TUCK IN YOUR SHIRT APPROPRIATELY--OR FIND ANOTHER JOB

A MESSAGE TO THE EMPLOYEES OF THE COCKLAND GROUP LLC

By : Mr. Ronald F. Daggett, Assistant Deputy Vice President for Human Resources, The Cockland Group LLC, an Investment House specializing in service to the mortgage industry.

Cockland Group LLC is growing at a rapid pace. Since our founding in 2003, we have secured firm accounts with the Nation's largest mortgage sellers, including HSBC, Citigroup and Coldwell Banker. Our commitment to Absolute Client Satisfaction (ACS)™ is unparalleled. Our earnings have steadily risen in every consecutive quarter since our founding, even during some of the most challenging economic times in our Nation's history. We are proud of our accomplishments and we remain focused on our overriding goal: To deliver timely, effective, reasonable mortgage reinvestment services across the entire financial industry.

We could not have achieved these results without you, our employees. Here at Cockland management, we salute your dedication, hard work and passion for mortgage reinvestment services. At Cockland, it is not just about mortgages. It is about people™. Our people are the best. We know you know that, too. And we are thankful that you share our zeal for boundless client satisfaction. Because when great people serve great clients, everyone wins™.

We owe our success to our unique corporate culture. Cockland drives hard and plays hard. When we enter a market, we aim to penetrate and win. But when we relax, we relax with the same fervor we display when servicing an account. Cockland employees know how to please clients. And that is why clients keep coming back for more. Cockland delivers solid performance: Any time, anywhere--and for the best price™.

Nonetheless, not everyone can be a Cockland employee. We expect the best and we demand a lot. Sometimes it is difficult to overcome stiff competition in the mortgage client service market. We do not tolerate droopers or flaccid account service. Only the firmest survive at Cockland. Our employees don't back down. They stay on top of accounts until they are closed. Cockland employees are not timid. When we service accounts, we never pull out. We do not stop until our clients are completely satisfied™.

We also demand complete devotion to The Cockland Mission (TCM)™ (see employee manual, Chapter 2 for details). Being part of a winning team means the ability to play your position and to cheerfully receive instructions. Knowing your job is only half the battle; the other half is knowing how you fit on the ball club.

Attire is an important part of Cockland's success. Since our founding, we have insisted that every team member in the Cockland family wear either a white or blue button-down shirt at work. Button-down shirts show good taste and respect for client expectations. Clients in the mortgage industry wear button-down shirts. Typically, those shirts are white or blue. It only makes sense that we--as dedicated client service professionals--mirror their expectations. That is why we have always required our employees to wear white or blue button-down shirts. Sometimes conventions are essential. And this is one such instance.

Button-down shirts are vital to Cockland's special place in the mortgage service market. Yet the company has never endorsed an official policy expressing unconditional support for button-down shirts. We believe we have a duty as a company to reverse that trend. It is time for Cockland to recognize button-down shirts. And it is time for Cockland to make button-down shirts mandatory for all employees at the company. It is time to formalize.

From this day forward, every Cockland employee will be required to wear only blue or white button-down shirts while on company business. We refuse to acknowledge any exceptions to this policy. Every Cockland employee must certify that he or she will comply with this policy. He or she must further certify that failure to comply will result in immediate disciplinary action, up to and including docked pay and termination. Cockland must preserve its team spirit. And it must also maintain its winning attire-related traditions. That is why we hereby officially make blue and white button-down shirts a core element of Cockland culture. If Cockland employees cannot accept this, they can find employment elsewhere.

But this does not end Cockland's determination to inculcate attire discipline. In addition to requiring all Cockland employees to wear white or blue button-down shirts, all employees must also appropriately tuck their shirts into their pants.

Without appropriate tucking, blue and white button-down shirts mean nothing. Only a tucked-in button-down shirt can accomplish the goals Cockland expects. A tucked-in button-down shirt is absolutely vital to continued employment at Cockland. Inappropriately tucked and untucked button-down shirts reveal an inattention to personal excellence that is fundamentally inconsistent with Cockland's overriding commitment to unparalleled mortgage service. Our clients tuck in their shirts. All people worth anything in the world tuck in their shirts, too.

It would contravene our most basic company values to tolerate anything less than fully tucked-in shirts among our employees. For that reason, Cockland hereby requires all employees to certify not only that they will wear a blue or white button-down shirt every day at work, but that they will also appropriately tuck in their shirts. Failure to tuck in a shirt will result in immediate disciplinary action, up to and including docked pay and termination. Additionally, inappropriately tucked-in shirts will lead to the same consequences. Cockland simply cannot risk disappointing its clients by allowing employees to appear without immaculately tucked-in blue or white button-down shirts.

We recognize that these policy changes may appear harsh. We also recognize that employees may be confused about what it means to "tuck in" a button-down shirt or to "appropriately" tuck in a button-down shirt. In fairness to our employees, we wish to clarify these matters.

First, a "tucked-in button down shirt" means any button-down shirt the shirttails of which rest against the upper thighs, yet which are concealed and circumscribed at the top by a belt and trousers. As such, if a shirttail at any time appears outside the pants, the shirt is considered "not tucked-in" and will accordingly subject the offending employee to discipline.

Second, an "inappropriately tucked-in button down shirt" means a tucked-in button down shirt the tucking of which is not appropriate. "Appropriate tucking," in turn, means a tuck that does not result in ruffles, creases or otherwise slovenly shirt characteristics above the beltline. A tuck is only appropriate when the shirttails remain at all times below the beltline without bulging out, creasing or otherwise creating an unsavory appearance. The mere fact that an employee experiences "inappropriate tucking" because he or she sat down at a desk for too long does not cure the offense. An inappropriate tuck is an inappropriate tuck. Our clients expect the best from Cockland; and they do not forgive inappropriate tucking.

Neither do we. Inappropriately tucked-in button-down shirts will immediately subject the offending employee to discipline, up to an including docked pay and termination. We realize that compliance with appropriate tucking requirements may at times prove difficult. For that reason, management has decided to allow employees to cure inappropriate tucking by expeditiously removing all inappropriateness from their tucking within 30 seconds after discovering that their button-down shirts are inappropriately tucked. We believe that this rule both fairly allows for conscientious compliance at the same time it justly punishes flagrantly inappropriate tucking.

Cockland management is determined to realize excellence in all employee endeavors. That is why it has decided to implement these new rules concerning mandatory button-down shirt wearing and appropriate tucking effective immediately. Details may be found in the employee manual, Chapter 45, subsection 7(b).

Anyone who is anyone wears a blue or white button-down shirt every day. And anyone who is anyone appropriately tucks that shirt in; or at least corrects inappropriate tucking the moment it appears. At Cockland, we are committed to bringing maximal satisfaction to everyone who is anyone. That is why we must lead by example. That is why we must tuck in our shirts--appropriately.

If you don't like the rule, you shouldn't be on this team. So tuck in your shirt and start penetrating those accounts like a real Cocklander.

A LAWYER'S VALENTINE (SUBJECT TO APPLICABLE LIMITATIONS CONTAINED THEREIN)

PLAINMAN, SCHNORRING & DRYE, LLP

Attorneys at Law Specializing in Mergers & Acquisitions

"We Help You Combine. Every Time."™

DATE : February 15, 2010

TO: Ms. Gabriella D. Purdy, B.A. (no relevant accolades) ("VALENTINEE")

FROM : Mr. Herbert J. Plainman, Esq., Senior Partner (Top 100, American Lawyer P.P.D. (Profit-Per-Deal List)); Silver Medal Winner, Monopoly Advocates of America, LLC (2008)("VALENTINOR").

RE : Valentine's Day

Ms. Purdy,

Pursuant to applicable law, rules and any provision of the Civil Procedure Law and Rules of the State of New York (NYCPL), please accept this Expression of Valentinary Intent (hereinafter "Valentine") done on or before February 15, 2010, in the City of New York, County of New York, State of New York, Country of the United States of America, from aforementioned attorney Mr. Herbert J. Plainman, Esq. (hereinafter the "Valentinor")(State Bar No. 987125).

ARGUMENT

Now, therefore, comes VALENTINOR, and in recognition of certain amorous feelings, having arisen in aforementioned Valentinor, and subject to all limitations applicable under any relevant law, ethical guideline, handbook, employee manual, offer, contract, pamphlet or written item having direct pertinence hereon, and giving due deference thereto (and disclaiming any intent to violate any such limitations, liability wherefor is hereby expressly disclaimed), Valentinor hereby presents this certain "Valentine" to and for aforementioned Valentinee.

It is expressly and unequivocally understood that Valentinor finds certain bodily and psychical characteristics in aforementioned Valentinee "appealing," both as a matter of taste and as a matter of law. Those characteristics include--but are in no wise limited to--her lips, hips, chest, legs, eyes, face, stomach, voice, charm and fashion choices. According to the Court of Appeals, "appealing" means "objectively pleasant to the satisfaction of any office or officer duly appointed under law to judge pleasantness, be that pleasantness aesthetic, erotic, artistic, intellectual or otherwise bearing upon the human senses." See, e.g., Quaker v. Booty-Licious Bumshakers Dance Hall Ltd., 4 N.Y.3d 165,190 (2005)(Kaye, C.J.).

