Wyzga On Words

The Letter Of The Law & The Spirit Of The Law.

There are two companion pieces in today's Sunday NYTimes that remind me what happens when we hew to the letter of the law in some blind, righteous, opinionated and judgmental way.

The first by Nicholas Kristoff, "Help Thy Neighbor and Go Straight to Prison, decries a recent conviction in Tennessee.  A man with a past, Edward Young, rehabilitates himself, gets married, has children, and helps the widow of a neighbor clean out the deceased's belongings among which was a handful of shotgun shells. Young puts them aside so they do not fall into the wrong hands - but when some burglaries happen Young is suspected, his property searched and the forgotten shotgun shells found.  Ex-felons are not supposed to possess guns or ammo.  Even though Young had not owned a gun, did not own a gun, did not know that helping his neighbor was a crime AND the burglary charges were dismissed Young was sentenced to 15 years.  No ifs, ands or buts.  He was the stay-at-at-home dad.  Now what happens?

Here's the other. As reported by Frank Bruni, Fatal Mercies, familial pity and compassion can get you in a world of hurt.  A daughter agrees to hand her ailing, elderly, pain-ridden father his morphine so he can choose the end of life dignity should allow.  She is charged with helping a suicide under Pennsylvania law despite the fact that the father rebounded after a 911 call (he eventually died), that the Pennsylvania law is worded broadly and ambiguously about "assistance" and, many's the time that painkillers hastening death are used in hospitals.

I am reminded of a story called Fire On the Mountain about a young man who takes a bet to survive a night on a old mountain top without fire, shelter, food or clothing.  He is sustained by watching a fire on a distant mountaintop that is being tended by a friend. When his master learns of this he reneges on his bet to give the young man his freedom as promised. "No fire! means no fire."

In time and thanks to the intercession of one who knew to distinguish the letter of the law from the spirit of the law, the master gets his comeuppance, the young man gets his freedom and the rest of us get a lesson in discretion, compassion, mercy.

 

 

Florida's Own Emmett Till.

A long-time friend wrote about recent interviews with jurors in the Zimmerman/Martin trial to say that he was caught off guard to learn that some of the verdict result may have come from interpreting the jury instructions.  His impression was that jury instructions are informative but not mandatory; otherwise, why get jurors involved?  Just let the judge decide. He also expressed the view that the Florida law of 6 might not serve the system well; perhaps 12 heads in deliberations might have been a different story.  And one final requirement: a mix (male/female) should be required as well.

Here's the conundrum: jurors are required to follow the letter of the law as the judge instructs.  Oftentimes a question in jury selection will be " Can you follow the law as the judge instructs you or are your beliefs such that you would not?"  Jury instructions, in addition to being poorly written for the layperson to interpret because they are drafted by.......lawyers, are also meant to be followed as written.  And as the judge has read.  Usually the jury will get all the instructions in the jury room but they can be like hieroglyphics to decipher.  However, that is the point of a jury by peers: the community gets to figure it out.

Yes, a small jury is a more difficult jury.  Give me "12 Angry Men" any day.  The numbers give more room for argument.

The 3rd point is that a defendant is innocent until proven guilty; and that is the job of the prosecution.  If they fail, as they have done so notably before, then the jury has no way out except to vote "not guilty."  When I was in law school and then again trying criminal defense cases, I learned that most often the defendant is guilty and the defense lawyer knows the defendant is guilty.  The job of the defense is to keep the State from fulfilling its promise to the jury: prove the case.  That was done here.  If the charges as filed and the jury instructions said X and if the State did not prove X, then the jury has to go with Y.  Even though following the spirit of the law might have rendered a different verdict.

I am still nauseated by the interview given by the defense trial consultant who said they selected women who would relate to Zimmerman's fear when Martin was beating him.  I wonder what these same women  would have felt walking alone in the nighttime in an unfamiliar neighborhood to be followed by a stranger in a car, who then left the car, chased them........do you think they would fight for their life?

