RSS FeedLaw School: A Fate Worse than Jail?
Last week a 28-year-old man stole two computer batteries from a Florida Staples, then returned to the store, reported his crime to the store manager and demanded that police be called. He told employees that he wanted a third-degree felony on his record, so that he wouldn’t be allowed to attend law school.
Unfortunately, the stolen items were valued at $276.88, a misdemeanor amount, $23.12 short of a felony. (Had he gone to law school, the would-be felon might have known that.)
The news outlet that reported the incident failed to answer the first question that comes to mind when reading the story: who is holding a gun to this guy’s head to go to law school?
Time for a Sex(y) Party!
British Columbians are going to the polls today. The Vancouver race is shaping up to be, it must be said, particularly stimulating.
The Sex Party — the party of “politics for a sex-positive future” — aims to promote healthy sex lives for its constituents, responsible (uncensored) coverage of sexual issues in media, and reform of youth sexual education (in order to encourage a “gradual and disciplined” approach to sexual activity among students, with particular focus on tolerance of different sexual identities). The party would repeal “sex-negative” laws and regulations, allow Criminal Code prohibitions against public nudity to go unenforced, and rename Victoria Day to honour Eros, a Greek fertility god (instead of commemorating a monarch “legendary for her negative attitudes toward female sexuality”).
Candidates include party leader (and lawyer!) John Ince (Vancouver Point Grey), who owns sex shop “The Art of Loving” in the Vancouver area; Dietrich Pajonk (Vancouver Hastings), a sex-positive activist and UBC radio producer; and Scarlett Lake (Vancouver West End), a former exotic dancer and self-described “madam” who operates an escort service.
While Law is Cool is not prepared to endorse the Sex Party outright, the party’s suggestion that leaders’ debates should be conducted in the nude is one that intrigues the anarchist elements of this blog, as it could bring the government, er, to its knees.
Everything sounds dirtier when you’re writing about the Sex Party.
“Some Words for Law Students’ Parents”
Thy son or daughter wouldst a lawyer be,
And so thou worriest for thy progeny.
The road is fraught, and hardy folk have failed,
And o’er the grading curve too few prevail.
Thou fearest the expense may prove too great.
Thou hopest for thy child a different fate:
Thy son couldst yet a doctor be,
And spend his hours at golf (or poetry)!
Thy daughter might take up a useful trade –
And truth be told, she might be better paid.
Nay, few are called to burn the midnight oil
And yea, the cost is great, and long the toil;
And not all youths prove equal to the task –
But think what bounty thou wilst reap at last
With ‘Esq.’ appended to thy daughter’s name.
Consider-ye how she might then repay
Thy long investment in her stock: a car?
A cottage where her parents might retire?
Thy son’s J.D.? Think-ye your funds well spent,
His future wealth an ample dividend.
(But woe betide thee should thy daughter prove
Idealist, should she her ambitions lose.
Despair-thou of a son in Legal Aid –
Your long investment ne’er will be repaid.)
Yet, if at night thy mind remains astir,
Take heart, good Madam; worry not, good Sir;
From this take comfort in the seasons hence:
At least thou hast not spawned a grad student!
Look not upon the lowly MFA.
Revilèd Master of the Arts, away!
Tempt not our children with thy life of ease;
Their sober minds want naught of your disease.
Cur, shave thy filthy beard, and cut your hair!
Proselytise on Derrida elsewhere!
Abhorrent hipster sloth, at once begone!
A legal education starts anon!
Online Privacy: The Noose Tightens
The scholars, captains of industry and champions of justice who compose Law is Cool‘s readership will have long since scoured their online social networks for photos or other items tending to compromise their integrity — reports of “the dark side of social networking” are thick on the ground. But a recent court decision may renew paranoia that privacy is an artefact of the twentieth century, doomed to join its contemporaries (pagers, Chris Tucker, student activism, literacy, the Ark of the Covenant) in oblivion.
Just weeks after finding that Canadians have no expectation of privacy in their online identities, Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice has ruled that posts on Facebook and other online social networks may be discoverable against their makers, according to the Star’s Tracey Tyler.
Plaintiff John Leduc claims that injuries sustained in a car accident in 2004 have lessened his enjoyment of life. The court found that Leduc may be cross-examined on the contents of his Facebook account where such contents are relevant to his claim — despite the fact that security settings on his account restricted access to his profile to only his close friends.
