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January 17, 2011
My Marrakesh: No "Ordinary Life".
...don’t live an ordinary life--anyone can do that. Be brave. Live a life filled with adventure.
It's short. Don't divert its natural exciting course with cookie-cutter moves--followed by years of regretful reveries and those awful "what ifs". In a popular movie of the 1970s, Ruth Gordon, a wonderful writer and actress, quipped in character to a young man named Harold 60 years her junior: "If you don't go out there and try, young man, you won't have much to talk about in the locker room".
Gordon, in that movie, and in real life, played a dame, advisor, teacher, elder seer. Grande Dame. Great Lady.
Ah, Great Ladies. I had two very strong, vibrant grandmothers. Each urged authenticity and drive in all things. Each had very strong children: my parents. My grandmothers even greatly liked each other. Both were well-traveled, well-educated and well-read. Both had long lives. One died very recently, and the other when I was a senior in high school. The two are always in my head; I still seek them out.
Great Ladies are still around if you look hard enough. But we know that a certain breed of them--the ones with lives that straddle the mind-numbing changes of the last 80 to 100 years--are vanishing every day. Our peripatetic friend Maryam had at least one of her grandmothers taken from the same inspired and celestial fabric as mine. Do visit today's My Marrakesh and "Essaouira: And a Tale of Jean and a Life Filled with Adventure". Don't be envious what you read there. But do change your life, if you need to.
Photo by Maryam
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Hermann the German: Tucson, Guns and Sarah Palin.
The New Congressional Redistricting in the Wild West. Probably not. So we always listen to the Berlin-based Hermann the German at Observing Hermann for one possible German reality check on America. He even speaks English. Writes it. Seems to likes tall blondes named Greta, Rolanda and Sigfreda. And Hermann's right a lot, friends. See his "Sarah Palin?"
Above: "Hermann's Triumph at Teutoburg Forest", Johann Janssen (1870-73). Another Hermann the German, or Arminius, in September of 9 AD, trouncing Roman legions. What? You're a proud Western professional, businessperson or leader? You don't know about Arminius? Then finish your education. Or at least start one.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 03:05 PM | Comments (0)
Martin Luther King Day: BR #294 by A Public Defender, "Gideon".
The bright and way feisty if thin-skinned anonymous young guy "Gideon", who writes the fine A Public Defender, has a very first-rate BR #294 you can see right here. Class Factor: High. Lots. Humor: Much. Forced PC Compliance: None. Gooey Hallmark MLK Stuff for People Not Alive in 1968: Mercifully Virtually None. Blawg Review is now in its 6th year. Well done. And well done.
If King has not been killed, he would have turned 82, two days ago, on the 15th.
Eighty-two is the same age as my own father, who told me about it at the time, and who is still very much alive and thriving. My Dad was then 39. I remember exactly where I was when I was told, and what time of the day it was. Although my father was and is no liberal, he--like everyone sane and decent--grieved over what had happened.
For months and months, even in most southern Ohio, the balcony stills of that Memphis hotel were etched in the minds of anyone old enough to read and watch television. We had all been through this kind of thing before, in 1963, in Dallas. And later in 1968, and just 8 weeks later, it would happen again, at a Los Angeles hotel.
Montgomery, Alabama, September 4, 1958. King was 28.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:58 AM | Comments (0)
My American States: Dudes, Where's My Merit-Based Judge Selection?
Yes--it's the same basic article we always run. Get used to it.
Socially, we are pretty liberal on these folks. No really. Three or four of our firm's friends are elected state judges, or ex-state judges.
We still say hello to them in public--and once even had one to dinner. We would probably not object too terribly strongly if one of our sisters, brothers, sons or daughters very very briefly dated one, probably.
States: Can You Get Off Your Knees, Please? Look, maybe think of it like this: Good Crops, Motherhood, the Flag, Andy Griffith, puppies, selflessness, courage, Beauty, Truth, a thin Marie Osmond, a really good-looking Eleanor Roosevelt, Sweetness, Light, and replacing state judicial elections with merit-based selection in 39 American states.