At the same time I still cannot fathom how this jury reconciled that someone can put into motion all these events and stand behind a law designed to protect someone in Martin's shoes.   But I wasn't there.  Who am I to say?

At the end of the day no one really knows.

Still and all, this verdict is a reflection of the collective conscience and consciousness of the community: we allow racial bias, we allow gun-toting, we allow vigilantes, we allow angry, violent, cruel behaviors toward each other, in the media, toward animals, toward the environment. It is our collective consciousness that designs our world.  It's no wonder we have become what we allow.

Florida's own Emmett Till.

How Politics Became A Business.

Who wrote the following and when?

"1. The immediate objective is the defeat of the compulsory health insurance program pending in Congress. 2. The long-term objective is to put a permanent stop to the agitation for socialized medicine in this country by (a) awakening the people to the danger of a politically-controlled, government-regulated health system; (b) convincing the people, through a Nation wide campaign of education, of the superior advantages of private medicine, as practiced in America, over the State-dominated medical systems of other countries; (c) stimulating the growth of voluntary health insurance systems to take the economic shock out of illness and increase the availability of medical care to the American people."

Would it surprise you to know it was 1945 in retaliation to a proposal by then President Harry S. Truman? 

Earl Warren, former Governor of California and later Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court had proposed compulsory health insurance for Californians after he had fallen quite ill and wondered how others who were not so well off as he would cope with medical bills.  His proposal was severely trounced. 

Months later President Truman proposed a national program. It was severely trounced. How did this happen?

In her riveting 7 page article that reads like a political campaign whodunit, Jill Lepore writing for The New Yorker magazine, "The Lie Factory," takes us back to the early 1930s when the world of political consulting was born of Leone Baxter and Clem Whitaker.  They named their prodigy "Campaigns, Inc." and political life has never been the same.  

If you think, even vaguely, that you are getting the straight scoop on this election, The Lie Factory may disabuse you of that comfortable notion.  It's downright scary even for a realist.

Who Will Speak For The (Illegal) Children?

  Imagine that you are 6 years old, do not speak English, are wearing clothes a few sizes too big for you and a sign around your neck that reads "Juan" which is your first name, and you are in a court of law alone - except for the social worker who cannot represent you.

    What is your crime?  You and your parents risked the uncertain dangers of a trip from your home to the United States to escape the certain dangers of the gangs, drug traffickers and other criminals that terrified that life.  You are illegal.  Now you have to answer for that decision.

    Julia Preston writing for the NYTimes, "More Young Illegal Immigrants Face Deportation," pulls back the curtain on a side of life many of us know nothing about: deportation of children without legal representation.  Excerpt.

"Immigration courts in this South Texas border town and across the country are confronting an unexpected surge of children, some of them barely school age, who traveled here without parents and were caught as they tried to cross illegally into the United States.

The young people, mostly from Mexico and Central America, ride to the border on the roofs of freight trains or the backs of buses. They cross the Rio Grande on inner tubes, or hike for days through extremes of heat and chill in Arizona deserts. The smallest children, like Juan, are most often brought by smugglers.

The youths pose troubling difficulties for American immigration courts. Unlike in criminal or family courts, in immigration court there is no right to a lawyer paid by the government for people who cannot afford one. And immigration law contains few protections specifically for minors. So even a child as young as Juan has to go before an immigration judge — confronting a prosecutor and trying to fight deportation — without the help of a lawyer, if one is not privately provided.

So far this year, more than 11,000 unaccompanied minors have been placed in deportation proceedings, nearly double last year’s numbers.

Young migrants say they are fleeing sharply escalating criminal violence in their home countries. Federal agencies have scrambled to muster adequate detention facilities, while legal groups try to find lawyers to represent them. Judges, for their part, have struggled to offer fair hearings to penniless youths who speak little English and often do not even understand why they are in court.

The influx has heightened concerns that young people without legal help may not be able to obtain even the most basic justice.

