Recently in Legal History Category

In case you missed it, vandals redecorated the Lambda Law Students Association's office at Boston College Law School (BCLS) over the weekend with a wall full of hate. Above the Law has a photo of the hooligans' handiwork here.

BCLS Dean Vincent D. Rougeau condemned the act. Jason Triplett, co-chair of the school's Lambda Law chapter, told Above the Law that the graffiti was shocking because the both students and faculty at the school are inclusive and supportive of the organization. Another Lambda Legal member suggested that the perpetrator was unaffiliated with the law school.

We have a problem. The editors insist on uniform standards of writing. Though such a quest is laudable, it creates a significant issue for us writers when it comes to two weird words: pleaded and drunken.

It's not just us either. The ABA and the Daily Report are pleading for a resolution to the pleaded versus pled debate. Meanwhile, we've turned to bottles of two buck chuck after arguing for common usage over technicalities in the drunken drunk debate.

Justice Elena Kagan had a lot to say in a presentation at the University of Tennessee on Friday, but the part everyone paid attention to was when she mentioned going hunting with Scalia.

During the talk on her life both in and out of the courtroom, Kagan mentioned that she has gone hunting with fellow Justice Antonin Scalia. She also admitted to plans to go hunting in Wyoming for big game with the hopes of bagging an antelope, much to the chagrin of some liberals.

Besides establishing herself as a hunting enthusiast, Kagan also had some interesting things to say about being a woman on the court and a few tidbits to share about herself.

Introducing our Ex-Lawyer of the Week: Nelson Mandela.

Mandela, South Africa's first black president, turns 94 today. Many are celebrating by completing "67 minutes of good deeds," one for each year of Mandela's anti-apartheid struggles, Reuters reports.

But Mandela's push for social justice actually began with a groundbreaking law practice he founded with a friend. The firm of Mandela & Tambo marks its 60th anniversary this year, and stands as a monument to Mandela's lifelong commitment to equality.

Justice Stephen Breyer's Caribbean vacation took a scary turn last week. Breyer was robbed by a man armed with a machete, who took about $1,000 in cash, Reuters reports.

No one was hurt in the Feb. 9 robbery at Breyer's vacation home on the island of Nevis, and the robber is still on the loose, according to Reuters. An FBI agent arrived in Nevis on Friday, but his role in the investigation was not immediately clear, The St. Kitts-Nevis Observer reports.

While U.S. laws don't apply in Nevis, Nevisian law does -- and Justice Stephen Breyer's robber could get a lashing in court. Literally.

With January's arguments completed, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has embarked on a legal "listening" tour of Egypt and Tunisia, one year after the "Arab Spring" uprisings began.

The Supreme Court's elder jurist landed in Egypt on Friday, the start of a politically significant weekend there. Justice Ginsburg, 78, is traveling with her daughter, Columbia law professor Jane Ginsburg, according to the State Department.

Justice Ginsburg's visit to Egypt will be followed by a stop in Tunisia where the Arab Spring uprisings began, the State Department reports. Perhaps due to security concerns, just a few scant details about the associate justice's trip have been released:

Big Supreme Court of the U.S. (SCOTUS) news this week has included the announcement that retired  Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter is set to deliver the commencement address at Harvard, which also happens to be the Justice's undergraduate and law school alma mater.  Appointed in 1990 by President George H. Bush, Justice Souter proved to be a moderate liberal, even-keeled SCOTUS justice who notably dissented in Bush v. Gore and joined Supreme Court Justices Kennedy and O'Connor in a plurality position in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, upholding the tenets of Roe v. Wade.  He left his post on the High Court with a legacy of strong work ethic, quiet independence, and as a champion of individual rights.

And that officially takes retired Justice Souter out of the running as the Supreme Court's most insignificant justice, leaving 110 other candidates vying for the prize of most forgettable. 

Whether or not you watched, listened, or read President Obama's address to Congress this week, even the bubble of law school can't completely shield you from the current state of the Union.  In sum, the economy. It was what was for dinner at the 2010 annual address by the nation's Chief Executive.

Parsing out the address more carefully, there are a few quotes that may resonate with law students.  Here are 3 to know, and why they matter to you, aspiring J.D.

If we're going to write a post on interesting legal happenings on this date, we should probably start by noting a couple of birthdays.  Today in 1907 was the birthday of biologist/ Silent Spring author Rachel Carson, who brought us modern environmentalism and the EPA.  And this date in 1923 gave the world Henry Kissinger, who is, interestingly enough, not the only Nobel Peace Prize winner to also suffer allegations of being a war criminal.

Of course, since it's late May, the more interesting legal events of the day are inevitably going to be the Supreme Court opinions which inevitably rain down upon us at this time of year.  And sure enough, we have two classics to bring you back to the finer points of torts and con law:

1935: A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, a/k/a the Sick Chicken case: who remembers their con law and can quickly recite the facts and holding?  No one?  Fine, we'll give you the holding at least: the court struck down the National Industrial Recovery Act, a major piece of New Deal legislation, as, among other things, not within Congress's power to enact under the Commerce Clause.  Sound familiar?  You'll also recall that the court had a change of heart the very next year, and that Congress would subsequently spend the next 60 years blissfully expanding its Commerce Clause authority to regulate absolutely anything it wanted to.

You can read all about the legal aspects of Tuesday's big SCOTUS decision on "fleeting expletives" at FindLaw's CourtSide (lawyer-y take) and Law and Daily Life (consumer-friendly version, complete with quotes from Cher and Bono).  But Greedy Associates is more interested in Justice Antonin Scalia's out-of-left-field (and probably just plain wrong) take on whether rural or urban Americans do more cussin':

We doubt, to begin with, that small-town broadcasters run a heightened risk of liability for indecent utterances. In programming that they originate, their down-home local guests probably employ vulgarity less than big-city folks; and small-town stations generally cannot afford or cannot attract foul-mouthed glitteratae from Hollywood.

Leaving aside for a moment Scalia's quaint notion that small-town America somehow remains blissfully free of s-words and f-bombs: glitteratae?  Really?

Lawyers love their Latin.  From arguendo to nolo contendere, from pro se to in re to per curiam, you just can't get between the legal system and a good turn of Latin phrase.  It's perhaps the most visible way in which lawyers work to distinguish themselves from the non-lawyering public (classics majors not included; we distinguish ourselves from them by comparing paychecks).  Impress your friends, confound your pro se opponents: throw in an ab initio here, a res ipsa loquitor there, and remind everyone that you're an initiate, armed with the secret linguistic knowledge that will dominate the argument and win the case.

But glitteratae?