Errata and Justice.

November 3, 2014 at 2:08 P.M. Obstructions have made reaching this site difficult, an icon from a "Mozilla-using" previous patron at the NYPL is irremovable on my screen at NYPL computer No. #03, Morningside Heights branch. 

The threat today seems to be that I will never again be able to write online. 

My television had to be rebooted several times over the past two days. I am sure that this is merely a coincidence that has nothing to do with matters turned over to Mr. Vance. Prosecutors are normally responsible for protecting the rights and safety of prospective witnesses.   

October 31, 2014 at 7:50 A.M. Astonishingly, on the very day when my letter was received by New York's District Attorney, my fully repaired Invicta watch was delivered to my home. 

There was no box -- not even the one in which I sent the watch -- no paperwork, no catalogue. The watch was encased in plastic inside an envelope. I have retained the dated delivery receipt from Fed-Ex showing their number and date of delivery for the item. 

Considering that Invicta does not use Fed-Ex, but only mails packages by way of the post office, this "delayed" Fed-Ex delivery is bizarre. I wonder who was in possession of my watch and for how long a period of time the watch was "intercepted"? What legal basis allowed for the interception of this item? Why was I not notified of this interference with property rights? Do Republicans and other anti-Communists not believe in property rights? ("The Invicta Watch Company" and "The Invicta Watch Company Caper.") 

I will forward copies of this new material to Mr. Vance's office by certified mail with return receipt requested. 

What is even more curious is that "Michelle Castro" made it very clear in her final email that my watch was being sent to "Swisserland" (wherever that may be) and would not be returned to me until after December 4, 2014. 

I anticipate hearing from Mr. Vance soon. 

Perhaps this sudden change of heart by my adversaries is what may be called a "tacit admission"? ("Manohla Dargis Strikes Again!" and "Is the universe only a numbers game?") 

"Revolution and Religion: The Fight for Emancipation and the Role of Religion -- A Dialogue Between Cornel West and Bob Avakian." November 15, 2014 from 3:00 P.M. to 7:00 P.M., The Riverside Church, 490 Riverside Drive, New York City. 

Revolution Books, 146 West 26th Street, New York, N.Y. 10001. 212-691-3345. http://www.revolutionbooksnyc.org ("Manifesto For the Unfinished American Revolution.") 

Ron Nixon, "Report Reveals Wider Tracking of Mail in U.S.: Lax Controls Found," The New York Times, October 28, 2014, p. A1. ("Ron [Ronald Reagan] Nixon [Richard Nixon]" points out that U.S. mails that are used by businesses and persons from all over the world are no longer secure from warrantless surveillance by American government agencies. No wonder return receipts are signed by "R. Schnetzler.")

Michael Barbaro, "On Trail, Christie Juggles Role as Ebola Fighter and G.O.P. Cheerleader," The New York Times, October 28, 2014, p. A21. (Mr. Christie continues to embarrass himself. I fervently hope that Mr. Christie runs for the presidency.)

Joe Nocera, "Are Our Courts For Sale?," The New York Times, (Op-Ed) October 28, 2014, p. A31. (Yes.)

Minjae Pak, "Ex-Trader Had Mocked Kid's Name: Wayne Educator's License Suspended Over Web Post," The Record, October 28, 2014, p. L-1. (For a professor to humiliate a student and brag about it to others is unethical and unprofessional: "Why Jane Can't Read" and "America's Nursery School Campus.")

Mark Mueller, "Diocese Pays $180,000 to Settle Sex Abuse Claim," The Star Ledger, October 27, 2014, p. 1. (Former altar boy receives compensation for abuse covered-up by the Church hierarchy. Will there be compensation for abuse covered-up by Trenton's OAE? "Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture.")  

Eric Lichtblau, "In Cold War, U.S. Spy Agencies Used 1,000 Nazis," The New York Times, October 27, 2014, p. A1. (The C.I.A. lied and covered-up cases of Nazis used by the U.S. government to gather information, some of the Nazis were major war criminals responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. The "former" Nazi spies were shipped off to friendly governments in Latin America at the request of the American government. Perhaps New Jersey's OAE makes use of similar persons? "John McGill, Esq., the OAE, and New Jersey Corruption.")

Charlie Savage, "Peace Prize Laureates Urge Disclosures Of U.S. Tortures," The New York Times, October 27, 2014, p. A3. (A dozen luminaries pressure the Obama administration over the "delayed" Senate report on post-9/11 tactics by requesting the release of 1,000 photos of heinous tortures and possible murders at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo that remain classified. "U.S. Lawyers and Torture" and "American Doctors and Torture" then "Is America's Legal Ethics a Lie?")

Laura R. Walker, "The Secrets of New Jersey," (Op-Ed) The New York Times, October 27, 2014, p. A27. (Mr. Christie betrays his promise of transparency to cover-up "peccadillos" and mislead journalists seeking the truth about a number of matters -- despite New Jersey and federal law -- including my experiences of torture and rape at the hands of government-protected persons, allegedly. "Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture" and "New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System.")

