Advice and Consent
On Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on state Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown's nomination to the D.C. Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. Excerpted here are attempts by two senators -- Utah Republican Orrin Hatch and Illinois Democrat Richard Durbin -- to put into context the coming clash over Brown's nomination.

The Gun Industry's 'Dirty Little Secret'
This week, alleged sniper John Muhammed went on trial in Virginia. Have you ever wondered how he and his purported partner, Lee Boyd Malvo, got the assault rifle that was the instrument of their attacks? Or have you thought more generally about how felons and gang members can so easily get handguns? Well, the answer is they acquire them from gun dealers who engage in risky business practices. The gun industry's "dirty little secret" is that it knows who "bad apple" dealers are.
Brian J. Siebel

Running Interference
When the Oklahoma attorney general stunned federal prosecutors by bringing state securities charges in the WorldCom case, he not only junked the deference traditionally paid to federal prosecutors, he may have also ignited a kind of doomsday scenario with state attorneys general racing to indict high-profile corporate defendants, thus undermining cases carefully crafted by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Robert A. Mintz

Fazio for S.F. District Attorney
The choice this November for San Francisco's district attorney is as difficult as it is important. The DA is responsible for keeping our streets safe, keeping our sometimes rowdy cops professional, and keeping our politicians honest. It's a tough job. The editors of The Recorder feel that one part of the choice facing voters Nov. 4 is simple. While we agree with much of incumbent Terence Hallinan's progressive agenda, we believe he has failed to deliver on it and should be replaced.
Recorder Editorial

Virgin Territory
Arguing before the Supreme Court is daunting at any time. But arguing there for the first time; that's the ne plus ultra of fear, exhilaration and unpredictability. Talbot D'Alemberte lost 10 pounds before his first argument 10 years ago. Ian Macpherson lost his lunch the day before he argued for the first time in 1980. They and 12 other lawyers recount their "first time" U.S. Supreme Court arguments in the latest issue of The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process.
Tony Mauro

Profiling Hurts -- Not Helps -- Police
Now that Congress has returned from summer recess, it should take up an issue the Bush administration prominently addressed in June: racial profiling. Declaring that it was fulfilling the president's campaign pledge to end profiling, the administration "banned" the discredited practice by issuing a policy "guideline." Unfortunately, the guideline neither bans profiling nor keeps the president's promise. It serves as a first step, but racial profiling will end only if Congress steps in to complete the job.
David A. Harris

Justice Confidential
The last weeks of each term are a coronary-in-a-box for anyone interested in the doings of the High Court. For a whole long year nothing much happens, and then June rolls in and everything starts to move at light speed. These are particularly frustrating days for those involved in a case. Which leads to this simple query: What is it that requires American justice to be served up like a blonde popping out of a cake?
Dahlia Lithwick

Looking Backward
In the University of Michigan Law School case, t`he Supreme Court licensed the use of racial discrimination in admissions, but left the license's term of years vague. "We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary," wrote Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. But there is no need for suspense. Unless human nature undergoes a fundamental transformation in the next 25 years, the court will have to extend the term of the license.
Lawrence J. Siskind

Conflicted About Martha?
How do you read the Martha Stewart indictment? Whatever your take, most likely you haven't actually read the 41-page indictment itself. Yet lawyers will benefit much from a close reading of the charges. Its tantalizing details are like clues on a wilderness trail that hint at what lies ahead, including conflicts that may have prompted hidden tactical moves and will surface at any trial.
Stephen Gillers

Preferences Don't Work
In her opinion for the Supreme Court in Grutter v. Bollinger, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor cited amicus briefs filed by 3M, et al., and General Motors, and the media gave great play to the support of Corporate America for racial and ethnic preferences in university admissions. Now that the high court has given its tentative approval to continued discrimination-in-the-name-of-diversity by universities, does that mean that companies have a green light to do so in their own hiring and promotion?
Roger Clegg

A Lawyer's Summer Movie Guide
The appearance of crayons and lunch boxes on office supply store shelves, and patches of actually dry areas on dress shirts, indicate that the end of summer is approaching. If you are worried that you have not seen as many of the 2003 summer movies as you hoped, and are seeking guidance as to which films lawyers might particularly enjoy, you need look no further. As the following selections indicate, this season's offerings include several created specifically for the legal audience
Lawrence Savell

Aschroft's Aim
It's not my habit to defend John Ashcroft. But lately, I've almost been tempted (emphasize almost). The attorney general has been blasted for a memo sent out in late July that calls for U.S. attorneys to report to the Justice Department all criminal cases in which federal trial judges impose less stringent sentences "over the objection of the Government." Some see this as a witch hunt for judges, with Ashcroft is leading the charge. In fact, neither of those two claims is totally true.
Evan P. Schultz

Uff Da
My mother is Swedish and German. When I was a boy, anxious to find out what it meant that I had Swedish and German heritage, I asked her to tell me about Swedes. "Swedes," she said, having just had a falling-out with her father, "are the most stubborn people on earth." A few days later, I asked her about Germans. "Germans," she said, "are even more stubborn than Swedes." It seems my mother unwittingly imbued me with the most important shared characteristic of all appellate judges.
William W. Bedsworth

A Pryor Offenses
During William Pryor Jr.'s confirmation hearing for the Eleventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, he said, "I am able to set aside my personal beliefs and follow the law, even when I strongly disagree with the law." Then again, why should Pryor -- who was approved last week -- bother to be circumspect about disagreements with the justices? After all, the court to which he is nominated knows how to ignore the Supreme Court when it wants to.
Evan P. Schultz

Justice Powell at Peace
Independence Day has come and gone again. The Supreme Court justices are packing up for points past the Beltway, leaving the pundits to pore over their opinions, to tally the votes, tote up the score and name the MVP of the 2002-03 term. Anne M. Coughlin's pick? The Honorable Lewis Powell Jr. By a mile.
Anne M. Coughlin

A More Perfect Union
Even without more, the U.S. Supreme Court's grand finale is a work of stunning humanity. At the core of his opinion in Lawrence v. Texas, Justice Kennedy wrote, "When sexuality finds overt expression in intimate conduct with another person, the conduct can be but one element in a personal bond that is more enduring. The liberty protected by the Constitution allows homosexual persons the right to make this choice." But the law being the law, and lawyers being lawyers, there is always more.
Evan P. Schultz

Sex and the Supreme Court
In its historic decision in Lawrence v. Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court turned to a subject that it rarely seemed willing to acknowledge in the past: the value of consensual, gratuitous sex. Now the court has compared the freedom of private sexual relations to the freedom of thought and ex-pression. For those of us used to the stodgy octogenarians of the past, it was like having one's grandparents pop by for a frank chat on the Kama Sutra.
Jonathan Turley

¡Ay Caramba, Taco Bell!
Taco Bell has been ordered to pay $30.2 million to two guys from Grand Rapids, Mich., for stealing their talking dog idea. Apparently, the talking animal thing isn't yet in the public domain. The two guys from Michigan say they invented the talking Chihuahua and that Taco Bell stole it from them and used it to make people buy tacos. William W. Bedsworth on the links between fast food advertising and intellectual property.
William W. Bedsworth