In view thereof, and in view of Valentinor's express finding (under all relevant State evidence rules) that Valentinee is "appealing," Valentinor hereby concludes that it is both reasonable and prudent to present this Valentine, unless Valentinor in any way concludes that Valentinee is not appealing, either in body or spirit, in his sole and unreviewable discretion. Valentinee's expression of affection for any persons--or animals--other than aforementioned Valentinor shall result in the immediate rescission of this Valentine in toto, with treble damages not to exceed $400,000, U.S. currency, to be assessed against Valentinee as liquidated compensation therefor.

This Valentine serves as a symbol of Valentinary Intent and no more. This Valentine is not a contract. It creates no legal duty or obligation in Valentinor. Valentinor's failure to perform according to this Valentine creates no claim whatsoever in Valentinee. Valentinor is under no obligation whatsoever to show good faith in the performance of this Valentine, nor must Valentinor continue to show affection in any appreciable way beyond a time reasonable for showing affection consistent with office protocols or any other applicable decency standards, including the criminal law. (Valentinee is hereby advised that Failure to Appreciate Your Employer is a crime under New York Law.) But upon acceptance of this Valentine, Valentinee assumes an absolute and nondelegable duty to show Unlimited Affection (hereinafter "UA")--in both mind and body--to Valentinor, in excess of the customary employer-employee affection expected in the course of office service. UA includes, but is not limited to: Making remarks as to Valentinor's good looks; praising Valentinor's masculinity; rubbing Valentinor's body in all places directed by Valentinor; dressing in an appropriately alluring way as directed by Valentinor (subject to Valentinor's rejection and imposing a duty to cure such rejection upon Valentiee); removing aforesaid clothing at any time (and at any place) directed by Valentinor; shaking any body parts in any manner directed by Valentinor (in this context, "shaking" includes erotically oscillating movement both in contact with Valentinor's body and outside Valentinor's body), and delivering various gifts to Valentinor subject to decency and Valetinor's request. Valentinee's failure to perform any of above-mentioned duties under this Valentine shall result in immediate termination, negative reporting to all major credit bureaus and referral to police authorities for disorderly conduct.

Valentinor herewith acknowledges that this Valentine comes one day late. In view of the fact that the Holiday commonly known as "Valentine's Day" fell upon February 14 in this calendar year, and in view of the fact that February 14 fell upon a Sunday in this calendar year, Valentinor hereby submits that it was legally impossible to deliver this certain Valentine on a Legal Workday (see, i.a., 5 U.S.C. § 6103). Legal Impossibility is a defense to any action based in contract. See., e.g., Combs v. Work-It Records, Co., Inc., 84 N.Y.2d 143, 150 (1994). Pursuant to law, Valentinor had no duty to deliver this Valentine to Valentinee on Valentine's Day; and Valentinee hereby waives any cause of action for Valentinor's failure to deliver this Valentine on February 14, 2010, any exception in the common law of the State of New York, the law of the United States or the Constitutions of the United States and the State of New York absolutely notwithstanding.

In the alternative, Valentinor asserts that this Valentine is purely gratuitous and may not be enforced against Valentinor in any way whatsoever. But because Valentinor is Valentinee's employer, Valentinor reserves the right to enforce this Valentine against Valentinee to the full extent of law, morality, decency, justice, right and any other authority deemed controlling hereon, including Valentinor's subjective jealousy and envy.

Valentinee is under no obligation to accept this Valentine. According to law, acceptance is only valid if it is free and voluntary. See, e.g., Morris Carburetor Repair of Queens Boulevard v. Fuggett Supply House, Inc., 1 N.Y.3d 363, 370 (2004). But if Valentinee does not accept this Valentine, Valentinor cannot warrant Valentinee's future employment at this firm, nor can Valentinor warrant Valentinee's future employability or income. Valentinor further promises that he will make best efforts to torpedo Valentinee's career if Valentiee does not freely and voluntarily accept this Valentine without qualification. Valentinor therefore must advise Valentinee to accept this Valentine and all duties appurtenant thereto, it being a relatively small price to pay for incumbent benefits.

Valetinee has no right to bargain for or alter the terms of this Valentine. This Valentine represents the full and final agreement of the parties hereto, any prior or contemporaneous oral declarations thereagainst notwithstanding. It is offered solely on a "take-it-or-leave-it" basis.

CONCLUSION

In view of the foregoing, would you please by my Valentine, subject in all events to controlling legal authorities, limitations and exclusions, unless those authorities be held invalid prior to acceptance?

I have hereby set my hand hereunto, this 15th Day of February, 2010,

__________________________
Mr. Herbert J. Plainman, Esq.

LAWYERS ARE BAD MEN AND CLIENTS ARE ONE-DIMENSIONAL SIMPLETONS...AND THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT

AN ESSAY

Over the last few days, I have been paging through my old law school ethics casebook, The Law and Ethics of Lawyering (Foundation Press 4th Ed. 2005). When I took this course in law school, I immediately recognized it was different. No other course investigated ethical quandaries in law practice. Sadly, our professor seemed less concerned with the abstract philosophical dimension to the course than with its technical aspects. After all, it is hard to get lawyers to understand ethics because lawyers understand law.

Contrary to popular belief, law and ethics are distinct from each other. Ethics are internal, subjective conceptions concerning the "right" decisions to take in life's ever-changing circumstances. Ethics depends on individual conscience. Law, by contrast, is nothing more than an official collection of written rules that a State formulates to govern external behavior. Law does not require conscience; it requires only technical compliance.

Applying these definitions, it is easy to see that a person can act legally without being ethical at all.

I have written at length about the incongruous relationship between ethics and law. The relationship is uneasy not just because ethics and law stand at opposite philosophical poles. Rather, the relationship is doubly uneasy because "lawyering" in America is adversarial. It is hard to adhere to ethical norms when you are constantly trying to "beat" your opponent and win money. By the same token, American lawyering is extremely commercial. Successful lawyers win their cases because they want to make money. This makes them "result-oriented." That's bad for ethics because ethics is less concerned with results than with means. An ethical person refuses to act in certain ways or even conceive certain actions. Put another way, ethics disqualifies particular means from consideration. Yet a "result-oriented" person--like the average American lawyer--refuses to take any means off the table. When you want to win, you don't refuse to play all your cards.

Yet this is how lawyers must think. After all, they serve the law, not ethics. The law prescribes conduct through language. Lawyers advise clients how to exploit ambiguities in language to avoid the law's reach. All language is imperfect. The law is no exception. Lawyers seize on the law's linguistic imperfections every day to make a living. How can ethics survive in an atmosphere where everyone just wants to game the system?

Sure, lawyers all must take "ethics courses" just like I did. But teaching "ethics" to a lawyer is something like teaching dining room etiquette to a wild animal. Law students take the ethics course because they must: It is required to graduate. And even then, most students view the course as a meaningless formality. Rather than using the course to cultivate ethical sensibilities and become "ethical people," they learn how to read "official ethics rules," then tailor their behavior to avoid censure from professional boards. In essence, then, the "ethics" course devolves into yet another course on law: How to read written standards and make arguments designed to exploit weaknesses in language.

But I am not your average guy. I might have done well in law school, but I hesitate to call myself a "lawyer." No, I am too interested in theory to be a lawyer. I am too interested in ideas and philosophy to blindly advocate a client's selfish financial interests until I die or retire. Put simply, I think deeply about the law and its relationship to civilization. That disqualifies me from everyday "law practice." My commitment to theory might drastically reduce my income. But it dramatically increases my understanding about the world we inhabit.

When I read text from my old ethics casebook, I relate it to all my other ideas about law and civilization. Recently, for example, I re-read Oliver Wendell Holmes' musing on the lawyer's role in American society. He said: "If you want to know the law and nothing else, you must look at it as a bad man, who cares only for the material consequences which such knowledge enables him to predict, not as a good man, who finds his reasons for conduct, whether inside the law or out of it, it the vaguer sanctions of conscience." The Path of the Law (1920) at p. 169.

Holmes' remark closely tracks my own views about the law and human nature. In short, Holmes understands that the law essentially serves "bad men" who just want to know whether they will lose their bodily freedom or their money, not "good men" who seek answers in the "vaguer sanctions of conscience." In essence, Holmes suggests that the law is fundamentally cynical; it merely provides explicit written standards that enable men to modify their behavior for maximum personal gain. And because the law is cynical, so too are the men who empower it: They just want to enrich themselves.

Holmes calls such men "bad." But in fact, he just means "selfish." It is not necessarily morally "bad" to be selfish. But no one would dispute that "selfishness" is neither noble nor especially praiseworthy. No one remembers men who just want to remain free and make the most money they can. They are selfish; and the law exists for them. Bad or not, the law advances an entirely selfish view of human nature. And there is nothing really wrong with that, because the law holds power over money, property and bodily comfort. Those are selfish men's concerns.

If the law only serves "bad men," where does that leave the "good men?" Holmes draws an important distinction here that mirrors the distinction between law and ethics. He says the law stands for selfish men and their petty motivations, not men who find "reasons for their conduct…in the vaguer sanctions of conscience." By that reasoning, "good men" must have nobler motivations than property acquisition and freedom from jail. "Good men" must craft their lives to follow the "vaguer sanctions of conscience," not just cynical legal commands. In essence, then, "good men" are ethical. Unlike law, ethics is internal. It depends on conscience. An ethical man looks within his own heart to know whether something is right or wrong, not a statute book. He does not exploit ambiguity to slither away from consequences. That is noble and "good."

