Wednesday, June 26, 2002

 

ooh

So Dahlia's rumored to be writing a book on the Supreme Court? See here:
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And what about this book you are rumored to be writing on the court? You extensive cult following (which I know to include several former solicitors general) seems to think/hope that it will be such an irreverent look at the court that those of us who aspire to respectability will have to carry it around in a brown paper wrapper.
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(from Walter Dellinger, in a Slate Breakfast Table exchange)

Ooh.

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more moussaoui

Dahlia's second article on the Moussaoui trial is up. Her focus is on the interactions between Moussaoui and Judge Brinkema, and Judge Brinkema's needs to balance a whole ton of concerns. Totally makes me wish I could be there, watching.

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Friday, June 21, 2002

 

also

I like that Dahlia points this out:

"At its heart, the dissent plays the same stupid math tricks they played at oral argument. They try to say that only 18 states oppose executing the mentally retarded by totally ignoring those 12 states that ban capital punishment altogether. Scalia factors those 12 states out of his calculations--suggesting that they're somehow agnostic as to this issue. The trick implicit is transparent: Scalia wants us to assume those 12 states have no ethical problem executing the mentally retarded, despite the fact that they're unwilling to execute anyone. This is disingenuous to the point of being laughable."

(in re: Atkins v. Virginia (holding that executions of mentally retarded criminals are cruel and unusual punishments prohibited by the Eighth Amendment))

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one more link about minority report

And then I'll stop, really. Anyway. The Slate review of the movie references Dahlia's reference, and says that no, she hadn't seen the movie (though at this point, I probably will).

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Thursday, June 20, 2002

 

wishes

I wish I could participate in Slate's Fray. Hell, I wish I could read Slate's Fray. But it crashes my computer at work, and I always forget to check at home.

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Wednesday, June 19, 2002

 

minority report

So that reference Dahlia made to The Minority Report (a movie directed by Steven Spielberg as well as a short story by Philip K. Dick)? Reason Magazine finds it relevant to what the Bush administration's doing as well. (So weird that I find myself agreeing with an essay in a liberatarian mag.)

As a note, there's an interesting quote in this article. "Spielberg insisted that Minority Report is not his most cynical movie because 'It's not cynical to want to believe that . . . they could stop people from killing in the future. . . . [I]t went from being a cynical story to being a movie about wishful thinking.'"

Maybe *that's* the difference between Dahlia's positive outlook on the hypothetical of "precrime" detention and my own more cynical instincts--she's drawing from the movie, not the short story. Not having seen the movie (yet), but knowing Spielberg and having read the short story (a long time ago) as well as tons of PKD, I can certainly see how she'd come up with a different spin. Too bad that spin doesn't relate to the fears expressed in the original story

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does dahlia do bagels?

Just as I began to go into withdrawal, I find her at the Slate Breakfast Table exchange (where contributors discuss the newspapers and mags they've been reading) this week with Walter Dellinger, Duke law professor and head of national appellate practice at O'Melveny & Myers in DC.

Tidbits? Prof. Dellinger likes to eat at Sutton's in Chapel Hill (I should ask my brother how that is) and read the sports section of the Raleigh News and Observer. Dahlia, on the other hand, seems to drink her morning coffee with her cat.

It looks like they're going to discuss Moussaoui, though I would prefer to see more on the Supreme Court decisions, both recently released and pending.

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Friday, June 14, 2002

 

also, if you're into reading dahlia...

...you might get a kick out of reading the columns on Writ by The Brothers Amar. Like Dahlia's dispatches, their "brothers in law" column is often witty and incisive, though it's generally more serious and more in-depth. Oh, and they're kinda cute, too. (Though I have to admit, I think Akhil's cuter than Vikram.)

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moussaoui

So Dahlia's covering the Moussaoui trial this week. The trial is before Judge Leonie Brinkema, who seems to be a former DOJ honors attorney grad. As an aside, alum from my law school will be clerking for Brinkema starting this fall. Ooh is she (the future clerk, not the judge, though I guess the judge, too) in for an exciting time!

Back to Dahlia, though. Dahlia's coverage--or at least the first day of it--is pretty exciting, too. She describes Judge Brinkema as having an "inner kindergarten teacher," and goes through each step of the judge's colloquy and Moussaoui's responses and interruptions. Will Moussaoui be appointed a lawyer? What is the silver bullet he keeps talking about? It's a fascinating depiction so far, and one that's especially fascinating to an appellate lawyer like me, who doesn't deal with trials and, er, facts quite so much. It ends with "At one point during the hearing, Moussaoui's lawyer Frank Dunham states that if he's not crazy now, Moussaoui will be by the end of trial. The same can be said of Judge Brinkema, I'm afraid. It's now just a matter of whose will is stronger." We shall see.

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Wednesday, June 12, 2002

 

on the constitution and dirty bombs

So Dahlia's got a new column up. One of her serious ones, actually, explaining why she thinks the government chose to go for military detention rather than federal courts, and how that choice is probably unconstitutional. (I disagree, though, with her desire for a "bureau of precrime"--whether successful in preventing crimes or not--but that disagreement involves deeper issues of how opportunities for individual choice and responsibility should be weighed against public safety, discussions much better left out of a fan page. ;-)

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up

Law geek that I am, I've been a fan of Dahlia Lithwick's writings for a long time. She's punchy and fun to read, and I always look forward to reading her descriptions of oral arguments. And I'm not alone. Many of my friends feel the same way, too. We think she's fab, and we think she deserves recognition for her sheer fabulosity.

So hey, here's to you, Dahlia.

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