The Rabbi on the Beach at the Shul on The Beach
Do You Know How Many Prisoners Are In For Life Without Parole Who Committed Their Crimes As Juveniles?
I do.
It depends where you ask this question. There is one answer for the United States of America, the Land of the FREE and the Home of the Brave and there is one answer for the REST OF THE WORLD.
In the REST OF THE WORLD there are 0 / ZERO / nil / Zed / zip / zilch / nada.
In the United States of America, the Land of the FREE and the Home of the Brave there (more…)
This summer I am taking two classes at Law School that explore many of the issues and themes of racism. I am extremely fascinated by racism, and ethnic hatred. I am still sorting out my feelings on a lot of the issues and I am really happy that I am being exposes to the everything that we are discussing in class.
In Hate Speech Seminar we read a (poorly written, but very interesting) book about the White Supremacy Movement in California through the 80′s and 90′s. (It’s called Skinhead Confessions and you can buy it on Amazon: Skinhead Confessions: From Hate To Hope. Again, not very well written but very enlightening and an important book.)
The question we have been probing is: Where does racism come from? Why do people hate? (more…)
(what "publishing" meant before the internet)
There is a very ambitious fellow in our class at Law School. His name is Paymon Khatibi. One day Paymon decided that our class should start an independent journal of law related articles. We would write student notes just like the official Law Reviews and publish them online in a digital journal. Sounds easy, right?
Well it took a lot of work and management to have all the pieces fall into place. Incredibly, Paymon was relentless and did not give up on this dream of his. Today, that dream has become a reality. And for that we are all very grateful.
The Loyola Journal has been published online and is open to all readers. (more…)
Last week I spoke at Pepperdine University about Jewish Lessons in Parenting. I began my talk by complimenting my parents and expressing my desire to emulate their parenting in the raising of my own children. One such example occurred today.
At Law School we are reading some of the most well-known Supreme Court Cases. A few weeks ago we read Roe v. Wade (banning 1st term abortion is unconstitutional) and the even more important Casey v. Planned Parenthood (upheld Roe) cases. Last week we read Plessy v. Ferguson (after Civil War, Separate but Equal schools were ruled constitutional).
This week we are reading Brown v. Board of Education. This case overruled Plessy and made Separate but Equal unconstitutional in Public Schools. (more…)
Last semester at Law School I studied Criminal Law. Crime is ugly. It hurts the victims and negatively affects the criminal’s life forever. Families can be shattered and communities can be destroyed by crime.
The system we have today only looks at the criminal. The goal of our criminal justice system is to incapacitate criminals and punish them for their acts. Little systematic rehabilitation is offered to criminals and consequently there is a high rate of recidivism in our prisons. We hope that punishing criminals will deter them and future criminals from pursuing a life of crime. Unfortunately, crime persists and criminals continue to crop up. (more…)
This short film is a “must-see”. It is part of Liberty Mutual’s “Responsibility Project”. Watch the film all the way through the very end.
Call me a sap, but this film brought tears to my eyes. Real, wet, tears.
Which left me wondering, the film is certainly nice, but why did it elicit such a strong reaction?
I think two parts of the film in particular were resonsible for my emotional response. (more…)
In the last few months there have been a few death penalty executions. Most notably the D.C. Sniper was executed on November 10, 2009. Since that time I have been thinking about the death penalty. I have discussed it on Twitter and in real life.
The last unit of our Criminal Law course was the Death Penalty. Professor Levenson asked for volunteers to argue for and against the death penal. Normally, I don’t jump at opportunities like this, I prefer to watch and observe other students try to make coherent arguments in front of their skeptical peers… Yet, my had shot up. It was almost involuntary. And I found myself on the side representing “against” the Death Penalty.
There were three of us and we split duties. I chose to make the moral argument against the death penalty. What follows was my basic argument. (more…)
The Good Wife is a new legal drama on CBS. The show is great. Usually the legal issues are portrayed correctly (at least from a law student’s perspective) and the character development of the main character has been superb.
This week’s episode revolved around a chasidic couple living in Chicago who were responsible to fix a fallen eruv wire, but since it fell on Shabbos they had to wait until Shabbos had ended and in the meantime a woman claims she fell over the wire and is suing for 1.2 million dollars in punitive damages. The title of the episode does not refer to the couple, rather it refers to their lawyer with an unorthodox approach to law.
