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Recent Articles from Jack L.B. Gohn
‘The Administrative State’: Nothing less than our civilization
The Trump administration has various names for what it would like to kill inside the existing government. Steve Bannon, President Donald Trump’s chief ideologist, told the Conservative Political Action Conference last month that he and his president were working to achieve “the deconstruction of the administrative state.” The Washington Post explained the phrase as “the […]
A most-telling consent decree
At this writing, we don’t know whether the proposed consent decree between the City of Baltimore and the U.S. Department of Justice will ever be approved and go into force. But its 200-plus pages are worth a read, if for nothing more than insight into the kinds of things that have gone on between minorities […]
Clogged funnels at trial and on the campaign trail
Clogged funnels. The election turned on clogged funnels. The litigator in me grasped this long before the rest of me caught up. I would see interviews with Trump voters about Hillary Clinton and knew I’d seen those faces before. But where? After the results came in, I remembered: certain judges and juries whom, despite my […]
Lessons of the levees
No traveler who drives down the Mississippi from end to end, as I recently did, can fail to be struck by the levees, those endless not-found-in-nature hillocks and walls that start popping up in Illinois and Iowa, become almost continuous around Cairo, Illinois, and accompany the traveler most of the rest of the way to […]
Freedom of expression v. equal protection, before the footlights
Unconventional casting, which assigns dramatic roles to performers of a different race or gender or ability than the role would seem to have been conceived for, has been much in vogue recently. The celebrated musical “Hamilton” is perhaps most prominent instance right now, with non-white actors portraying our white Founding Fathers, but all-female and all-male […]
Here’s to party elites
In this column, as I’ve often stated, I write about law and policy, not politics. Yet there is such a thing as the law and policy of politics. The primaries and conventions we’ve just lived through have certainly provided some fresh, object lessons about one political issue that touches on both law and policy: the […]
Jack L.B. Gohn: ‘Lawyer Clark Blues’ and the life well-lived
In a 1940 Who’s Who publication, now an online database, titled “Prominent Tennesseans, 1796 – 1938,” there is a brief entry on Hugh L. Clarke. It reads, in part: “Attorney, of Scotch-Irish descent…. Attended public schools of Haywood Co., and Haywood Co. High, 1923. State Bar and American Bar Associations; ….Passed the State Bar Examination […]
Jack L.B. Gohn: ‘Partner’ and other Big Law euphemisms
Despite a mostly placid surface, the most recent of the “Law Firms in Transition” reports issued annually by law firm consultancy Altman Weil is alarming. True, it starts with the unstartling observation that larger firms continue to change in response to changing market conditions, and that anodyne tone continues. But then you start recognizing the […]
Jack L.B. Gohn: In SIJ cases, we broke it, we bought it
Among the oft-touted secondary benefits of pro bono legal work is making a practitioner feel good about himself. But that feeling can be seductive and deceptive, as all forms of self-satisfaction can. And among the first things threatened are one’s critical facilities. I recently smacked up against this danger when I got partway through a […]
Jack L.B. Gohn: Constitutional rights under assault in Apple encryption fight
There are plenty of issues in the dispute between the Justice Department and Apple over the encryption of iPhones. But the two I personally find of greatest concern have to do with human dignity: that of cellphone users and that of programmers who may at some point be subject to a court order to attempt […]
Jack L.B. Gohn: Welcome to the ‘Drone Age’
The civilian drone era has barely begun, and already heads are throbbing with the issues drones raise. There are lots of juicy ones, including national defense, air safety and conflicts between federal and state authority, but I only want to focus on privacy problems. Because – let’s face it – the drone is, first and […]
Jack L.B. Gohn: Trump’s would-be Muslim ban is abhorrent, not unconstitutional
There is no question that Donald Trump’s plan to cut off all entry to the country by Muslims, immigrants and visitors alike, is widely and justly felt to be contrary to this country’s values. But I have heard it said that such a ban would also be unconstitutional or illegal. I’m far from convinced. To […]