The Supreme Court's Drug Test
Last month the Supreme Court handed down Sell v. United States, a case that raised the question of how a court should decide when to forcibly medicate a mentally incompetent criminal defendant. At first glance, the opinion seems consistent with the other unexpected liberal-leaning decisions that the court handed down this term, on affirmative action and gay rights. However, on a closer look, it seems that the court has avoided a turn to the left on this important issue of defendants' rights.
Tamar M. Meekins

A Racialist Blowout
For those who stubbornly cling to the elder Justice Harlan's conviction that "our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens," last month's Supreme Court twin Michigan decisions were more than disappointing. They were catastrophic.
Lawrence J. Siskind

Agency Theory: Why we should worry about the lobbying of regulators
On June 2, a bitterly divided FCC voted along partisan lines to relax the agency's decades-old media ownership restrictions that govern how many and what type of media outlets a single entity may own. While people may differ on the substance of the media ownership issue, we need to understand that if the unusual tactics employed by those who opposed the FCC's deregulatory initiative become the norm, sound agency decision-making may be the loser.
Randolph J. May

Conflicted Pioneers
A fascinating new genre of nonfiction books has begun to emerge: the memoir of the successful woman lawyer. Recent months have seen the publication of several biographies and autobiographies by some of the first women at America's finest law schools -- specifically, the new book by Sandra Day O'Connor, "The Majesty of the Law,"; a new biography of Eleanor Holmes Norton, "Fire in My Soul"; and the memoir of Judith Richards Hope, "Pinstripes & Pearls," about the women of her Harvard Law School class.
Dahlia Lithwick

Swimming With Sharks
Talking about the movies, screenwriter William Goldman has famously said, "Nobody knows anything." Author Jay Handlin has one point of contention with that statement. He knows that when it comes to the movies, new technologies mean lawsuits. Mike Myers' new deal with DreamWorks Pictures -- whereby Myers and other actors will be inserted into older films -- may well prove his point.
Jay Handlin

Justice May Be Blind, But Picking One Isn't
The White House has leaked word that it plans to fill the next Supreme Court vacancy with a member of a minority group, probably Hispanics, whose voters the GOP hopes to attract in 2004. The GOP has long made a point of opposing affirmative action. The president's reported eagerness to use ethno-racial preferences in judicial nominations raises an obvious question: What principle, if any, can justify selecting Supreme Court nominees on ethno-racial grounds while condemning such preferences in other areas?
Peter H. Schuck

We, the People of the State of ... Mmm ... Uh ...
When William W. Bedsworth was recently lambasting Ohio and Illinois, he somehow overlooked Indiana. According to a recent article in the South Bend Tribune, "A portion of the state constitution displayed in a government building in Indiana isn't Indiana's after all." It's Tennessee's. How could such a thing happen? Read on.
William W. Bedsworth

Watching Wall Street
Here's a challenge for you savvy readers: Name a group of people who must submit to fingerprinting, have their letters and e-mails scrutinized, and make their phone calls on taped lines. If you guessed prison inmates, sorry. The winning answer is Wall Street employees. These practices have long been the norm for people in the securities business, whether or not they've misbehaved. No one asking that people shed tears for Wall Street. But, as the saying goes, bad facts make bad law.
Wendy Fried

The Battle Over Bill Bennett's Betting
The end to the fighting in Iraq posed a grave crisis for pundits. No other story was at hand to fully occupy their time and observational skills. Then, miraculously, came the William Bennett gambling exposé. Liberal commentators have been quick to pounce, and conservatives have been just as speedy in defense. But this sort of traditional Left versus Right warfare will soon pass. The true importance of the reaction to the Bennett story lies within the Right alone.
Lawrence J. Siskind

Clueless in Columbus
While you, like the author, may have been brainwashed into thinking people from the Midwest are more likely to be rational and level-headed, the latest from William W. Bedsworth may help to dispel that notion. A look at Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley's recent decision to tear up an airport runway that he unilaterally decided was a security risk -- and the Ohio Supreme Court's decision to funnel a punitive damages award into its own charity.
William W. Bedsworth

The Right to Discomfit
Freedom of speech may be a noble concept, but the actual stuff of such cases tends to be sordid. In Virginia v. Black, decided earlier this month, the stuff was particularly repellent: cross burning. The court confronted the question of whether a state could punish cross burning done "with the intent of intimidating any person or group of persons." Unfortunately, the court failed to explore the meaning of the word "intimidation."
Lawrence J. Siskind

An Unpopular Position
Is Scott Peterson innocent until proven guilty? Or is he guilty until proven innocent? What's the difference? Plenty. One is the very cornerstone of our justice system which assures the criminally accused a fair trial, while the other is a frightening mutant imposter with far-reaching ramifications.
Jonna M. Spilbor

Don't Give Gun Makers a Break
While most of us are transfixed on the events unfolding in Iraq, the National Rifle Association is quietly pushing legislation through Congress to provide unprecedented legal protection to the domestic gun industry. Why should we care? Because it is irrational and irresponsible to immunize a particular industry -- especially the gun industry -- from the legal consequences of its reckless behavior.
Juliet A. Leftwich

The Art of War
Entering the fourth week of the invasion of Iraq, we readily admit that we're tweaking furtively and often from the war news: sneaking updates at work; then home for the real deal, an uninterrupted stream of images coming from network "magazines" and cable TV. What we're far less willing to acknowledge is the root of the addiction -- and the political consequences of that fixation: We are truly junkies to visual display -- and the pathetic prey of any provider who can feed our habit.
Terry Diggs

Taking Stock in the Market
Let's talk about how to get rich. How does anybody make money in this bedlam? The same way any other gamblers make money: either get lucky or become the house. The getting lucky approach is pretty much self-explanatory. Also unlikely. Becoming the house, on the other hand, is not nearly as difficult as it looks. You can do it because the market is like poker: Everybody thinks they know how to play. And almost everybody is wrong.
William W. Bedsworth

A Body of Evidence
Like it or not, Elizabeth Smart is a walking, talking crime scene. If Utah police wish to determine exactly what crimes have been committed against this young woman, and ultimately prove who committed them, they need to handle Elizabeth as they would any other piece of precious evidence; not with kid gloves, but with latex ones.
Jonna M. Spilbor

Class Action
The University of Michigan Law School is defending its affirmative action program before the Supreme Court with this argument: The presence of a critical mass of minority students in the classroom improves the quality of education that every student receives. So how does that work? Mark V. Tushnet

What Women Want
It might seem fair to allocate sports funding based on surveys of student interest. But how can girls want what they really want, asks professor Jill Gaulding, when social feedback still discourages female athletes?
Jill R. Gaulding

Gideon's Gift
San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi comments on the U.S. Supreme Court's historic decision in Gideon v. Wainwright, which celebrates its 40th anniversary on March 18. While most attorneys know the case of the man who dared to ask for a free lawyer at state's expense, many Americans do not. It is hard to imagine that just four decades ago, a person charged with a felony in this country was not entitled to a lawyer unless he or she had the financial means to hire one.
Jeff Adachi

'It's My Life.'
By rejecting a pair of Eighth Amendment challenges to the Three Strikes law earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court dashed what many California inmates saw as their last hope of leaving prison alive. In October of last year, just before the cases were argued, The Recorder asked Three Strike inmates to explain what the challenges meant for them. Excerpts from the responses we received follow.

