Defending People

the tao of criminal defense trial lawyering

Convergence: Personal Sovereignty and Google Scholar

Mark Bennett | November 18, 2009

A reader recently asked me for advice on persuading a loved one to stop believing the personal sovereignty / straw man / redemption theory / UCC-as-supreme-law-of-land hogwash. I’ve written about this at least a couple of times, here and here. It’s frustrating because people who subscribe to this particular delusion think that all lawyers are [...]

The UCC: Ban it Fully, or Not at All.

Mark Bennett | June 30, 2009

I got a letter from a Texas prison last week: contraband had been confiscated from an inmate (not a client) after arriving in an envelope with my return address on it. The contraband was described as “two UCC Packets.”
After dashing off a cross letter to the warden about people using my return address to send [...]

The UCC and the BAR

Mark Bennett | April 7, 2008

Georgia public defender S.C. Ruffey’s comment about his fondness for the Uniform Commercial Code brought to mind a special kind of character that pops up from time to time in a criminal law practice.
[Digression: Austin criminal defense lawyer Jamie Spencer talks about "how to rank high on Google's natural results." I have heard -- and [...]