January 21, 2014 at 10:58 am
I used to spend extensive time in my Law and Ethics class discussing capital punishment. This is an important issue to me; I spent years working on a death penalty appeal for a man who spent 21 years on death row before being released. Growing up, I was vaguely in favor of the death penalty. […]
January 16, 2014 at 9:31 am
I am constantly telling my kids that they are judged not just by their actions, but by the company they keep. In other words, you can be punished for what your not-so-well-behaved friends do. In many ways, that parenting adage is consistent with the abortion protest “buffer zone” law that we have in Massachusetts. The […]
January 8, 2014 at 9:40 am
I might seem to be picking on JP Morgan this week (where, ironically, several of my friends and former students are employed), but we can blame the NY Times, who has a new article every morning about the financial behemoth.* Yesterday JP Morgan agreed to pay $2.6 billion in exchange for receiving a deferred prosecution […]
January 6, 2014 at 2:12 pm
I have written about the federal investigation of JP Morgan’s “Sons and Daughters” program before, but as the coverage continues I thought it was time to revisit. As this article details, in late 2009 the JP Morgan Chase executives in Hong Kong were feeling the pressure. They had lost out on several lucrative deals, and […]
December 29, 2013 at 7:34 pm
I am not a procrastinator by nature; actually quite the opposite. But I have been putting off writing this blog entry for months. When Edward Snowden became perhaps our country’s most famous whistleblower of all time, I should have been all over the story. Despite some discussion in class and off-line with students, I have […]
December 11, 2013 at 10:45 am
In the last couple days I have had several students share current events that range from the meaningful to the very, very silly. All are fun, and a continual reminder of the relevance of law and ethics in our world. I decided to share all the links here, and more importantly, it inspired me to […]
December 3, 2013 at 6:31 pm
This security guard from Reliant Stadium in Texas, home of the Houston Texans, claims that he was fired for taking this picture with Tom Brady. The stadium owner, the guard’s employer, has a rule against employees taking pictures with any players. This makes sense; players don’t want to be annoyed by every hot dog vendor […]
December 3, 2013 at 6:17 pm
It must be a slow news week, because I am not the only one slightly obsessed with Amazon’s announcement on 60 Minutes that it is developing delivery drones. Drones will soon be dropping off your book, DVD, or new shoes. I don’t know if this is a veiled attempt to pump up Amazon’s stock price, […]
November 22, 2013 at 11:49 am
Sometimes what we know is good for us, we don’t want to do. For example, eating your vegetables — we all know the green leafy stuff is the best thing we can eat to be healthy, but aren’t french fries and ice cream so much better tasting? This semester I started using low stakes quizzes […]
November 19, 2013 at 9:42 am
Just a quick update on an earlier post — JP Morgan and the federal government have reached a settlement of all the civil claims against the bank. As reported this morning, JP Morgan will pay $13 billion total, going to a combination of investors, struggling homeowners, and the government as a fine. Interestingly, this record-setting […]
