This is filler. This is unabashedly filler, because I’m having an amazingly busy week and have to get the themed Friday post together still, and Boozy just doesn’t have time to sit down and write something new and glorious every Wednesday. However, I made a promise to myself, and to you fine folks, that I would keep the site updated at least twice a week as we head back to the three times a week posting schedule. So, in the furtherance of that, let’s bring back an oldie but goody and do a legal news roundup here on Lawyers & Liquor, with some light commentary by the bastardly Boozy Barrister on all of the weirdest or, in my opinion, most worthy news that has slammed into the legal world!
I swear, if I could make this a real job I’d never open a Federal Reporter again.
Above the Networking Opportunities: David Lat Takes A New Job
If you’re a lawyer or legally related professional of a certain age, you probably have heard about Above the Law. This website, founded in 2006 by former Federal Prosecutor David Lat, is probably the most common form of wish fulfillment you see among young attorneys and the legal fetuses of the law school classroom. Mainly reporting on law school gossip, because the drama unfolding in your study group simply isn’t enough to satisfy you, and Big Law associates bitching about their bonuses not being enough to buy that nice new luxury car, Above the Law and Lat himself have become cultural touchstones of the legal community – whether you like them or not. Sure, it may be the Sun tabloid of the profession, a slightly more boring version of the inane ramblings of Grandpa with internet access, but everyone at least knows about them. And, I’ll admit, I’m harder on them than most because I long ago decided that, whether they know it or not, they are my sworn enemy.
But the contributions of Above the Law, which spawned current legal influencers like Keith Lee of Associate’s Mind, can’t be undersold. Shit, since Keith founded LawyerSmack, which led to the creation of this site and Boozy in general, you could even say that Above the Law is my great-grandfather whose picture I hide in a trunk in the attic – you know, as one does with a shameful ancestor. As such, it’s no surprise that after over a decade at the helm of that lum bering ship of legal state, founder David Lat is moving on to greener pastures. As reported by the ABA Journal yesterday, May 7, 2019, Lat is joining the ranks of legal recruiters at Lateral Link. In other words, he’s becoming a headhunter employed by Above the Law’s first advertiser and…shit…all of my sponsors are furries.
…fuck.
We here at Lawyers & Liquor wish David the best in the typical manner used whenever someone has a better career move than we do: by muttering “That fucker gets all the breaks” and dosing our coffee with enough whiskey to make us cross-eyed.
A Boobie-Based Circuit Split On Nipple Freedom.
Are you familiar with “Free the Nipple,” the movement to allow women to wander the streets of our fair country completely devoid of anything but a smile up top? If you’re a 13 year old boy, you most certainly are and probably have supported them for a long goddamn time,waiting in the wings with a bottle of Jergens and, just, a mountain of Kleenex. For the rest of us, in the terms of political activism and such this movement has fallen by the wayside in national attention because oh my God the past two years have just been an unrelenting hellfire of pain.
The point of the movement is well-founded, though, in that it basically states “Hey, guys can walk around without shirts and really we all have the same parts up top. Like that Boozy guy. He’s at least a double D and he gets to mow the lawn shirtless in hot pants without the police saying anything. Why can’t women?” The answer, of course, comes back to community morals and the sexualization of the female upper body as something more than two baby feedbags strapped to a human delivery device. So, you know, it’s not like the cause is meaningless as the current status, at least in my neon-pink shorts-wearing opinion, does end with a woman’s body being marked as too obscene for ocular consumption in the city streets while I can do whatever the fuck I want. Shit, you convinced me. Let the nipples be free!
Except in the 8th Circuit, because as the ABA Journal has reported that court has absolutely come down against allowing women the same right to wade shirtless through the streets that men currently enjoy. In answering this equal protection argument, the 8th Circuit leaned on a prior decision that basically said it was really important to public decency that cities be allowed to restrict the display of the nipple. That said, this determination is at odds with a decision of the 10th Circuit a few months back, which struck down such ordinances on equal protection grounds.
You know what that means?
CIRCUIT SPLIT! Oh please let this get accepted by SCOTUS and set for argument along side the “death while jerking off and choking yourself” case. I can make a two-fer day out of it!
Finally, There’s No Excuse For Marital Rape…In Minnesota.
Finally today, a bit of criminal law news for Minnesota, where the state legislature has finally outlawed marital rape…again.
It turns out that while all states have outlawed spousal rape protections – the theory that because you are married you are always consenting to sex with your spouse and therefore it isn’t rape – a number of states placed restrictions on this outlawing. These so-called marital rape exceptions say “Well, you know, it isn’t rape if it’s your spouse and none of these facts apply.” For instance, in Minnesota you were always considered to have consented, and therefore prosecution of the offense was barred, unless the parties weren’t living together and one party had filed for a legal separation. Which did fuck all to protect Jenny Teeson when she discovered her husband had been drugging and then raping her while videotaping it over the course of their marriage.
Teeson, though, refused to just shut up and take it and fought the Minnesota legislature to remove these exceptions to marital rape prosecution. And, as the ABA Journal reported, she won this battle and now these exceptions to marital rape prosecution no longer apply in Minnesota! Good work Jenny! Seriously, no snark. Good work. This is a fucking hero move.
Now if Maryland, which refused to repeal its exceptions earlier this year, and the majority of other states with these exceptions on the books, would just get on board, we’d be good.
I’m Out Of Here!
That’s all for today, folks. Join me Friday for Freaky Friday, where we explore a macabre legal case or principle on the spooky side of the law! Until then, I’m the Boozy Barrister, and you need to be billing time.
-BB
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