October 2011
19 posts
“My lawyer died last week. His name was Michael Nussbaum, of Washington, D.C. He was seventy-six years old and Stage 4 lung cancer got him after a brave two-year struggle. He was survived by his wife, Gloria Weissberg, and her two daughters. His obituary in the Washington Post told of his high-profile client list, about whom he rarely spoke, and his equally high-profile corporate clients, such as Lloyds of London.
What’s harder to put into words is the relationship of a trusted lawyer and an investigative reporter. Michael was born in Berlin and came to America as a three-year-old Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, just before the Second World War. His sense of time and place remained impeccable. He spent his career resolving disputes and, if that were impossible, making them go away. I spent my career creating disputes and doing all I could to keep them alive. Michael’s favorite word was vanilla, by which he meant: Let’s not rush to judgment about who did what to whom, and whether it was an outrage; slow down. That wasn’t the same as doing nothing: an injustice, if real, had to be rectified, but carefully.” —Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker, http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/10/a-reporters-lawyer.html
What’s harder to put into words is the relationship of a trusted lawyer and an investigative reporter. Michael was born in Berlin and came to America as a three-year-old Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, just before the Second World War. His sense of time and place remained impeccable. He spent his career resolving disputes and, if that were impossible, making them go away. I spent my career creating disputes and doing all I could to keep them alive. Michael’s favorite word was vanilla, by which he meant: Let’s not rush to judgment about who did what to whom, and whether it was an outrage; slow down. That wasn’t the same as doing nothing: an injustice, if real, had to be rectified, but carefully.” —Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker, http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/10/a-reporters-lawyer.html
Peter Thonemann on Children in the Roman Empire →
the-tls.co.uk
Facinating to imagine our “instincts” were not always so instinctual in Roman times.
Blackberry outage causes law firm to consider alternatives →
abajournal.com
and the band played on…
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NY Times asks Can Anybody Be a Designer? →
nytimes.com
“The first definition of “design” in the Oxford English Dictionary is dated 1548, as a verb meaning to “indicate” or “designate.” Nearly a century later, “design” was identified in a professional context as “a preliminary sketch for a work of art: the plan of a building, or part of it.” Since the start of the Industrial Revolution in the late 1700s, design’s professional role has expanded incessantly and numerous disciplines have surfaced: graphics, product, software, transport, multimedia and so on. The word “design” has remained both a noun and a verb, and retained its original instinctive meaning, but has been used primarily in a commercial context.
Over the years, a growing number of designers have objected to the commercial dominance of design. They argue that although commercialization has made design appear more important by giving it a particular status, it has also constrained it by limiting designers to designated roles. The same restrictions, or so they claim, prevent society from recognizing design’s potential to tackle substantial social, political and environmental challenges.”
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Adam Liptak, In New Term, Supreme Court Shifts Focus to Crime and First Amendment
The New York Times’ Adam Liptak previews an unusually interesting upcoming docket for the U.S. Supreme Court. The highlights for me -
Hosanna-Tabor Church v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, No. 10-553, the court will consider whether a Michigan school run by a Lutheran church is subject to a federal law banning discrimination based on a disability. The church fired a teacher with narcolepsy who was a commissioned minister but taught mostly secular subjects.”
and
Federal Communications Commission v. Fox Television Stations, No. 10-1293, which concerns “fleeting expletives” uttered by giddy celebrities at awards shows and partial nudity on the old ABC drama “NYPD Blue.
FCC v. Fox is potentially especially entertaining for the opportunity for counsel to slip some fleeting expletives into their own arguments, as they did in the oral argument before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals broadcast on C-SPAN.
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