Strange Doctrines

Will You Kindly Just Dig It?

From Music Matters: Can reading program notes reduce your enjoyment of music?

The latest issue of Psychology of Music includes an interesting study by Lisa Margulis (University of Arkansas) who decided to investigate what the effects are of the widespread practice of including program notes for classical concerts on musical experience. In this study, the researchers presented people without formal musical training excerpts from Beethoven String Quartets prefaced by either a dramatic description, a structural description, or no description al all. Consequently, they were asked to rate their enjoyment of the music, and in a later stage, to recall excerpts and descriptions. What would you expect the results were? The results show a significant negative effect of description, suggesting that prefacing an excerpt with a text description reduces enjoyment of the music....

Click over to read the whole thing.

Simple Probabilities

David B. Hart muses about a new book featuring fifty essays the "new" atheists. His credulity, so robust when it comes to matters of the Spirit World, has apparently met its match in the Bad Writing of Smug Humanists:

Simple probability, surely, would seem to dictate that a collection of essays by fifty fairly intelligent and zealous atheists would contain at least one logically compelling, deeply informed, morally profound, or conceptually arresting argument for not believing in God.

But why should that be, when no one believes in God based on arguments?

Anyway, reading Hart's piece, which is (simple probability being what it is) only mostly horrible, [1] was at least worth it qua set up for the withering riposte waged by Ars Artia in the first comment:

Any comment I could make about the content of this essay would necessarily be banal (one does not want to join the ranks of Daniel Dennett, et al). I can only acknowledge that the intellectual and spiritual power of David Hart steadies one's spine, so to speak, for the terrible things that already exist and may lie ahead. This essay provides hope. There are still men of faith, courage, and good will on earth. Can they prevail?

NOTES

1. In fairness, I found his enthymematic riffing amusing, even edifying. One must take the sweet with the bitter.

The FPD's TGIF Roundup

For the week of April 23, 2010 (cross-posted from the Central District Federal Public Defender blog).

"I Would Like the Firing Squad Please." That was Ronnie Gardner's preferred method of death, which the state of Utah is scheduled to facilitate in about a week.

"The Fallacies Underlying Immigration Guideline § 2L1.2." That handy bit of deconstructive work made available here by your friends at Defender Services.

New Rules. The Sentencing Commission has voted to promulgate amendments to the guidelines that will "expand the availability of alternatives to incarcerations and address the relevance of certain specific offender characteristics in sentencing."

The FPD's TGIF Roundup

For the week of April 12, 2010 (cross-posted from the Central District Federal Public Defender blog).

Ice ICE Baby. The Federal Defenders of Eastern Washington and Idaho have a practice "kit" for getting pretrial release of your noncitizen clients. (H/T Tenth Circuit Blog.)

We Have Ways... From the Daily Journal (subscription): "'When I see someone [cite an unpublished opinion] I say, "Aha, loser argument,"' [said Chief Judge Alex Kozinski]. [snip] Nevertheless, Kozinski conceded, the rule [permitting citation of unpublished opinions] was adopted and so he and his colleagues have adapted. 'We have ways of dealing with it: We just say less....'"

A Difficult Question

On the one hand, the President is right to say that Sarah Palin doesn't sound like someone with any real expertise in nuclear weapons policy.

On the other hand, Sarah Palin does sound like someone with real expertise in schoolyard bullying.

So which of them is right?

(Thankfully, we can rely on our professional news corps for careful analysis of the question.)

The FPD's TGIF Roundup

For the week of April 6, 2010 (cross-posted from the Central District Federal Public Defender blog).

Stevens Retires. Justice Stevens has formally announced his retirement, effective upon summer recess. Adam Liptak's excellent analysis in the New York Times is here. SCOTUSblog has an extensive roundup of other coverage and comment.

"Courts Not Waiting for Congress' Cocaine Sentencing Solution." The ACSblog has a post on that topic here. We've made a handy syllabus of district court opinions adopting the 1:1 ratio available here.

Take-Away Points on Deportation. In the wake of the Supreme Court's decision last month in Padilla, the Immigrant Defense Project has published a practice advisory, Duty of Criminal Defense Counsel Representing an Immigrant Defendant after Padilla v. Kentucky. Take it away.

It Wasn't About the Slavery. It Was About the Freedom to Own Slaves.

Jack Balkin appropriately commemorates "Confederate History Month," here and here.

We Appreciate Your Input

The leading complaint in a review for Costco Van Nuys:

The majority of the people who work there are Hispanic and very "RUDE".

