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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31255 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

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This is nothing new. Virtually all censorship, and indeed virtually all limits on civil liberties, are premised on the claim, usually false or overblown, that it is necessary to prevent harm. That is true on the right as well as the left, and everywhere, not just the US.

And the proper response is not to argue that the threat is not real, but rather, the response is, so what? See, eg, this colloquy at oral arguments re a state law requiring that all arrestees give DNA samples:

Katherine Winfree: Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the Court: Since 2009, when Maryland began to collect DNA samples from arrestees charged with violent crimes and burglary, there had been 225 matches, 75 prosecutions and 42 convictions, including that of Respondent King.

Justice Antonin Scalia: Well, that's really good. I'll bet you if you conducted a lot of unreasonable searches and seizures, you'd get more convictions, too. [Laughter] That proves absolutely nothing.

Do you know of a site/blog that just collects Supreme Court clapbacks? I’m interested mostly as popcorn entertainment...but also as a reminder that we’re theoretically appointing some of the smartest, most experienced legal professionals in the country.

Anyway, to play devil’s advocate—that’s the correct response for our government. Not so for a private individual. Twitter as a medium is somewhere in between, and I don’t believe broadcasting death threats or even epithets are deserving of that maximum level of protection.

Not Supreme Court, and tending towards the silly, but Above the Law is always good for this kind of thing.

Benchslap archive

Normally, Lowering the Bar is better, but they don't have a specific archive page for the sort of thing you are looking for. I recommend a close read of the Caselaw Hall of Fame for some absolutely metal trial court clapbacks.

I don't know what you mean, exactly, by clapbacks. There are certainly plenty of blogs which analyze Supreme Court decisions.

Snark, ideally highlighting something the appellants should have known. I’ve seen good ones coming from Scalia and others, though I’m struggling to find them again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mattel,_Inc._v._MCA_Records,_Inc. is always a fun read.

Bradshaw v. Unity Marine Corp., Inc., 147 F. Supp. 2d 668 - Dist. Court, SD Texas 2001 is a treat in the sense that you can still see the ring marks where the judge backhanded the attorneys:

Before proceeding further, the Court notes that this case involves two extremely likable lawyers, who have together delivered some of the most amateurish pleadings ever to cross the hallowed causeway into Galveston, an effort which leads the Court to surmise but one plausible explanation. Both attorneys have obviously entered into a secret pact—complete with hats, handshakes and cryptic words—to draft their pleadings entirely in crayon on the back sides of gravy-stained paper place mats, in the hope that the Court would be so charmed by their child-like efforts that their utter dearth of legal authorities in their briefing would go unnoticed. Whatever actually occurred, the Court is now faced with the daunting task of deciphering their submissions. With Big Chief tablet readied, thick black pencil in hand, and a devil-may-care laugh in the face of death, life on the razor's edge sense of exhilaration, the Court begins.

And there is this Alex Kozinski classic:

After Mattel filed suit, Mattel and MCA employees traded barbs in the press. When an MCA spokeswoman noted that each album included a disclaimer saying that Barbie Girl was a "social commentary [that was] not created or approved by the makers of the doll," a Mattel representative responded by saying, "That's unacceptable.... It's akin to a bank robber handing a note of apology to a teller during a heist. [It n]either diminishes the severity of the crime, nor does it make it legal." He later characterized the song as a "theft" of "another company's property."

MCA filed a counterclaim for defamation based on the Mattel representative's use of the words "bank robber," "heist," "crime" and "theft." But all of these are variants of the invective most often hurled at accused infringers, namely "piracy." No one hearing this accusation understands intellectual property owners to be saying that infringers are nautical cutthroats with eyepatches and peg legs who board galleons to plunder cargo. In context, all these terms are nonactionable "rhetorical hyperbole," Gilbrook v. City of Westminster, 177 F.3d 839, 863 (9th Cir.1999). The parties are advised to chill.

Mattel, Inc. v. MCA Records, Inc., 296 F. 3d 894 (9th Cir 2002)

There is some prof who used to rate the funniest justices, based on number of laughs. But I don't know whether he or she posts the actual content of the comments.

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