Welcome back from the long weekend! Just four days to go until the next one! Until then, here are some law links:

• John Bratt calls the 4th Circuit’s decision in the Sparrows Point LNG case a win for Baltimore County.
• There aren’t a huge number of lawyers in the General Assembly.
• “The criminal justice system wasn’t a good system with a few cracks,” Page Croyder writes. “It’s been a giant mud hole in which the wheels of justice spin without going anywhere.”
• Facebook is not actually encouraging people to cheat on their husbands and wives, but it is making it easier for them to be caught at it. Via Maryland Divorce Legal Crier.
• This is kind of a weird lede on this ABA Journal story about wrongful convictions, implying that the guy did something wrong: “Barney Brown should have listened to his mother that fateful day in 1970 when she told him to stay home while she was at work.”

Has it really been more than seven months since I’ve noted the annotations in the opinions of Court of Appeals Judge Glenn T. Harrell Jr.?

Sadly, it has.

I’ve been checking periodically since May, of course, but honestly I haven’t been as diligent as I should have been. (Anyone else smell a New Year’s resolution here?) So I did a quick review of the judge’s opinions since I last wrote about them. And while I didn’t see too many Harry Potter references, two opinions stood out.

Harrell referred to a zoning dispute between Baltimore City residents and a neighboring apartment complex as “the city’s version of the Hundred Years’ War” in a July opinion. Not only does Harrell give a brief description of the Hundred Years’ War in a footnote, he includes this gem:

The Hundred Years’ War gave history Joan of Arc. The instant case also has a central figure named Joan (one of the Petitioners), who, like her saintly antecedent, faithfully presses her cause, having battled the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore numerous times. Although Joan of Arc suffered an unfortunate fate, her principals… ultimately succeeded.

One month later, Harrell went from the historical to the philosophical. He began a majority opinion holding the state can regulate noise from a shooting club in Allegany County with a question: “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” Harrell notes many attribute the question to 18th century Irish philosopher George Berkeley.

The judge then partially answers the question. “An existentialist likely would decline to confront the riddle because human impact expressly is excluded by the query,” he writes. His footnote offers a crash course in existentialism:

Most existentialists treat the human subject as the starting point for philosophical thought. Thus, this riddle likely would be deemed by them to be too abstract and remote from the concrete human experience to be worthy of serious contemplation.

In other words, the opposite of Harrell’s opinions.

A group of inmates at a prison in Illinois say they’re getting dangerously high levels of soy in their food.

According to a Chicago Tribune story, the inmates allege that they are getting up to 100 grams of soy per day, even though the FDA recommends about 25 grams per day. The soy is everywhere–in soy cheese, cooking oil, gravy, hot dogs, sloppy joes. The head of the foundation backing the lawsuit calls the high-soy diet “the Tuskegee of the 21st century.”

The inmates say they’re having big health issues, such as gastrointestinal difficulties, allergic reactions and heart problems.

One former inmate, who isn’t actually a plaintiff, said he is allergic to soy. Prison meals caused a big problem for him in the tight confines of a cell, he told the Tribune.

“Gas was really an issue,” said [Thomas] Salonis, who was released from prison last fall. “And most of my (cellmates) were real big, and they were like, ‘Hey man you gotta take that somewhere else.’ But I was like, ‘Where am I gonna take it?’ The whole thing was just offensive.”

The foundation head says the diet conditions at the prison represent an accidental experiment in “what happens when you feed people soy with no other choices. This situation has brought it out into the open.”

HT: ABA Journal.

Happy icy Monday! Drive and walk carefully. I don’t know how conditions are by you, but here, the roads are OK but the sidewalks are a little treacherous.

• Baltimore Police are sending “Dear John” letters (clever!) to guys neighborhood observers have tagged as cruising for prostitutes. A noted Baltimore defense lawyer cries foul.
• Oops. In a short item in Time about the death penalty’s fading importance as a political issue, the magazine’s Web site embeds a link titled, “Read about Maryland’s decision to end the death penalty.”
• The Post has an interesting rundown of the circumstances surrounding the Salahi affair.
• Black-lung disease is back on the rise. Soon to follow: a rise in black-lung lawsuits, surely. HT: Mass Tort Litigation Blog.
• Says Sonia Sotomayor: “I understand from my girlfriends that I’ve been put on a most eligible bachelorette list. I’ll figure that out in time. But right now I pity the man who tries to find a minute in my schedule.” HT: Above the Law.

The University of Maryland School of Law soon might be able to add “location for an Academy Award-winning film” to its promotional materials.

“The Response,” written by alum Sig Libowitz and filmed at the school in February 2008, is one of 10 films in the running for Best Live Action Short.

