Cat-and-Mouse Games Close to My Heart

December 28, 2012 by

Since any statute of limitations has clearly expired, sharing the following information does not concern me: the scene is South Boston in the mid-fifties. Almost daily, my then-eight-year-old mom stopped in at Jennie’s local grocery store with my nana – but not for milk or eggs or bread. While my nana slipped into a back room with Jennie to lay a wager, my mom importantly took Jennie’s place at the check-out register, armed with instructions to let the ladies in the back know if anybody came into the store looking for Jennie. My mom was aiding and abetting a numbers […] More...
 

The Supremes Take On Gay Marriage

December 12, 2012 by

I hated Con Law in law school. It wasn’t the results that I minded so much. At the time we were still in the afterglow of the Warren Court’s expansion of individual rights. The Court was in sync with the civil rights movement. It had recently struck down, for example, the laws prohibiting racial intermarriage that were still on the books in sixteen states. What I hated about Con Law was the attempt by professors to explain Supreme Court decisions as the logical application of legal principles, when it was pretty clear many were just result oriented political decisions. Ideology cloaked as legal reasoning. If you wanted to strike down a state law on equal protection grounds, you applied strict scrutiny. If you didn’t, you applied a rational relationship test. More...