No More Private Shows
When it comes to exploring the legal views of judicial candidates, what's sauce for the goose (the president) should be sauce for the gander (the Senate), argues Alan Morrison.
Alan B. Morrison

Getting Over the Golden Arches
Late last month, a federal judge dismissed the fast-food lawsuit that's been fodder for both talk show ridicule and public outcry. You can hear the collective relief -- common sense prevails. Or has it? Before you join in, think about this. If you get fired because of your gender, defrauded by lying corporate executives or victimized by a deceptive trade practice, your case could get tossed out the same way.
Christopher M. Fairman

Escape From the Gilded Cage
Neil Shapiro moved his media, commercial and IP litigation practice to Kennedy, Archer & Harray in Monterey after spending more than 30 years at firms in the big city. He discusses both the motivations for and ramifications of making this significant -- but seemingly inevitable -- change.
Neil Shapiro

Getting a Leg Up on Science
Arthur C. Clarke may have had William W. Bedsworth in mind when he said, "We have reached the point in man's development where any reasonably advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." But every now and again, the third millennium rears its ugly head and he is forced to deal with cases that involve technology more challenging than doorknobs and dumbwaiters. Some examples of "Technology run amok."
William W. Bedsworth

Local IP Firm Stuns City: Votes Not to Dissolve
Harvey Siskind Jacobs, a leading intellectual property law firm and a fixture in San Francisco's Financial District for more than three years, announced today that it will not dissolve. The announcement came after a late night meeting, during which the issue of dissolution was briefly addressed, apparently by accident. Lawrence J. Siskind gives the "inside story."
Lawrence J. Siskind

Take the Ashes and Gub
William W. Bedsworth both takes a look at the Reporter of Decisions -- the man whose office edits everything written for publication by the Courts of Appeal and the Supreme Court -- and lets us know who the recipient of his "Dumbest Criminal of the Year Award" is. You'll be pleased to know that after two years in Arizona, the award is back in California, where it belongs.
William W. Bedsworth

Monkey Business Can Be Hard on Monkeys
Twenty hours with monkeys in the underpants. Did we need a law for this? Isn't this a case where the conduct is its own deterrent? William W. Bedsworth examines a recent case of attempted wildlife smuggling.
William W. Bedsworth

Free Speech, on the Cheap
Lawrence J. Siskind tells us that "freedom of speech" has become the first refuge of a scoundrel. Meet Amiri Baraka, Tom Paulin and Lynne Stewart. Not only does each spout unpopular views, all enjoy a special perch from which to spew those views. And, when his or her right to receive special treatment is challenged, each indignantly invokes freedom of speech. The fact that anyone takes their complaints seriously teaches us much about the true nature of freedom of speech.
Lawrence J. Siskind

America's First Family
This was the first real week of withdrawal. On Dec. 8, HBO's "The Sopranos" ended its fourth season. Before us lie nine long months without a fix. Now, at long last, we have the time to consider why the life of a New Jersey mobster has mesmerized America's upper middle class.
Terry Diggs

Village Women Threaten Nudity in Oil Standoff
William W. Bedsworth examines the recent incident at an oil terminal in Nigeria, where unarmed village women held hundreds of Chevron Texaco workers hostage -- by threatening to remove their clothes should the workers try to leave. Should this seem strange to you, remember that this is the same country where recently there was rioting over the Miss World pageant.
William W. Bedsworth

A Footnote Most Foul
When Michael Wilkins agreed to serve as local counsel for a Michigan insurance company, he had no idea that the case would land him in deep trouble with his state supreme court. And when he submitted his client's brief, he never expected that a mildly aggressive footnote would get him clocked with a 30-day suspension. Every lawyer knows stories about thin-skinned judges -- but the Indiana Supreme Court opinion in In re Wilkins takes judicial hubris to a new extreme.
Steven Lubet

Making a Material Witness Disappear
Stephen S. Pearcy poses a hypothetical situation: How should an attorney advise a Middle Eastern client to act when that client overhears a possible terrorist plot? Particularly in the face of recent situations where people have been detained indefinitely for simply being identified as material witnesses?
Stephen S. Pearcy

Silence Is ... Well, Golden
William W. Bedsworth has found a settlement so completely beyond his ability to comprehend that he's afraid it may also be beyond his ability to describe. The settlement in question? A British rock musician agreeing to pay "six figures" to the estate of a dead composer in settlement of the composer's estate's lawsuit against him -- a suit that claimed he had plagiarized ... silence?
William W. Bedsworth

The Judicial Council Stretches Out
On July 1, the Judicial Council, in issuing its "Ethics Standard for Arbitrators in Contractual Arbitration," set about revolutionizing arbitration of contract disputes in California. Much controversy has been stirred by the novel extra-constitutional procedure under which these standards were promulgated. Even more concern, however, has centered on the extraordinarily prolix draftsmanship of the standards.
Francis O. Spalding

A Sea Change for Sentencing?
The death penalty is dead in Vermont, at least in the courtroom of Judge William Sessions. Sessions is the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont and, not insignificantly, a vice chairman of the U.S. Sentencing Commission. Following recent Supreme Court precedent, he held on Sept. 24 that the death penalty violates the Fifth and Sixth Amendments. Striking down the federal death penalty is obviously significant. But the decision is even more momentous than that.
Mark H. Allenbaugh

The Tonga Trust Fund
Much of the best work ever turned out by the California Court of Appeal was written by Justice Robert Gardner. After retiring from the Fourth District -- under duress -- he landed on his feet as the chief justice of the High Court of American Samoa. William W. Bedsworth contrasts Robert Gardner's case with that of Jesse Bogdonoff -- a guy who handled the transition from Mainland Suit to South Seas Mucky-Muck with considerably less aplomb.
William W. Bedsworth

Prop 51: The Pay-to-Play Proposition
It is not every day that state lawmakers publicly brand initiative proponents "pimps" or threaten them with criminal prosecution, but Proposition 51, the superficially appealing "Traffic Congestion Relief and Safe School Bus Act," is not your typical initiative.
Cathleen Chapman

Splitting the Bonds Ball
What can two warring claimants do with a million-dollar baseball? Agree to donate the prize to charity? Have a fist fight and the winner gets the ball? Compromise at mediation so that each comes out a "partial" winner? Nah. In this day of school shootings, sniper killings, terrorist bombings, poverty, economic turmoil and an impending war, it's no surprise that the parties involved in the baseball brawl chose to go to court, where there will be a declared winner and a declared loser.
Jerry Spolter

Suits and Strikes
With the Giants entering the World Series for the first time since the Loma Prieta earthquake, it's the perfect time to ask: Why does baseball hold such allure for some lawyers? Are there some fundamental similarities between law and baseball that can teach us some deep inner truths about either -- or both?
Karl Olson

Gods and Godlings
According to contributing writer William W. Bedsworth, the following column is actually going to have some redeeming social value -- not a whole lot, but some. It starts with an odd question about an unusual sentence from a published 9th Circuit opinion: When's the last time you read an opinion in which a court found it necessary to describe the legal position of the "humans?"
William W. Bedsworth

