Lawyer blogs are boring. I chalk this problem up to an understandable but flawed perception of the two privileges that lawyers are taught to honor: 1) attorney-client privilege and 2) work-product privilege. The attorney-client privilege protects private communications between a client and a lawyer. This sensible rule promotes a full and frank discussion so that […]
Early America adopted English common law and a long history of cherished rights, including the right to trial by jury – which dates back to 1215. In that year, Pope Innocent III issued an order validating a person’s right to a trial by peers. That same year, at Runnymede in England, King John was forced […]
For all the attention the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution gets, very little attention is given to our right to jury trials. Starting with the Magna Carta in England, the pantheon of natural rights in America would be toothless without the right to seek redress and defend oneself before a jury of our […]
“He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression.” Thomas Paine was an England-born political philosopher and writer who supported revolutionary causes in America and Europe. Published in 1776 to international acclaim, “Common Sense” was the first pamphlet to advocate American independence.
The right of every person to counsel and a jury trial protects us from the over-reach of powerful government and private interests. Yahoo News provides an important reminder. American Founders Knew: Right to Counsel Is Fundamental The right to counsel is a core American principle pre-dating the establishment of American jurisprudence. Our founding fathers experienced […]
I’m reading Citizen Cash by Michael Stewart Foley. The book tells the story of Johnny Cash’s misunderstood politics of empathy. In today’s divisive politics, Republicans and Democrats both claim him as their own. Conservatives view him as a traditional patriot and Liberals view him as a champion of the downtrodden. But the author suggests the […]
I accept reality and dare not question it. Walt Whitman, The Bard of Democracy
The sentence is weak. The weakness is deliberate. Madison couldn’t afford, on the one hand, to let the amendment seem to contradict the hard-won federal military power in the Constitution’s main body. He couldn’t afford, on the other hand, to underscore too strongly for the states’ comfort the overwhelming nature of that federal power. The […]
Thomas Jefferson had no idea about the internet. Thanks, Zuckerberg.
