. Read more

Marco Rubio ends presidential bid

Marco Rubio ends presidential bid after crushing Florida loss
The Miami Herald 
By Patricia Mazzei 
March 15, 2016 

Marco Rubio put an end to his collapsing presidential campaign Tuesday after getting battered by Republican front-runner Donald Trump in Rubio’s home state of Florida.

"There’s nothing more you could have done," Rubio reassured dejected supporters gathered in the cramped lobby of Florida International University’s basketball arena. "While we are on the right side, this year we will not be on the winning side."

He blamed the "political establishment" for failing to pay heed to real frustrations from conservative voters. The Florida senator said voters repeatedly showed their complete disregard for politicians, beginning even before the 2010 tea-party wave that got Rubio elected. Yet their concerns went unheard, and their leaders need to do better, he said. "I understand all of these frustrations, and yet when I decided to run for president, I decided to run a campaign that was realistic on all of these challenges," he said.

"From a political standpoint, the easiest thing to have done in this campaign is to jump on all of those anxieties."

In an indirect jab at Trump, Rubio added a plea to the Republican electorate: "I ask the American people: Do not give into the fear."

 Rubio congratulated Trump from stage but said he hadn’t spoken to him. Read more

 ______________________________________________________

Rubio failed, and not just because of Trump
Stars and Stripes Opinion
By Jonathan Bernstein
Bloomberg View
March 17, 2016

The 2016 demise of Marco Rubio has been obvious for a while, but it is nevertheless a very big event. He was the Republican Party’s choice. He lost.

Starting last fall, I said he would be the most likely winner. I continued saying that through the early primaries and caucuses. In fact, he seemed on track to win up until his disappointing Super Tuesday on March 1, and even in the days after that I thought he was in fairly good shape — that is, right up until his support collapsed the weekend after Super Tuesday.

Since I have been dead wrong about Rubio, I can’t turn around immediately and tell you why he lost. It’s something all of us who study presidential nominations are going to need to study, and it’s going to take some time, especially for those who believe that strong parties made up of formal organizations and informal networks control their presidential nominations.

Is this year a fluke? A sign that the system has changed? Frankly, I don’t know right now.

But I can run through some reasonable explanations of what happened with Rubio.

1) The party chose a fatally flawed candidate. Some commentators have floated variations of this explanation. One is that Rubio wasn’t appealing to Republican voters. But for most of the contest, Rubio’s favorability scores among Republicans were excellent. Even when he lagged in the horse-race polls, he usually did well when pollsters probed beyond the top vote choice among Republicans.

I’m also skeptical of blaming his position on immigration or his hawkish foreign policy. Both John McCain and Mitt Romney won Republican nominations with problems that were more severe.

A more plausible explanation of Rubio’s weakness is that he choked under pressure. His poor debate before the New Hampshire primary when he repeated a line multiple times, and his debate after Super Tuesday when he got down in the mud with Trump, both appear to have been disasters. Read more

Rigged Justice: 2016 How Weak Enforcement Lets Corporate Offenders off Easy

Rigged Justice: 2016 How Weak Enforcement Lets Corporate Offenders off Easy

Press Release. Senator Warren Releases "Rigged Justice," First Annual Report Detailing How Weak Federal Enforcement Lets Corporate Offenders Off Easy

Jan 29, 2016

A PDF copy of the report is available here

Washington, DC - United States Senator Elizabeth Warren today released a report titled Rigged Justice: How Weak Enforcement Lets Corporate Offenders Off Easy. The report, the first in an annual series on enforcement, highlights 20 of the most egregious civil and criminal cases during the past year in which federal settlements failed to require meaningful accountability to deter future wrongdoing and to protect taxpayers and families. Read more