Does this mean that a person who depends upon his own conscience has no place in the law? It almost appears so. After all, to properly serve the law, one must be cynical. One must look at it as a "bad man." If the law enshrines the "bad man's" motivations, then conscience apparently has no place in it. An ethical man might be cynical about others' motivations. But he will not always act cynically. True allegiance to the law, however, requires constant attention to cynical concerns. Litigants would not win their cases if they suddenly started following their own conscience rather than their hunger for money. If ethics means allegiance to conscience and "higher" motivations than the body and property, then it really has little place in the law. Holmes said as much.

Later in my casebook, I ran across an article that criticized Holmes' "bad man" argument. See William H. Simon, The Ideology of Advocacy, 1978 Wis. L. Rev. 29. In it, Professor Simon contended that Holmes' cynical conception about law compromised clients' "individual dignity" and "personal autonomy" because it required lawyers to assume that all clients have the same ends: Property and bodily comfort. The professor found it distressing that the law induces lawyers to both presume what clients want and "to lobby for a peculiar theory of human nature." Id. at 30-52. He found it lamentable that the law basically reduces "individual clients" to one-dimensional "hypothetical people" with a "few crude ends," namely "maximization of freedom of movement and the accumulation of wealth." Id.

I strongly disagree with this critique. First, while I agree that human individuality is precious, a person cedes any claim to uniqueness the moment he seeks legal redress. When a person invokes the law, he is not trying to soothe his conscience or prove his individuality. Rather, he is trying to win as much property as possible or to avoid going to prison. No matter what a client says, "justice" and "right" are not the main objects for his decision to take legal action. He takes legal action because he seeks to gain what the law can offer. The law does not offer abstract justice or right. It offers property and freedom from bodily restraint. This is all a person can hope to win from legal intervention. It is sheer ignorance--or sheer delusion--to believe it can deliver anything else. Courts do not award "good feelings" or a "sense of justice" with their rulings. No, they enter judgment in particular monetary amounts. If a client wants a spiritual reward, he should go to a church, not a lawyer's office.

Second, there is nothing wrong with imputing goals to a client. The law is not about conscience. It is not about ethics. There is a reason courts are called "Courts of Law," not "Courts of Ethics" or "Courts of Conscience." Clients could rightly complain about sacrificing their individuality if they sought to voice their conscience or their ethics. But when they file suit in a law court, they necessarily subscribe to far baser values. The law can deliver only money or bodily freedom. There is nothing wrong with imputing those base goals to a client, because those are the only things he can hope to gain from the law. If this renders lawyers "lobbyists for a peculiar view of human nature," it is not the lawyer's fault. It is the law's fault. The law is about cynicism, not conscience.

That is why the law really does exist to serve "bad men." And that is also why "good men" have little place in it. Once conscience enters the picture, law supplies no answer. Only ethics can appease the conscience.

Consequently, ethics and law do not mix. I don't care what any Bar Association, court or law professor says to the contrary. Law is external compliance. Ethics is conscientious belief.

And law cares not a fig for either conscience or belief.

APPLICATION DENIED : YOU ARE NOT APPROPRIATE

THE BUTTSON HOUSE CO-OPERATIVE, INC.

"Fine Residences in the Heart of Tribeca"

190 Franklin Street, New York, New York

January 8, 2010

Dear Mr. Farrell,

On behalf of the entire Board here at the Buttson House, I wish to thank you for your recent application to purchase a residential share with us. Despite your admirable resume, financial status and ability to pay for the share, we regret to inform you that we cannot sell the share to you because you lead an inappropriate lifestyle.

Two months ago, you expressed an interest in purchasing a two-bedroom residential share at 190 Franklin Street. Consistent with the Board's requirements, you duly submitted: (1) A resume listing past employers since 1980; (2) A certified letter from your current employer concerning your employment status, income level and bonus expectations; (3) Tax returns disclosing income since 1990; (4) Bank statements revealing savings levels since 1975; (5) A certified accountant's letter disclosing your current asset situation; (6) A marriage certificate; (7) A certified copy of your college degree, medical degree, law degree and engineering degree; and (8) A sworn affidavit declaring that all information you submitted was true, accurate and not misleading.

We salute you for complying with the Board's requirements. We are happy to report that you did not omit a single piece of information required under our procedures. You clearly have the financial and moral capacity to purchase a residential share from our cooperative.

However, despite your obvious financial ability to purchase the share from us, we refuse to sell it to you. Pursuant to cooperative By-Law Number 451.21, the Board independently investigated you after you submitted your application materials. Under the By-Laws, we are not required to alert you that that we conduct such investigations, nor do you have any right to question conclusions we make during the investigations. As a private entity duly licensed to do business in the State of New York, you have no legal recourse against us because we do not represent the State. Rather, we are a private corporation with full discretion whether to buy, sell or otherwise deal with any other private actor in the free market.

Our investigation disclosed several unfavorable facts about you. First, we learned that you do not cut your hair every week. To our minds, this reveals poor attention to personal hygiene, which in turn implies that you will not respect the property you intend to purchase from us. As a cooperative Board with an interest in maintaining a clean facility, we obviously worry about prospective shareholders who do not regularly cut their hair. We do not want unkempt ragamuffins with unfavorable hairstyles living under our roof, no matter how many stocks or bonds they own.

Second, our investigation disclosed that your middle name is Barfield. We found it anomalous that you did not list your middle name in your application materials. To our minds, your omission reveals a propensity for dishonesty that has no place at the Buttson House. Furthermore, even if you did reveal that your middle name was Barfield, we would have denied your application because we do not like that name. We believe that any name containing the word "Bar" would bring disrepute upon the Buttson House. We do not want others to think that bartenders, hobos, barmaids, wenches or drunks live in our building. Put simply, the name "Barfield" suggests all these things. As a cooperative Board with an interest in shareholder dignity--as well as public reputation--we simply cannot allow people named Barfield to live on our premises, even if they have all the money in the world.

Third, our investigators discovered that your left middle toe is 3 millimeters longer than your right middle toe. Although we sympathize with your deformity, we must advise that it makes us uncomfortable. We do not like the idea that a freak with two toe lengths might live in our building. To say the least, it is rather revolting. We understand that you keep your toes under socks during most public appearances, but that alone does not obviate the danger that you may appear in sandals, flip-flops or shower shoes in the Buttson House from time to time, particularly in the summer months. We are simply unwilling to subject our shareholders to the embarrassment of beholding your freakish toes during the summer. We cannot take the risk. Furthermore, under By-Law Number 4987.32(a), shareholders at the Buttson House have a right to refuse residence to anyone with unpleasant or inconsistent toe length, financial ability notwithstanding. Thus, we have technical grounds to deny your application for this reason alone.

Fourth, we learned that in 1996 you briefly worked as an artist during a break between jobs at financial institutions. Although this did not affect your financial health--in fact, you are a talented painter--we cannot tolerate former artists on our premises. As a cooperative Board committed to establishing a comfortable home for our shareholders, we take pains to ensure homogeneity in employment. All our residents work in the professions or in financial institutions. We do not house artists, tramps, free spirits or freelance writers. We do not want our residents to be subjected to inappropriate lifestyles, nor do we want artists making noise after 9 PM. In a word, our residents watch artists from the comfort of various concert venues in the Metropolitan area; they do not live among them. In a word, you were once an artist. That disqualifies you from obtaining a residence share at the Buttson House.

We understand that our decision may disappoint you. After all, it may appear to you that we have denied your application for completely unjustifiable reasons. But we really could care less. Under New York law, we can deny your application for any reason we wish; we are not a government agency. We can discriminate against you for any reason. We can turn you away because you have bad breath or because you are Mets fan rather than a Yankees fan. Put simply, we have unlimited discretion. We are the shareholders; you are the applicant. It is our club. We get to decide whether to let you in. Applying these powers, we hereby conclude that you are not appropriate.

We know that you have money. We know that you can afford the residence share for which you applied. But we just don't like you; it is as simple as that. If you were more like us, we might have approved your application. But that is just conjecture. Maybe we would have been in a bad mood that day. Who knows. The bottom line is that you're not getting this apartment.

Yours very truly,

Mr. B. Rockwell Merriman, Esq.,

Attorney-at-Law and Chairman of the Board of Directors
The Buttson House Cooperative, Inc.

ARE LAWYERS ALLOWED TO CARE ABOUT FAIRNESS?

AN ESSAY

I like fairness. I always have. Even when I was a kid, I couldn't stand it when people got preferential treatment when it appeared to me they didn't deserve it. I didn't like it when other kids cheated at games, or when I saw that some kids' parents had more money than mine. "That's not fair," I complained. When I was young, I earnestly believed that everyone should have an equal chance to succeed at things. And I believed that success had something to do with merit. For me, fairness expressed whether a situation was fundamentally right or wrong. It was intuitive. I even thought that our government cared about fairness.

My understanding about fairness changed over time. I learned that fairness had two dimensions, one substantive, the other procedural. "Substantive" fairness referred to the intuitive judgment whether a situation was right or wrong. "Procedural" fairness referred to the technical circumstances that either gave or withheld an equal chance to achieve a particular result. For example, racial realities in America reflect "substantive unfairness" for black people because their economic social situation is largely worse than that for comparable white Americans. On the other hand, court rules and contract terms might reflect "procedural unfairness" because they tilt technical rules to favor one party over another in a dispute. Substantive fairness is basically a "justice" inquiry. Procedural fairness is more technical. But both imply a confrontation between opposing forces with "something at stake."