Breaking a Bad Habit
Matthew Cavanaugh, a first-year member of the Board of Governors of the State Bar of California, is about to attend the State Bar's annual meeting. As a self-described non-Bar-junkie "outsider" on the State Bar's governing board, he wants to encourage you to vote for change -- and an end to shenanigans.
Matthew Cavanaugh

My God, You Mean There's a Sequel?
William W. Bedsworth revisits the case of 84-year-old gazillionaire Kirk Kerkorian and his bizarre child-support dispute. He's been sued for child support in the amount of $10,667.67. Per day. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. If you can spend the time to negotiate all the twists and turns -- which include a fake DNA paternity test, a supermodel and a lawsuit over dental floss -- you'll be rewarded with a practice tip.
William W. Bedsworth

A Challenge to San Francisco's Law Firms
The Bar Association of San Francisco's minority law student scholarship selection program got off to a good start. When the initial call went out to the legal and business community to sponsor a scholarship, firms and companies responded admirably. But now the program has faltered. The cost has been the loss of dozens of students who, through their diverse lives and experiences, would have enormously enriched the collective wealth of our own knowledge and wisdom.
Richard Zitrin

Iraq for Lawyers
Has George W. Bush "made the case" for toppling Saddam Hussein? Those asking the question, of course, think they already know the answer. By asking, they mean to imply President Bush has failed to make the case. Well, if foreign policy is to be subjected to legal tests, here's a better question to ask: If Hussein managed to inflict an attack on our population because the government failed to take pre-emptive action, would George Bush be liable for negligence?
Lawrence J. Siskind

High Noon in Texas
No populace -- and certainly no people who relish playing cowboy as much as Texans do -- can long ignore an act of resistance that is so clearly the stuff of the quintessential Western: In every frontier classic, the time comes when a decent man must ask himself why he has acquiesced in an obvious evil -- and whether he has the courage to challenge what he knows to be wrong.
Terry Diggs

Connecting the Dots
The Bush administration has recently been accused of failing to "connect the dots," referring to its apparent failure to piece together scattered fragments of information into a coherent picture of the threat of the Sept. 11 attack. Those "dots" were subtle, ambiguous and intermixed with static. But today there are other "dots" out there. Unlike the pre-9/11 "dots," these are blatantly visible, impossible to miss, conspicuous splotches.
Lawrence J. Siskind

The Bedsworth Pygmy Hippo Jailbreak Rule
It turns out you are not allowed to keep hippopotami in your back yard. There seems to be some law against it, enforced by the Fish and Game people. William W. Bedsworth doesn't know which is more surprising: the fact there are people who violate this law or the fact that someone correctly foresaw that there could ever be a need for a law regulating hippos in back yards. How do we get laws like that? How do you convince legislators such laws are necessary?
William W. Bedsworth

Clifford Chance, You’ve Gone Too Far!
They say the British have invaded the American legal market. That's not the half of it. Lawrence J. Siskind takes a look at how the recent events involving Clifford Chance seem to be tranforming his whole world -- colleagues, his local bar and even his family -- into something from across the pond.
Lawrence J. Siskind

Why We Can't Tear Our Eyes Away From the Dog-Maul Case
The public obsession with San Francisco's dog-mauling case suggests that we need to spend more time thinking about what trials really do. Why did a crime that is hardly extraordinary -- failing to control a dangerous dog -- become a subject of such intense fascination? And what role did law play in stimulating a cultural spectacle? The answer is as simple as a salutation -- "Good evening, Clarice."
Terry Diggs

'Not That I Recall'
According to William W. Bedsworth our mother tongue -- specifically the American legislative dialect -- is the single most effective engine of entertainment known to man. Take, for example, the indecent conduct law of the state of Maine, which seems like a fairly simple statute. There were some complications, however, in the case of the police officer who observed two young women running down the street in the buff.
William W. Bedsworth

The Fear Factor
The First Amendment respects no ideology. Those it defends today it offends tomorrow. The same constitutional guarantee that permits the NAACP to conduct store boycotts also enables the Ku Klux Klan to spread its hateful message. Those who invoke it for themselves but deny it for others disregard a basic tenet of our Madisonian democracy -- only the people, and not the government, may decide which ideas are acceptable.
Ronald K.L. Collins and Robert Corn-Revere

Taking It Outside
An op-ed spitball fight between State Bar President Karen Nobumoto and dissident Bar Governor Matt Cavanaugh has made it a lousy two weeks for the Bar. The latest embarrassment began when the "California Bar Journal" rejected a delicately titled Cavanaugh critique -- "Flushing Dues Down the Toilet"-- for publication. Nobumoto says the article contained "numerous inaccuracies," was "possibly actionable" and "made personal attacks on board and staff members." So Cavanaugh ran it in the Los Angeles Daily Journal.
George M. Kraw

Reasonable Accommodations for Disabilities, Not the Disabled
The Americans with Disabilities Act requires employers to make "reasonable accommodations" for disabled persons. In April, the U.S. Supreme Court helped define the scope of the reasonable accommodation requirement in US Airways v. Barnett. David J. Reis and Dipanwita Amar say the decision outlines the important distinction that an employer must accommodate a person's disability, not the disabled person more generally.
David J. Reis and Dipanwita Amar

Where Trademarked Brands Won't Work
Just weeks after Sept. 11, the Bush administration unleashed a novel weapon in the war against terrorism. Charlotte Beers, a prominent figure on Madison Avenue, was appointed undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs. Beers and the State Department may believe that the war on terrorism can be won by branding American values as if they were commercial trademarks -- but they are bound to be disappointed.
Lawrence J. Siskind

The Hollings Bill Doesn't Compute
Amid all the vexing legal dilemmas that have been spawned as copyright owners try to secure their rights in a suddenly digital world, a refreshingly simple issue has finally emerged. Whether you believe that this country should be tightening copyright protections online or loosening them, you should oppose the Hollywood- and record industry-endorsed bill introduced in March by Sen. Ernest Hollings.
Roger Parloff

Conflicting Interests
Feeling the heat from the Davis administration lobbying scandals, state Attorney General Bill Lockyer grudgingly returned $50,000 in campaign contributions to Oracle last week.
George M. Kraw

Cybersquatters Caught in Spider Webs
Last month, the Fifth Circuit affirmed a summary judgment for Ernest & Julio Gallo Winery on its claims of cybersquatting and trademark dilution against Spider Webs Ltd. for registration and use of the domain name "ernestandjuliogallo.com."
Robert Burlingame

Sue Your Way to Happiness
Every day, the constitutional rights of thousands, perhaps millions, of Californians are being violated. How? Through happiness deprivation. Despite a national perception of Californians as being naively carefree, concerned only by the effect of sun on hair, many of us experience fleeting moments of doubt and anxiety, thereby frustrating our constitutional right to pursue and obtain happiness.
P.D. Witte

Wax, Oil, Pain Relievers and Puffery
he limits and liabilities regarding advertising about one's own products and services or the products and services of another has been and continues to be a source of great confusion and misunderstanding. Commercial companies rely upon advertising to be their primary link with the public, yet they frequently remain unclear as to what can be claimed or represented without risk of liability.
By Eric L. Wesenberg and Cynthia A. Wickstrom

