The first comment to this Juan Non-Volokh post (inviting comments on the usefulness of the third year of law school) sums up the problem:

However, as a practicing attorney, I'm embarrassed to admit that I like the fact that there are so many barriers to entry into the legal services market, like expensive tuition and a difficult first year. If an extra year at $15K or $20K keeps a lot of poor but smart people out of the profession, so much the better.

Back in January, I posted on the lack of respect (particularly titular) afforded the JD, and (only half-jokingly) insisted that JDs should be commonly addressed as "Doctor" (at least as much as PhDs). I think that the JD serves a distinct academic purpose, yet one not fully realized by most students, who fetishize lucrative jobs that (statistically) most will loathe within a few months actual employment. The effects BIGLAW fetish manifests, curricularly, in students as an obsession with taking the "right" and "practical" courses. While these can prove useful, their actual value is sorely limited.

There's an extremely high utility to each class in the first year, where one truly learns to "think like a lawyer". But, once assimilated into the lawyering culture, additional coursework in "substantive" areas is necessarily artificial and, as far too many 3Ls can attest to, extremely banal. One is probably better served by taking non-doctrinal courses, such as seminars, that can actually shape and develop the way one thinks about the law, instead of spoon-feeding tiny slivers of the vast amount of "black letter" law a practicing attorney should know in their field. Practice admission ought to have the most minimal, if any, formal education requirements. (I hesitate to say insist on none because there's also ample reason to doubt that current bar exams are a proper barrier to entry as well, and I think that some minimum competency should be demonstrated through a formal institution, be it educational or by examination.)

Again, I think the JD serves a useful purpose, but not as an appropriate minimal qualification to enter into the practice of law. A modified business school approach to law degree-granting would be a vast improvement (the MBA as a graduate professional degree, the longer and curricularly different PhD as the academic degree; two different law degrees doesn't seem unreasonable). A several-tiered hierarchy of law school degrees seems especially promising to me, perhaps to award the LLB after the first year (and allow admission to the bar; people often seem to forget the, in the U.S., the LLB was generally a second degree, even though baccalaureate), the LLM after the second (in specific concentrations), the JD after the third, perhaps even with the addition of a dissertation requirement. Of course, this plan would lead to the elimination of SJDs/JSDs, but they're quite uncommon among U.S.-trained lawyers as it is. And my plan would also eliminate the exceedingly silly master's degree beyond the doctorate.

Hanno Kaiser has a nice post over at Law & Society about today's filing of suit by the NYCLU. Kaiser asks if people (especially New Yorkers) are really docile enough blindly go along? Well... yes. They don't mean to be, but they're influenced by the world around them and think that such a minor imposition as a bag search isn't such a bad idea. And certainly nobody thinks of the consequences.

So what are the consequences? Kaiser says:

The subway search program is yet another step towards a culture of permission, a culture in which basic rights (such as the right to travel freely within a city) are conditioned upon obtaining prior approval from whatever authority claims to have such powers of pre-approval.

Exactly right. The small transition made in the last few weeks is that instead of paying customers having a right to travel on city transport, they now have the right only subject to NYPD approval. In a sense, we no longer have a right to ride the subway, but merely a license to. Certainly plenty of people in days past have been detained before a subway ride, but not without some cause. But this isn't the case any longer. Rights give way to licensing, licensing to tougher licensing, tougher licensing to prohibition.

Of course, I'm not one to begrudge "reasonable" searches; the Forth Amendment only protects against "unreasonable searches". I would even be willing to consider as (at least potentially) reasonable searches based on profiling that includes some consideration of race. But how can the current searches possibly be characterized as reasonable? They can easily be avoided - there is ample warning and, if selected, one is allowed to walk away. The only way these searches could logically be rationally related to the security interest is if those with illicit materials are presumed to be irrational, i.e., to assume that they would be so stupid as to knowingly walk right into their own capture.

I generally walk everywhere in NY, including between home and Cardozo, but tonight I rode the subway to avoid the light rain. It was the first time I rode since the searching began and, had I remembered it, I probably would've decided to get home a little wet instead. Luckily, I neither saw nor experienced a search on the subway to serfdom.

Where to begin... such a bad movie. Lots of bad things, especially the fact that the writer plays three characters, including and old man and an old woman. I've never understood the humor in not having old people play old people, but whatever. I also have issues about to how we're supposed to see the "mad black woman"'s "strength" in physically abusing, including nearly drowning, her husband that is at the time quadriplegic. That takes a whole lot of courage, no?

Anyway, the most disturbing part of all - running throughout the film - is the gross misrepresentation of family law. The whole premise is that her lawyer (and huge jerk of a) husband made her sign a prenuptial agreement, thus is able to kick her out of the house with no place to go, stop paying for her mother's care, and give her no money. Not even her own lawyer (and cousin) tells her that this is not an open and shut case.

Prenuptial agreements of the kind she has aren't worth the paper they're written on. There's every reason to believe that she didn't have any legal representation when entering the agreement, or if she did it was clearly inadequate. Especially with her husband being an attorney, any court would be highly suspect of her waiving all rights to the property. And many states specifically prohibit the designation of who gets to live in the marital home upon separation.

Her husband would be required to help her maintain the quality of life she had become accustomed to over 18 years of marriage, especially considering that she has no skills with which to earn a living beyond entry-level unskilled labor positions. The fact that they were married for 18 years is also of great importance. Good prenuptials frequently escalate the amount of property retained by the poorer spouse based on the length of the marriage. Among other reasons, this is done to increase the probability of the agreement being upheld.

So there are plenty of reasons to dislike Diary of a Mad Black Woman, and especially its depiction of law. Other misrepresentations in movies present a more complex question, such as Dodgeball, a fine flick... until you get to the terrible ending.

Maybe so. Christine Hurt makes the case for decriminalizing prostitution. (N.B. - Conglomerate's header says "Business, law, economics, and society ... from Wall Street to Main Street"; the post in question would seem to fit rather squarely on the latter side.)

The heart of the matter: "pornography is legal although Person A is paying Person B and Person C to have sex, but prostitution is still illegal because it is a bilateral contract with only two parties".

And let's not the safety of legalized prostitution - it's substantially safer for all parties involved, as is true of any open market compared to it's black market shadow. Ostensibly, prostitution criminalization can be defended on public health grounds, but a regulated service industry would protect the public's health much better. After all, prostitution could certainly be characterized as "affec[tion] with a public interest" (and, yes, you're a huge dork if you get that joke).

Two clarifications: (1) I don't think it would take any substantial additional regulation aimed specifically at prostitution, just application of existing regs AND (2) it's a policy argument, not a legal one, as the means need not be closely tailored to the objective of this law.