In law school, I cared about both substantive and procedural fairness. I used to complain about results in particular cases because they were "unfair" to one side or the other. This amused my professors. Slowly, I learned that while the law professes to supply "procedural fairness" to both sides in a legal dispute in an effort to assure "substantive fairness" (AKA "justice"), the reality is that fairness does not really matter. Procedure and form are more important than substance in the law. The side with greater resources and greater procedural tact will win. One motion beats another motion. A dismissal beats a complaint. A judgment beats a plea. Papers must be filed properly or they will be rejected, no matter how cogent their arguments. Sometimes these procedural results lead to "substantive fairness." But it is really irrelevant. Judges simply look to see whether the lawyers' behavior matches the rulebook. Legal officiating, then, is really just a technical exercise; it is not necessary that both sides have equal procedural opportunities. And it certainly is not necessary that the ultimate result be "substantively fair."

And how could it be? After all, fairness only enters the analysis when two sides confront one another. Fairness comes into play not just in the law, but also in fistfights, football games and poker tournaments. When two sides compete for a result under common rules, fairness rears its head. When something is at stake, fairness matters. Children scream "No fair" only after investing themselves in a game that offers some reward; without confrontation, fairness does not really matter. People want fairness when they strive to obtain a result that will favor them and disfavor someone else. They want to know that they had every opportunity to vindicate their desire to win. In legal terms, litigants want to know that they had every chance to advance their interests, or to protect them if they are threatened.

This creates a dilemma. After all, lawyers in our legal system--like rabid children vying for victory in a game--badly want particular results. They are not neutral guardians committed to abstract principles like "procedural fairness." Rather, they are biased advocates determined to win. In fact, they take an oath to "zealously" represent their clients' legal interests, and that means pulling out all the stops to prevail. This is problematic because fairness and bias do not go hand in hand. If fairness means giving the other side exactly the same opportunity to win as you, then fairness reduces your chances to win. As a biased advocate, you must increase your chances to win, not reduce them. In that sense, lawyering and fairness appear antithetical to one another.

Still, lawyers inevitably say that they just want "fairness" for their clients. But here they confuse their terms. Yes, they certainly want "substantive fairness," namely, a biased result that intuitively pleases the client. But they do not want "procedural fairness," namely, giving the other guy an equal chance to win. Additionally, lawyers misuse the word "fairness" all the time. They say they care about fairness, but they really mean "favorable results for me." If they win, they say the process has been "fair." If they lose, though, they say they were treated "unfairly." This has nothing to do with abstract fairness. This is mere bias and disappointment.

We should not be surprised that lawsuits are brutally acrimonious affairs because we follow the adversarial system in the United States. That means we basically allow two diametrically opposed, biased parties to battle it out to determine various property and liberty rights. One side gains; the other loses. It is always a zero-sum game. As such, advocacy is essential. The lawyers must go for the throat or their clients lose everything. Courts praise the adversarial system because they say it leads to greater "truth." After all, according to the apologists, the "truth" will inevitably come out as two sworn enemies struggle to gain an advantage over each other. And when money is at stake, they will stop at nothing to win. Truth, then, is the "collateral fallout" from biased adversary confrontations.

And here again arises the dilemma. How can fairness matter in bitter confrontations like this? Will either side in a lawsuit value fairness to the other when they are sworn to ruin each other? That is like asking NFL teams to ensure that their opponents get all the favorable flag calls they deserve. In other words, it is sheer fantasy. When two sides confront each other and stand to lose all if they do not win, fairness to the other guy is the last thing on their minds.

I mention all this because our legal system professes respect for fairness. Everyone in court says they are either "aggrieved" or "wrongly accused." They say they just want an opportunity to be heard in a fair forum. Yet during that opportunity to be heard, they want to treat the other side as unfairly as possible in order to win the fight. No one really cares about securing "ultimate fairness." Individual litigants--and their lawyers--just want biased results.

Judges should care about fairness. But as merely technical stewards committed to determining whether lawyers meet the standards set out in motion rulebooks, they have little power to reflect on power disparities between the parties--or unfairness in the rules themselves. Court rules and civil procedure protocols present fairness problems in their own right. Judges do not have the authority or discretion to deeply think about larger fairness issues. Their job is technical, not philosophical or ethical. Behavior either falls within the rule or without. Sometimes the result is fair, sometimes it isn't. Sometimes it's "fair" to bar an injured person from filing a lawsuit because he missed the date by one day. Sometimes it isn't. But from the judge's perspective, rules are rules. And that ends the judge's role.

This is why so many legal cases arouse disgust in neutral onlookers. From a detached perspective, it appears that fairness means nothing in the average lawsuit. Rather, it appears that mere compliance with rules and deadlines takes precedence over the question whether each side has a fair shot at a particular result. And lawyers do their best to belittle, degrade and discount everything their opponents say in court. This gives the impression that they would be just as satisfied if they won unfairly as if they won fairly--just so long as they win. Fairness seems the last thing on their minds. Indeed, they only mention "fairness" if they lose a point, in which case they say the result is "unfair."

In truth, we cannot blame lawyers for acting this way: They are biased advocates in an adversary system. They are trained to exploit rules in order to obtain private results, not to ensure that abstract fairness flows from every confrontation under the law. Lawyers are not philosophers or ethicists; they are employees hired to do a job. And employees are biased toward their employers because they receive pay to act only in their interest.

Bias and fairness are mutually exclusive. That is why I think it is extremely difficult--if not impossible--for our legal system to consistently deliver fair results. That is not to say that biased advocacy does not sometimes lead to abstract fairness. But that is a side effect at best, not an intentional result.

SHAME OR GUILT : WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?

AN ESSAY

I tried to answer this question during a conversation I had with one of my best friends. We often talk about philosophy and power, and we both agreed that "shame" and "guilt" are "kindred spirits." They are both strongly negative words. No one likes to feel guilty or shameful. They both imply that you have done "wrong." But are they really the same? That's the question.

Both "shame" and "guilt" flow from an acknowledgment of power. We only feel shameful or guilty when we recognize that we have failed to conform to a standard that we probably did not make. Someone else made the standard, someone we recognize as "superior" to us. In this sense, both guilt and shame emanate from below; the person who makes the rules that induce guilt or shame at most feels "disappointed" that his "subject" broke a rule. Shame and guilt, then, are for those who occupy an inferior power position. This is why Nietzsche called shame and guilt Sklavenmoral--Slaves' Morality. The rule-maker (or "master") does not feel them. Rather, he causes others to feel them because they do not adhere to his standards. They solidify his grasp over them.

But this does not mean that a single "superior person" causes others to feel guilt or shame. While a "superior person" may have originally laid down external standards, in most cases today external standards proceed from institutions. After all, power is deeply entrenched. It emanates from manifold places. It operates in virtually every conceivable manner, whether subtle or overt. Power radiates in families, in schools, in laws, in social settings and in professional relationships. It exists in commerce and in property. Most relationships involve a party with advantages and a party without them. That disparity provides an opportunity for dominance by one party over the other. And this is the setting in which guilt and shame flourish.

Guilt is more extrinsic that shame. Although both guilt and shame flow from an acknowledgment of power, the power that induces guilt is predominantly external. When we feel guilty, we feel bad because we know we have transgressed against some common rule or understanding. Our negative emotion springs from our awareness that we have violated an external expectation. This includes everything from the criminal law (an external authority about which we are conscious) to our parents (an external authority whose commands we respect). A person feels guilty when he steals or when he knowingly fails to attend a dinner he promised his parents he would attend. In both cases, the person knew he was obligated to do something by some external authority, yet he failed to adhere to the obligation. That conscious failure creates guilt.

With guilt, then, the inquiry is external. We feel guilty only when we acknowledge that some external authority holds power over us. When we break its rules, we feel guilt to the extent that we deviate from the "expected standard." Guilt requires an acquiescence to "superior" people or ideas. It necessarily makes the subject "inferior" to the standard he violates. And unlike shame, it can be objectively measured: The "superior" party can declare a subject "guilty" because the subject verifiably deviated from an external standard. This is why the law uses the term "guilt" rather than "shame." Guilt is a conclusion as well as an emotion. You just need to see whether a person met the standard.

Not so with shame. Although shame might feel similar to guilt, it flows from an entirely different conceptual source. Shame has internal origins. A person feels ashamed when he fails to meet a standard that he expects from himself, not a standard some external authority set for him. An external authority might encourage a person to expect certain behavior from himself. But in the final analysis, only an individual can decide whether to adhere to certain principles or beliefs. In this sense, shame intertwines with honor. An honorable person swears to himself that he will not act in a certain way to achieve certain results. He expects certain behavior from himself. He commits himself to certain principles and beliefs. When he fails to act in the way he expects, he feels shame, not guilt. He failed to meet his own standard, not an external one.

Consider a man who commits himself to respecting others and telling the truth. He makes these commitments because he personally believes that respect and truth are honorable principles. If one day he lies and disrespects a competitor to win a job, he deviates from his own standard. If he truly has honor, he would feel ashamed for breaking his own commitments to good principles. He might also be guilty of violating some external standard against perjury or untruthfulness, but that has nothing to do with his own internal transgression. And that internal violation creates shame. In short, shame is ethical (internal), while guilt is legal (external).

But shame still requires an "inferior" mental outlook. Although an honorable person decides for himself whether to believe in certain principles, in many cases he does not decide freely. The decision whether to believe certain things often depends on social circumstance and expectation. An external rulemaker has as great an interest in creating strong internal shame in his subjects as he does in crushing them under external guilt. A rulemaker wants his subjects to decide to believe in principles that could induce individual shame. All this inures to his benefit. For example, a person learns to believe that "it is good to respect private property." He also learns that it is "illegal to steal." If he steals something, he suffers both shame and guilt: On the one hand, he failed to meet his own internal standard about respecting private property; on the other, he knowingly violated the external command not to steal others' property.