If Leduc’s Facebook account contained evidence of him
- exerting himself,
- stopping to smell roses,
- “seizing the day” in any fashion, or
- otherwise engaged in merriment,
such evidence might undermine his claim. Pictures of him sitting on the roof of his car watching the sun set over a northern lake, or snowboarding through thick powder with the caption “Go for it!” beneath him, would be especially damning.
The decision overturns a Superior Court case management master’s ruling that forcing Leduc to produce the contents of his Facebook account amounted to a “fishing expedition”, since there was nothing — except Leduc’s opposition to disclosure — to suggest that any compromising photos in fact existed. Leduc’s profile consisted only of his name and picture.
A search of Facebook for accounts registered to “John Leduc” yielded 129 results — many of whom appeared to be enjoying themselves.
Less Popular Judicial ‘esque’s
In Czech novelist Franz Kafka’s The Trial, a man is arrested, forced to participate in a nightmarish, labyrinthine legal system administered by bureaucrats, presumed guilty, and executed without ever learning the nature of the charges against him. The novel has been taken up as a realist depiction of the justice system as viewed by an outsider unversed in the law. Since the 1960s, more than 400 judicial opinions have made reference to it. The term “Kafkaesque” has been used to describe proceedings which deprived parties of due process or the presumption of innocence, or as a synonym for decisions which were disingenuous, ironic, arbitrary and capricious, counterintuitive, or a distortion of reality.*
While The Trial is undoubtedly required reading for those embarking on a career in criminal justice, an observer might conclude that it is the only novel judges ever take the time to read.
Here, then, are some other adjectives which the legal community might consider adopting, where Kafkaesque is less than appropriate.
- Beckettesque: no progress is made for the duration of trial proceedings; all parties are degraded by their participation.
- Chandleresque: proceedings marked by hardboiled description, bouts of violence and femmes fatale.
- Daviesesque: litigants are pompous academics, engaged in a feud the genesis of which no one can recall.
- Dostoevskyesque: trier of fact displayed appalling pessimism with regard to the human psyche; nevertheless, realistic.
- Eggersesque: lower court decision beset with self-aware digressions; appellate courts wish they had thought of it first.
- Garcia Marquez-esque: the accused is executed just moments before a woman whose love he devoted his life to winning appears bearing evidence conclusive of his innocence; she later gives birth to a child who bears his name and who grows up to be executed in exactly the same circumstances.
- King-esque: a struggling writer, a quaint Maine town with a dark secret, and a van barreling towards its gruesome destiny figure prominently in the dispute.
- Murakamiesque: like Kafkaesque but much prettier.
- Nabokovesque: proceedings relate to indecent assault of a minor.
- Poe-esque: proceedings relate to vengeance for the murder of a beautiful woman; disclosure indicates indecent assault and/or incest.
- Pynchonesque: inscrutable; of astounding length — potential violation of Charter s. 11(b) right to be tried within a reasonable time. [See also: Foster Wallace-esque, Rushdie-esque.]
- Rothesque: proceedings are simultaneously an indictment of and a sympathetic depiction of twentieth-century American Jewish values; accused is an old man, ailing, estranged from his family and full of regret.
- Zadie Smithesque: the litigants are minority groups in modern England, fighting to preserve their old-world eccentricities in their new locale; a tooth motif pervades proceedings.
- Sterne-esque: proceedings start at the beginning and then move still further backwards.
* Parker B. Potter, Jr., “Ordeal by Trial: Judicial References to the Nightmare World of Franz Kafka”, Pierce Law Review Vol. 3, No. 2, 2004-2005, pp. 195-330.
The Power of a Guilty Plea
“You mean,” he said, this look of absolute unbelief working across his face, “you mean, if I’m guilty I get out today?”
“Right.”
“And if I’m innocent I stay locked up?”
“You got it, man. So what are you gonna be, guilty or innocent?”
James Mills, One Just Man, Simon and Schuster
Pro-Israel faculty members launch air raid on CUPE
Following an announcement by the Canadian Union of Public Employees calling for a ban of Israeli academics from Ontario campuses, Israeli faculty in Ontario have begun an intensive aerial assault. Casualties among CUPE members stand at roughly 300, with the number expected to climb.
Correspondents at the scene also report that faculty troops are amassing near the borders of CUPE headquarters, fueling speculation of a possible faculty ground assault.