“It is almost impossible for children to receive relief in immigration court on their own,” said Meredith Linsky, the director of the South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project, known as ProBAR, a nonprofit organization that defends young migrants in the region. “The reality is they cannot comprehend the system and what is being asked of them.”"

    Say what you will about immigration.  These are children.  What kind of justice is this? 

    Law firms seeking opportunities for pro bono efforts may well look to these cases.  The American Society of Trial Consultants Pro Bono Committee would be a good place to get some assistance. 

    For those asking what's the use of one case among so many, here's one story with one happy ending: a chance to work, to contribute, to serve.  Who are we to say "no" to such determination.?  Excerpt.

"Sometimes, a Victory

When children appear in court without lawyers, it can be distressing for them and for judges. One judge tried to put a boy at ease by asking playfully to share a bit of the child’s lunch. Thinking that he was supposed to have brought food for the judge, the boy burst into tears.

Migrants who have gotten help from lawyers have won immigration cases they could never have attempted alone. Eduín Rodríguez, now 18, was abandoned by both parents in Honduras. He rode the tops of freight trains across Mexico and swam the Rio Grande to Hidalgo, Tex.

Caught and sent to a shelter, Eduín made contact with ProBAR lawyers, who realized he was a strong candidate for a special immigration status for abused or neglected juveniles.

The legal battle wound from immigration court to Texas family court and back to immigration court. By the end, not only Eduín had won a permanent resident’s green card. The lawyers also discovered that his sister, Cintia, who is one year older, had made the same journey before him and was living illegally in Texas. Through Eduín’s case, she also became a legal resident.

The siblings support themselves on their own in Harlingen. They share a small apartment, and Eduín has been working full time, helping his sister while she went to school. Cintia graduated from high school in May with honors and also completed a nurse aide program at a local community college.

“I left Honduras because I didn’t want to be a loser,” said Cintia, who is now working part time at a supermarket while she continues her nursing training. She plans to enlist in the Navy.

“It really was worth it,” Cintia said, “all the pain I went through, the hunger on the trip, the thirst. I’m a successful person now because I graduated and I’m going to college.”

Flashing a smile, she displayed her most vital documents: her Texas nurse aide certificate and her green card.

“Thanks to God I’m here legally,” she said.""

Fear Or Compassion? Which Motivates Action?

I've been reluctant to kick the hornet's nest on this one.  Folks seem pretty divided on The Reptile Theory.  Like Paris - you either love it or you hate it.

The notion that we should regard jurors as reptiles to get some huge verdict out of them by playing to their fears has always struck me as cold-blooded, and not a little inhuman.  How we regard people and things becomes how we treat them.  I felt so strongly about this I co-wrote an article with Stephanie West Allen and Jeffrey Schwartz for The Jury Expert entitled "Atticus Finch Would Not Approve."  [Click AllenSchwartzWyzgaTJEMay2010 to read.]  My position has only strengthened.

I used to work with a beekeeper who insisted on calling the honeybees "really angry" when they reacted to us opening the hive boxes.  He treated them as if they were somehow "really angry."  He over-smoked them.  He was tense, jumpy and afraid.  His physical actions conveyed fear.  At the end of the day working with him I was a wreck.

And yet, there was nothing to fear.  We were suited up for the job.  We would get head-bonked by some of the guard bees; but that was normal behavior.  No bees chased us or swarmed us.  A honeybee has to be truly threatened to sting; when she does she rips out her guts and dies.  Not an action to be taken lightly. 

When I was trained as a beekeeper I was told to remember, "No jerks in the beeyard." While I have not yet gotten to the stage where I will work my hives wearing only a veil, I know that to bee Zen keeps everyone - beekeepers and honeybees - calm.

It works with people, too.  The Science of Compassion by the social scientist David DeSteno writing for the NYTimes shares the results of scientific research that shows empathy with the suffering of others is alive and well.  Excerpt:

"As a social psychologist interested in the emotions, I long wondered whether this spiritual understanding of compassion was also scientifically accurate. Empirically speaking, does the experience of compassion toward one person measurably affect our actions and attitudes toward other people? If so, are there practical steps we can take to further cultivate this feeling? Recently, my colleagues and I conducted experiments that answered yes to both questions.