Both emotions are negative. They flow from different sources. But in the end, they both serve to reinforce the "superior rulemaker's" control over his subjects. Guilty and shameful people are easier to manage than willful ones.

Shame seems purer than guilt. It is more individual than guilt because it depends on the individual's own moral ordering. But if a person's own moral ordering is not voluntary--and if individual moral ordering merely substitutes for external rulemaking--then the net effect of shame is no different than guilt: They both reinforce dominant values by inducing negative emotions in those bold enough to "transgress."

VALUES IN THE LAW : WHY YOU CAN'T BE A LAWYER AND A COMMUNIST IN AMERICA

AN ESSAY

Values play a huge role in the law. They infuse American legal doctrine just as they infuse all other associational activities in the United States. Still, values do not blare as loudly through the law as they blare through in more visible discourses, such as popular politics. In fact, values dominate the law in a much more subtle way. After all, according to popular understanding, the law "is blind." In other words, it is somehow detached, fair, unbiased, neutral, cerebral, rational and just, even though it governs biased parties and hotly contentious subject matter.

But it is a mistake to think that values do not infuse the law just as deeply as they infuse popular politics. Through ostensibly "fair" and "neutral" rules, our common law actually reinforces a dominant value system, namely: A complex, bewilderingly unbalanced system prizing industry, commerce, individual responsibility and vested property rights. Broadly speaking, legal rules favor those who own property. They provide predictable guidance in disputes over property, land, liability and money. They encourage unbridled property exchange. They arm property owners with numerous advantages to stop claims that their property or business injured someone. Superficially, the rules appeal to justice. Yet when push comes to shove, the common law's commitment to "vigorous, predictable commerce" and "personal responsibility" (a value judgment in itself) takes precedence over "abstractions." Lawyers who dedicate themselves to justice in practice all too often find themselves submerged in a world of unforgiving procedure and dizzying, often counterintuitive "everyday customs." When they insist on justice before grumbling judges with full dockets, they often invite ridicule rather than respect.

In the end, the common law is not about justice at all. Sometimes justice happens to flow from the rules. But it's not required.

To be a really effective lawyer in the United States, you have to possess certain values. Specifically, you need to have a basic respect for property rights, social distinctions, governmental institutions, order, "appropriateness," commercial activity and the notion that people exist in the world to profit from one another. These values all find expression in American legal rules. They are not necessarily "correct" or "just" values in themselves; they simply reflect dominant values. After all, law has always reflected dominant social values. Those with power dominate others. They obviously will want to brand their views about the world as somehow "official," "correct" and "sacred." In the West, commercial power generates practical power. That is why the common law so rigorously incorporates commercial values.

You cannot be a really effective lawyer if you do not wholeheartedly accept these values. If you have qualms about the notion that profit is the reason why human beings interact with each other, you will have difficulty advocating for a business client who claims he lost money in a deal. If you cannot understand why a person should lose a lawsuit because he filed something a day late due to unavoidable circumstances, you do not possess the "order values" (ie, "deadlines are deadlines") so necessary to bring reliability and predictability to commerce. If you find it repugnant that a client can get away with fraud by inserting the word "or" instead of "and," you are too morally sensitive to be a lawyer. Lawyers comply with rules and zealously manipulate them in order to win money for their clients. Those are the values necessary to be an "effective advocate" in our system. In the law, a conscience is not an asset. It is an impediment.

On some level, all lawyers know this. Until the late 1960s, Bar Associations in virtually every State refused to admit prospective attorneys who conceded membership in the communist party. Some Bar Associations even asked applicants whether they agreed with communist philosophy or Marxism. Even sympathizing with socialistic ideals was sufficient to deny admission to a hopeful lawyer. This may sound appalling to anyone who believes in the First Amendment. But for anyone who understands the values inherent in the common law, this hostility toward communism is hardly surprising. In fact, it is perfectly warranted.

Why is communism relevant to law practice in the United States? Simple: Because socialistic values clash fundamentally with the values enshrined in most common law doctrine. State Bar Associations correctly presumed that anyone who truly believed in Marxism would not be able to "effectively" or "zealously" represent clients in a capitalist system. After all, communism teaches hostility to free market enterprise, economic exploitation, private property ownership and power relationships built upon commercial inequality. It also teaches respect for the dignity and equality of man as an individual, not as a commercial "instrument." Given these values, no one who truly believes in communism could serve a client committed to owning more property, dominating more employees, making more profits, seizing more land and basically becoming richer than his neighbor.

For better or worse, lawyers in the common law system are essentially accessories to capitalistic enterprise. Their very craft defends these values. A communist lawyer, then, would be a walking contradiction.

Our Supreme Court ultimately concluded that States could not condition Bar admission upon matters of conscience or belief, including belief in communist principles. But this does not mean that communists make good lawyers. In fact, I think that States' former restrictions on communist sympathies among lawyers made abundant sense. In our system, after all, lawyers owe a duty to "zealously" represent clients. It is an "adversary system." One side fights to the figurative death for his client's interests, while the other does the same for his client's interests. In most cases, a client's "interests" mean "property interests:" Will the client make money or lose it? To be "zealous," the lawyer must do everything under the sun to vindicate those interests. How could he do that in good conscience if he believes in communism? How could he pull out all the rhetorical stops to either enrich one person or drive another into poverty? Quite simply, he could not. In fact, his communist principles would disable him from putting up a fight at all on behalf of someone who just wants to make more money. Lawyers are ineffective when something blocks their ability to fight tooth and nail for their clients. If a lawyer truly believes in communism, his beliefs will surely block him from advancing legal rules that result in unfairness, economic inequality, class distinction, exploitation and crass private profit. In this light, determining whether a future lawyer believes in communism has prime relevance on the question whether he can "effectively" represent a client.

I write all this to demonstrate that the law is neither neutral nor detached. Contrary to popular belief, it is not "blind," nor does it always fall fairly. Put simply, it is a human institution that voices the values of the society that creates it. In the United States, power created law to suit its purposes. For the most part, those purposes are commercial. Commercial values dominate the law just as much as they dominate the minds of those who practice them. Why do criminal penalties for theft increase according to the value of the goods stolen? Why is stealing a car worse than stealing an old shoe? Isn't the act the same? Why does the law disfavor restrictions on the ability to sell land? And why does the law equip landowners with defenses that make it easy for them to defeat the claims of people who suffer harm on their land?

In all these cases, the answer is the same: Because the law enforces the values of those who own property and seek to gain more. Common law rules make it easy for them to make profits, sell goods, sell land, develop land profitably and defeat lawsuits brought by those who suffer injury due to these activities. They all reflect a dominant value judgment. Those who write rules will naturally tilt the field in their own favor. This is precisely what property owners have done with the common law: They have inscribed their self-serving commercial values into the rules that govern our society. If you own, you're in luck. If you don't, you're not.

Those who own lots of property certainly want fairness and justice for themselves. They commit themselves to it on paper. But when fairness and justice interfere with vigorous commercial activity, "exceptions can be made" and "procedures must be followed." And they expect their lawyers to defend their values and their interests, not start mouthing about "justice." A client in our system does not want abstract justice; he wants "justice for me." Generally, that means making a profit or saving a potential loss.

Against this background, it is no surprise that State Bar Associations ostracized communists. Communists just do not fit in a club dedicated to greasing commercial wheels and furthering profit ambitions. In fact, they probably would gum up the works by talking about "extraneous issues," like avarice in society, inequality and sympathy for disadvantaged people.

Common law judges don't care about all that. They want to know whether the testator used the words "within twenty-one years of the death of a life in being at the time aforesaid," or whether a paper was stamped on the 14th rather than the 15th.

Justice? That doesn't help resolve a case. Rules do.

BEATING ROBBERS : HOW TO KEEP YOURSELF AND YOUR PROPERTY SAFE FROM VIOLENT CRIME

CRIME WATCH

By : Mr. G. Chadwick Klauenberg, Esq., J.D. (University of Pennsylvania Law School 1980), Former Chief of Police, East Orange, New Jersey (1985-2005); Published Author, Can’t Thug This : Hoodlum Management in 21st Century Urban America (New York Times Bestseller List), a Best-Selling Self-Defense Handbook; Amateur Chef; Property Owner (residence and beachfront properties).

We live in a violent society. For those who inhabit cities in the United States, crime is a very real danger. Murderous gangs roam the streets. Discharged and undiagnosed psychiatric patients threaten to push innocent commuters before onrushing subway trains. Con artists defraud hard-working men and women with fanciful yarns. And thousands of petty thieves mill through the streets every day, picking pockets, stealing, looting, robbing and swindling.

It is essential to know how to deal with crime. But today I do not write to call for greater enforcement against criminals. I leave that to legislators and executive officials in State government. Rather, today I write in order to inform the public about an important skill: How to keep yourself and your property safe from violent crime. Today, we are not talking about theories and abstractions. We are talking about real-life, practical skills that will prevent you from being the next police statistic.

Let’s face it: Many criminals want your property. They want your wallet, your watch, your Gucci handbag, your billfold, your cash, your family amulet, your car and even your furniture. Criminals are not like you or me. They do not work, make money, pay taxes and buy things at Wal-Mart®. No, they have separated themselves from society. Unlike us, they acquire money and property by violence, scheme and coercion. Everybody wants property in our society. Yet there is a legal way to do it. Criminals don’t follow the legal way.

