Lawrence R. Velvel, JD

Early on, it was made plain here, on five occasions from May through July of 2004, that the reason the Bush administration wanted to use military tribunals to try prisoners was that evidence against them had been obtained by torture and therefore could not be used against them in federal courts. At the time, this…

We hope for Barack Obama to have all the success in the world. And given his smarts – he seems far and away the smartest president-elect in the last 45 years – he should although, as one person put it to me, people hope for so much from him that there conceivably could be no…

There are also those who will say that American courts will never call this country’s leaders, or their minions like John Yoo, to account. That almost surely is true now and will likely remain true for at least ten or twenty years, even though library stacks and internet servers already are fairly bulging with books,…

Yesterday, at our faculty lunch table, I was marveling at the fact that a person as stupid and incompetent as George Bush has regularly shown himself to be, could appear so personable, charming and even intelligent as he was when speaking about (and to) the Boston Red Sox before the White House news media. (Even…

If he caught a break here or there rather than relying wholly on self, well, everyone should and most do catch at least some good breaks in a world filled with bad ones. We have a chapter at MSL of BLSA, the Black Law Students Association. The chapter is open to persons of any race,…

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“Frustrated by a system that has marginalized many states in the presidential election process, or seeking partisan advantage, state lawmakers, political party leaders and voting rights advocates across the country are stepping up efforts to change the rules of the game, even as the presidential campaign advances.” Two major possibilities were discussed for “chang[ing] the…

It is always nice to learn that one is not the only person in the world to hold an idea that others would find so antagonistic or erroneous that one utters it but rarely. It happens occasionally me because I read books (and occasionally when reading internet stuff or even, amazingly enough – but very…

On Thursday, June 7th, the New York Times newspaper carried three large obits. While I did not count words or column inches, eyeballing indicates that the one at the top of the page occupied not quite one-third of the page. It was, in other words, of significant length, and one presumes that placement at the…