In one experiment, designed with the psychologist Paul Condon and published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, we recruited people to take part in a study that was ostensibly about the relation of mathematical ability to taste perception — but that in actuality was a study of how the experience of compassion affects your behavior.

In another study, published in the journal Emotion, the psychologist Piercarlo Valdesolo and I conducted an experiment ostensibly about music perception — but that actually investigated how feelings of compassion might be increased.

Our hunch was that compassion is easiest to feel when you have a sense of commonality with someone else."

And what did the scientists find?  Excerpt:

"What these results suggest is that the compassion we feel for others is not solely a function of what befalls them: if our minds draw an association between a victim and ourselves — even a relatively trivial one — the compassion we feel for his or her suffering is amplified greatly.

What does this mean for cultivating compassion in society? It means that effortful adherence to religious or philosophical dictums (often requiring meditation, prayer or moral education), though clearly valuable and capable of producing results, is not the only way to go. There is nothing special about tapping in synchrony; any such commonality will do. Increased compassion for one’s neighbor, for instance, can come from something as easy as encouraging yourself to think of him as (say) a fan of the same local restaurant instead of as a member of a different ethnicity.

Simply learning to mentally recategorize one another in terms of commonalities would generate greater empathy among all of us — and foster social harmony in a fairly effortless way."

I am not Pollyanna enough to believe that I can buy someone a Coke and the world will live in perfect harmony.  

I agree that there is fear in the world.  Look at everything from video games to the nightly news to the most recent midnight movie massacre in Aurora, CO.  You will get more than your share of a diet of human suffering. 

But fear does nothing to improve the situation - fear causes us to hide, bar the doors, become complacent.  Ironically, when we feel an empathy, a compassion for the situation we will act - whether for gun control, mental health, local food, a jury verdict, whatever.  How does it work this way?

"What these results suggest is that the compassion we feel for others is not solely a function of what befalls them: if our minds draw an association between a victim and ourselves — even a relatively trivial one — the compassion we feel for his or her suffering is amplified greatly."

Like my friend the angry beekeeper, you get what you name.  Whether or not the honeybees were "really angry," he perceived them as such and treated them that way.  It was how he perceived them that created the expectation of harm. 

I've had enough of fear.  I prefer to be on the side of those who encourage a deep compassion for human suffering and from that place articulate for action to lessen the plight of others.

Q&A Tuesday: How Does Storytelling Help Me As Well As My Client?

Q:    How does storytelling help me as well as my client?

A:    Stories are the stuff of daily life.  When we commit to becoming part and parcel of the story we need to tell on behalf of another, the commitment expands our awareness of our humanity.  From this place we become increasingly empathetic, compassionate, and relatable to other human beings, more authentic, believable and better at persuading, too.

Some years back I wrote an article with San Diego attorney Jim Parziale entitled, "Once Upon A Client - The Power of Persuasive Legal Storytelling."  [Click on the title to access the pdf.]  It's a treasure trove of information, thoughts and ideas gained over decades of my storytelling work which became translated into the litigation arena.  I bet you will recognize in these words much of what I have been speaking, teaching and writing about for almost 15 years.

I trust that this work will be of help to you and your clients.  If you intend to use it, please remember the integrity of attribution.

Do You Really Want & Need That High-Priced Law Degree?

Hidden on a back page of the NYTimes instead of prominently displayed on a front page is a piece by Lincoln Caplan, "An Existential Crisis For Law Schools" that bears serious attention by law students, lawyers and, most critically, law schools. 

A few decades age you went to law school, took the bar exam, passed the test and got a job.  A good job.  One that would help pay down that $50 grand of tuition debt.  Like many other things in the legal profession - one of my litigator gurus predicts no more trials in 5 or 10 years - the promise of a job after law school has shifted.  Excerpt.

