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May 03, 2008
France's American-esque president: his tough first year.
Nicolas Sarkozy was elected on May 7, 2007. According to The Economist, in "Sarkozy's France: The Presidency as Theatre", his difficult first year in office can be divided into three acts. In Act II, as we reported in December, the business-oriented President Sarkozy on national television told millions of his countrymen:
The French needed to work harder, he told the country that invented the 35-hour working week. They needed to invest more in brainpower; and the state needed to tax and spend less. [more]
Posted by JD Hull at 11:11 PM | Comments (0)
Ten years of Swerdloff Dot Com
A NYC-residing lawyer and Renaissance man with smarts and wisdom beyond his years reaches a milestone, celebrates.
Posted by JD Hull at 03:22 PM | Comments (0)
London has a new--and different--mayor.
Yesterday in UK local elections, Conservative Party candidate Boris Johnson defeated the Labour Party's incumbent two-term mayor, Ken Livingstone. Labour lost hundreds of council seats in London, northern England and Wales in the party's biggest defeat in 40 years. See Daily Telegraph. Even by Brit standards, which prize oddity, the new London Mayor Johnson, a 43-year-old writer and TV commentator, is a unique fellow. AP: "Eccentric and offensive, London's new mayor boasts a devastating wit but reckless streak".
Posted by JD Hull at 10:52 AM | Comments (0)
May 02, 2008
"No love" in China for foreign corps.
Sorry, Yanks. China does love foreign investment--but it puts managing its populace of 1.4 billion people first. It will not tailor, bend or even explain laws and regs for foreign companies upon demand. WAC? doesn't like it either--but then we have an ugly American streak where U.S. clients doing business abroad are concerned. But listen to these two old China hands. Dan Harris at China Law Blog notes that "Foreign Companies In China Can't Get No Love" and Shanghai-based Rich Brubaker at All Roads Lead to China has this one: "Regulations in China: Are You Prepared? Are Ready? Are You OK?". And see CLB's earlier and related piece, "China Law As A Guessing Game".
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 06:56 PM | Comments (0)
"Yes, they have more money."
Associates are different. So do they really need to market? Back to marketing, selling, clients, serving clients, keeping clients, and keeping clients you like. In a gem we missed last October, our friend Jim Hassett notes that associates, with limited time for marketing, are different from you and I, Ernest.* Also see Jim's post this week: Self-test: How efficient are your business development tactics?, an exercise for partners and senior attorneys.
*From alleged and oft-quoted exchange between F. Scott Fitzgerald and his glib friend Ernest Hemingway.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 06:31 PM | Comments (0)
The decline of the American newspaper?
More on good things to read. London-based The Economist doesn't always love Yanks. But these men and women are clever and often hilarious. They write well enough to make Newsweek and Time seem like that 3rd grade paper about your new dog Sparky. See "On the Brink--Some of America's most venerable newspapers face extinction, unless they evolve".
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 06:19 PM | Comments (0)
May 01, 2008
The Blog Thing--finding good ones.
See at Anne Reed's Deliberations her post "Finding Good Blogs". And for non-U.S. legal blogs, just scroll down the left-hand side of WAC? You'll find them sorted by nations and jurisdictions. We currently have a total of 222.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
The new Wall Street Journal
We know what you mean, sir. Yesterday Broc Romanek got cranky about the "new" Rupert Murdoch-driven Wall Street Journal in "The New Media: Time to Merge with Old Media?". It's at Romanek's TheCorporateCounsel.net Blog. Don't be killing the brand, please.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Labour Day, May Day, Beltane.
If today and in the next few days you have trouble rousting people in Norway, Italy or China on the phone or with e-mail, here's the reason. In many nations of Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa, May 1 is Labour Day, or international workers day.
And a bonus day for all you pagans and druids out there: in parts of Europe, as in the U.S., May Day is also a rite of Spring, including Beltane, still observed by some in Scotland and Ireland.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 06:59 PM | Comments (1)
2007: "Prelude to Famine?"
Is Carolyn Elefant a saucy wordsmith or what? See at Legal Blog Watch her "Am Law 100: 2007 Was a Year to Feast, But Is It a Prelude to Famine?". The new Am Law 100 list is out, where clients can find (a) some of the very best (as in olden days) and (b) some of the most spectacularly mediocre lawyers on earth. Guys, you aren't what you used to be--on either skills or service.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 05:42 PM | Comments (0)
April 30, 2008
Will railroads make a come-back?
With gas at $4 a gallon, it's something to think about. And, hey, Warren Buffett suddenly loves trains. See Reuters article of April 20.
Photo of non-U.S. train
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
The Complete Lawyer goes totally holistic...
...and tries to get you integrated, dude. Which, seriously, is not a bad idea. A whole issue (Vol. 4, No. 3) of Don Hutcheson's great online magazine for lawyers is devoted to "A Sound Mind In A Sound Body". It's Spring, a time for new beginnings and to kick out the jams.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 07:47 PM | Comments (0)
April 29, 2008
Specialization: What moves clients?
See Michelle Golden's article "Defining Who You Are and Who You Aren't = Specializing". And the winner is: "a limited number of really strong things for one group...". Read more.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Elections in America
The election...was not fought over great issues. Few elections are. Questions important to the nation, it is true, were before the public eye--the tariff, land policy, internal improvements--but on these questions there were no clear-cut party stands. It was, rather, chicanery, slippery tactics, and downright falsehoods upon which the politicians relied to win the contest.
--Glyndon Van Deusen, in The Jacksonian Era, 1828-1848, Ch. 2 (Harper & Row, 1963 ed.), discussing the 1828 U.S. presidential election.
