Category: Memoir

WAR STORIES: CHAPTER TWELVE – “Corporate Nonsense and Office Shenanigans – Part IX”

MARCH 7, 2024 – (Cont.) About 18 months after he’d taken over the reins, Dan announced that he wanted us—his direct reports—to take turns leading the department’s periodic “business update” meetings. These had been all-department gatherings in the ballroom-turned-corporate meeting venue at a downtown hotel, led by our fearless leader and featuring the department’s year-to-date …

WAR STORIES: CHAPTER ELEVEN – “Technology!”

FEBRUARY 27, 2024 – Recently our eight-year-old granddaughter asked my wife and me, “When you were young, did you have technology?” I thought of several snarky responses, such as, “How old do you think we are?!” and not as defensively, “Yeah. The wheel and the lever.” A less sarcastic reply to her innocent question might’ve …

WAR STORIES: CHAPTER SIX – “My Murder Case . . . and the Ultimate Redemption of Vladimir Horowitz – Part VIII

FEBRUARY 14, 2024 -(Cont.) Interpretation of the statutory language was a simple example of the role that case law—“judge-made” law—plays in Anglo-American jurisprudence. Filling the shelves of every law library back in 1983 were thousands of volumes of case law “reporters”; thick, handsomely bound volumes filled with case decisions by state appellate courts and federal …