When Thomas Jefferson became President in 1801, the fastest means of communication on land was on horseback. If the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is to be believed, nothing whatsoever has changed in the intervening centuries. In this column we consider the court’s decision in Schoenefeld v. Schneiderman, 11-4283-cv, decided April 22, 2016, and the advisory opinion from the New York Court of Appeals (in Schoenefeld v. State of New York, 25 N.Y.3d 22 (2015)), which the Second Circuit had requested—and we contrast the outcome with the reality of law practice in the 21st century.
The facts and background of the case are described by the circuit court as follows:
