33rd / 424th District Courts

The following example will be used as reference for future discovery disputes. :-)

It is with pleasure that I appoint Stephanie Larsen as Poet Laureate of the 33rd Judicial District. The final decision is based on the following poem written by her on the spur of the moment with what some may consider to be divine inspiration:

So I got it for them. This jury is the most animated I've encountered. As is my custom, I'll tease with them some to loosen them up from the arduous task they face, but perhaps I've overdone it with this bunch. At about 2pm the following notes were handed to the bailiff, and thence to me, each from a different juror:

Golf Tournament Raises $24,000 for California Drug Court | Demand Treatment! | JoinTogether.org

Golf Tournament Raises $24,000 for California Drug Court.

TOUGH LOVE vs. SPANKING

Most of America's populace thinks it very improper to spank children, so some experts have tried other methods to control my kids when they have one of "those moments".

One that they found very effective is to just take the child for a car ride and talk.

They usually calm down and stop misbehaving after the little car ride together.

(Updated 4/1/05)

I can't believe I've not been keeping track of these, but better late than never. This item will be updated from time to time.

Lifted from the Newsweek Technology & Science page is the following list of excellent tips for preventing identity theft. Click on the link to read the entire article, then do your clients a favor and pass these tips along in a newsletter:

Before I discuss this topic, I want to make it clear that while I would personally appreciate a raise, the issue is much larger than just any one judge. The bottom line on judicial compensation is that the Texas judiciary will steadily decline in the quality of its judges if the pay continues its downward spiral -- downward in comparison not only to other large and progressive states, but also in comparison even to the average salary of a 10-year lawyer.

We (judges and lawyers alike) frequently deal with the "Objection, 401, 404b, 403" litany and we know intellectually what all that means, but do we have a structure within which to actually "run the traps" on the filter that those sections of the Evidence Code provide?

At http://www.jdbliss.com/ is a site worth visiting. It's about the personal side of lawyering -- about the 'take care of yourself' side which most of us leave until we hit a personal crisis of some sort.

In case you don't get enough of it from the news media, the Peterson trial is extensively covered, analyzed, dissected, editorialized, commented upon and otherwise reported about on the CourtTV Peterson site. That link is to the jury blog itself but there are many links in the sidebar.

A 'web page archive' is a page that is no longer an active page on the web but which has been archived by a search engine. Google does this and there is a site whose sole function is to archive web pages.

You hear all the time that there are too many lawyers.  As we know, that varies from place to place, but overall could this be? Here is an article  from the University of Illinois -  Urbana/Champaign asking Are There Too Many Lawyers?, which was presented by the Pre-Law and Law School Admissions office. While many stats are presented I can't figure out what the real point was of the article.

You may recall my diatribe against the deprecating humor about lawyers. Just say 'no' to that but here is some genuine legal humor. It's billed as 'Notes from the (Legal) Underground -- A weblog that asks the question--Why are lawyers so stuffy?'

We lawyers and judges are "wordsmiths" by training and trade. Words are important and how they are used can be quite interesting. Even in legal briefs. Why are those called "briefs" anyway? Oh, but I digress.

I really don't want this venue to become politically charged, but the following has some awful truths with a tad bit of humor.

About Physicians
A) The number of physicians in the U.S. is 700,000.

The House passed legislation that would prevent federal courts, including the Supreme Court, from hearing cases challenging the words "under God," a part of the pledge for the past 50 years. See House Blocks Court on Pledge Case Rulings By JIM ABRAMS Associated Press Writer (Source: http://news.findlaw.com/ap/a/w/1153/9-24-2004/20040924000017_29.html).

This could make a huge change on the Court. At our recent annual judicial conference we had a wonderful analysis of this by Professor Erwin Chemerinsky, noted constitutional law scholar and media commentator on legal issues who is the Alston & Bird Professor of Law at Duke Law School. He does an awesome talk on current constitutional issues and is able to talk about every case one ever heard of and not only analyze the decision but explain precisely why each justice voted as they did and trace backward through other cases that predicted how the justice would vote. It was an amazing hour and a half with no notes at all!

This is a test posting via the 'webmaster' account. This test will demonstrate how blogs from other users appear on the site. Testing. Testing.