Who Killed Dot-Com?
Don't invest in dot-coms!" Pets.com's sock puppet told Good Morning America, when asked what advice he had for investors shortly after the puppet's company filed for bankruptcy in November 2000. "Now he tells us," flashed through the heads of millions of viewers. Pets.com had raised $82.5 million in an initial public offering only nine months earlier.
By George M. Kraw

Happy Easter, Case Dismissed
I see where the Messiah has lost his case in the Michigan Superior Court. Damn. I was really kinda pulling for Him to win this one. The Messiah turns out to be Chad Gabriel DeKoven. This has come as kind of a surprise to many of us, who thought He might appear as someone without a felony record.
By William W. Bedsworth

A Public Man, a Private Life
To those who knew Byron White, who died last week two months before his 85th birthday, the obituary accounts of what the Associated Press called his storybook life were accurate without being true. The facts were all there -- multiple valedictorianships, Kennedys, independent voting on the Supreme Court -- but in many respects, the man was missing.
By Dennis J. Hutchinson

Treason to the Law
When Clarence Darrow was accused of trying to bribe two jurors during the McNamara brothers case, he used all his rhetorical skills to obtain his acquittal in one trial and a hung jury in the second. But historical evidence -- what Darrow biographer Geoffrey Cowan calls "almost certain guilt" -- shows that Darrow did exactly what he was indicted for and that he got away with it. Contemporaries who were friendly to Darrow and knew his tactics believed he bribed witnesses and jurors in other cases.
By George M. Kraw

An Overly Punitive Sentencing Scheme
I don't know much about Dr. Ira Gore Jr. What I do know comes courtesy of the Supreme Court: He used to drive a BMW, he sued when he learned that the automaker repainted his new car before selling it to him, and his lawyer persuaded a jury to award him $4 million in punitive damages. I also don't know how much help Gore has ever given to homeless people or heroin addicts. But I'm sure he would be glad to know that his Alabama case might help free some of California's sorriest prisoners.
By Evan P. Schultz

The Law of Intended Consequences
As it pries into the Enron scandal, Congress has entered one of its finger-pointing phases. Before this phase is over, lawmakers should remember to point right into the mirror. While the Enron culprits, whoever they are, embraced greed with particular enthusiasm, their greed was given a huge assist by a federal law passed in 1996 -- the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act.
By Abner J. Mikva

The Parking Chase
When pop culture last took a sustained look at American legal education, audiences didn't like what they saw. "I train your mind," Professor Charles Kingsfield (John Houseman) intones in The Paper Chase. "You come in here with a skull full of mush, and you leave thinking like a lawyer." That result -- as James Bridges' 1973 film made all too clear -- is far from a good thing.
By Terry Diggs

Deregulating the State Bar
Do you remember Gov. Pete Wilson's 1998 dismissal of the State Bar's Board of Governors, after he vetoed their dues bills and shut off the lights in the Palazzo di Bar? "You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing lately… . Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!" Well, actually that was what Cromwell said to the Long Parliament, but the words capture our former governor's sentiments about the befuddled and beleaguered Bar.
By George M. Kraw

Tide Is Turning on Business Bribery
Most people would agree that bribery has a corrosive effect on international commerce and that the practice of bribery introduces monetary inefficiencies into commercial transactions. Despite this, it's been practiced for years -- sometimes by people who would readily agree with the preceding sentence.
By John W. Brooks

Spousal Privilege
Virginia Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, recently published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal that expressed sympathy for Charles Pickering Sr., President Bush's now-defeated nominee to the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
By Steven Lubet

Post Post-Impressionist Impressions
Way, way high up on the disconcertingly long list of Things I Know Nothing About, you will find the entry "art." I am an unregenerate Philistine. If I had been the Nazi general in charge of looting Russia, all those priceless art treasures would have been safe. I would have been the guy shouting, "Forget the Chagalls and the Falconets, grab those doll-within-a-doll-within-a-doll things; those are valuable."
By William W. Bedsworth

The Sidney Tablet
Three thousand years ago on the sands of Sinai, the Jews built and worshipped a golden calf. This was an act of very poor judgment. Only three months earlier, the Lord had delivered them from Egypt. He had parted the Red Sea, drowned the Egyptian army, and fed the Children of Israel with manna. Only 40 days earlier, He had specifically instructed them through Moses not to worship other gods.
By Lawrence J. Siskind

Deliberate Ignorance
What lawyers don't know can hurt them considerably when a client becomes a scandal. In a public humiliation rarely visited upon prominent corporate attorneys, six senior lawyers from Enron and Vinson & Elkins were dragged before a House subcommittee last week to explain why they didn't do more to prevent the company's collapse.
By George M. Kraw

Why Be Public?
During the boom, scores of companies went public and reached valuations in the billions of dollars. Today, their market values may look like a venture capital investment. Analysts ignore them. SEC reports may now make their customers nervous, give their competitors ammunition, and make them the butt of media jokes. Why should these issuers remain public?
By Michael Prozan

Copyrighting Federalism
Today's quiz: What do Sonny Bono, gun-toting school kids, battered women and members of the Geritol generation have in common? Answer: If Stanford Law professor Lawrence Lessig gets his way, the Supreme Court will kneecap a copyright law with the same constitutional blackjack it recently used to take down laws involving those other groups.
By Evan P. Schultz

Zoning Out in Muncie
Henry David Thoreau once said, "It is not worthwhile to go around the world to count the cats in Zanzibar." It's a good thing Thoreau didn't know my mother. If he had, he never would have spent all that time hanging out at Walden Pond. He would have gone to Zanzibar, seen the cats, and dropped the writing thing like a hot rock.
By William W. Bedsworth

Delayed Reaction
Stock option reform? New 401(k) restrictions? Stricter rules for cheerily conflicted lawyers? Silicon Valley corporate cognoscenti consider the suggestions as valuable as Webvan options.
By George M. Kraw

'Someone Will Pay for This'
Human nature demands that there be someone to blame and then punish when we are harmed. This is what the prosecution of John Walker Lindh, and the entire national clamor for his head, is all about. If we had Osama bin Laden to prosecute, Lindh would be just a tiny newspaper item back near the used car ads. Instead, he serves as our surrogate bin Laden. We have seen this kind of search for scapegoats before.
By Peter Keane

The Tales They Tell
Possibly the worst aspect of our long and nasty public defender's race has been that the political sparring has never adequately communicated what public defenders do -- or ought to do. That's unfortunate because public defense is ultimately the antithesis of politics. It is rather -- as Peter Kinoy and Pamela Yates demonstrate in their new San Francisco-shot documentary, Presumed Guilty -- the articulation of the very stories the powerful want least to hear.
By Terry Diggs

War Crime Delusions
Slobodan Milosevic's Balkan war crimes trial will likely continue for years. But the former Serb leader's prosecution has already provided an important lesson -- albeit one that neither his judges nor prosecutors are eager to acknowledge. The threat of a war crimes trial does not deter war criminals.
By George M. Kraw

Twain's Twins
Mainstream culture -- and especially legal culture -- hypes Black History Month with no little irony: After all, black history demands special commemoration largely because the legal and cultural mainstream have been so successful at obliterating it. But there are even sharper ironies: First, that we owe much of what we know of slavery's survivors to the most popular mainstream writer of his day; and second, that the sharpest critique of law's hypocrisy toward race is the story of a lawyer.
By Terry Diggs