The 30-minute movie is based on the Guantanamo Bay tribunals and follows a trio of military judge advocate generals as they decide on a detainee’s guilt or innocence. The law school has an executive producer credit.

The shortlist will be pared down to no more than five next month, and the nominees will be announced Feb. 2. The Academy Awards will air March 7.

A Baltimore County husband and wife convicted on animal cruelty charges earlier this year will have their appeal heard next month after a judge agreed to postpone Thursday’s scheduled hearing.

Both Hilton and Donna Silver were unaccompanied by lawyers Thursday in Baltimore County Circuit Court. Hilton Silver, a lawyer himself, said counsel who had agreed to represent him was at another trial; Donna Silver had a letter from the public defender’s office indicating she applied for assistance within 10 days of the hearing, meaning no one could represent her.

Hilton Silver also indicated he had two character witnesses – a prosecutor and a retired judge – who were unavailable Thursday.

Prosecutor Adam Lippe, who had at least four witnesses in court and three on standby, objected to the postponement. Judge Robert E. Cahill Jr., however, agreed to the Silvers’ request and moved the hearing to Jan. 25 but said no further postponements would be allowed.

The Silvers were each sentenced in August to three consecutive weekends in jail and ordered to pay $10,000 in restitution for the death of one horse and neglect of two others at their Windsor Mill home. Lippe said following the hearing that the couple has served their jail time but the fine has not been paid, including $230 owed to a vet for euthanizing one horse at the home.

The delay in the appeals means the two surviving horses remain under the care of the county, which has spent $20,000 so far, Lippe said. The horses have fully recovered at Days End Farm Horse Rescue in Woodbine but cannot be sold until the legal issues in the case have been resolved.

Donna Silver has forfeited ownership of the horses, but Hilton Silver has maintained the horses aren’t his, Lippe said in court.

As if this article about the challenges being made against a “post-theist” councilman in Asheville weren’t interesting enough, there’s also the Maryland connection. As the story notes, Maryland is one of a handful of states with a constitutional clause requiring “a declaration of belief in the existence of God” from state office-holders (see Article 37 of the Declaration of Rights).

Rest assured, the Free State hasn’t tried to enforce the requirement since 1961, when the U.S. Supreme Court found it unconstitutional in Torcaso v. Watkins, a case involving a Maryland notary public. In 1978 — a mere 17 years later – the wording of the oath of office was changed in response to Torcaso, but Article 37 has never been amended to delete the requirement itself. That’s understandable, given the difficulties of amending the state constitution. Can you imagine getting 60% of the state’s lawmakers to back the idea of excising God from anything, let alone the Declaration of Rights? My guess is that it would have been easier back in the ’60s.

About a month ago, I noted in this space that The Perring Place Express Deli had opened across the street from Baltimore County Circuit Court.

I also promised a restaurant review at some point. (Since the deli opened, the question I regularly receive is, “How is it?”) So yesterday, I bought the sandwich pictured on my way downtown from Towson.

I selected corned beef on rye with mustard, because any deli worth its salt shakers must make one and it’s pretty much impossible to screw up. This one came with chips and a pickle for $6.50.

The corned beef was lean, even though it did not indicate that on the menu, which is worth major bonus points in my book. The Dijon mustard was an interesting choice; I would have gone with the spicy mustard.

But that did not stop me from eating the entire thing. I was definitely full for much of the afternoon, which is really all you can ask for from a sandwich. I would go back and sample other things on the menu, including the breakfast items.

(Question for all of the lawyers out there – can I expense the sandwich? )

The stereotypical sweet for cops is a doughnut, but that has changed in Maryland – at least until the New Year.

My colleague, Liz Farmer, passed along a press release from the state’s Mothers Against Drunk Driving chapter announcing its fourth annual “Cookies for Cops” campaign. From now through Dec. 31, thousands of cookies will be delivered to law enforcement agencies throughout the state, a sugary way of thanking officers for their work.

There were 152 drunk-driving fatalities in Maryland last year, down from 178 in 2007, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

You can visit MADD’s Web site if you’re interested in contributing to the cause. (And if you need people to test the cookies you bake, feel free to send them to our office.)

Good afternoon. Here are some Web nuggets to nosh on to help fight that case of the Mondays:

Bryan Sears with the Patuxent newspapers reports on a pair of Baltimore County lawyers who might exert some influence on next year’s County Council races.

The issues surrounding concussions and football players are not just in the sports headlines anymore – they’re appearing on law school finals.

If you’re looking for gag gift this holiday season, might I suggest this?

A writer to “Annie’s Mailbox” seeks help getting a 47-year-old lawyer friend to move out of her parents’ home. (HT: Above the Law.)

C-SPAN’s “America and the Courts” series focuses on the role of the U.S. Solicitor General in its most recent installment. Opening remarks given by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. (HT: How Appealing.)