Read on for my comments, critiques and a HUGE PLOT HOLE. (more…)
Lawyers take the brunt of a lot of jokes and jabs questioning their ethics.
Believe it or not, Law Schools actually teach Ethical Lawyering and every student is required to pass that class prior to taking the bar.
Law blog Legal Geekery (recommended reading for law students) has an article criticizing the way Law Schools attempt to teach ethics to future lawyers.
Yesterday we began learning about Homicide in our Criminal Law class at Loyola Law School. Our Criminal Law professor is world famous Laurie Levenson (she is in the news very often). She is an incredible teacher and a very successful practitioner. Studying Criminal Law in her class is a privilege. (Plus, she brings baked goodies for the class and sometimes stops at Schwartz’s Bakery to get some kosher goodies for the two Kosher observant Jews in the class. Pretty nice!)
After learning the building blocks of Criminal Law we began our unit in homicide.
A little while back I contributed a decent post to DovBear that generated an impressive response from legions of commenters on DovBear. The post was a comparison of anonymous vs. onymous blogging.
I argued that by blogging about important things anonymously, they are less effective and only perpetuate the near censorship of right-wing Orthodox Judaism. Some went on to call anonymous blogging cowardly.
In the discussion that ensued I conceded that quite possibly, better conversation can be had anonymously and I admitted that for a blog like DovBear, the unfortunate reality is that anonymity is the preferable choice.
Something left undiscussed was the reality that DovBear is not anonymous. Google, who hosts his blog, knows exactly who he is, where he lives and presumably, has access to all his email, searches and web history. Until a few days ago, one may have assumed that their information was safe with Google.
Not anymore.
As a Law Student, there are things I find interesting that may not interest “clients” (non-Lawyers, hehe). The following article interests me and will probably interest any lawyer or law student, anyone Jewish, or anyone that has been following the Gates Saga.
I invite you to contribute your opinion in the comments.
The article originally appeared in this week’s Jewish Press as an OP-ED. The writer is Nathan Lewin (read more about him here).
This post has been cross-posted to DovBear. – more discussion there.
In addition to my work as the Rabbi at Pacific Jewish Center at the Shul on the Beach I am also a Law Student at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. I am part of the evening program and completed my first year of evening classes in May.
In December I was subjected to mid-terms in each of my courses. Many Law School exams are long fact patterns that require the student to analyze the facts and apply all the law that is relevant to the facts and then argue why the law should or should not apply to those facts. Usually these fact patterns are fiction and these essays are typically 3 – 4 hours in duration.
My torts professor gave us a very interesting fact pattern. The basics of the case were, two young boys named Israel and Jacob enter an elevator on their way to school. Along the way the elevator malfunctions and the boys are suspended between the 10th and 11th floor. The doors malfunction as well and the doors are opened. The younger boy, Jacob is 5 and he tries to jump from the stuck elevator to the 10th floor below. Jacob jumps and (more…)
I read a really interesting column this week.
Whenever I find a convergence of ideas between the Legal field and Torah I get excited.
This time I found a divergence. Not quite as exciting, but very interesting.
The NY Times followed up on a study conducted a few years ago by a 2nd year Georgetown Law School Student.
The study was groundbreaking. It focused on the amount of questions from the Judges to lawyers and its effect on the outcome of cases. (more…)
“Oh I can be quite litigious” - Cosmo Kramer
As Law Student I read about 25-30 cases per week. All of the cases I read this year are lawsuits. Whether they deal with torts and damages, contract disputes or property issues “A” is always suing “B”. The lawsuit is the basis of the American Legal system. It allows any victim of a social or financial injustice to seek and recover damages for harms suffered. There is a downside however.
Thanks to The Seinfeld Episode: The Cartoon whenever I see The New Yorker magazine I check to see if the cartoons are actually funny. One of my professors mentioned a New Yorker article last night about inaugural addresses so I went to check it out online. This cartoon was inset in a completely different article I was reading (which I did not “get”) and I just had to blog about the cartoon (which i do “get”)!
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