Anemona Hartocolis & Emma Fitzimmons, "Tested Negative, Nurse Criticizes Her Quarantine," The New York Times, October 26, 2014, p. A1. (Incarceration without due process of law for a woman with no Ebola symptoms. Mr. Christie would send her to Guantanamo.)

Shaila Dewan, "Law Lets I.R.S. Seize Accounts On Suspicion, No Crime Required," The New York Times, October 26, 2014, p. A1. (Why bother with the commission of crimes? No reason. "Preventive incarceration" allows for the imprisonment of the entire national population, if necessary, on mere suspicion. Seizure of property should be easier. Will disregard for human rights make us secure?)

J. David Goodman, et al., "City Rights Commissioner Charged With a Sex Crime," The New York Times, October 26, 2014, p. A25. (Derek Bryson Trask charged with misdemeanor sexual assault. Perhaps he should move to New Jersey? "New Jersey Welcomes Child Molesters!")  

Jeffrey Toobin, "The Obama Brief: The President Considers His Judicial Legacy," The New Yorker, October 27, 2014, p. 25. (Frozen appointments process at the moment.)

Matt Apuzzo, "Guards Guilty In '07 Killings in Iraq Square: Ex-Blackwater Agents Fired On Civilians," The New York Times, October 22, 2014, p. A1. (Human rights, Senator Menendez?)

Adam Liptak, "A Rare Admission About a Correction," The New York Times, October 23, 2014, p. A21. ("Have you no shame, Mr. Rabner?" and "Stuart Rabner's Selective Sense of Justice.")

"The Shifting Politics of Cuba Policy," (Editorial) The New York Times, October 23, 2014, p. A21.

Politicians -- like lawyers and judges who tend to be the same sort of persons -- are reluctant to admit to human fallibility. 

Contrary to expectation (or common sense) this reluctance is far greater when the consequences of a failed, archaic, pointless decision (or action) are painful or evil for persons affected by such decisions and/or actions. 

Invading Iraq and America's adventure in Afghanistan, for example, or drone policies and surveillance, trickle-down economics, and many other humiliatingly failed policies of government are, privately, recognized as disasters by officials who are honest. 

No one can admit this truth, publicly, or take the necessary remedial actions to meliorate the human suffering caused by these same moronic policies and practices of government, or by inept as well as corrupt officials. 

Perhaps the continued incarceration of Mumia Abu-Jamal is one such mistaken decision, along with many others affecting persons who are "similarly situated," that is, persons whose dilemmas are politically and not necessarily legally irreversible. ("Freedom For Mumia Abu-Jamal" and "Justice For Mumia Abu-Jamal.") 

When politics takes precedence over law in courtrooms, among judges and/or prosecutors, due process is lost. 

Many people recognize that Mr. Mumia Abu-Jamal's conviction is factually "questionable" if not absurd. Pennsylvania politics simply precludes the legally correct and just action of exoneration from taking place. 

An effort to deprive Mr. Abu-Jamal of his freedom of speech in violation of the U.S. and Pennsylvania constitutions is the latest chapter in the horror story that is Mumia Abu-Jamal's life. I will be writing more about this nightmare soon.  

This bias or failure of state institutions makes Mr. Abu-Jamal an excellent candidate for a presidential pardon. ("Mumia Abu-Jamal and the Unconstitutionality of the Death Penalty.")

The federal government found it necessary to take similarly controversial actions to enforce integration and other civil rights decisions by federal judges in the sixties, often invoking the executive power and the "pretext" or "technicality" of, say, the commerce clause and equal protection of the laws. 

Failure to act in the matter of Mr. Abu-Jamal may result in the continued incarceration of a man who is innocent of murder based on the only reasonable interpretation of the publicly disclosed "evidence" against him and who is also the victim of heinous racism in legal proceedings. 

Much the same irrationality exists in New Jersey with regard to my matters. 

Garden State authorities appear to have lied, through their continuing silence, while admitting, privately, that great crimes have been committed against me and others. 

It may be that New Jersey's judges are afraid to act. Hence, the crimes of state officials against many of us become subjects of additional cover-ups and lies in what purport to be "ethics" proceedings or their aftermath. ("An Open Letter to Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., Esq.")

I am confident that, someday, New Jersey's Supreme Court will tell the truth about my matters (to me) in order to take the necessary remedial action to restore its own integrity and credibility. ("New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System" and "New Jersey Supreme Court's Implosion.")

With regard to the Cuban embargo -- despite the thug-like actions of far-Right Republican Cuban-Americans -- the lunacy of the embargo as foreign policy in a post-Cold war era is obvious. 

The embargo is counterproductive in terms of promoting democracy and could well be harmful to American along with Cuban interests in the long-term:

"The evolution [of opinion] has allowed a growing number of seasoned politicians to call the embargo a failure and argue that ending America's enmity with Cuba represents the best chance of encouraging positive change on the island. Several prominent Cuban-American businessmen who were once strong supporters of the embargo have changed their stance and become proponents of engagement. The pro-embargo lobby raises a fraction of the money it once did. President Obama now receives more correspondence from lawmakers who favor expanded ties than from those who want to keep robust sanctions." 

