Interesting Items for 6/1/2009
- Is Candor From Judges Dead? [balkin.blogspot.com]
- US CODE: Title 18,248. Freedom of access to clinic entrances [law.cornell.edu]
- The death of Wolf Block [busmovie.typepad.com]
Tamanaha: David is puzzled (below) at my previous post suggesting that judicial candor will be a casualty if Sotomayor’s nomination is derailed by her statements that judges occasionally make choices which are influenced by their backgrounds. Candor cannot be a casualty, he says, because it is already dead. “Most scholars and commentators” agree that “candor has not been a positive characteristic for Supreme Court nominees for quite some time,” according to David…
§ 248. Freedom of access to clinic entrances(a) Prohibited Activities.— Whoever—(1)by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injures, intimidates or interferes with or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person because that person is or has been, or in order to intimidate such person or any other person or any class of persons from, obtaining or providing reproductive health services;
The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act made it a crime to obstruct access to a reproductive health center. Sen. Orin Hatch (R-UT) added an amendment additionally protecting the freedom to worship at a religious facility.
A pretty good analysis, but the lesson is muddled. Although the article begins with the idea that WB didn’t have to die, in the end it says “there’s no reason to be shocked” by the death. That’s correct. Because the firm “doesn’t own anything” there’s nothing to tie it together but mutual faith — which might get you an afterlife, but not save a law firm.
Although the death of this particular firm may not…
Ribstein’s solution: make law firms more cutthroat.
