Via Ernie the Attorney, a blog by a former Washington, DC lawyer now working as a public defender in New Orleans. I’m sure some will accuse him of being a big soft-on-crime librul for thinking that being accused of a crime does not erase your worth as a human being; nevertheless, good reading.
“What are we to make of a justice system that must depend on the good graces of volunteers?”
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Jan 092007
Jan 062007
For those who have not already read it (meaning, you’re not a law student), Mayo v. Satan and His Staff is instructional in how courts handle fillings, even stupid, wackaloon filings.
The background to this case is that Mr. Mayo’s first petition was thrown out by the court as, um, wackaloon. Mayo appealed. The Court of Appeals told Judge Weber that the court cannot just decide a petition is stupid and throw it out; there must be procedural and/or substantive reasons. Which makes sense; we don’t want judges throwing out perfectly good cases simply because of their personal feeling that it is stupid.
Judge Weber’s response was an extremely dry and cite-ridden opinion that does not actually use the word “wackaloon” anywhere. It is still good law in that jurisdiction.
Jan 062007
The Bush administration seems to have decided that its visitor logs are nobody’s business. Therefore, to get around the possibility that anyone might take a look at them, the White House signed a memorandum of understanding with the Secret Service, declaring that these are Presidential records rather than (as has been the case until now) agency records. Therefore, the White House says, these are not subject to FOIA and do not need to be disclosed in response to pesky, Abramoff-scandal-related court orders requiring production. These same logs were used in the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal to show Monica Lewinsky’s comings and goings, but apparently it didn’t occur to Clinton’s legal advisers to hide evidence in this way.
Naturally, the White House has no comment.
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