"Only 55 percent of 43,735 graduates in 2011 had a law-related job nine months after graduation, said William Henderson of the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, who analyzed recent data from the American Bar Association. Twenty-eight percent were unemployed or underemployed. And at the 20 law schools with the highest employment, 83 percent of graduates were working as lawyers. At the bottom 20, it was a dismal 31 percent.

These numbers are far worse than jobs data going back a generation and should be a deep embarrassment to law schools, which have been churning out more graduates than the economy can employ, indulging themselves in copious revenues that higher tuitions and bigger classes bring in. A growing list of deans acknowledge that legal education is facing an existential crisis, but the transformation to a more sustainable model will be difficult and messy.

The number of law office jobs began to decline in 2004, well before the recession. And demand for new lawyers isn’t expected to grow much even when the economy recovers. Outsourcing of legal work to places like India and greater efficiencies made possible by smarter software to search documents for evidence, for example, are allowing firms to cut the positions of multitudes of low-end lawyers. In 2009, twice as many people passed bar exams as there were legal openings — a level of oversupply that may hold up for years. There is, of course, tremendous need for lawyers to serve the poor and middle class, but scant dollars to pay them.

Law schools have hustled to compensate for these shifts by trying to make it look as if their graduates are more marketable, even hiring them as research assistants to offer temporary employment. But those strategies won’t fix legal education, particularly when students are starting to see that a high-priced degree, financed by mountains of loans, may never pay off. The number of people taking law school admissions tests fell 24 percent in the last two years, to the lowest level in a decade. Law schools will be crushed if they don’t remake themselves, said Frank Wu, dean of Hastings College of the Law at the University of California in San Francisco. “This is Detroit in the 1970s: change or die.”"

TIP:    Law firms are slow to change; law schools are even slower.  It's up to you to decide what you want and need for your life.

TIP:    Do you cut your losses and quit or press on?  This post might give you something to think about: "Cut Your Losses Or Finish."

TIP:    A few years old, but the wisdom and observations are relevant: "A Lot Can Change In A Year."

Q&A Tuesday: Why Invest In Focus Group Research?

Q:   Why should I invest in focus group research?

A:    Reconnaissance.

I am often asked what is the worth of investing in focus group research.  The answers are as many and as varied as the lawsuit you have filed or are considering filing:

1. learn attitudes
2. learn opinions
3. learn biases
4. learn notions
5. get ideas for discovery
6. get ideas for strategy
7. test the legal story
8. test the experts
9. test the experts' opinions
10. test the other side's story(ies)
11. test the visuals, demonstratives
12. test your own platform skills
13. ferret out the landmines
14. learn all the ways you can (or might) lose your case
15. learn whether you should even file a lawsuit
16. value of the case
17. whether alternative dispute resolution is feasible
18. ideas for direct and cross examination
19. witness preparation
20. whether and how to go to battle
21. and so on.

Still, lawyers are not convinced that they should invest a reasonable amount of money to learn what is bad and worse about their cases, their clients, and their own strategy.

So I am forced to go to a movie to plead my case.  The other night I was watching Steven Spielberg's Academy Award nominated production, "War Horse" based on the novel of the same name.

Early on in the movie, British cavalry officers listen to a report from their scouts about the location of enemy German soldiers.  The Brits learn the number of German troops, number of mounts, artillary, best positions of attack, strategy for attack, risks of loss of men, and so on. 

As the Brits prepare to attack the German soldiers, the officer in charge tells the scout, "Time spent on reconnaissance is time well spent."   

And then they went to battle. 

Do You Have The Right ID To Vote?

According to a recent article in the July/August issue of Sierra magazine, "Can I See Your ID?" readers are informed about new state laws that disenfranchise Latinos, African Americans and young people.

Of course, Sierra is reporting from the point of view of three groups of people who have traditionally leaned toward environmental issues and might be disenfranchised as a result of the new laws.  Excerpt.

