Friday Roundup
Yeah, but Ohio State had a lot more guys go in the NFL draft. Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Dave Bernstein points out
The president went to Harvard, and barely defeated a primary opponent who went to Yale. His predecessor went to Yale and Harvard, and defeated opponents who went to Yale and Harvard, and Harvard, respectively. The previous two presidents also went to Yale, with Bush I defeating another Harvard grad for the presidency. And once Elena Kagan gets confirmed, every Supreme Court Justice will have attended Harvard or Yale law schools.
Besides the (lack of) diversity issue, others have expressed concern over the absence of a paper trial evincing anything about Kagan's core beliefs. But the American Family Association rightly -- pun fully intended -- directs us to the real issue here: Kagan's sexual proclivities.
It's time we got over the myth that what a public servant does in his private life is of no consequence. We cannot afford to have another sexually abnormal individual in a position of important civic responsibility, especially when that individual could become one of nine votes in an out of control oligarchy that constantly usurps constitutional prerogatives to unethically and illegally legislate for 300 million Americans.The stakes are too high. Social conservatives must rise up as one and say no lesbian is qualified to sit on the Supreme Court. Will they?
We can only hope.
Things I didn't know, Volume 24. So your client's worried about getting a job if he gets a criminal conviction? Thanks to the guys over at the Ohio Employer's Law Blog, I learned that, according to the EEOC, a blanket policy of not hiring applicants with criminal records is a no-no:
Although Title VII does not, on its face, prohibit discrimination on the basis of conviction records, the EEOC and courts have concluded that a policy or practice of excluding individuals from employment on the basis of their conviction records may have an adverse impact on certain minority groups in light of statistics showing that they are convicted at a rate disproportionate to their representation in the population.
Now that a class action lawsuit has been filed against Accenture on this basis, some employers might take a second look at their policies.
And "Ambulance Chasing 101" has been approved for 3 CLE credits. Look, I know you're trying to distinguish between "hard" injuries, for which there is objective evidence like an X-ray of a broken foot, and "soft-tissue" injuries, where the evidence is, shall we say, less solid, often largely dependent your client's whiny and wholly incredible testimony that, since the accident, he has had to endure constant pain of a degree not normally encountered outside of Apache torture sessions. But still, if you're the national bar assocation for plaintiffs' personal injury lawyers, did you really think you'd be able to hold a seminar entitled "Injuries Without Evidence," and nobody would make fun of you for it?
Blogiversary. I start doing this four years ago. I've never for a moment regretted that decision. Yes, it does take up a fair amount of time (about twelve hours a week). No, I don't have anybody helping me with it. Yes, there are Sunday mornings when I'm doing the stuff for the Monday Case Update that I think I'd rather do something else.
I spent a while trying to figure out what exactly I wanted to do with this. There are a lot of very good criminal law blogs out there, and they do a number of different things: provide insight as to the nature of the practice, share war stories, point to particular outrages or injustices, or even work toward making changes in the justice system. I finally settled on the reason I originally started this: to help out solo and small firm practitioners who don't have the time or resources to keep abreast of what's happening in the law. This place does what it says: provides commentary and analysis of Ohio law. If you practice criminal law with a smattering of civil stuff, like a lot of solo and small firm practitioners do, you could do worse than spend the three minutes a day it takes to read this. Plus, I think I make a reasonably good effort to keep it interesting, if not downright snarky at times.
Anyway, I don't know how long I'll keep doing this, but as long as it's fun, I'll keep doing it. And it's fun.
Legal ad of the week. Yeah, I know I made fun of them a few a paragraphs ago, but at least these plaintiffs' attorneys don't take themselves too seriously.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoDNdTXx-7U&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
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