A Minor Modern Analogue to the Destruction of the Ancient Library of Alexandria

"BOSTON — Harvard announced Thursday that it would indefinitely suspend construction on a high-tech science complex in the Allston neighborhood of Boston because of money problems." Abby Goodnough, NYTimes (Dec. 10, 2009)

(Alleged) Destruction of the Fabled Ancient Library of Alexandria

&&&

The dynamic evidence page

It's here (more or less): the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post.

Browser-based evidence marshaling: MarshalPlan in your browser

What Does the Rule of Law Mean in New Jersey? (It Means that Ms. Lopez Gets to Keep Her Public Office.)

As I understand it, according to New Jersey law, Jersey City Councilwoman Nidia Lopez can be a council member of Jersey City only if she was a resident of Jersey City when she was elected (and was a resident for some time before that). At the time Ms. Lopez was elected she had claimed Florida as her domicile and had thereby avoided paying taxes on her self-declared homestead there. In addition, she had not paid New Jersey income taxes (or business taxes) for some years. (Florida has no income taxes.) On her federal income tax return Ms. Lopez had declared that Florida was her residence. Nonetheless, an esteemed New Jersey trial judge ruled that Ms. Lopez was a resident of New Jersey. I guess the eminent trial judge peered into Ms. Lopez's soul and saw that no matter what Ms. Lopez might have said and done, New Jersey was, in Ms. Lopez's inner heart, her real residence, that that's where she intended to reside. You cynics you! Behold! Here you see a judge with ... er ... uh ... ah ... oh yes ... courage, no?

In the meantime Jersey City is governed by the Hon. Jerramiah Healy, Public Official 1 or 4 (so identified in indictments and criminal complaints), that fervent admirer of the presumption of innocence (for his appointed and indicted deputy mayor and former treasurer of his election campaign, in any event). Mr. Healy of course had utterly no idea that the fake bribes his deputy mayor took from the remarkable Mr. Solomon Dwek for the mayor's election campaign committee were illegal (even though Mr. Mayor was present on two occasions when Mr. Dwek offered the money to the deputy mayor in exchange for some help with a fake real estate development).

Oh yes, the indicted president of the Jersey City council also remains in office -- and votes on real estate tax abatement proposals for major developers and on other such unimportant matters. That's heartening too -- for it shows that he too believes in the presumption of innocence.

Well, let's see. I wonder how many unindicted Jersey City council members are left. One, two, ....

Mr. Putin should come to New Jersey and see how the rule of law works. He would find much to emulate here.

&&&

The dynamic evidence page

It's here (more or less): the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post.

Browser-based evidence marshaling: MarshalPlan in your browser

Skeptic's Dictionary on Repressed Memory

Skeptic's Dictionary:

Psychologist Lenore Terr, a defender of repressed memory therapy, argues that repression occurs for repeated or multiple traumas, such as a repeatedly abused child. Schacter notes that "hundreds of studies have shown that repetition of information leads to improved memory, not loss of memory, for that information." He also notes that people who have experienced repeated traumas in war, even children, generally remember their experiences. A person who suffers a great trauma often finds that she cannot get the event out of her mind or dreams. Terr's theory is that the child becomes practiced at repression to banish the awful events from awareness, and forgetting might aid in the child's survival. Her dissociative theory, however, is based on speculation rather than scientific evidence.

&&&&

See the still-sparse authority on repressed memory in the node on repressed memory in Spindle Law's evidence module.

See also cases collected in the Advanced Evidence web site.

&&&

The dynamic evidence page

It's here (more or less): the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post.

Browser-based evidence marshaling: MarshalPlan in your browser

Latest Legal Developments about Repressed Memory etc.?

What is the latest law on the admissibility of repressed & recovered memory? Is there any genuine distinction between -- one the one hand -- standard(?) "memory recovery" and -- on the other hand -- the use of devices such as guided imagery (as it's sometimes called) or hypnosis to reawaken lost or suppressed memories?

Enter your thoughts & news here and, please, in the evidence module of Spindle Law. Go in particular to this node (reliable vel non?) of the evidence module. (I am interested in legal developments abroad as well as domestic legal developments.)

&&&

The dynamic evidence page

It's here (more or less): the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post.

Browser-based evidence marshaling: MarshalPlan in your browser

New York Times & The Bishop

The New York Times castigates Cardinal (formerly Bishop) Egan for uttering these words:

It’s marvelous ... when you think of the hundreds and hundreds of priests and how very few have even been accused, and how very few have even come close to having anyone prove anything.

The NYTimes apparently thinks that Cardinal Egan's own words condemn him.

But what if what cardinal Egan said was true?

In the Middle Ages it took a lot of witnesses to overcome the testimony of a single bishop (or so it is sometimes said, perhaps by the same people who say that folks in the Middle Ages thought that the earth is flat). Today -- as the New York Times would apparently have it -- not even the testimony of a hundred or a thousand bishops can overcome the testimony of even a single money-bedazzled plaintiff.

I am tired of anti-religious bigotry. It is time to attack this sort of bigotry. Perhaps the power of the "new media" can overcome the power of the "old media" in this arena? I surely hope so. Ye believers in religious freedom, unite!

P.S. I am against sexual predators. However, I do not favor the idea that every accuser of a priest should be believed -- and paid off. (Yes, Virginia, there are some liars out there.)

&&&

The dynamic evidence page

It's here (more or less): the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post.

Browser-based evidence marshaling: MarshalPlan in your browser

Something's in the Offing, Is It?

Some passages are too delicious not to quote (do you catch my meaning?):

There are obvious difficulties with presenting the arguments in the original works of Derrida or Lacan, or Baudrillard. They do not write in any natural language, they do not put the premises before the conclusion, the conclusion is distributed over the text rather than appearing in any one sentence, positions are assumed to have been established outside the texts one is actually reading, in previous texts, or perhaps future ones, and so on.

James Franklin, What Science Knows and How It knows It 42 (Encounter Books 2009).

&&&

For some unknown reason, Franklin's comments about postmodern folk put me in mind of a different kind of strange philosophy -- J.L. Austin's. Austin's "ordinary language" philosophy is still thought of as having been a respectable sort of thing. But some of Austin's extraordinary ordinary language can make one wonder why:

Are cans constitutionally iffy? Whenever, that is, we say that we can do something, or could do something, or could have done something, is there an if in the offing—suppressed, it may be, but due nevertheless to appear when we set out our sentence in full or when we give an explanation of its meaning?

J.L. Austin, “Ifs and Cans,” Proceedings of the British Academy (1956), in Philosophical Papers, p. 205 (Oxford: 2nd ed., 1970)

&&&

Sometimes I'm quite glad I decided to become a law professor rather than a modern (or, worse yet, postmodern) philosopher.

&&&

The dynamic evidence page

It's here (more or less): the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post.

Browser-based evidence marshaling: MarshalPlan in your browser