In response to global uproar, pro-Israeli faculty leaders called the campaign a “perfectly proportional” response to CUPE’s continued attacks and offered no further comment.
In related news, York University students will return to classes tomorrow.
What I would have included on my application to Osgoode, had I known you were permitted to make things up
This site’s readership will be all too familiar with the rigorous process of applying to Canadian law schools, starting with the LSAT and ending (it is to be presumed) with a vetting of one’s academic and professional credentials against those of one’s fellow candidates. The most deserving students receive early confirmation of acceptance to their first-choice schools. For the rest of us, months may pass before a position is secured; unease turns to anxiety turns to panic, until we would accept an invitation to the Novgorod School of Law just to return some certainty to our lives.
But fear not, would-be law school freshmen, for there is an easier way! Third year (former) LLB candidate Quami Frederick has the secret to a stress-free application process: fabricating a significant element of your application. As previously reported here, Frederick’s artificial B.Sc. in Business Administration opened the door to Osgoode Hall and might have launched a stellar legal career, but for the investigative journalism of the Toronto Star.
I, for one, would have welcomed this alternative in late July 2007, when I was losing hope of being accepted anywhere, and was considering making a career of my summer job at the Maple Leaf Foods chicken slaughterhouse. Had I known then what I know now, my application might have looked very different:
- graduated magna cum laude from the Bill Clinton President School (TM)
- holds two simultaneous parliamentary seats, for Calgary Southwest and Laurier Sainte-Marie
- in 2005, Rt. Hon. Beverley McLachlin, P.C. called me “the son [she] never had”
- has two thousand Facebook friends
- prepared to bequeath a substantial personal fortune to the first law school to accept
- Nobel Prize nominee, 2007, for brokering landmark peace agreement between scissors and rock
- autobiography The Audacity of Hope was on the New York Times Bestseller list for thirty weeks
- middle name is “Osgoode Hall Law School”
- can read minds
Beans, beans, the magical fruit / The more you eat, the more you go to jail.
A 12-year old boy attending Stuart’s Spectrum Jr./Sr. High School in Martin County, Florida, was arrested November 4, 2008, by a member of the county Sheriff’s Office, after a teacher said that he had “deliberately passed gas to disrupt the class” and had turned off the computers of his classmates.
He was then criminally charged with “disruption of school function.”
* * *
“The United States is the greatest law factory the world has ever known.”
- Charles Evans Hughes
“Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.”
- Jonathan Swift, A Critical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind, 1707
Pimp Claims Massage Parlour is a Church
A Tucson, Arizona pimp has been ordered to repay about $2 million as the proceeds of crime.
The pimp, John A. LaVoie, 52, was found guilty of 22 counts of racketeering.
LaVoie claimed he was a minister of the Church of Liberty, a church he founded. He ran a massage and prostitution business in his Tucson building called Angel’s Heaven.
LaVoie claimed Angel’s Heaven was part of his church, and clients only gave donations.
LaVoie has been ordered to fofeit a $1 million office building, plus $850,000 that he reportedly earned from his prostitution business.
The website for the Massage Parlour/Church is still up. It features pictures and bios of the “angels,” who have names like “Honey Angel” and “Oriental Angel.”
Another page provides descriptions of the spa services, including pricing information: “$59.95 Donation for a half hour of bliss.”
The church’s tag line: “Angel’s Heaven: some say it’s a religious experience!”
Toronto is Canada’s Safest City?
Below is a rather ironic screenshot from the front page of the Toronto Star’s website just after the release of a report claiming that my beloved Toronto is the safest metropolitan area in Canada. Note the circled sections.
Will Obama, Hillary, or McCain ever be as funny as Bush?
Say what you will about George Dubya Bush. He certainly wasn’t America’s most popular President. He certainly wasn’t America’s smartest President. He definitely wasn’t America’s best President.
But as his 8 years in office draw to a close, I’m left with a bittersweet feeling.
There’s just no way that today’s candidates for office will ever match Bush on the hilarity scale. We’ll just have to accept that the glory days for late-night television like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report will soon be over. Whether you were laughing with him, or laughing at him, no President will ever provide as much fodder as Bush.
Here’s Bush congratulating graduates from the Air Force Academy today. Words do not describe.
(photo credit belongs to Charles Dharapak of AP)
