Are retirement ages for Minnesota Supreme Court justices constitutional?

I recently attended a fundraising party at a downtown Minneapolis law firm. As you probably know fundraisers are sort of like rent parties in college. The host provides some alcohol and snacks and the guests provide some cash for the person or organization seeking the funds. In college one would then try to drink enough alcohol to make attending the rent party a good investment of scarce funds. That sort of behavior is frowned on at fundraisers held at law firms.  So that is one difference between a rent party and a fundraiser.

For some people, Christmas means dressing up like a Nazi.

OK, I have not blogged in a long time. There are a number of reasons for this but they are mostly not worthy of discussion. Suffice to say that if Judge Kopf can post while undergoing cancer treatment, I can be better about posting while eating Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and thinking about March Madness.

Grudge Match: Basketball Edition

You may be forgiven, dear Reader(s)™, for thinking this blog was dead. But it isn't! It was just, well, frozen. I, for one, am currently obsessed with: (1) pursuing justice on behalf of my saintly clients; and (2) blogging about college basketball.

On the latter point, tomorrow is the rematch of the Iowa – Wisconsin basketball game. Wisconsin is going for the sweep, hoping that Iowa's coach once again blows his top.

Mr. Gillette's birth-state honor is on the line, as the football team also lost to the mighty Badgers in the fall.

May the best state school (that is, Wisconsin) win.

"I answer yes, though I’m a cat person and consider his dog hideous."

Says Judge Posner, expounding on his prodigious ability to tell spontaneous lies.

Santa Claus is just pretend, but he's real.

I am generally opposed to telling lies, even trivial ones. Partly for this reason, I did not intentionally set out to sell the myth of Santa Claus to my children. When my older daughter was younger, I explained to her that Santa was "just pretend." She nodded knowingly, because this was something she had always known. Only, for her, "just pretend" meant something a little different. There was a "pretend land" where the pretend things actually existed, and sometimes they came to our "real land." So "just pretend" didn't mean "not real," it meant, essentially, "supernatural." She had no problem saying something like, "Santa is just pretend, but he's real."

I suppose that I could have rigorously disabused her of this false notion. But the benefits of her misimpression soon became clear. There was, of course, the behavior modification. She didn't really care about disappointing or annoying me, but the thought of getting on Santa's bad side—the dreaded "naughty list"—could move her to immediate tears. In a pinch, this comes in really handy.

More importantly, this idea of Santa brought her palpable joy. Her fascination with Santa, the North Pole, the Elves, the Workshop, etc., was very endearing, and the visible thrill she got from thinking about getting presents from Santa was just adorable. Eventually she knew that what Santa was purported to be capable of was impossible without magic. So she believed in magic.

It came to seem cruel to disabuse her of this notion. So I let it slide, and her belief has intensified over the years. Big Time.

This might be a big mistake. Maybe when she learns the truth about Santa, and about magic, she'll infer some unflattering truths about me as well—for one, that I'm a liar. I will, it must be said, have some plausible deniability. (I'm a lawyer, after all.) I will be able to say that I told her the truth from the start, and she just misunderstood. But this probably won't convince her.

Just the other day she asked, "You  believe in Santa, right daddy?" And I said, "In spirit, yes." (Lawyer'd.) "But Santa is real, " she said. This was not a question. "Well, in spirit." "No, really real," she insisted. Her grasp of the real/pretend distinction is more sophisticated nowadays, and only magic bridges the gap. She was staring at me, somehow looking down her nose from below. So I relented and agreed.

Then this morning I told an outright lie, and it was awesome. We will be in Madison for Christmas, with the grandparents, but we're going to give our presents to the kids tomorrow. Today I just blurted out, "I got an email from Santa, and he said he's going to drop off presents here tonight."

"Really?" Ivy looked like she was going to cry, and I realized my mistake: (1) this was counter-myth; (2) more importantly, she gets a lot more presents at the grandparents than she gets at our house, so she was worried about an inferior haul. (This is a practical magic she believes in.)

"He's still going to Gaga's house, too, he's just dropping some of the presents here tonight."

"Really?" Now she was very serious, sensing one of my little jokes. "No, daddy: really? This is serious. I need to know the truth."

Now Laura chimed in to back me up, which is important because she can be counted on to dispel my little jokes.

Convinced at last, Ivy jumped up and down and began making plans to leave cookies and milk. It really made my day.

Lesson: the more brazen the lie, the better the results. There's going to be a lot more lying to the younger one.

Merry Christmas, Reader(s)™.

"It is not a crime in Canada to sell sex for money."

The Supreme Court of Canada has struck down various anti-prostitution laws.

A good day for individual rights and free markets?

Refreshingly on point or highly tendentious?

Reader Astrophel brings to my attention an essay entitled, "The real reason law schools are raking in cash," by Benjamin Winterhalter for Salon.com.

Spoiler alert: the reason is capitalism. Well, that and Richard Posner.

I may respond to the essay here soon, but for now I invite Astrophel to share his thoughts in the comments. He takes the "refreshingly on point" side of the titular dichotomy. I take the other.

General Rettig v. Captain Justice.

Judge Richard Kopf has a post over at Hercules and the Umpire about a motion in limine that the prosecution filed in Williamson County, Tennessee Circuit Court. The prosecution wanted to prohibit the defendant's attorney from referring to the prosecution as "the government."  The prosecution believes that referring to it as the government is derogatory.  Keep in mind that the prosecution in this case was by the State of Tennessee.  In the motion the prosecution wanted the defense to refer to the State of Tennessee by the title or name of the assistant attorney general prosecuting the case  Among the suggestions the offered in the motion was "General Rettig."  Rettig is the last name of the prosecuting attorney.

Do judges in Michigan hate Michiganders?

When they aren't taking shirtless selfies, lying under oath, and impregnating parties in a case they are hearing, judges in Michigan do the work the people of Michigan elected them to do. What is that work? Finding citizens of Michigan in contempt of court, of course.

The Grudge Match is Alive!

For the first time since 2010, the football teams for the University of Iowa and the University of Wisconsin will take the field to determine whether Mr. Torvik (Wisconsin) or I (Iowa) is the superior blogger.  Or maybe they play for the Heartland Trophy.  According to Wikipedia, the teams have played 86 games.  Two of the 86 games ended in a tie and Iowa and Wisconsin have each won 42 of the other 84 games.  As a result, one team will leave having made their team a winner in this year's rivalry game and also in the all-time rivalry.  Whether either coach is using this tidbit as a motivational tool is unknown.