"Say you're a large U.S. corporation with an interest in defeating pro-environmental candidates for public office. Which voters would you most want to keep away from the voting booth? At the top of your list would be Latinos, African Americans, and young people.

According to polls, all three groups strongly and consistently support environmental issues. A Pew poll in March, for example, found that 82 percent of 18- to 30-year-olds support increased federal funding for alternative energy, compared with just 54 percent of those over age 66. And when asked whether climate change is a "very serious" problem, 59 percent of Caucasians agree, while 69 percent of African Americans and 74 percent of Latinos do."

What is of greater global concern are the ways in which the new laws rob populations of the right to vote on any issue under the guise of preventing "voter fraud" by requiring proof of citizenship  and specific forms of photo IDs.  Excerpt.

"Now, just in time for November's general election, comes a coordinated plan to disenfranchise those green voters. Acting from cookie-cutter legislative templates furnished by the corporate-financed American Legislative Exchange Council, 176 bills to restrict voting rights have been introduced in 41 states since the beginning of 2011, and bills have passed—or are on the verge of passing—in 14. The ostensible reason for the legislation is to eliminate the threat of voter fraud—in the words of Kansas governor Sam Brownback, to "ensure the sanctity of the vote.""

What kind of voter fraud do we have here?  We are all familiar with the "Tale of Hanging Chads." Is voter fraud so prevalent that the laws must have such a long-arm reach?  Maybe blue inked fingers?  Excerpt.

"Efforts to solve this phony problem vary from state to state. Alabama, Kansas, and Tennessee require would-be voters to present proof of citizenship prior to registration. Florida makes voter registration so onerous that the League of Women Voters has ceased its registration efforts there. The most common suppression laws, however, require voters to show a specific form of photo ID at the polls. In Texas, licenses to carry concealed firearms are considered valid, while student IDs are not.

Twenty-one million American citizens, in fact, lack the kind of photo ID that would pass muster under these laws. Among that number are 18 percent of young eligible voters, nearly 11 percent of Latinos, and 25 percent of African Americans. Because of the laws' discriminatory effect, the Justice Department has been able to block voter ID laws in states with prior histories of discrimination—such as South Carolina and Texas—under the Voting Rights Act. Elsewhere, however, even though U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has said that making it harder for people to vote "goes against the arc of history," the feds have declined to take action."

You know me well enough by now.  I say bring it home with a story.  Here's one:

"In Pennsylvania, for example, the ACLU and the NAACP are suing to overturn that state's voter ID law. Their lead plaintiff is Viviette Applewhite, a 93-year-old woman who marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in Macomb, Georgia, and has voted regularly since casting her ballot for John F. Kennedy in 1960. She never learned to drive and lost her photo ID when her purse was stolen years ago. She's tried to obtain a new ID, but the state can't find her birth certificate and so won't issue one.

"I think it stinks," Applewhite says in an ACLU video. "It's the most ridiculous thing I ever heard of. I got in line and marched with [King]. There was so many rights we did not have. The way they take them away, we'll be right back where we were before.""

Click here to listen to Applewhite in her own words.

Q&A Tuesday: Why Should Lawyers Care About Marriage?

Q:    Why should lawyers care about the institution of marriage?

A:    As the institution itself seems to declining, the legal definition of marriage is up for grabs.

As reported by Aja Gabel in the current issue of The University of Virginia magazine, The Marriage Crisis, marriage has declined over the past 50 years and continues to decline.  Excerpt.

"Only about half of Americans are married now, down from 72 percent in 1960, according to census data. The age at which one first gets married has risen by six years since 1960, and now only 20 percent of Americans get married before the age of 30. The number of new marriages each year is declining at a slow but steady rate. Put simply, if you are an unmarried adult today, you face a lower chance of ever getting married, a longer wait and higher divorce rates if you do get married. The Pew Research Center recently found that about 40 percent of unmarried adults believe that marriage is becoming obsolete.

