Posts filed under 'Law'
I have learned a horrible thing, as explained this paper by Michigan State’s Brian Kalt: “there is a 50-square-mile swath of Idaho in which one can commit felonies with impunity.”
Here’s the deal, in lay terms. (This explanaiton depends heavily on Professor Kalt’s paper; all quotations and citations to “Kalt” are to it unless otherwise noted. Speaking of citations, I don’t have my Bluebook with me, so keep in mind that I’m faking it.) To begin with the geography of the problem, Yellowstone National Park is mostly in the state of Wyoming, but some bits of it stick into Montana and Idaho. Kalt at 4. Interestingly, these bits are in the states of Montana and Idaho, but the entire park is in the judicial District of Wyoming. Id. at 5, Wikipedia. This incongruity is what will cause problems.
So, let’s hypothetically say you go to the Idaho portion of Yellowstone and run feloniously amok, as hypothetical felons tend to do. The wheels of justice start to grind, but your defense attorney points out that before they get to you, they must satisfy the requirements of the Sixth Amendment. In particular, your attorney points out the requirement of “vicinage,” that is, the requirement that the jury come from “the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed . . .” (Emphasis added.)
And your crimes were committed in a very unusual place, as it was in the state of Idaho, but the district of Wyoming, and so your jurors must be drawn from that state and that district–from the Idaho portion of Yellowstone. However, nobody lives in the Idaho portion of Yellowstone. Kalt at 6.
With no population there can be no jury, with no jury there can be no trial, with no trial there can be no judgment, and with no judgment there can be no punishment. “Assuming that you do not feel like consenting to trial in Cheyenne [where trial would be held if you were in Wyoming], you should go free.” Id. at 7.
It’s highly unlikely that this would ever happen, but it’s remarkably clever.
June 7th, 2006
Do you think Drew needs a patent lawyer? I sure do.
May 12th, 2006
From a case we read in Contracts today, Brookside Farms v. Mama Rizzo’s, Inc., 873 F.Supp. 1029. The case involved Brookside Farms selling basil leaves to Mama Rizzo’s under a contract that prohibited oral modifications, to which oral modifications were made, recorded, and performed on by both parties before the litigation ensued. From pages 1034-35 of the opinion (emphasis and hyperlink added):
For the Court to allow Defendant to invoke the no-oral-modification clause after MRI itself induced and participated in the extended course of action it now complains of would be to convert the sale of basil leaves into a “basil sale carcinoma” that would devour all reasonable commercial standards of behavior between merchants.
Further commentary would be superfluous.
March 9th, 2006
. . . CNN, for this pearl of wisdom that just showed up in my inbox:
A long running dispute that threatened to shut down the BlackBerry wireless e-mail service has been settled.
How has it been settled? In whose favor? By what means? Is the settlement confidential? I understand that organizations distributing breaking news need to strike a balance between speed and precision/accuracy (the friend who first informed me of the 9/11 attacks described them as a “bombing,” which was only correct in a highly technical sense), but I think some delay was clearly warranted here.
March 3rd, 2006
“If Line 11 is more than Line 10, leave blank and fill out Negative Discriminant Worksheet.” Link [PDF].
February 17th, 2006
As a second-semester Hastings student, I’m taking moot court this term. Among other things, this is cool because I got my first choice of topic: LabCorp v. Metabolite, a case the Supreme Court will hear sometime this term. There’s a lot going on here; this is probably the biggest patent case in a couple of decades. The class has just started, but look for stories about the case to show up throughout the term.
January 19th, 2006
Hello! I fell off the planet for a bit there with finals and break and all, but I’m back in the saddle now. As a New Year’s present, I give you this list of phrases from the American common law that sound like band names, together with their genres of music and the titles of their first albums.
Hooray!
January 11th, 2006
If you haven’t been following the Sony-BMG CD debacle, BoingBoing‘s roundups are as good a place to catch up as any: Roundup IV is the latest one. You can also read about the EFF’s litigation.
But, of course, this is really an excuse to link to this comic from the one and only Lore. The crazy part is that it dates from the early 1990s, by my recollection. Then again, he is a noted futurologist.
December 15th, 2005
If you are studying US Federal Civil Procedure, and you do not have a copy of Glannon’s Examples and Explanations, purchase one at your next opportunity. I bought my copy this morning on the recommendation of someone I met in the elevator last night, and I now understand Erie much more thoroughly. Granted, I still regard supplemental jurisdiction as a malconcieved scion of quantum physics and the occult, but then again, I haven’t read that chapter yet.
tags: civ pro
December 15th, 2005
Next Posts
Previous Posts