It is illegal to steal and rob. As law-abiding citizens, we find it appalling that some people commit violence in order to obtain property. But that does not alter the fact that many people do it. For that reason, we must be prepared to deal with robbers and thieves. They are out there. They see our property. They want it. And they are ready to hurt us to take it from us. Put simply, we must be on our guard.

I have written many articles about self-defense and practical crime prevention. I always take a practical approach. I do not try to explain social trends and the reasons “why” criminals become criminals. I do not rationalize criminal behavior, nor do I make excuses for criminals, like blaming bad schools, bad parenting and poverty. Rather, I try to keep law-abiding citizens—like you—safe from hooligans. It does not help a robbery victim to understand why her assailant is a hooligan; it helps to prevent the hooligan from attacking in the first place. Hooligans are hooligans. In my book, that fact doesn’t change. And it makes no sense to debate it.

Let’s talk robbery. We must always fear robbers. They lurk everywhere. At this very moment, some thug may be sitting in a car outside your townhouse, observing your daily routine. He may be looking at your clothes, your briefcase and even the grocery bags you carry on the way home from work every night at 9 PM. He may be looking at your house and guessing that you have quite a lot of property. He may be plotting the right moment to ambush you and take your wallet. Put simply, robbers are everywhere. As long as you have property, robbers will try to take it from you.

I was a police chief for 20 years. Before that, I went to law school. From both a legal and law enforcement perspective, I know a thing or two about robbers. My knowledge can help you avert robbery. Robbery has a legal definition. In the law, behavior either fits the definition or it doesn’t. You can legally avoid robbery if you know what robbery actually means. When you understand what robbery actually is, you can take steps to make it impossible for a criminal to rob you.

At common law and in most State law, robbery is “the taking of personal property from a person by force or fear.” That means a person can rob you with a toy gun because he creates “fear” in order to take your personal property. It also means no one can rob your house, or your tree, or even apples from your tree, because those things are “real property,” not “personal property.” “Personal property” is “anything that is movable,” like a watch, a wallet, a pocket-knife, a painting or a jar. Apples are movable, too, but they are an exception to the rule because they come from trees, which are not “personal property.” There has also been some debate whether a mobile home is “personal property.” But let’s not get too philosophical; in most cases, a robber doesn’t want your trailer or your apple orchard.

No matter the circumstances, robbery cannot occur without “property.” A criminal cannot legally commit robbery without “taking property.” From a practical perspective, this means you can completely avoid robbery by refusing to carry, own or otherwise lay claim to property. Consider this: If you own nothing and go about naked on the street, you cannot be robbed. Legally, no criminal can rob you if you are naked, penniless and possess nothing. Now, if you were naked and had a rope around your neck, a criminal could rob you by threatening to kill you unless you gave him the rope. But again, you can avoid that situation by simply owning or possessing nothing at all, not even a rope. Property is the key to robbery. Without property, you cannot be robbed. Thus, refusing to own or possess anything is the best defense against robbery.

Other crime prevention advocates recommend lesser measures to prevent robbery. They offer advice such as “don’t go out by yourself;” “watch your belongings;” “stay away from bad neighborhoods;” and “don’t show off expensive goods.” Yet these are half-measures. They do not make it legally impossible to suffer robbery. Rather, they still allow robbers an opportunity to commit robbery. If you “don’t go out by yourself,” yet still own property, a criminal can rob you because there is property available to “take by force or fear.” Similarly, even if you don’t “show off expensive goods,” a criminal can still rob you because you have “expensive goods” (which are “personal property”) to take “by force or fear.” It doesn’t matter whether you conceal it; if you have it, someone can take it. In sum, then, these measures may reduce the chance that you will suffer robbery. But they do not render robbery legally impossible.

Wouldn’t you rather make it impossible for a criminal to rob you? A 0% chance of robbery is preferable to a 10% chance. The only sure way to make robbery legally impossible is to stop owning or possessing property. No matter how much you conceal or protect your property, a determined robber always has something to “take by force or fear.” But if you are naked, broke and destitute, you have nothing that can be robbed. The minute you obtain property you are subject to robbery. Why increase your risk? Just don’t own anything; it will render robbery a hollow threat.

Law teaches us many things. Many people think that the law does not provide practical solutions to real problems. But here we see that the law allows us to effectively prevent crime. By understanding what robbery actually means, we can stop robbers before they even obtain the legal opportunity to violate our property rights. Let robbers try to rob you. If you are naked and own nothing, you are completely safe.

Now, a would-be robber might get angry when he discovers you have nothing to “take by force or fear.” In that case, he might attack you with a weapon or his fists. If you are a woman, he might try to sexually assault you. In fact, these chances increase if you are naked on the street. Nonetheless, none of these criminal acts would be robbery. They might be rape, or murder, or attempted rape, or attempted murder, or assault, or sexual assault or battery. But they would not be robbery because the criminal has no “personal property to take.”

Let the law work for you. The law is not just a post hoc remedy intended to deter future criminals from violating your rights. It is a proactive tool. You must merely understand what the law requires before setting off on your daily routine. I have dedicated my life to preventing crime. We can prevent crime by understanding legal definitions. That is why I say to you: If you know what robbery actually means, you can make it impossible for anyone to rob you. Just refuse to own or possess anything.

This is not an absurd recommendation. How can we call a solution absurd if it completely prevents a potential problem? In my opinion, a solution that completely removes the possibility of a problem is a winning solution, not an absurd one. To that extent, heed my advice. If you wish to forever free yourself from robbers, simply give up all your property and live penniless—and naked—on the street. If you do that, you will literally have no “personal property” to “take by force or fear,” not even tattered old rags.

Just imagine how good you’ll feel knowing you can’t be robbed. If someone puts a gun in your face while you’re naked and broke, let him say: “This is a robbery.” You can confidently say: “No it isn’t. I cannot legally be robbed.”

WAR, DEATH AND TRUTH : PUBLISHING CASUALTY PHOTOGRAPHS

AN ESSAY

Associated Press photographer Julie Jacobson recently published a “disturbing image” in the New York Times. See http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/04/behind-13/. Specifically, she dared to snap a picture of a U.S. Marine moments after he suffered a mortal injury in Afghanistan. The image shows two comrades struggling to stabilize him. His lips are weakly parted; he stares at the ground as if in shock. His bloody leg (or stump) is clearly visible. His rifle lies powerless at his side. According to the article that accompanies the picture, the Marine died several days later. His father learned that Ms. Jacobson had the picture and asked her not to publish it. He did not want the picture to “sully the memory of his son.”

Ms. Jacobson published the picture anyway. Defense Secretary Robert Gates angrily denounced her decision. Although he acknowledged she had a “legal and constitutional right” to publish it, he claimed that “common decency” and “taste” should have stayed her hand. In response, Ms. Jacobson pointed out that she complied with the Defense Department rule for publishing “U.S. casualty photographs,” namely, only after the Department confirmed the casualty and notified the soldier’s family. This satisfied her sole legal obligation. From a strictly legal perspective, the fact that the Marine’s family objected to publication made no difference; Ms. Jacobson followed the only rule that constrained her.

Not surprisingly, Ms. Jacobson’s decision sparked a heated debate on the New York Times’ website. The debate broke into two camps: (1) Those who believe that the press must always respect a family’s wishes and (2) those who demand to see the “truth of war” uncensored and uncut. One angry commenter even went so far as to say that “acts like this” (ie, photographers defying military families’ wishes) were reason to “revoke the First Amendment.” But another applauded Ms. Jacobson for delivering a “dose of truth” about a war that seems all-too distant and “sanitized” in American eyes.

This is not a new debate. Americans have always been queasy about seeing pictures of their own men dead (or dying) on the battlefield. We have been in many wars since the advent of photography. Matthew Brady was the first man to photograph dead soldiers after the Battle of Antietam during the Civil War. His work sparked outrage and disgust. He said he was merely trying to show “what really happens in war” beyond all the glorious rhetoric and saber-rattling. Despite his commitment to “telling the truth” about war, the U.S. military took steps to curtail such publications. These efforts culminated in complicated rules about publishing “U.S. casualty images.” These are the rules that Ms. Jacobson’s image now calls into debate.

Interestingly, the military’s rules about publishing “U.S. casualty images” only apply to U.S. service personnel. If a civilian is killed, there is no rule prohibiting a journalist from immediately publishing the image. Similarly, if a soldier from the enemy army dies, a journalist does not have to wait until his family is notified. And naturally the journalist need not heed the foreign soldier’s family’s objections to publication (if they even know their son has died fighting the Americans). The U.S. military defends its rule because it wants to “uphold the dignity and memory of troops who give their lives for their country.” Yet that concern does not apply to any other human being who dies as our troops fulfill their mission. At the same time, the rule leads to a skewed impression: Americans only get to see dead enemy troops and civilians, but never dead Americans. In the end, this blinds the American public to the brutal reality of war. After all, American troops die in Iraq and Afghanistan every day. We know this from the “official casualty rolls.” Yet those rolls do not begin to tell the same story as pictures showing soldiers dying.