I half expected him next to advise Costco that they change their name to Costco Rico.

CRU Report Whitewashgate

A preliminary report into the East Anglia climatic research unit suggests that their data was on the up and up. The story is mostly failing to get the kind of attention I thought it wouldn't.

Some of the attention it has failed not to to get, however, has been kind of amusing. Iain Murray, for example, claims that the report is a "whitewash." (Bet you didn't see that coming.) But in support of that thesis, Murray (correctly) paraphrases Roger Pielke's point that "a broad reading of the report reveals an indictment of the state of climate science."

So it's a "whitewash" and an "indictment"? Riiiiight.

Murray's greedy appropriation of Pielke's remarks is more than just incoherent, though; it's dishonest - Pielke clearly disdains the "whitewash" claim as a "sideshow."

Defenders of CRU will no doubt paint the report . . . as a complete vindication of their arguments and those who have been critical will . . . call the report incomplete or a whitewash.

If you are going to quote someone as support in a blog post named "Climategate Whitewash," you should probably own up to the fact that your authority does not believe that the report is a whitewash.

On the other hand, maybe I'm being unfair - Murray did make that clear enough himself. If only by accident.

The FPD's TGIF Roundup

For the week of March 29, 2010 (cross-posted from the Central District Federal Public Defender blog).

Crime Scene Investigation Interpolation. When a crackerjack crime scene investigator makes his reputation as the guy who finds evidence where no one else could, it might just be because the evidence was never really there.

BOPcare and RDAP. New stuff on those topics by past NACDL president Alan Ellis available here.

The Droids You Are Looking For. Recent legal tech articles focus on iSlips, iPhone legal research apps and the Droid v. iPhone debate.

Next. You can demo Westlaw's new platform WestlawNext here.

New Rules. The California Bar Journal has a Top Ten list of changes to the ethics rules that may soon become California law. 

The Week in Sausage Making. Congress is in recess until April 12.

Top of the Ninth - 9th Cir. decisions released during the week.
Ledezma-Galicia v. Holder (immigration) (petitioner not removable for aggravated felony conviction predating aggravate felony provision in Immigration and Nationality Act).
Thompson v. Frank (habeas) (collateral order doctrine did not apply to stay issued pending exhaustion).

SCOTUS Focus.
Padilla v. Kentucky (habeas) (counsel's failure to advise client when plea bargain is likely to result in deportation is IAC). Analysis here and here.
Berghuis v. Smith (habeas) (petitioner convicted by all-white jury had not demonstrated systematic exclusion of black jurors from pool as required for fair-cross-section claim).

Short Circuits - other persuasive authority.
U.S. v. Janvier (2d Cir.) (district court lacked jurisdiction to revoke supervised release, where on last day of term court had ordered that a warrant be issued, but warrant actually issued two days later).
U.S. v. Basciano (2d Cir.) (successive racketeering count alleging pattern of racketeering identical to that underlying earlier conviction was double jeopardy).
U.S. v. Llamas (4th Cir.) (generalized findings were insufficient for vulnerable victim enhancement) (including in restitution calculation losses attributable to "sweepstakes" call centers other than the one in which defendant worked was reversible error).
U.S. v. De La Torre (10th Cir.) (defendant may fulfill § 5C1.2(a)(5) safety valve condition through testimony at trial).
Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, Inc. v. Obama (N.D.Cal.) (requirements of FISA law trumped "state secrets" privilege). (Via WSJ Law Blog.)
R. v. Cunningham (Can.) (counsel's withdrawal for ethical reasons must be granted, and court may not inquire into nature of those reasons).

For the Bookworms - New books and scholarly articles of note.
"Breaking the Law to Enforce It: Undercover Police Participation in Crime," Elizabeth E. Joh, 62 Stan. L. Rev. 155 (2009) (discussing widespread use of "authorized criminality" in covert police operations and the implications for the fundamental premises underlying the role of police in a democratic society).
"Disentangling Child Pornography from Child Sex Abuse," Carissa Byrne Hessick, 88 Wash U. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2010) (SSRN) (critically evaluates arguments that conflate the separate harms engendered by child abuse and child pornography possession).

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Suggestions or corrections? Email Michael_Drake@fd.org.

Our Task (Criminal Defense Edition)

"We, as criminal defense lawyers, are forced to deal with some of the lowest people on earth, people who have no sense of right and wrong, people who will lie in court to get what they want, people who do not care who gets hurt in the process. It is our job – our sworn duty – as criminal defense lawyers, to protect our clients from those people."
—Cynthia Roseberry