Right? Can you believe it?! Sua Sponte has a post about Michael Jackson. Give me a break! If I hear one more minute of news time devoted to Michael Jackson I’m going to flip.  Or maybe you’re in the other camp—the man was amazing, a pop legend that has changed the way we hear music.  We should all take a minute to pay tribute to his life… or at least his career.

I suspect that most readers of this blog are in category one—or at least I think that’s generally where I fall.  But there is something about his story that has not let me dismiss it as just another TMZ-train-wreck-celebrity-moment.  It seems to me that MJ, in his depravity and his greatness, is a caricature of the human experience.

It is undeniable that he had an incredible gift.  Even if you do not like his music, it is fact, not opinion, that his music moved millions of people in deep and real ways.  On the other hand, while there is not hard evidence of wrongdoing, it is difficult to ignore the fact that he paid a boy for silence.  And if you give him the generous benefit of the doubt on that issue, one can still plainly see that he was a man who had trouble living.  He never fit into society; he was literally not comfortable in his skin. That dichotomy of having something wonderful to offer the world and at the same time being terribly flawed and weak rings true to me—I see it in myself; I see it in my friends.  It rings true to me of what it is to be human.

There is a push and pull in the media right now—between the “that’s enough, the man is a wretch,” and the “lets have another tribute to this genius.” And as much as I want to dismiss it all, I can’t help but notice that it sounds like a familiar—granted an extreme version of—an inner dialogue.  MJ seems to be the new poster boy of the imperfection–the intense grayness–of life.

– Anonymous

Please submit questions for Dean A. Morrison, Associate Dean for Public Interest /Public Service, by tomorrow, July 10.  You can email you submissions to suasponteblog (at) gmail (dot) com.

We told you in April that GW scored a big coup in hiring Alan Morrison as the new Lerner Family Associate Dean for Public Interest/Public Service.   He has had an incredible legal career – far too much for me to describe in a short blog post – but I’ll give you the following points from his resume: Along with Ralph Nader, he founded Public Citizen in 1971; and he has argued 16 cases in front of the Supreme Court, including everyone’s Con Law favorite, INS v. Chadha.

Well, Dean A. Morrison finally arrived at GW on July 1, and as the BLT described it, “a sense of new beginnings [is] in the air.”

Dean A. Morrison has graciously offered to answer student questions about his new position at the law school abd the future of public interest at GW.  We here at Sua Sponte are very excited about being able to host this question-and-answer session.  

Here’s how it will work:  Just like with the SBA Candidate’s Debates we had in the Spring, please submit your questions to Dean Morrison via email to suasponteblog (at) gmail (dot) com.  We’ll select the best of the bunch and give them to Dean Morrison and then post his responses next week.  Please submit your questions by this Friday, July 10, to be considered.

I am nearing the end of the third week at my summer job, so I thought it was a good time for an update of sorts.  I am working at a law firm in DC for the summer, doing mostly litigation-type work.  I’ve found the work to be interesting and engaging, and the people, on the whole, to be fun and welcoming.  But I think that a lot of people, no matter what job they have for the summer, can describe it positively in such generic terms.  So I’ll spare you the bland pleasantries and talk about some things that I have had to adjust to at the office so far.

First, I am still getting used to the culture of the law firm.  I know that every law firm has a distinct culture, but my sense is that across the board, the collective culture of law firms is different from other office settings.  All of my previous jobs were with the government, political campaigns, or small businesses.  I am accustomed to a smaller team setting, with all members of the organization focusing on the project or projects at hand.  That isn’t the case in the firm, where 250 attorneys can be staffed on hundreds of different projects and cases.  Now, I fully recognize that in larger organizations, this is THE way things get done – its just that I’m not used to that yet.  This isn’t to say that there isn’t a strong sense of comraderie within the office – there is plenty of that to go around – but rather that the different components of the office don’t have to rely on each other to get a single project done.   Even though I’ve gotten my sea legs already to manage the workflow I have been assigned, I still need to grasp how a firm can be successful while allowing for the necessary level of autonomy for individuals and teams to work on their own.  

Second, it is personally challenging working on cases that I don’t always agree with.  More than any other time in law school, my ability to act as an advocate for my client, right or wrong, is being tested and strengthened because of some of the work I have done so far.  Without mentioning specifics, allow me to offer an example:  I recently finished a project on a potential case that one of our clients might bring to challenge an action taken against it.  In many ways, I personally support the action taken against our client, if only as a matter of principle.  Nevertheless, our client wants to explore the possibility of litigation, so I am assigned the initial research into possible causes of action.  Upon completing my research, I realized that my opinion had changed.  Our client not only had a possible cause of action, but a probable chance of winning – and I think they should win.  Imagine that!  Finally, I am beginning to see the connection between the doctrinal material that we learn in class and the application of the law in every day life.  

Taking the rosy view, I do feel that my experience of and with the Law has grown and matured somewhat, despite only working for three weeks.  I fully expect that in the remaining weeks of the summer, I can continue to say that this is the case.  Then again, I’m not that naive  - I can see how some people who end up working as attorneys in larger law firms can easily lose sight of the reasons they decided to become lawyers in the first place.  Especially when most of your clients are not individuals but companies, without face and feelings, and for whom you only provide legal services.  