If America wants to wage war, it should know the costs. War is not about animated maps and strategic objectives narrated on the FOX News Channel. Nor is it even about geopolitical balancing or justice. Rather, for the men who fight war, it is about fear, carnage, brutality and death. For the men who fight war, it is an agonizing sensory experience. The sights, sounds and sensations of war irreversibly alter those who experience them. (See, e.g., All Quiet on the Western Front). Yet these sensory impressions rarely make their way back home for everyone else to see. War veterans cannot even start to “explain” what it is like to be in combat and to see young men suddenly die. Yet photographs can at least partially convey the sensory impressions that language can never capture. In so doing, they tell an essential story that would otherwise be forever lost. Put simply, when the government censors images capturing the visual, visceral, unforgiving “essence of war,” it deludes the public. If the public really wants to know the sacrifices men make on the battlefield, it should know about the uncensored brutality they see every day.

Yet many strongly disagree with this assertion. They say that the public’s “right to know” about war’s brutality must yield to the individual soldier’s family’s interest in freedom from the emotional turmoil that flows from seeing their dying son paraded in newspapers. They say that military families have a right to “cherish certain memories” about sons who die in combat, even if those memories are inaccurate or false. While it is true that military families will suffer immense pain upon seeing such images, their pain must be compared with the broader public interest in knowing the true cost of war. I venture that it is better for the public to know how bloody and senseless war is than to fall into ignorant delusion about its human price. The only way to truly inform the public about war’s price is to inflict additional emotional pain on the families of the individual soldiers whose dying bodies we see captured on film.

This sounds harsh. Yet this is the only way to drive home the cost of war. Nothing else even remotely tells the story.

My heart goes out to the father who lost his son in Afghanistan. I am truly sorry that he must bear the additional burden of seeing his son’s final moments in a photograph. I am also sorry that the public, too, can now see that image. But I venture that this image does far more than inflict individual emotional pain on those who knew the soldier who died. It does not disparage his memory, nor does it dilute his sacrifice. Rather, it honestly shows what he endured. It shows what war does to men. It reveals that there is nothing glorious or heroic about war. In so doing, it educates the public. When the public knows what war really costs—in visual, visceral, human terms—we can only hope that they will be less eager to start them in the future.

America needs to understand that wars have costs. Yet rules such as the military’s ban on “casualty photographs” blind us to those costs. They also deceive the public into believing that “we do the killing, but not the dying.” Ms. Jacobson’s photograph unsettles these assumptions, and rightly so. It illustrates that war is not fun for anyone, American or not. It is important for Americans to know that before launching another military excursion somewhere in the world.

Europeans learned the cost of war between 1914 and 1945. That is why they criticize us so much for our willingness to start new ones.

TURNING THE TABLES ON THE EXECUTIONERS

AN ESSAY

During my break from writing this week, I have had time to read some interesting history. I am always searching for historical material to flesh out my satires and inspire essays that link modern-day problems to ancient precedents. I found a good one in the story of Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat (1667-1747), a Scottish Baron who had the honor to be the last man beheaded at London's Tower Hill.

I have studied capital punishment at length. I think it measures a society's moral progress. You can tell how advanced--or barbaric--a society is by investigating three things: (1) Does its government kill its own citizens "by law?"; (2) If it does, how does it "officially kill" them? and (3) If it does, how many does it kill every year? For over a year now, I have cataloged which countries (and US States) allow capital punishment. I have also investigated which methods they use to execute people. It is a grim business, but I think it reveals a lot about human societies and their claims to "civilization." Capital punishment, after all, is the ultimate government action vis-a-vis the individual. Government can take many things from you. It can take all your property, your dignity, your self-respect, your money, your liberty and even your children. But it can't take anything more than your life.

Yet it impossible to talk about capital punishment without talking about history. Throughout the ages, capital punishment and brute political power have gone hand in hand. Political power uses law to advance its own purposes, not in order to vindicate abstract principles like justice or right. Victorious governments execute rebels and others who commit "treason" against them. In this sense, capital punishment masquerades as a "legal sanction," when in fact it is merely an exercise in raw, arbitrary political power. The strong man kills the weak one who opposes the "establishment." The strong man deploys judges to cover up the killing with official-sounding legal gobbledygook.

But law doesn't fool me. Law is supposed to speak against killing our neighbors, not kill them itself. I have profound difficulty believing legal rhetoric that justifies capital punishment when the same legal rhetoric condemns common, intentional homicide. If intentional homicide is "wrong" when a citizen commits it, how is it different when a State officer does the same to a citizen? There is a glaring inconsistency here. And this inconsistency persists because governments have always claimed a power to kill their own citizens. In my view, blind tradition is no reason to keep foolishness alive in our time.

In all my studies about capital punishment, I routinely run across ironic tales that expose these philosophical inconsistencies. Simon Fraser's story is a perfect example. Fraser was sentenced to die because he conspired with Jacobite rebels during their attempt to overthrow King George II in the 1740s. He "had to die" because he threatened to dislodge those with political power. He lost, so he "had to die." If he had won, he probably would have executed the losers. It had nothing to do with principle; it was about power.

In any event, Fraser went to Tower Hill. Huge crowds gathered to watch his head roll off the block. The government built wooden scaffolds to accommodate the overflow crowd. They wanted to see this "traitor" die. But before the headsman struck, a scaffold collapsed, killing 20 bloodthirsty spectators.

I laughed when I learned this. I found it ironic that men and women died while waiting to watch an execution. They paid for their perverse desire to watch the government ritually kill someone. Something turned the tables on them. They thought the law supported them against the "traitor," but they died, too. Victorious political power might have killed Lord Fraser, but some other power killed the spectators who prepared to celebrate his death.

In my view, this shows that executions do not prove that the government is "right" about anything, even if the condemned person is guilty. No matter what legal arguments the King's judges and prosecutors made to justify Lord Fraser's death in law, they could not prevent "innocent" spectators from dying, too. In short, government had power to order Lord Fraser to die, but it had no power to prevent the spectators from dying. Thus, the government's own claim to "power over life and death" appeared pitifully limited.

In principle, then, government is not "naturally right" when it kills its own citizens. It has simply arrogated the power to execute people "by law" because power creates law. There is nothing in nature that entitles government to put citizens to death. All the procedures, trials, rules and rhetoric underlying modern capital punishment are mere inventions, not a priori truths.

There is not much I can do to dislodge power. I just like to think that government should aspire to something better than the crude, human urge for revenge against "trespassers." I have written before than men will always kill each other. Men are emotional animals. They have individual weaknesses, passions, idiosyncrasies and even delusions. Yet government is supposed to be better than the individual men who compose it. Just because men constitute government does not mean that government must mirror all men's weaknesses. To the contrary, government has a unique power to stand on principle and dignity, even when individual men cannot. To my mind, there is no substance to the argument that "government can kill because men can kill." Rather, I believe that government has a unique opportunity to insist on behavior that transcends human weakness. Principles might not work for individual men, but governments can demand them.

Law should mean something more than mere power. Lord Fraser's story reveals power at work through law. Yet his story also reveals that neither law nor power can control everything, despite their claims to the contrary. While power might have ordained Lord Fraser's death, it did not ordain the spectators' deaths. No legal solemnity or argument killed the spectators. Law may have justified Lord Fraser's death with florid rhetoric and even legal citations. But its pretentious reasoning could do nothing to justify--or prevent--the spectators' deaths.

In short, power has limits. But power acts as if does not. I love stories that reveal those limits, chastising those who adhere to power. The spectators at Lord Fraser's execution confidently took their seats on the scaffold to behold "their" power at work on a man "their" law had condemned. They felt justified in exercising "their" power. But they wound up dying, too, even though the "law was on their side." They didn't "deserve to die;" but apparently--to quote The Unforgiven--"deserve's got nothing to do with it."

What sweet, maddening irony. The history of power--and capital punishment--abounds with stories like this. In the end, you get the impression that no one is right, no matter who dies and who invokes law to justify death.

JUSTICE THOMAS ON TROY DAVIS : "WHEN IT COMES TO EXECUTIONS, I DON'T GIVE A BROTHER A CHANCE"

WISDOM FROM OUR LEARNED SUPREME COURT JUSTICES

By : Mr. Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice, United States Supreme Court (1991-present) (appointed by President George H.W. Bush; confirmed by the United States Senate 51-48); Chairman, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (1982-1990); J.D., Yale Law School (1974); Affirmative Action Beneficiary; Affirmative Action Opponent; Republican; Champion, Supreme Court Building Cafeteria Cheeseburger n’ Fries Eating Competition (1998, 2003, 2005)(Runner-Up to Sandra Day O’Connor (1999); Runner-Up to William H. Rehnquist (2004)); Member, The Federalist Society; Republican.

Early this week, my colleagues issued an extraordinary order granting Troy Davis—a Georgia death row inmate—an opportunity to challenge his conviction for a murder that happened 20 years ago. Three courts have already reviewed his conviction. A Georgia jury found him guilty in 1991. Georgia wants to just get the show on the road and put him to death. My good friend Justice Scalia dissented from this madness and I joined him. He basically said that the law requires some finality in death penalty cases. He said the law does not permit us to free convicted killers because we think they are “actually innocent.” And he said that the Constitution allows States to execute people even if they are “actually innocent.” After all, if you’re guilty “in law,” it doesn’t matter if you’re not guilty “in reality.” Here at the Supreme Court, we only care about the law, not reality.

I joined Justice Scalia’s well-reasoned dissent. But I have a right to add my own thoughts about this case. All too often, Justice Scalia gets to say all the fun stuff and I just silently sign on. This time I want to say a few things myself because I care deeply about this issue. This is a case about black men on death row. I just want to say for the record: I don’t give a brother a break. If a brother wind up on death row, shee-yit, he ain’t gonna get no love from old Uncle Thomas. That be what it is.