While marriage is in decline, unmarried cohabitation is on the rise. Fifteen times the number of couples today live together outside of marriage than in 1960. Almost half of cohabiting households include children.

Why should we care about what may be a failing institution? Brad Wilcox, U.Va. sociology professor and director of the National Marriage Project, argues that the institution of marriage still symbolizes core values important to intimate relationships.

“Marriage conveys a sense of meaning, purpose, direction and stability that tends to benefit adults and especially children. People who get married have an expectation of sexual fidelity, and that fidelity tends to engender a sense of trust and security,” Wilcox says. “There is no kind of similar solemn ritual marking the beginning of cohabitation.”

Allison Pugh, also a U.Va. sociology professor, has a slightly different take on it. She says that it isn’t so much the institution of marriage that is important, but rather how well a family cares for children, regardless of its structure. Children need stability, nurturing and love, but both married and unmarried parents can provide those things, Pugh says.

Is America having a “marriage crisis?” Certainly, the institution of marriage is changing and it’s worth taking a look at why and where it might end up. It’s a question that a number of researchers at U.Va. are trying to answer by exploring the role of women in the workforce, emotional expectations for partnership and marriage’s benefits or costs to individuals and families."

In an nutshell, what has changed?  Women became "liberated."  We obtained college educations and entered the workforce.  While discrepances in equal pay and opportunity continue to exist, women have more choices available to them while society seems ready, albeit resigned, to let us have them.  Personal fulfillment is a goal rather than a tantalizing dream. Divorce is more acceptable than shameful.  Birth control translatesinto higher economic brackets for both partners as women take control of their fertility and their earnings.

Ultimately, marriage in America has changed because Americans have changed:

"Marriage has changed because America has changed. We can’t return to the model of marriage from the mid-20th century because we no longer live in the culture or the economy that created it. And some would argue that we wouldn’t want to return to it even if we could. Both men and women have greater choice than they did 50 years ago not only in regard to whom they marry, but also if they do and what kind of family they want to build. And, if the experts agree on one thing, it is that these choices are some of the most important we make for our own happiness."

Click here to read more about the changing legal definition of marriage. 

Which brings me to where things stand with the Prop (H)8 Trial.  No one was more surprised than I to learn that the good - albeit sometimes whacko - folks in my adopted state of California swigged, chugged and guzzled the Kool-aid before adopting Prop(H)8 banning same-sex marriage.  Surely, we are at least as liberal as Vermont, as smart as New York, as socially savvy as Massachusetts.  But no.

Do you want to know where things stand with the Prop 8 trial?  Click here to read an exceptionally nuanced 5-part series exploring the future of Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the Prop 8 trial and marriage equality.

What is particularly broad-minded about the series is the author's willingness to step beyond the two cases (DOMA and Prop 8) to reflect upon the more global topic of the future of marriage equality in the United States.  Excerpt.

"A vision of the future of marriage equality in the United States

Yesterday, I argued that the DOMA case should be decided before Prop 8 because it fundamentally changes the arguments to be made against California’s marriage ban, and other bans like it across the nation.  Today, I want to take that a step farther and look past the two cases to the future of marriage equality in general.

Marriage equality currently stands at a tipping point in the United States, will polling beginning to shift to the majority in our favor, DOMA and Prop 8 at play before the Supreme Court, and marriage referenda in three states in November.  While the legislative and judicial tracks are currently moving in parallel and do effect each other, I believe that the legislative track will eventually (and within the next few years) be exhausted, and further victories will have to come through the courts.  A Supreme Court ruling on DOMA this year, rather than Prop 8, puts the marriage movement on more solid footing for the future."

Folks, the times they are a changin.

What was it that Aaron Sorkin said in his commencement address to the graduates of Syracuse University?

MR. SORKIN “You’re too good for schadenfreude, you’re too good for gossip and snark, you’re too good for intolerance — and since you’re walking into the middle of a presidential election, it’s worth mentioning that you’re too good to think people who disagree with you are your enemy.”