This weekend my kid and I took a machining class, learning the basics of running a milling machine. The instructor, a Greenfield-grade curmudgeon, had several stories of people using his machines incompetently and breaking things. The stories all ended, "and that's why I hate people." Last Friday the Vermont Supreme Court in State v. Vanburen held that state's revenge-porn statute constitutional. Eric Goldman has a good first analysis

Every month or so for about the last year I've received an email purportedly marketing "estimators," "estimating services," or "material take-offs." Emails have been from: "Luke Shaw" of "International Estimating, LLC," 14 East, 4th Street, Suite 405, New York City, NY 10012;"David Jackson" of "International Estimating, LLC," 14 East, New York City, NY;"Jacky Lee" of "International Estimating, LLC," 14 East, 4th Street, Suite 405, New York City,

https://twitter.com/ConLawWarrior/status/1028086368868556800 I wrote on this topic some years ago, here. My sense then was that the slow death of the jury trial in federal criminal cases did not reflect what was happening here in Texas: Closer to earth, where most criminal prosecutions actually take place, the dynamic can be quite different. In our discussion on Twitter, Clark mixed two ideas: Type I errors in the criminal justice

(b) A person commits an offense if: (1) without the effective consent of the depicted person, the person intentionally discloses visual material depicting another person with the person's intimate parts exposed or engaged in sexual conduct; (2) the visual material was obtained by the person or created under circumstances in which the depicted person had a reasonable expectation that the visual material would remain private; (3) the

"The First Amendment's guarantee of free speech does not extend only to categories of speech that survive an ad hoc balancing of relative social costs and benefits. The First Amendment itself reflects a judgment by the American people that the benefits of its restrictions on the Government outweigh the costs." The legislature must strike a balance between sexual-privacy rights and the First Amendment. Because revenge porn does

I wrote yesterday about a loss, so I hope you'll indulge me in talking about two recent wins, one before the loss and one after. A couple of weeks ago I described my bizarre oral-argument experience in Tyler, where the prosecutor (bless his heart) melted down in front of the court. I wrote: When you’re arguing with the court about how big you’re going to win, it’s

This is a truly bizarre law. It presumes that there is “an interest in sex” that is not prurient. We are not sure what kind of interest that is. We are also left guessing at who gets to determine whether an image has sex appeal. … What the “prurient interest in sex” means is anyone’s guess. It would also be interesting to learn who the legislature believes should determine

I don't think I've ever voted in a State Bar election. I've certainly never endorsed a candidate. But I feel compelled to endorse a candidate in this year's election for State Bar President. Randy Sorrels is running on a platform of 12 Ideas (12! Like jurors! Or apostles! Or months!) most of which will make life better for us without making life worse for our clients. The few

I lost a DWI jury trial yesterday. (Most lawyers wouldn't write publicly about their losses. Most lawyers don't seem to find the generalizable lessons in their losses that I find in mine.) I had argued to the jury that criminal court is the wrong place for common sense. The argument did not go over well—I got feedback that I seemed to think I was smarter than the jurors.

From 1791 to the present … the First Amendment has permitted restrictions upon the content of speech in a few limited areas, and has never included a freedom to disregard these traditional limitations. These historic and traditional categories long familiar to the bar—including obscenity, defamation, fraud, incitement, and speech integral to criminal conduct—are well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise