Exactly one year ago today:

/5 And that's just the first page. If I analyzed this for a client I'd tell them that this lawyer doesn't know defamation law and is in a panic. I'm not anybody's lawyer here but this letter's bluster and lack of professionalism scream "the dude did it" to me.

Agreed. Unbearable to see such bad lawyering, with real consequences for a person who is going to suffer for their clownish antics.

“Don’t praise the day before the dusk” as the Germans say.

Not so funny when you learn it’s a case about a woman so desperate to see her daughter, over whom she has lost custody, that she spiraled into a mental breakdown and is now going to prison for two years for fighting off the cops who dragged her away. search.txcourts.gov/Case.aspx?cn...

Before I became an American, I was Lebanese. Parts of my family live in Lebanon.

Anyway, you don't need those bona fides to feel this way, but what is happening in Lebanon right now is a complete outrage. The people there, who mostly are just trying to carve out a living, don't deserve this.

With ALT text

Three weeks ago, in an individual habeas case, Judge Gary Brown ordered ICE to report by today on what it would do to comply with the law going forward. Today, we at @latinojustice.bsky.social submitted a brief saying what relief he can order if they don’t:

There’s a reason people read the classics.

If only a dozen Republicans in Congress found the will, they could impeach and remove him today.

But shall this crazed old man be tamely suffered to drag a whole ship’s company down to doom with him?

“The Constitution isn’t a suicide pact,” like “you can’t yell fire in a crowded theater,” is a vapid content-free bromide that translates to “my policy preferences override the constitution.” It doesn‘t mean a Goddamned thing and never has.

As a law clerk in Arizona, I had the good fortune to watch Ms. Wang argue summary judgment and conduct trial in Melendres v. Arpaio (Joe Arpaio racial profiling case). I learned more about what makes a good lawyer from watching her than any other advocate that year.

My first appearance in the commercial division was trying to cure a default that had been entered when the client’s GC had failed to realize that you really have been served even if there’s no complaint with the summons. Justice Masley was not impressed.

Summons with notice in lieu of complaint! Summary judgment in lieu of complaint! Those orange folders in room 30 in the basement.

Every time I’m here I’m reminded of a different CPLR related humiliation. Today, the time when I walked into a Queens Supreme courtroom to try to get an OSC, and a man in the pews yelled “not today!” And I thought “what business is that of yours” but jokes’ on me it was the judge.

It’s a proposal. It’s not the current state of affairs obviously

I think people need to revisit @elienyc.bsky.social on court reform. Make the court 20 or 30 justices. Dead serious. We have to break up the singularity of thought among conservative jurists.

We would never get a decision like, for example Oncale v. Sundowner Servs with this group of Fed Soc drones

Or no fixed Supreme Court justices at all. Circuit court judges rotate onto the court for staggered five-year terms. No permanent ideological majority. Make judges act like judges.

Trump’s DOJ Admits ICE Memo Erroneously Authorized Arrests at Federal Plaza — What Does That Mean? - Documented A court filing from government lawyers acknowledges that one of their legal bases for detaining immigrants in 26 Federal Plaza and other courts was inaccurate.

"People continued to attend their immigration court hearings. They were trying to do the right thing. And in the months since we started this lawsuit, many of those individuals have been arrested & had their lives upended," said Harold Solis, our co-legal director, via @documentedny.bsky.social.

Today is Trans Day of Visibility. Trans, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming people have always been here — from the hijra of India to the Diné nádleehi to the leaders who built the modern LGBTQIA+ movement here in New York. Your existence is not up for debate. Your lives are not a political issue. We're fighting for a city where every trans New Yorker can live openly, safely, and with joy.

Today is the Transgender Day of Visibility and I'll take the opportunity to once again say that trans people matter, their lives have meaning, and what's being done to them by so many politicians and people in this country is wrong.

My lord.

"I'm a cop, I don't understand the law" is literally one of the most on-brand things I have ever heard in my life

Don’t do it on a full stomach.

The good news is that when we retake power we can rely on the quickly-developed “robust body of law” that the Eighth Amendment did not apply to people who illegally seize power and treat Stephen Miller like they did the rebels of Münster.

Pope Leo on Palm Sunday: “This is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war. He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying: ‘Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood’ (Is 1:15).”

Incredible news!

We don’t fear for our lives when crossing Delancey St. anymore. When I had to take a car to Newark airport the other day in the middle of the day, it took *22 minutes*. The air is noticeably cleaner. Big government overreach absolutely fucking rocks.