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Some sad news (and a bit about the Supreme Court)

https://terikanefield.com/some-sad-news-and-a-bit-about-the-supreme-court/

Published: June 22, 2024 23:33

This week, JJ died suddenly of a pulmonary blood clot. You wouldn’t have known from his puppy looks and constant puppy energy, but he was a senior dog diagnosed with bronchitis and a heart murmur that was getting worse. Given how suddenly and peacefully JJ…

Criminal law and procedure, Part 2: Why Criminal Law?

https://terikanefield.com/criminal-law-and-procedure-part-2-why-criminal-law/

Published: June 15, 2024 23:39

Welcome back to Everything You Ever Wanted To Know (and presumably more than you’ll ever need to know) about Criminal Law and Procedure. Last week, in Part 1, the Basics, I covered: What is a crime and how do we decide which behavior to criminalize? Types…

Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure, Part 1: The Basics

https://terikanefield.com/criminal-law-and-criminal-procedure-part-1/

Published: June 8, 2024 22:35

A reader offered this suggestion for my blog: I’d really like to understand the entire process better. How does a criminal case go from arrest to indictment, trial, and appeal? Another reader pointed out that I’ve talked about many aspects of criminal law…

All About Appeals

https://terikanefield.com/all-about-appeals/

Published: June 1, 2024 19:12

This one is all about criminal appeals. It also includes insights into the life of a criminal appellate defense lawyer. I think I know why people have been asking about appeals. There was what you might call a high-profile criminal conviction in the news…

Juries and the Zenger Trial

https://terikanefield.com/juries-and-the-zenger-trial/

Published: May 25, 2024 22:28

Because I’ll be talking about the case of Crown v. Peter Zenger, you know this blog post will be fun. What? You’ve never heard of Peter Zenger? Well, read on. I ended last week’s post with this question: Because jurors can’t un-hear or un-see, how does…

Beware the Lawyers (follow-up)

https://terikanefield.com/beware-the-lawyers-follow-up/

Published: May 18, 2024 21:24

Last week I summarized Peter Arenella’s 1998 piece, The Perils of Legal Punditry. Among other things, Arenella argues that much of legal punditry is “Hot air that passes for legal commentary.” If you missed it, start here. I suggested that people don’t…

Beware the Lawyers

https://terikanefield.com/beware-the-lawyers/

Published: May 11, 2024 19:55

This blog post could have been called “Why you don’t need a lawyer to answer your questions about legal issues in the news.” Mostly it’s about former TV pundit Peter Arenella’s scathing assessment of legal punditry published in 1998 in the University of…

The Ninth Amendment and The Law (and Politics) of Reproductive Rights

https://terikanefield.com/the-ninth-amendment-and-law-and-politics-of-reproductive-rights/

Published: May 4, 2024 21:32

After I wrote this blog post, I realized it’s really about how laws evolve. Citations and sources for much of the material in this blog post are in this book. *  *  * During the 1788 debates about whether to add a Bill of Rights, some people worried that…

Where’s the Beef? Trump’s Manhattan Criminal Case and some Mind-Bending Legal Puzzles

https://terikanefield.com/wheres-the-beef-trumps-manhattan-criminal-case-and-some-mind-bending-legal-puzzles/

Published: April 28, 2024 00:49

Welcome to this week’s blog post, where I will (1) discuss the criminal liability for behaving like a gold-plated bucket of slime and (2) offer a few mind-bending legal puzzles. Two weeks ago, here, I laid out the facts as we know them in Trump’s…

Trump’s First Criminal Trial: Theories of the Case

https://terikanefield.com/trumps-first-criminal-trial-theories-of-the-case/

Published: April 20, 2024 18:55

This post will build on last week’s post, where I laid out the facts as we know them and offered explainers on the law. If you missed it, start here. The Theory of the Case Good advocates organize their cases around a theme or focal point called the theory…