A Matter of Choice
The dispute over school choice in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, scheduled for argument Feb. 20, is perhaps the most watched case on the U.S. Supreme Court's docket this term. But the high degree of scrutiny the case will receive should not keep the court from following through with its recent precedent and upholding the constitutionality of the program being considered.
By Jesse H. Choper and Douglas W. Kmiec

Libertarians and Their Discontents
A couple of seasons back The Sopranos poked fun at earnest citizen Larry Arthur by having him chatter about the menace of crime while assisting a police investigation without knowing its target. The episode then shows him at home reading Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State and Utopia. The book posits a "minimalist state" which in the book's words "allows us, individually or with whom we choose, to choose our life and to realize our ends and conception of ourselves ... aided by the voluntary co-operation of other individuals."
By George M. Kraw

The Plaintiffs Bar's Protection Racket
One of the key issues on the legislative agenda of the plaintiffs bar again this year is restricting the use of protective orders. Two bills that would do this are SB 11 (Escutia) and AB 36 (Steinberg), both of which are strongly opposed by the California Chamber of Commerce.
By Fred Main and Chris Micheli

Between a Rock and a Hard Place
When the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued its opinion in Echazabal v. Chevron U.S.A., in the summer of 2000, it handed employers a "can't-win" scenario. By siding with an Americans with Disabilities Act plaintiff who literally wanted to work to death, the panel complicated life for employers trying to comply with the ADA while also limiting exposure to OSHA and to tort claims by injured workers.
By Scott Lawson and Leah Williams

The Champ's Greatest Fight
Through Will Smith's surprisingly persuasive performance in Ali, the champ is -- again -- larger than life. In Michael Mann's generous biopic, Muhammad Ali is celebrated for his life outside the boxing ring as much as for his victories making him (twice) the world heavyweight champion. Although a decent part of the movie is devoted to Ali's refusal to serve in the Army during the Vietnam War, Ali is curiously opaque on the details of the champ's journey through the legal system. That journey is worth recounting in greater detail.
By Rodger D. Citron

Accounting for Conflicts
Don't make the client's problems your problems" is an old saw of lawyers that applies equally well to CPAs. Violate it and you put your professional practice at risk - which is what Arthur Andersen CEO Joseph Berardino and his 4,700 partners have done in the Enron debacle. Andersen paid tens of millions of dollars in recent years to settle negligence claims for its audits of Waste Management and Sunbeam. The accounting firm's problems arose from its auditors' compliant relationships with management before each company's collapse into financial ignominy.
By George M. Kraw

Divorced from Reality
According to the Los Angeles Times, Kirk Kerkorian, the elderly gentleman described in the first paragraph, is the 46th wealthiest man this side of Alpha Centauri. Forbes estimates his fortune at $6.2 billion, which is noteworthy since, as far as I can determine, he has never played baseball for the San Francisco Giants. He is trying to sell MGM Studios because he thinks he can get $7 billion for it, and he's trying to cut back on cumbersome baubles and trinkets. He is being sued by his ex-wife, Lisa Bonder Kerkorian, whose main complaint seems to be that he came to regard her as a cumbersome bauble and trinket.
By William W. Bedsworth

Safety in Numbers
The attacks of Sept. 11 and the death of thousands of civilians from more than 80 countries have provoked at least two significant, and contradictory, international reactions. The first is the war in Afghanistan in which the United States has emerged as a proactive and successful leader. The second is the global effort to bring those responsible for the crimes committed on Sept. 11 to justice and to prevent future acts of terrorism. Here, unlike the war effort, Washington has been reluctant to engage in a visionary, internationalist leadership role.
By Urs A. Cipolat and Noah B. Novogrodsky

Our Son John
Until John Walker Lindh emerged from a prison basement in Mazar-i-Sharif, Gen-X America had no treason narrative to call its own. Now, thanks to the "American Taliban," slackers can learn what their parents took away from the controversy surrounding Hanoi Jane -- or what their grandparents absorbed from the trials of Alger Hiss or Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. The Xers principal lesson may be that no public inquiry into national loyalty is as much an investigation of conduct as an articulation of mainstream ideology.
By Terry Diggs

'Tribunal' Doesn't Do It Justice
The press tells us that regulations are in draft to fill out the president's Nov. 13 order establishing a military commission to determine the fate of people the government thinks might be terrorists. A special ABA committee just issued a report calling for procedures to provide a full and fair trial, presumptively open proceedings, and defendants' rights to choose lawyers and to have appellate review. The military has also begun building a detention center at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and transporting captured opponents there.
By Judith Resnik

Portraits in Grief, Portraits in Journalism
A few days after Sept. 11, The New York Times began building a remarkable monument to the city's dead. Each day until Dec. 31, the Times published vignettes of the people killed, under the title "Portraits in Grief." The title was always a misnomer. The Portraits were anything but grieving. Instead, they celebrated the idiosyncratic traits of the people who, before Sept. 11, lived the extraordinary lives of ordinary New Yorkers. Thanks to the Portraits, they can always be remembered that way.
By Lawrence J. Siskind

Terrorists, Traitors and the Courts
Zacarias Moussaoui, the Franco-Moroccan charged with being a co-conspirator in the Sept. 11 attacks, was arraigned last week. Facing a possible death sentence, he refused to stand when the judge entered, and refused to plead. Trying to turn a trial into farce is not a new tactic. The al Qaeda training manual for "overthrowing godless societies" advises Islamic militants to use civil liberties and the institutions of democracies to disrupt investigations and judicial proceedings. Attorneys and others who blindly assist them in doing so become what Lenin called "useful idiots."
By George M. Kraw

New and Improved!
Despite the economic slowdown, 2002 is not the year for lawyers who have business in the courts of appeal to cut costs by continuing to use a 2001 rule book. The California Rules of Court relating to appeals are undergoing a major overhaul, with the first set of new rules (Cal. R. Ct. 1-18) having taken effect on New Year's Day.
By Paul D. Fogel and Benjamin G. Shatz

Snow-Blind
William Bedsworth hasn't worked out all the kinks yet, but he's decided that time is of the essence since ski season is upon us. Having done enough accumulation of data to be able to postulate the basic hypothesis, this seems like an appropriate time to set out his initial findings: Snow causes brain damage.
By William W. Bedsworth

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
When James Taylor announced that his first post-Sept. 11 release would be a holiday song -- in fact, a 57-year-old melody that one critic dubbed "the most melancholy Christmas carol ever written" -- music industry executives questioned Taylor's rationality. But Taylor insisted that "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," which he released this month online, is a song for our time. And indeed, it is.
By Terry Diggs

Who Murdered Myrna Opsahl?
Even before Sept. 11, there should have been zero-tolerance for terrorism, and the dismal rationalizations used to justify it. But it's better late than never for this particular policy. And the crimes of Katherine Soliah, the former pipe bomb enthusiast turned Minnesota matron who now goes by the name of Sara Jane Olson, are a good place to start.
By George M. Kraw

Our Better Half
The unthinkable horrors of Sept. 11 have changed our nation and its people. This nightmarish tragedy that resulted in the loss of so many has also cost us -- perhaps permanently -- the sense of security, optimism, and unlimited possibility that characterizes the American spirit.
By Esther F. Lardent