Posted by JD Hull at 10:56 AM | Comments (0)
Ken Wilber, this century's philosopher.
In Salon, see You are the river: An interview with Ken Wilber by Steve Paulson. Ken Wilber is no fad. He thinks and writes about the "ultimate reality that science can't touch", who's evolved and who's not, and what's in store for us. He really did amaze us in his 2000 book A Theory of Everything: An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science, and Spirituality. What's weird today is truth tomorrow.
Posted by JD Hull at 09:27 AM | Comments (0)
April 28, 2008
Oh Canada: Blawg Review #157
Toronto-based Michael Fitzgibbon hosts this week's Blawg Review #157 at Thoughts from a Management Lawyer. Fitzgibbon's is one of the most active and consistently fine lawyer sites you could read.
Posted by Brooke Powell at 11:58 PM | Comments (2)
The elected judiciary
The popular election of state judges is a national illness. We Americans are in denial about it. We are so heavily invested in it, and so used to it, that we are even incapable of experiencing the "oh-my-god" embarrassment it ought to cause every day it still exists.
We've mentioned Tocqueville before. If he were alive today, I had argued, Alexis de Tocqueville might very well "like" George W. Bush--as his exemplary American, warts and all. But he would be appalled to learn that 31 of our states still have some form of popular election of judges. The young French author who toured America in 1831 noted that some American states already were in the process of reducing the power and independence of the state judiciary through certain "innovations", and it disturbed him. One was the state legislatures' ability to recall judges. Another:
Some other state constitutions make the members of the judiciary elective, and they are even subjected to frequent re-elections. I venture to predict that these innovations will sooner or later be attended with fatal consequences; and that it will be found out at some future period that by thus lessening the independence of the judiciary they have attacked not only the judicial power, but the democratic republic itself.
from Democracy in America, Vol. I, Part 2, Ch. 8 (Tocqueville's emphasis in some translations).
Since that was written, state judiciary selection in America has remained largely election-based; as a result, elected judges, either trial or appellate level, still appear to have "shadow" constituents in the form of campaign donors. Impartiality is an unspoken issue in countless proceedings. And even first-rate state jurists of the highest character, and with the best academic and workplace credentials, must suffer the taint of that machinery. Some groups like the Philadelphia-based Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts, founded 20 years ago, still soldier on in the wilderness for reform.* Earlier this month, lawyers with NYU Law School's Brennan Center for Justice got high marks for publishing a report of proposed state recusal and disqualification standards**--a 50-page ten-point plan and analysis, both practical and scholarly--for elected judges. Last week, writing about the report, BLT's Tony Mauro in his post "The Recusal Remedy" quoted from the report's foreword. It is by Tom Phillips, a former Texas Supreme Court chief justice (appointed, elected and re-elected between 1988 and 2004), and now Baker Botts partner:
As the authors acknowledge, threats to judicial impartiality and the appearance of impartiality will persist no matter how perfectly a state structures its recusal process. As political pressures on the judiciary mount, most states should consider more fundamental changes to their systems of judicial selection. But until that day, improved recusal procedures are among the most promising incremental reforms.
(emphasis ours)
This blog has made no secret of the fact that we believe that, in the longer term:
(a) judges should never be elected (ever), (b) elected state judges pose dangers to clients which do business in more than one state or nation, (c) the notion that any dispute would be heard and decided by an "elected official" who has received election campaign contributions from some of the lawyers and clients before him is a national embarrassment (especially since these conflicts are rarely disclosed), (d) popularly elected state judges is an institution inconsistent with the fact that business is now done nationally and internationally, with "non-local" parties appearing frequently before American state courts, and (e) justice would be better served if all of the "affected" states reformed their judicial systems to select judges for life on the basis of merit, coupled with an impeachment safeguard.
In the short-term, and as a practical matter, sane and sophisticated business lawyers should bend over backwards to keep their global, multi-jurisdictional clients out of state courts, and before federal courts. We do think that recusal standards make good sense--the Brennan Center report is brilliant, persuasive--but the remedy for us is what Phillips termed the "fundamental changes" in the selection process. That's judicial appointment on a merit basis for life, similar to the federal selection process. No elections. No reelections. Ever.
The popular election of state judges is a national illness. We Americans are "in denial" about it. We are so heavily invested in it, and so used to it, that we are even incapable of experiencing the "oh-my-god" embarrassment it ought to cause us every day it still exists. And here's the rub, and a reason for pessimism: constitutionally, only the States can do anything about it.
*I travel in my work, much of it trial work, and am licensed in four states (DC, CA, MD, PA). Many Pennsylvania trial lawyers I know fall into one of two groups: (1) too caught up in the current judicial election system to validate or acknowledge Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts' existence; (2) too paranoid to even talk about PMC.
**James Sample, David, Pozen, Michael Young, "Fair Courts: Setting Recusal Standards", Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law (April 2008).
Posted by JD Hull at 06:24 PM | Comments (0)
April 27, 2008
$200 million in punitives cut from award against Genentech.
The California Supreme Court: No punitive damages can be awarded for a breach of contract claim absent a fiduciary relationship between the parties. But the court still awards to City of Hope National Medical Center $300 million in gene-splicing technology royalties in 1976 contract dispute. See San Francisco Chronicle and Law.com.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:29 PM | Comments (0)
Paris Parfait in London again.
Take a walk in the Spring on Oxford Street in London. Even if you don't travel, read about life outside the U.S., or worship European fashion, these photos are interesting, edgy. See Shipwrecked at Selfridges at Tara Bradford's Paris Parfait. The Paris-based American writer Bradford gets around.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 12:38 AM | Comments (0)