Law

Razzle Dazzle

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Advanced trial techniques for defense attorneys.
 


Seth Barrett Tillman: Conlawprof and Climate Change

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Interesting observations:

On August 18, 2019, on Conlawprof, Professor BBB wrote:
 

Your note reveals a common misunderstanding of the predictive models. First, the models tend to under-predict. That is, the observed macro-effects exceed what the models predict. The models and reports also tend to under predict global temperatures. (The IPCC noted that “the [observed] level of warming in 2017 was 0.15 °C0.35 °C higher than [predicted] average warming over the 30-year period 19882017.”) [citing: ]

 
I note that Professor BBB adds the word “predicted”. It is not in the original quotation. I checked the original quotation in IPCC5, and it struck me—generalist though I am—that he had inadvertently inverted the meaning of the quoted material. But not being expert, and realizing that different minds might reasonably disagree about such things, I promptly wrote my friends at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Secretariat…

Seth links to a paper he wrote whose abstract includes this passage:

Legal academics and the public are fascinated by both constitutional text and the processes by which it is interpreted. The precise role for legal academics in the interpretation of such charters is controverted. Doctrine and case law as established by the courts remain the core of academic legal discourse. Case law is, after all, the object about which doctrine is based, built, and extended. But the interpretation of constitutional text through case law comes with costs — it seems to lack democratic legitimacy, and where unconnected to text and history, it has a tendency to fence out (even the well-educated) the public. On the other hand, when legal academics shift to text and history, their work gains populist credentials, but, at that point, the legal academic risks his privileged position. For the legal academic has no monopoly, or even highly developed expertise, with regard to textual exegesis or the best use of historical materials…

Substitute “scientists” for “legal academics”, and “climate data” for “text and history”, and there might be some kind of parallel here.

Jeffrey Epstein’s Death in Federal Custody, the Suicide of Federal Government Credibility

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The announced “death by suicide” of Pedo-Pimp to the Powerful Jeffrey Epstein in Federal government custody while;

  1. On a 24/7 suicide watch,
  2. After his first “suicide attempt,”   in late July, and
  3. Before there was any time for a real autopsy…

…is such utter horse manure as to utterly destroy any shred of credibility of the Federal government.

That Federal Attorney General Barr first called for an FBI investigation of Epstein’s death — to deafening loud round of public rasp-berry’s.

Then he followed that credibility destroying knee jerk response near seconds later by saying the Department of Justice Inspector General would conduct the investigation — given the non-prosecution of so many in the DoJ & FBI after the IG caught them red handed leaking FISA surveillance sources and methods to the press — amounts to an “Eff-U” slap in the face to the General Public.

This is pure “Pravda Reporting on Chernobyl” territory.   It’s all about elite posturing and “Face” while the radioactive pile burns.

America functions on the consent of the governed.   This requires the government be credible through elite replacement by elections as well as the fair administration and enforcement of justice for both the powerful as well as the least of us.

The circumstances of Mr Epstein’s death are such that I’ve completely lost any faith in the concept of “Justice” that in any way involves the institutional FBI or Department of Justice.

I hate saying that because it leaves us here:

“Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable.”

That Rubicon has now been crossed. G-d help the people of these United States.

Please comment and tell me I’m wrong.   I’m in the mood to be lied too.

Worthwhile Reading

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Anthony Kronman, a professor of law at Yale, writes about how an obsessive focus by academia on ‘diversity’ (as that term is now used) is destructive of individuality and the search for truth.

Victor Davis Hanson observes that the Robert Muller’s “dream team,” loaded with Ivy Leaguers, was expected to devastate Trump’s legal team, which had scarcely a Harvard man or woman in sight.

Electricity problems in Sweden – looks like these are being driven by the closing of nuclear plants, the increased reliance upon wind, and the failure to build adequate transmission capacity to collect the wind turbines with the loads.

Seth Barrett Tillman: Today’s Question On CONLAWPROF: Where Would You Put Trump?

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Professor ZZZ asks: “Trump is not Stalin but in the history of national (federal) political figures in this country, I’m wondering … where [would] you put Trump? … Having a POTUS so publicly awful along those lines lowers the horrible bar so dramatically that we will pay for years to come. Not being Stalin but being Roy Cohn is a hell of a legacy.”
 
Tillman responded:
 
[. . .]
 
Trump is ahead of Woodrow Wilson: World War I, and! his resegregation of the federal civil service. I grant you that being ahead of Wilson is not saying much…but then, the nation survived Wilson, and no one today thinks of Wilson as having lowered the bar vis-a-vis future presidents. Professor ZZZ seems to be worried about this. He wrote: “Having a POTUS so publicly awful along those lines lowers the horrible bar so dramatically that we will pay for years to come.” Really?—Will we pay for it in years to come, or is this just a shabby slippery slope-type argument?
 
I cannot say I see much sense in Professor ZZZ’s references to Roy Cohn. Roy Cohn’s permanent claim to fame is his association with McCarthy and aggressive anticommunism. Trump, by contrast, has been criticized for being too close to Putin. It is not exactly the same; actually, the two are not alike at all.
 
If words and pretty speeches are the measure of a president, then Trump comes up short. The question is whether that is the correct standard for measuring presidents in a dangerous world.

Read the whole thing.

Seth’s last line is a good summary of the general flaw with many anti-Trump arguments. However, Seth doesn’t go far enough with specific examples:

-Trump didn’t withdraw US forces precipitately from an overseas conflict, leaving the worst of our enemies to fill the resulting power vacuum as Obama did in Iraq.

-Trump didn’t reverse longstanding US policy, deprecating alliances with pro-American countries, in a foolish and futile effort to buy the love of the Iranian mullahs as Obama did.

-Trump didn’t let himself get played by the North Korean dictatorship as Clinton, both Bushes and Obama did.

-Trump didn’t use the IRS to harass his political opponents – as Nixon threatened to do, as the Clintons did to right-wing activist organizations, and as Obama did to organizations and individuals who were active in the Tea Party movement.

-Trump didn’t use the FBI and CIA to spy on his Democratic rivals’ election campaigns as Obama seems to have done to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

I can think of numerous other examples of unwise or malicious actions taken by previous presidents that Trump hasn’t done. Feel free to add additional examples in the comments.