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Today’s Quote
“I’m not eccentric, I’m just more alive than most people. I’m an unpopular electric eel in a pond of goldfish.” — Edith Sitwell.
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Recent Posts
- Oral argument to be replaced by Chat Bot
- 2023: Lunar New Year of the Rabbit
- The charade of appellate review
- Appellate Judges to be Replaced by ChatGPT
- ACT UP: HIV+ is not a sex offense.
- Getting AIDS from Typewriter Keys
- NY DA Supports Discrimination Against HIV+ Persons
- The Public Defender Card Game
- Maud Maron v. The Legal Aid Society
- I’m objective, thee is biased
- People’s briefs and other horror fiction
- “My pronouns are sheehurr… so yours would be?”
- May it really, really displease the court
- Defending the Second Amendment
- May It Displease the Court
- Covid in the Courtrooms: an Unnecessary Risk
- Judge Jack Weinstein 1921-2021
- In-Person Oral Argument Should Go the Way of the Dodo
- Convicting Bill Cosby: “An Unconstitutional Coercive Bait-and-Switch”
- Judge Conviser rips into SORA
- Adios, 2020!
- THE BEST OF APPELLATE SQUAWK 2010-2020
- Call a rose by any other name and it’ll see you in court
- Try the new high-tech system for alienating your clients
- Outdoor Public Defending
- Why do cops lie? Because judges believe them.
- Courts to replace juries with potted plants
- Do Statues Matter?
- Sexual thoughts and the First Amendment
- COVID-19 masks for judges
- Judges in trouble
- Hell hath no fury like a client scorned
- “Don’t you dare invite me to your stupid Zoom party!”
- Janitors, Catholic schoolteachers and the Hosanna exception
- Supreme Court hears robocall case, flushes toilet
- “Planet of the Humans”
- The virus, like the rain, falleth on the just and the unjust
- The NYC arraignment scandal: part 2
- NYC courtrooms: the arraignment scandal
- Squawk under house arrest
- Must be true, says so right here in the Probation Report
- Discovery reform in Brooklyn: fuggetabout WitCom
- Happy Lunar New Year 2020: Year of the Rat
- The Sex Offender Bus
- Head for the hills, discovery reform arrives with the New Year!
- Annals of Social Injustice: Affluent People Drinking Rosé in Central Park
- Is it silly to demand transparency from appellate courts?
- “Your question has nothing to do with this case, Judge.”
- Not your law office? Click here.
- Let’s keep dogs off the witness stand.
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Category Archives: Satire and parody
Appellate Judges to be Replaced by ChatGPT
Official Photograph of the Judges of the New Appellate Court Ushering in the most revolutionary innovation in legal drafting since dispensing with cuneiforms on clay tablets, the Administrator of Court Administration announced today that appellate judges will be replaced by … Continue reading
The Busywork Conspiracy
How come whenever they tell you, “We’re moving into the 21st Century,” it means more forms to fill out, more “reminders” maddeningly blinking on your screen, “updated” computer programs that take five steps to do what used to take a … Continue reading
Posted in Satire and parody
3 Comments
Fox snarls at pursuing hounds, is shot for bullying behavior
In another victory for “the offended” over our blog post from two years ago, Are You a Cissy? the boss has condemned us to a course of treatment by Corporate Counseling Associates (“CCA”). The boss has now added “bullying” to our … Continue reading
“Justice in every borough”
The other day we were glumly printing out a closing letter to a client: “Court of Appeals denied leave . . . end of the line. . . wishing you the best for the future,” when we noticed something new on … Continue reading
Posted in Criminal Defense Appeals, Satire and parody
3 Comments
Prison Sex Offender Treatment vs. The Fifth
“Confess and be saved” and its corollary, “Refuse to confess and be damned” have been the bedrock of the sinner rehabilitation industry, from the Inquisition to prison sex offender “treatment” programs. If the treatee refuses to confess to uncharged, unknown, … Continue reading
What is ineffective assistance of appellate counsel?
Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. — Matthew 23: 24. In an unusual burst of candor, New York’s highest court recently confessed to what we’ve always suspected: if your appeal is a loser, it … Continue reading
At the movies: Woman at War
The other day we went to see “Woman at War at the local arthouse. Shazzam! Under the façade of a respectable, middle-aged chorus director lurks Halla, a ninja eco-saboteur toppling electric pylons with a bow and arrow. Pursued across the … Continue reading
Posted in Satire and parody, Satirical cartoons
Tagged Halldora Geirhardsdottir, Iceland, Woman at War
1 Comment
Are your politics acceptable to your cabdriver?
As Rumpole of the Bailey would tell his clients, a public defender is “a taxi plying for hire,” making him “duty bound to take on any client, however repellent.” But the taxi comparison is no longer operable, now that cabdrivers … Continue reading
Posted in Civil Liberties, Satire and parody
1 Comment
How to get judges to read your brief
Judge Saxe is at it again, handing out more advice about appellate briefwriting. “The reply brief is an important document,” he pronounces. It’s “the last word” that the judges will read. It should consist of “short, declarative, punchy sentences.” Based … Continue reading
Posted in Criminal Defense Appeals, Judges, Law & Parody, Satire and parody
Tagged Appellate advocacy, Justice Ginsberg
10 Comments
The ban on “sex offender” art
“Leaving the artwork up could serve as a trigger for our students and staff who have been victims of child abuse and sexual assault. Since the display is at the campus main entrance where our students and staff are required … Continue reading
Posted in Civil Liberties, Satire and parody, SORA
15 Comments
Criminal defense vs. “social justice”
A recent communiqué from HR casually let fall that we’re now a “social justice organization” dedicated to the interests of “the most vulnerable.” And all these years we thought we were a public defender! We feel like the hero of Kafka’s … Continue reading
Posted in Civil Liberties, Law & Parody, Satire and parody
22 Comments
Courts should take a tip from the Dept. of Agriculture
Reasonable people can disagree about GMO (genetically modified organism) food production. You can take the word of the multi-billion dollar agrichemical behemoths like Monsanto who deny its damaging effects on the environment, human health and the livelihoods of farmers and who go to … Continue reading
The ACLU uncompromisingly defends free speech — unless it’s offensive.
Why is everybody so down on the poor old ACLU just because of an internal memo proclaiming its zealous defense of free speech unless it offends vulnerable and marginalized minorities? Even the NY Post joined the affray, moaning, “ACLU Stops Caring About Free … Continue reading
“The Constitution does not require Florida to join New York in la-la-land.”
Whenever a court invokes the old saw that constitutional rights can’t be stopped at the prison gate, it’s even money that the court is just about to do exactly that. The latest is the 11th Circuit’s upholding of the Florida … Continue reading
Punch & Judy’s easy answers to everything
Posted in Satire and parody, Satirical cartoons
3 Comments
Trigger warnings for courtrooms
“We understand that even the thought of an individual coming to campus with the views that Mr. Shapiro [a twerpy conservative political commentator] expresses can be concerning and even hurtful and that’s why we wanted to make you aware as … Continue reading
Posted in Criminal procedure, Law & Parody, Satire and parody
Tagged Ben Shapiro, microaggressions, safe spaces
5 Comments
Chief Judge orders prosecutors not to be crooked and defense lawyers not to be incompetent
The Chief Judge adopted the “groundbreaking recommendation” of the NY State Justice Task Force Report that from Jan. 1, all New York State trial judges must issue an order in every criminal case directing prosecutors to disclose evidence helpful to the … Continue reading
President Trump takes to the street
We donated a dollar and he blew us a kiss. P.S. Squawk has gone legit! See us in “The Crime Report,” the online zine of John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Squawk is interrogated
Lenny Bruce complained that cops would go to his show, write down every word of his routine and then read it aloud in the Grand Jury, completely ruining his lines. Although not remotely in the league of that great iconoclast, we … Continue reading
Posted in Civil Liberties, Humor, Satire and parody
16 Comments
Let’s remove offensive statues from Central Park
Inspired by a recent video of students pulling down, kicking and spitting on a statue of a Confederate soldier, we took a tour of inspection to similarly purge Central Park. The first offender we came across was Alice in Wonderland: … Continue reading
Posted in Satire and parody
6 Comments