Well, that’s what I have for you so far.  Drop us a line in the comments and let us know how your summer is going so far.  It doesn’t matter if you are working at a large firm, small firm, government agency, judicial chambers, or as a research assistant – let us know what’s going on!

I think all of us were working when the two biggest stories of the day were announced, so we couldn’t post earlier.  

As you all know by now, Judge Sonia Sotomayor has been nominated by President Obama to replace Justice Souter on the Supreme Court.  

Additionally, the California Supreme Court, in a 6-1 opinion, ruled that Proposition 8, which was passed last year and made gay marriage in California illegal, was constitutional.  

Thoughts? Reactions? Comments?

In the last month or so there has been a big debate in the blogosphere over what Obama should do with memos and photos that tend to show that the Bush administration tortured some of the detainees it held.  In the media, this discussion has been painted as a partisan battle, where the liberal left is seeking the ultimate revenge against the Republicans who were doing their best shortly after 9/11.  I don’t see it that way.  To me this is an issue about the rule of law and about whether members of the Office of Legal Counsel (Judge Bybee, Professor Yoo and Steven Bradbury), other members of the Executive Branch (including Vice President Cheney or even President Bush), and members of Congress (Nancy Pelosi, perhaps)  should be exempted from national and international law.  I think they should not be.

But that also doesn’t mean that I think they should necessarily sit in jail for the rest of their lives.  There is a  difference between torture being legal and torture being justifiable.  What I mean by that is similar to what Justice Jackson said in his dissent in Korematsu v U.S.  Korematsu challenged an order given by a General (and authorized by Congress) during World War II that mandated the internment of all Americans of Japanese dissent in California.  The Supreme Court upheld the law, but in his dissent, Justice Jackson stated, “if we cannot confine military expedients by the Constitution, neither would I distort the Constitution to approve all that the military may deem expedient.”  Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214, 244 (1944).  Justice Jackson’s point was that while some decisions may be required because of the unknowns of a military situation facing the country, those decisions should still be subject to judicial review.

While torture is illegal it can sometimes be justifiable.  Was it in this case?  The appropriate way to determine the answer to that question is through our court system.  The judge plays a neutral role to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to justify charging someone with crimes and the jury serves to determine if the facts in the particular case meet the requirements of the law.  But in this type of case, the jury serves a special purpose.  Jury nullification has always existed, and torture during  a time of war  may be the type of crime a jury finds excusable.   For example, let’s say Khaled Sheikh Mohamed  had information about an imminent terrorist attack (the so-called ticking time bomb scenario).  I think most juries would excuse those who authorized torture in a limited scenario like that.

From the evidence that has been released, it does not appear that the use of torture was limited to the ticking time bomb scenario.  This is why prosecuting those who authorized widespread torture is important.  Enforcing both the Geneva Conventions and domestic laws against the use of torture is crucial in sending two messages.  The first and most important is that when there is no dire, emergency situation, torture is never justified.  The second is that the United States as a country is strong enough to have our past decisions reviewed in the public eye.  The irony of the reaction people had to the torture that took place at Abu Ghraib and the clearly worse behavior that has been uncovered and authorized by these memos is shocking to me.  There is no proof, except the word of former VP Dick Cheney (contradicted by the testimony of FBI and CIA agents who interrogated K.S. Mohamed) that these methods produced actionable intelligence. In fact, many have suggested that these interrogations took place in order to create a justification for going to war with Iraq in the first place.

This doesn’t mean that torture should never be used.  But it should never be legal.  And it should always be prosecuted.  The simple reason for this is that it forces officials to think twice about each time they torture someone already in U.S. custody.  Unless it is absolutely necessary to torture someone in order to save lives–and the torturer knows that it will save lives–it should never be done.  There are so many reasons for this that I almost don’t know where to start.  First, torture doesn’t provide true confessions, meaning it doesn’t work.  When someone knows that they will be tortured until they say the right thing, they will keep talking until whatever the right thing is comes out of their mouths.  Torture is designed to break someone, not to illicit truth.  Second, Al Qaeda uses the fact that the US tortures to recruit more soldiers.  This alone should be proof that this is almost always a counter productive method.  Third, the torturers–not the lawyers who wrote the memos or the politicians who authorized the techniques–are affected morally and spiritually by torturing.  When we ask CIA agents and soldiers to torture, we are asking them to lose a little of their humanity.  And last, the ability to torture empowers an already too powerful Federal Government with the legally approved means to break individuals to serve some greater good.  I don’t know how much closer to 1984 I want to get.

That is, of the first annual Party Law Schools Rankings.

We haven’t disappeared – just taking some time off after finals to regroup our thoughts and get settled in the normal world again.  Check back on Monday for regular blogging.  

I hope you are all enjoying your break so far!

NPR is reporting that Justice Souter is retiring. 

UPDATE: MSNBC is reporting it also. 

In case you are the only person left on the planet who hasn’t heard yet, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, is switching parties and becoming a Democrat.