The Art of the Deal
In September, the Second District Court of Appeal issued what may be the most important legal malpractice case in a generation. Viner v. Sweet, 01 C.D.O.S. 8520, will thoroughly change the dynamics in all negotiations (including settlement negotiations in litigation).
By Kurt W. Melchior

Fighting the Enemy Within
This week, it's time again to tell the story of Pearl Harbor -- until Sept. 11, the site of the most devastating attack on American soil in living memory. But, more importantly these days, it's also time to remember what came about after Dec. 7, 1941 -- the incarceration of 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent and the devolution of American law into a rationalization for racism.
By Terry Diggs

Attorney-Client Privilege, Under Attack
John Ashcroft has spread consternation among those committed to maintaining the rule of law in these troubled and extraordinary times. On Oct. 31, the Federal Register reported that the Justice Department will henceforth eavesdrop upon conversations between detainees and their counsel whenever the attorney general concludes that there is "reasonable suspicion" to believe that these conversations are being used to facilitate terrorism. Defense lawyers and defenders of American civil liberties are up in arms. Are they right to be worried?
By Edna Selan Epstein

The Path to Juvenile Justice
For far too long, San Francisco's juvenile justice system has been failing our kids. Every year, far too many San Francisco teens fall through the cracks. Too many kids are stuck at juvenile hall. Too few kids get the attention, help and opportunities that they need for a real shot at success. We can turn these kids around if we make it a city priority.
By Kimiko Burton

Should Sept. 11 affect U.S. immigration policy?
Before contemplating what will go into America's immigration policy in light of Sept. 11, it's worth appreciating the significance of what won't go into it. We won't rely on judgments, like those of a California state senate committee in 1876, that "the Chinese are inferior to any race God ever made;" they "have no souls to save, and if they have, they are not worth saving."
By Evan P. Schultz

She Walked in Ipanema
Heloisa, who as a young woman inspired "The Girl From Ipanema," never earned a cent from the song. Her husband has been unemployed for the past five years. Their 22-year-old son suffered brain damage as an infant and requires special medical care. When she tried to open a clothing boutique named "The Girl From Ipanema," the heirs of composer Jobim and lyricist Vinicius sued to force her to change the name.
By Lawrence J. Siskind

Putting Enforcement First
In a marked departure from the policy of his predecessor, Federal Trade Commission Chairman Timothy Muris announced last month that the FTC would emphasize enforcement of existing laws over seeking passage of new legislation. Evidencing this shift in focus, Chairman Muris also called for a boost in funding for enforcement of existing privacy laws.
By Devin Gensch

Searching for Guidance
As security experts propose new forms of searches, seizures and surveillance to combat terrorism, civil libertarians will rhetorically rally round the Constitution. But that document does not quite say what most libertarians -- or most judges, for that matter -- think it does. Indeed, the document is far wiser than the standard libertarian line and the conventional judicial interpretation.
By Akhil Reed Amar

Torture by Proxy
To the French, Kenneth Starr is known as the "Ayatollah sexuelle," but after his recent comments in The Washington Post suggesting that we should cast aside traditional civil liberties in the fight against terrorism, just plain "Ayatollah" seems more fitting. According to Starr, five justices of the U.S. Supreme Court have signaled that they would give "heightened deference to the judgments of the political branches with respect to matters of national security," and thus, would be willing to bend the constitutional rules in a case involving terrorism.
By Karen L. Snell

Earth to Palo Alto
What would you do with a 3-year-old company that has never turned an annual profit, is on track to lose a quarter billion dollars and whose recent SEC filings warn that its services might be used for money laundering and financial fraud? If you were the managers and venture capitalists behind Palo Alto's PayPal, you'd take it public.
By George M. Kraw

Depictions of Minors Pose Major Questions
Purveyors of child pornography were hindered in the full expression of their sicko art because it's illegal. It harms those children depicted in sexual situations. The geeky solution was "virtual" kiddy porn: computer-generated images of children having sex. Pornographers' problem solved. Except that's not the way Congress saw such creativity when it passed the Child Pornography Prevention Act (CPPA) in 1996.
By Paul Butler

Jerk of the Year: 2001
It's always the way. As the year winds down, the competition for "Jerk of the Year" heats up. Just when I get to thinking the human hippocampus might include moral imperatives more fully developed than those of a rabid weasel, our species demonstrates that impressive finishing kick that always gets us to hell weeks -- even months -- ahead of even the most deranged and malignant dolphins and squirrels and cacti.
By William W. Bedsworth

The Big Kahuna Takes Care of Business
Many of you have been expecting our firm to weather the current downturn by taking aggressive steps to lay off associates. What are you, nuts? Why should I lay off lawyers who cost one-third or one-fifth of what you do? The clients come here because of me. Do I still have to explain to you how leverage works?
By George M. Kraw

Who's Afraid of Osama bin Laden?
In times of war (yes, we are at war), even governments engaged in noble aims (and yes, our government's aims are noble) make mistakes. Last week, our government made a significant one. In the wake of the taped remarks by Osama bin Laden broadcast right after the U.S. and Britain commenced air strikes, White House National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice urged the five major television news organizations to refrain from airing unedited messages by bin Laden.
By Lawrence J. Siskind

'I Thought I Saw a Kulturkampf'
Our current patriotic zeal notwithstanding, there are still a few good men the Marines won't be looking for. In fact, Osama bin Laden has done little to alter a legal policy that keeps homosexuals who love their country from fighting for it: A post-Sept. 11 stay in discharge proceedings isn't so much a renunciation of Department of Defense biases as a recognition that the brass is otherwise occupied these days.
By Terry Diggs

A Short History of the Public Relative's Office
Looking back, it probably should have been obvious that U. S. v. Female Juvenile (00-50306) (9th Cir. 2001) was a watershed decision when it was published in June of 2001. The headline alone in one legal publication, "Feds Must Notify Parent Before Interrogating Child, Panel Says," should have been so obviously a landmark extension of Miranda as to alert the legal community to the impending deluge.
By William W. Bedsworth

Milosevic and the Empty Chair Defense
In the early 1980s there was a criminal trial at the San Francisco Hall of Justice that became a legend. The case itself was nothing special, breaking into a parked car. The accused represented himself and, just before jury selection, he began screaming insults at the judge. He was banished to the adjoining holding cell until he promised to behave. The trial started with the judge on the bench, the assistant district attorney at the prosecution table and no one at the defense table.
By Peter Keane

First, do no Harm
Hundreds of children of firefighters and police lost parents in the World Trade Center destruction. I thought about them as I watched four young cops shopping for flags in downtown San Jose shortly after Sept. 11. Police and firefighters -- as much as soldiers and sailors -- are our first line of defense.
By George M. Kraw

War of the Words
erhaps no event in modern history has highlighted the power of words as has the attack on the World Trade Center and the ensuing "war" on terrorism. First, President Bush blundered by calling for a "crusade" against terrorism, a move any high-school student with a "C" in world history would have counseled against.
By Bill Hancock

