Law and Legitimacy

Episode 32 is special in more ways than one. 

Last week, the world lost a titan of American jurisprudence and criminal advocacy, F. Lee Bailey. This episode is thus devoted entirely to the man and the legend F. Lee Bailey was and will forever be known to be. 

We start with a reading from the Norm Pattis Blog, Farewell to a Legend: F. Lee Bailey, which Norm penned on June 2, 2021, jus

I took a road trip to Vermont the other day. I found myself myself, in the end, standing along the border to Canada deep in the woods, looking at a marker dividing one country from another. 

It was a source of delight, really, imagining myself as Humpty Dumpty on the wall, looking down on a continent filled with scrambling folks trying to reassemble just what, exactly?  Certainly not me.

My second long-form interview guest for Law and Legitimacy is a law student. We'll call him 'Student X'. 

Some say lawyers are born and not made. I’m not so sure about that. Lawyering is hard work; it takes training to earn the right to stand in the law’s trenches.

In this interview, we’ll discuss what it’s like to be a law student. Student X is a rising 2L at an elite law school, by which I mean a school that requires impossibly good grades to even be considered for admission.

Calls for a commission to study the January 6 “insurrection” at the Capitol present an interesting opportunity to take a long and sustained look at what ails the American republic. But the Commission needs to ask the right questions.

And? It needs to be staffed by the right scholars.

A son in search of his father; a mother’s fearful tears; and the fidelity of lifelong friends. You will find some part of your life in these pages.

Too busy to read? Fine—I will read for you. Listen as though your soul’s life depends on it, because, in fact it does.

Herewith, Book IV of Homer’s Odyssey.

See: LAL #024 for my reading of Book III.

See Also: Norm Pattis on

I re-read Orwell’s 1984 the other day — one of the joys afforded by cross-country travel is the plenty of downtime in airports and on planes. How well does Orwell’s fears of a totalitarian society account for what we have become, and are becoming?

My first long-form interview guest for Law and Legitimacy is one of America's great trial lawyers, R. Rex Parris. 

Rex is also a mayor, the founder of a biotech company, and an environmental activist.  

My main question to Rex: what do you see in a courtroom? His answers will surprise you. 

Rex has spent several decades mastering cognitive sciences, treating the courtroom and the city council chamber alike as a laboratory. He shares some basic insights into how ou

What's going on?! However this episode is reaching you, I hope it finds you well. 

My name is Michael Boyer. I am the managing attorney for Carolina Craft Legal here in beautiful Greensboro, North Carolina. I have for the last six-or-so weeks been assisting Norm from afar on all things technical and quality for this podcast, Law and Legitimacy. 

I trust that you, like I, are hearing the march of progress in that respect. 

I want to first express my sincere and deep app

"Though as for death, of course all men must suffer it:

Too busy to read? Fine—I will read for you. Listen as though your soul’s life depends on it, because, in fact it does.

Herewith, Book III of Homer’s Odyssey.

See: LAL #022 for my reading of Book

The law is a clear: a defendant is entitled to a fair trial, not a perfect trial. 

In the case of Minnesota v. Derek Chauvin, there are good reasons to doubt whether Chauvin received a fair trial. Even the federal government seems to acknowledge that; why else would federal prosecutors bring federal charges before sentence is even imposed?