Let's be clear. Popular election of state judges is beneath: (a) you, (b) your law firm, (c) your family's dog, and (d) your business clients, and especially if you act for businesses who trade nationally or globally. That institution, favored in a majority of states in some form, makes states that still conduct them appear insular and potentially unfair to both American litigants and to non-Americans and their businesses abroad.
With each election cycle campaign donations are driving up the costs. This is, of course, wasteful and inefficient. See "The New Politics of Judicial Elections in the Great Lakes States, 2000–2008" by Justice at Stake. More importantly, the very existence of state laws regulating campaign contributions to candidates running for judicial office send two unintended but lousy messages:
1. Judges, like mayors and congressmen, have "constituents".
2. Justice, like real estate or widgets, is "for sale".
We appreciate that many of the some 10,000 elected American judges were excellent lawyers, and that as jurists they do first-rate, honest, exemplary, and often inspiring work. We have indeed stayed loose and open-minded on this subject.
In fact, 3 or 4 of our firm's friends are elected state judges--or ex-state judges. (Hull even dated one for until she turned 35.) We are gracious. We say hello to them in public--and once even had one to dinner. We would probably not object too strongly if one of our sons or daughters very briefly dated one. But elected benches are by nature glaringly "fishy" to even the most casual observer and especially, it seems to us, in the Midwest and South, and wherever else American Horse Sense abounds.
Merit-based selection, of course, is not perfect. However, it has worked very well for two centuries in American federal courts with a minimum of bad appointments and embarrassments--even if you adjust for the fact that state judges outnumber federal judges (who are appointed for life) by a factor of over 10 to 1. Last year, we followed the U.S. Supreme Court case about a popularly elected state supreme court judge, and campaign money recipient, who failed to disqualify himself in arguably suspect circumstances. In Caperton v. Massey Coal Company (June 8, 2009), the Supreme Court ruled that a West Virginia judge should indeed have disqualified himself from hearing an appeal of a $50 million jury verdict against an a coal company because its CEO had been a major campaign donor.
Judges should not have "constituents"--i.e. law firms, and their clients, who make campaign contributions. Right now, in most American states, they do. And there is no way to dress that up. Generally county-based, American litigation at a state level is already frustratingly local and provincial for "outsider defendants"--businesses from other U.S. states and other nations sued in local state courts--who cannot remove to federal courts, the forums where federal judges can and should protect them from local prejudice.* American states that still hang on to electoral systems look increasingly provincial, classless, and silly from a global perspective. It's time for the States to grow up, and adopt systems of merit-based appointment.
*One reason that federal diversity jurisdiction was created in the first place was because of the Framers’ concern that prejudices of state judges toward out-of-state persons would unfairly affect outcomes in trial courts. Erwin Griswold, Law and Lawyers in the United States, 65 (Cambridge, Harv. Press 1964). Over 200 years later, our current systems in the states make that local prejudice almost inevitable. See also, the interview of General Electric's Mike McIlwrath in July 2009 of Prof. Geoffrey Hazard of Hastings Law School, who addresses why European business really fear U.S. state courts.
(from past posts)
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 12:36 AM | Comments (0)
Salzburg: Mozart, Huns and Lawyers.
St. Peter's cemetery. Catacombs are further down and up in the cliff.
You may dream in American. But you still live in the world. Far from being a museum piece (like Venice, sadly), and being a favorite on the tourist's list of "cute small Alpine cities" (like Kitzbuhel, which IS real perky and cute but less storied) in Europe, Salzburg, Austria is best appreciated by digging deeply, and with a reverence. Celts settled it, and they mined salt. The salt commerce never stopped--and in later centuries barges floated tons and tons of it on the Salzach River to points all over Europe. By the 8th century, salt barges were subject to a toll.
Rome claimed Salzburg around 15 BC. Much later, Charlemagne ate and slept here. It was capital of the Austro-Hungarian territory between 1866 and 1918. And apart from Mozart, art, salt, ancient Celtic culture, St Peter's (above) and restaurants carved into cliffs, this staid Austrian city is home to the International Business Law Consortium, an active group of over 85 first-rate law and accounting firms in strategic cities all over the world, and founded in 1996.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)