On Saturday, November 7th, 2020, the election to name America’s 46th president was called. According to the AP and multiple media outlets, Joe Biden was the winner, having exceeded the required 270 electoral college votes to claim the presidency. Donald Trump, however, has thus far refused to concede. He has alleged voter fraud, filed multiple […]
Pardons Issued Colorado Governor Jared Polis recently issued an order to pardon over 2,500 people who have been convicted of low-level marijuana crimes, here meaning possession of one ounce or less. The authority for this action derives from House Bill 20-1424, which Polis signed in June of this year and which allows for pardons in […]
Scary Stuff If there’s one thing you and I and everyone else hates, it’s admitting mistakes. Not that I’ve ever made any. But I presume that if I did, I would hate admitting them. After all, to admit a mistake is to drop your shield, to give up control over your own fate: when you […]
For more a more detailed discussion of this topic, listen to our podcast here: https://isthislegal.buzzsprout.com/1296158/5699065-ep-41-is-donald-trump-going-to-jail Global leaders are no strangers to criminal charges, with foreign heads of state from Silvio Burlusconi to Slobodon Milosovic being charged with crimes committed while in office. The United States, however, has largely stayed above the criminal fray. Sure, we had […]
A Request Has Been Made U.S. legislators will soon review, if they are not already, a request from the Justice Department for authority to detain people indefinitely in situations like the coronavirus pandemic. The sort of indefinite detainment set out in the request infringes the constitutional right of habeas corpus and probably others, and therefore […]
Long Live the You OK, here’s the scenario: you have overthrown the government of a nation and made yourself its dictator. Now it’s time to dictate. Will you be an anarchy-adjacent figure of dread, laughing insanely from the balcony of the palace as citizens below scurry about obeying your cruel whims? No, you won’t. It […]
Wisconsin SC Ends COVID Order Wisconsin’s Supreme Court not long ago annulled the state’s stay-at-home order, saying that the emergency powers governor Tony Evers had invoked to issue the order were meant for brief effect, not to last indefinitely. That ruling is interesting in its own right, but it also points to a quality of […]
The Fantasy We’ve all come across the idea of acting as your own lawyer in a legal proceeding. It lends itself to seductive fantasies: there you are, like Anthony Hopkins in Fracture, laying out your defense before the bench, the prosecutor dumbstruck at the erudition all those Google searches have given you. The jury nods along […]
A Trial Is Over The trial of Harvey Weinstein for multiple sex crimes has ended. Weinstein was acquitted of the most serious charges he faced, first-degree rape and predatory sexual assault, but convicted of rape in the third degree and of criminal sexual act in the first. These convictions entail a prison sentence—to be handed […]
The Background The 1970s, by which time “tough on crime” had become a catchphrase among successful politicians, gave rise to policies whose effects we see even now in the justice system in the U.S. During that decade, sentences previously left to the discretion of judges were instead set out in official guidelines, parole opportunities were […]