The Back of the Class
Unless you can fly the B-1 or rebuild an infrastructure, the best thing you can do for Uncle Sam these days may be to hone your skills at analyzing media messages and identifying the political agendas they advance. As it happens, this week's installment of Golden Gate University School of Law's film-law series offers a welcome exercise of the critical faculties.
By Terry Diggs

The Trial of Osama bin Laden
The president of the United States has demanded that Afghanistan's ruling Taliban turn over Osama bin Laden to face justice. A wise adage counsels us to be careful what we ask for, lest we get it. For the arrival of the world's most wanted man on our shores would pose a threat to our free society as grave as that of the suicide bombers who brought down the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Bin Laden at large abroad permits our government a latitude of language and action that his capture would not.
By Dennis Riordan

The Importance of Being Earnest
As you read this, highly dedicated human beings are developing plans, trying to kill you. Sept. 11 has been compared to Dec. 7, 1941, the Day of Infamy. But after Dec. 7, no further shots in anger were ever fired at Pearl Harbor. The United States is not Pearl Harbor. It is wartime London, the city George Orwell inhabited when he wrote the words quoted above. London had been bombed and knew it would be bombed again. We will be too.
By Lawrence J. Siskind

America Alone Must Write Rules for War
As decisively as the bombing of Pearl Harbor ended the debate on neutrality in World War II, last week's terrorist attacks should end the domestic legal debate about who makes the rules of war and who has jurisdiction to enforce them. The idea that the American government would acquiesce to international or foreign courts trying American officials or military personnel for official acts is unthinkable in the aftermath of the World Trade Center mass murders.
By George M. Kraw

A Patriot's Dilemma
Make no mistake about it. I want to support my government -- my country -- in the wake of last week's horrific terrorist attacks. But like many, I feel a sense of unease that transcends the fear that my loved ones or I will suddenly perish in a terrorist attack. I fear for my country in a more fundamental way.
By Bill Hancock

In Time of War, the Laws Are Silent
Last Tuesday, an online discussion among law professors was interrupted with urgent news: "Folks, for goodness sake please turn on your TV or radio. Both World Trade towers are gone, part of the Pentagon is gone, hijacked suicide planes, hundreds dead, all air traffic grounded, second hijacked plane headed toward D.C., crashed in Pa., all air traffic grounded U.S., foreign planes to N.Y. or D.C. being diverted to Canada."
By Evan P. Schultz

Public Worries About Private Matters
The privacy wars have come to Sacramento. Arrayed against state Sen. Jackie Speier and several consumer groups are an assortment of banking, insurance and other financial services lobbyists, arguing over whether the federal Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act sets an adequate privacy standard. Should you care? Until recently, this seemed to be a problem for the geeks to work out.
By John Hancock

A Moral Imperative
If you can't make it in business, try law. That seems to be the sentiment of thousands of dot-com refugees now enrolling in law school. Applications for spots in this fall's entering class were up 5.6 percent -the largest increase in more than a decade, The New York Times reported. And a bigger wave of J.D. hopefuls is on its way; 18 percent more sat for the LSAT in June than the year before. If you have a friend or relative who is considering this path, you should pull him or her aside and ask: "What the hell are you doing?"
By Ted Allen

Leveling the Field
When President George W. Bush sits down with Mexican President Vicente Fox at the White House today, the U.S. president will have an opportunity to shed light on the most persistently debated question of his presidency: Just how compassionate is his brand of conservatism? At the top of the agenda for this summit meeting is the formulation of new U.S. policy toward more than 3 million documented and undocumented Mexicans currently living in this country.
By E. Joshua Rosenkranz

Domestic Dispute
Is it possible that there's anything new to be said about the Cold War Fifties? About the notorious policies that limited scientific research in the name of "traditional" values? About the famous education wars that permitted the banning of books and ideas that were offensive to conservative censors?
By Terry Diggs

Palais de Justice - or Death Row
There is a plaque in Monroeville, Ala., that reads: "The legal profession has in Atticus Finch, a lawyer-hero who knows how to use power and advantage for moral purposes, and who is willing to stand alone as the conscience of the community."
By Barry Helft

The Wrong Tack
At first, the news from Chicago seemed to be that the American Bar Association would adopt proposals to permit lawyers unilaterally to disclose clients' confidences where the lawyers suspect financial crime or fraud. With all due respect to the well-respected individuals who made the proposals, they would have undermined clients, lawyers and the American legal system.
By James P. Schaller

Overregulated And Overrated
A new State Bar report finds that almost 90 percent of consumer complaints are against lawyers in firms of 10 attorneys or less. The Bar is trumpeting its study as vindication against charges that it unfairly targets small firm and solo lawyers, because the percentage of small and solo practitioners prosecuted roughly equals the percentage of complaints received against them.
By George M. Kraw

Justice Goes Global
The past three weeks have been good ones for international law and global cooperation. In a series of landmark events, international courts and organizations have affirmed the emerging principles of international accountability and global responsibility. The trend toward internationalist reasoning and collective decision-making is particularly noteworthy because it stands in stark contrast to President Bush's apparent policy of prioritizing narrow "national" interests over pressing global issues.
By Benjamin Novogrodsky and Urs Cipolat

Labor Shakes the City
Sometime during Labor Fest 2001, the City's month-long celebration of its history as a union town, San Franciscans may wonder why their struggles have never produced a cinema classic on par with On the Waterfront. But film does commemorate the impact of law on the lives of the local rank and file: In fact, the movie that gave the City its theme song also produced a testament to a generation of West Coast laborers who were determined to use New Deal legislation to improve their working conditions.
By Terry Diggs

Making Our Court a More Appealing Place
Albert Camus is supposed to have speculated that it would be easier to redeem a man steeped in vice and crime than one steeped in business. Well, I've been steeped in vice and crime for 30 years (15 in the Orange County DA's office, 10 on the trial bench, and five here) and after spending the last two hours "steeped" in business, I've come to the conclusion Camus was right.
By William W. Bedsworth

Our Prayers are Answered
Gary Condit couldn't be digging himself into a bigger hole if he used a backhoe. But he's had a little help his from friends. While the Modesto Congressman remains ensconced in his personal witness protection program, new questions continue to pile up about his relationship with missing intern Chandra Levy and his conduct after her disappearance.
By George M. Kraw

Free the Common Word
In the world of trademark, genericness is cause for capital punishment. Once deemed generic, a mark can never qualify for protection. Indeed, a generic "mark" isn't really a mark at all. Courts are understandably reluctant to impose this severe sentence on disputed marks.
By Lawrence J. Siskind

Memories of Mosk
Friends and colleagues of Stanley Mosk share their memories.

Questions for Congressman Condit
Congressman Gary Condit must believe his public responsibilities end where potential personal embarrassment begins. After questions arose about his relationship with a missing woman, he became more concerned about spinning the story than working with her family.
By George M. Kraw

Our Prayers are Answered
The government can't treat religious groups differently and worse than otherwise similar nonreligious groups -- whether in regulating speech or action, or in distributing government benefits.
By Anthony R. Picarello Jr.

Going on a Rescue Mission
When two S.F. lawyers and a paralegal signed on to a trip to Thailand organized by the International Justice Mission, lying awake before dawn in an Akha village near the Burmese border wasn't exactly what they had in mind. From there, IJM's Thailand office takes on the country's multibillion-dollar sex industry.
By Kathy McBride