Justice Scalia did a fine job explaining what the law says about so-called “postconviction relief.” But Justice Scalia can be a little technical. I like simpler language, even if it involves the law. So today I’m going to explain what Justice Scalia meant in laymen’s terms. I’m also going to talk about why I don’t give a brother a break. Bottom line: When States want to execute black men, they can count on my full support. After all, the law says that States can execute convicted black men. The law says that black men can only appeal their convictions under certain circumstances. If they don’t follow the procedures—or the appeals court affirms the conviction—that’s it: Dead playa walking. I respect the law in this area. And the law says we need finality after juries speak, innocence or not. Not just that, I’m a Federalist. States have a right to execute black murderers. As a Federal judge, who am I to stand in their way?

Let’s start with the Constitution. Let’s get rid of the argument that the death penalty is unconstitutional. Like Justice Scalia, I believe the text provides the answers here. We just need to look it up. First, the Constitution doesn’t use the words “death penalty,” “execution,” “innocent” or “actually innocent.” All it says is: “..nor shall any State deprive any person of life…without due process of law…” (U.S. Const. Amd. XIV, § 1). Well, if it says the State has to give “due process of law” before “depriving life,” that necessarily implies the State can deprive life. There wouldn’t be a rule qualifying how the State deprives life it couldn’t deprive life in the first place. So the text says States can execute people. That’s enough for me.

American tradition allows executions, too. Justice Scalia always likes writing about colonial history and 17th Century England to make sense of what the Constitution says. I like it, too. I basically just follow his lead. He is right that States used to execute people in 1787. In fact, they executed lots of people, even for stealing and adultery. They just hanged them from a sour apple tree and buried them in the pasture. They even burned and whipped slaves to death. But back in those days, killing a slave wasn’t even capital punishment, because slaves weren’t people by law. You can only execute a person. Life sure was easier back then.

Of course, liberals like to say that capital punishment is “cruel and unusual” under the Eighth Amendment. Well, we resolved that argument in Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1977). Call me old fashioned, but I’m all about precedent. When we decide a case, we need to stick by the result. In that case, we said that the death penalty was not “cruel and unusual;” so out goes that argument. Who am I to contradict the Court? We need to follow what we said in the past, and in 1977 we said that capital punishment is not “cruel and unusual.” That’s enough for me to throw out any liberal contention to the contrary. Precedent is precedent.

Being a Supreme Court justice is not as hard as you think. You just look at the text, listen to Justice Scalia’s lectures about American tradition and check to see if the Court has already said something about the issue in the past. If it has—and you agree with the result—you follow it. If it hasn’t, you do whatever you want. In some tougher cases, the Court says something in the past and you don’t agree with it, like in Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973). In those cases, you need to overrule the law. But that’s not the case here.

This case involves a Federal law called the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA). Although Justice Scalia discusses the statute at length in his dissent, I want to discuss it in simpler terms. Basically, AEDPA makes it tough for convicted black murderers to throw out their convictions. Congress enacted the law because black guys were gumming up the system by filing hundreds of Federal petitions asking for “writs of habeas corpus.” For those who don’t know, “writs of habeas corpus” allow black guys to challenge their State convictions in Federal court (don’t ask me anything else, like what it means in Latin, because I don’t know; ask Justice Scalia about that). This took up way too much time. I’m talking decades; executioners got out of practice. Some black dude might have committed murder in 1978, yet the State wouldn’t get around to strapping him down to the lethal injection table until 2007. I echo Judge Joe Brown when I say: “Justice delayed is justice denied.”

Thankfully, the AEDPA cut down on these delaying tactics. Now, black guys get one shot at habeas corpus. And Federal courts can’t overturn a State conviction unless it rests upon a “clear violation of constitutional law as construed by the Supreme Court.”

Basically, AEDPA says: “Screw you” to all black guys who think they can land a “Get out of Jail Free Card” from some Clinton appointee in Federal court. And there is nothing wrong with that. After all, the law is the law. Who am I to question the law?

But this is where Troy Davis comes in. Troy Davis is a convicted black man. He appealed all the way through the Georgia State courts, then applied for habeas corpus in the Federal courts. He lost every time. In every case, the appeals courts said that the “evidence was sufficient” to sustain his conviction. Under AEDPA, he had his one shot at habeas. He lost. Now, he’s trying to appeal directly to the Supreme Court. After losing three times, his lawyers dredged up some new evidence. They say that all the witnesses who said he killed the security guard perjured themselves. These witnesses have even sworn out affidavits recanting everything they said about Davis; they all say the accomplice killed the guard, not him. In other words, Davis is trying to say that he is “actually innocent,” and that it would be unconstitutional for Georgia to execute an “actually innocent man.”

No it wouldn’t. Like I said before, the Constitution doesn’t say anything about “innocence” and “execution.” Rather, the law requires us to allow Georgia to carry out the execution as scheduled. This is not about innocence. This is about law and procedure. Procedure says that black guys get only one shot at habeas under AEDPA. Davis got it. Our court rules say that black guys can appeal directly to the Supreme Court only in “exceptional circumstances.” U.S. Supreme Court R. 20.4(a). Yet these are not “exceptional circumstances.” Davis is not the only black murderer who says “he’s innocent.” I don’t care whether all the witnesses recanted their testimony. This is not a new argument. AEDPA bars federal courts from rehearing any argument that has already been made. Davis is just repeating himself, no matter what affidavits he’s shuffling. Procedure says Davis is done. Who am I to question procedure?

I fully join Justice Scalia’s remark: “This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually innocent.’ Any claim based on ‘actual innocence’ is not constitutionally cognizable.” In re Davis, 557 U.S.___ (2009)(slip op. at p. 2). Let’s be honest here. Troy Davis had a full and fair trial. It does not matter that all the witnesses recanted their testimony and that police investigators admitted they coerced people to accuse Davis. Georgia paid for the trial; are we going to make Georgia pay for another one? Nor does it matter that Davis’ attorney bordered on ineffectiveness. Davis had a fair trial. The jury found him guilty. By law, that verdict subjected him to Georgia’s criminal code. Georgia’s criminal code prescribes the death penalty for murder. The jury imposed that sentence. The State afforded Davis all the procedures it could possibly give him. Not only that, Davis took his innocence claim all the way through both Georgia’s court system and the Federal courts, despite the AEDPA’s prohibition.

Put simply, Davis has had too many chances. The State has paid exorbitant sums defending against Davis’ frivolous arguments. He has exhausted all his legal remedies. It’s time to let Georgia inject this guy with some potassium bromide. This is what the law requires. I follow the law.

I also join Justice Scalia’s observation that Davis’ case represents a “capital conviction in full compliance with law.” In re Davis, 557 U.S. __(2009)(slip op. at p. 5). Here on the Supreme Court, we look no further than the law, provided we agree with it. In this case, the law is the AEDPA. The AEDPA prescribes procedures intended to stop black guys from gaming the criminal justice system with frivolous “innocence claims” decades after they shoot police officers. Additionally, the AEDPA preserves the State’s interest in quickly executing black criminals, as well as protecting the finality of jury verdicts. Remember, we’re talking about law. Under law, we must believe the jury. Juries decide facts, not judges. In this case, the jury said that Davis killed the security guard. Who are we to question a jury, even if we later learn that the jury heard perjured testimony? We need to put our foot down on appeals like this. Every black guy on the planet is going to say “it wasn’t me.” Does this mean we have to grant a new trial every time?

I can tell you this: “Not on this negro’s watch.” From where I’m standing, juries are always right, especially when they sentence black guys to death. I’m not going to contradict a jury, nor am I going to stop a southern State from executing a black man. Federalism says that States have a right to execute black men in their own borders according to local law. There’s nothing unconstitutional about that. States have rights, too, not just black murderers. The Constitution gives you the right to fair trial, not the right to escape execution for “innocence.” Like I said, the Constitution doesn’t use the words “innocent” or “execution.”

I need to say a few more things about “innocence.” All these liberals are up in arms about Justice Scalia’s remark that the Constitution does not prevent the State from executing “actually innocent” black guys. They say it shocks the conscience to allow States to execute people who may be “guilty in law” but are “actually innocent in fact.”

I disagree. On the Supreme Court, we deal with the law, not with facts. From where we sit, there is no truth beyond what the law prescribes. I don’t care if a convicted defendant totally undermines the basis upon which the jury found him guilty. In law, we must trust the jury. We need some finality in our system. As judges, we cannot philosophize about “truth” and “facts.” And we don’t need to: Who needs “truth” when you have law? Law provides all the answers, even if they are fictional. We don’t listen to conscience. We listen to law. Conscience is uncertain; law is crystal clear. In Troy Davis’ case, the law clearly dictates that he “had his chance.” It does not matter what “actually happened.” If we had to weigh the “truth” in every death penalty case, States would never get to lethally inject, shoot, hang, electrocute or gas anybody, black, Hispanic or Cherokee. As judges in a Federal system, we cannot tolerate that result. We must follow the law, not the truth.

Truth is for philosophers. Law is for administrators. We are just trying to settle on some orderly administration here. That’s all Justice Scalia was trying to say. I agree with him. I’d also like to add one personal comment about Troy Davis’ “actual innocence” argument: “Playa, pleeze.”

Now would you please excuse me? I have more important things to do. It’s lunch time and there’s a cheeseburger n’ fries competition today. If I don’t practice now, I might lose to Justice Alito.