A DARK, BLACK, BLOG

Some people have entirely too much time on their hands. Rather than sit down, read a file and write a motion to suppress (with corresponding memorandum of law if it's going to the 3rd Floor of the REGJB) they decide ..."hey, I know what I'll do, I'll write a blog!"

Welcome, Roy Black to the Blog-a-sphere. Black's Law is here.

After the usual pandering to Rumpole to get a shout out, ("Rumpole does a great job..." {yawn}) Mr. Black gets down to the business of writing his blog:

I am writing this to teach myself. No one else. So this will be personal. I find that putting my ideas on paper helps crystallize them. It makes me think and work out ideas. Ideas about trials pop into my head all the time. During the fall semester at the law school I can use them for lecture topics. But outside of that, I have no forum to articulate them. Unless I make the effort to write them down and flush them out, I am afraid they will be lost. So now I have an outlet to discuss them.

Actually this is a very "Howard Roarkian/Ayn Randian" reason for writing: "I do this for myself." No altruist he, we applaud Mr. Black for echoing our reason for blogging: "Because we like it." Not to enrich the world or help "the poor, the ignorant, the simple." See, Phalen v. Virginia, 49 U.S. 8 How. 163, 168 (1850).

But merely to write, for writings sake. (And to poke a Judge now and then.)

Mr. Black notes that there are 60 million blogs "infesting" (good term) the internet and only 3% last "for any appreciable period." We've lasted for over 1800 posts, (this is our 1884th) but we hardly think that's "an appreciable period" considering that baseball's Cal Ripken played in 2,632 straight games over seventeen seasons. So we'll return to this subject sometime in 2022 (longtime and careful readers remember that we started this blog November 16, 2005).

DOM is excited that Mr. Black revealed his "folder method" for cross examination. (Click here, if you must.) The discourse on the relative advantages versus the disadvantages for writing out cross examination questions is useful, but we frown on attempting to devote a few blogged lines to a subject that takes many lifetimes to master.

Still, overall we welcome Mr. Black to blogging. He is an eminently successful lawyer (and a nice guy to boot) and we look forward to his views in forthcoming posts. His discourse on these pages with Mr. Laser on their epic battle in the Alvarez case (Circa 1982) (See, Rumpole, The Case That Made Miami Burn) remains one of our personal favourites.

Mr. Black rapidly approaches that dreaded "Dean of Defense Attorneys" title that signifies the probability that most of one's battles are behind them. (As Bruce Springsteen sang in No Retreat, No Surrender: "The War outside still rages, but you say it ain't ours anymore to win...")

But you ignore the Lion's roar at your own peril. Even the Lion in Winter.

See You In Court, our cross examination's fully written out, fully cross referenced, but without any folders, per se.