The only appropriate and honest view that would relieve unnecessary human suffering is spelled out at the conclusion of the Times editorial:

"Politics aside, the issue remains deeply personal for the holdouts, Cuban-Americans of that [older] generation [and their acolytes,] say, because it continues to evoke raw feelings about ancestry, homeland and loss. Those sentiments, which have lasted for more than 50 years, cannot be ignored. But they should not continue to anchor American policy on a FAILED course that has strained Washington's relationship with allies in the hemisphere [and the world,] prevented robust trade with the island[,] and offered the Cuban government a justification for its failures." (emphasis added!)

If we really wish to test the Cuban people's commitment to their revolution then we should remove the embargo and allow for the reality of what the revolution can deliver to be clear to everyone. 

Cubans alone will then decide what they want their government to be: democratic forms of socialism exist in the world in many nations where there is respect for civil liberties. For example, many societies in Europe fit the bill. 

Capitalism and socialist goals continue to be "tweaked" in China and Russia to meet competing goals and values for those societies. Cuba is not alone in balancing values and making trade-offs that may work for that society in the estimation of the Cuban people. ("Time to End the Embargo Against Cuba" and "Time to Restore Ties to Cuba.")

Ironically, a recent news item suggests that Justice Ruth Bader-Gingsburg -- unlike Ms. Poritz and Mr. Rabner -- is willing to admit human errors and to correct them as is the United States Supreme Court on which she serves: 

"The Supreme Court on Wednesday made a rare confession: One of its opinions contained an error and was corrected."

Errors of substance are even more worthy of correction than mere stylistic lapses. The obligation or duty to correct legal blunders is greatest when human beings are wronged and made to suffer deprivations because of known blunders or judicial incompetence and slanders as is often true in the New Jersey Supreme Court's jurisprudence. Please refer again to Mumia Abu-Jamal. ("Louis C. Taylor Serves 42 Years As An Innocent Man.")

According to the aptly-named "Richard J. Lazarus" (as in Richard J. Codey "reborn"?), identified as a Law Professor at Harvard University, the U.S. Supreme Court's announcement of mistakes in their opinions and occasional reconsiderations or rejections of precedents is appropriate judicial candor that is bound to arrive in New Jersey someday:

"Justice Gingsburg's notification today is a very positive, and indeed even historic development, demonstrating that by being candid about the need for corrections, the court can bolster rather than undermine its authority."

An Open Letter to Cyrus Vance, Jr., Esq.

Computer crime continues to make editing and revising difficult.

Several attempts to make use of my computer at home to access the Internet were thwarted by what, I guess, is interference with my Time/Warner Internet connection. 

I will continue to attempt to access the Internet from my home laptop. Unless I suffer an unfortunate accident, I will continue to write every day, despite being prevented from creating a new blog at this location and daily computer obstructions or censorship.

VIA CERTIFIED MAIL, RETURN RECEIPT REQUESTED, AND POSTED ONLINE (CERT. #7014 0510 0002 1476 0008; sent: 10-29-14; expected delivery 10-30-14.)

Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., Esq.
District Attorney of Manhattan
One Hogan Place
New York, N.Y. 10013
(212) 335-9400
http://www.manhattan.da.com 

Dear Mr. Vance:

Attached to this letter are proofs detailing the curious history of the sale and fate of a watch (retail value is $1,500), the shipment of this defective or sabotaged item to the manufacturer for repairs, followed by the exchange of letters purportedly to (and from) public officials in Manhattan and the watch company.

My costs in the matter and crimes committed against me, together with the increasing (I believe) Internet attention being devoted to this "ongoing" situation makes the matter worthy of your attention. 

I trust that it is not necessary for me to to cite relevant sections of the N.Y. Criminal Code. I am certainly prepared to do so, if necessary. 

What is remarkable about this story is not only the various kinds of sabotage indicating the participation of N.J. police, perhaps, legal officials, and organized crime (these may be overlapping categories in the Garden State), but communications to me that, fraudulently, claim to come from N.Y. public officials, notably (allegedly) from lawyers affiliated with the office of Ms. Letitia James, NYC Public Advocate. 

I understand that there are no lawyers employed by the New York Public Advocate's office. 

"Fernando Fernandez" (evidently) is not an attorney or otherwise employed by the Office of the Public Advocate in this city. (See attached letters from "Mr. Fernandez.") 

Sadly, I have reason to believe that these fraudulent representations of identity, implicit attempts at intimidation, theft, and online censorship may come from New Jersey's Office of Attorney Ethics, or from persons acting at the behest of officials currently or formerly associated with that office in Trenton. 

Under applicable principles of criminal law, of course, this agency relation only enhances liability for all concerned. 

Worse, as you will see from attached postage receipts (some are signed by "R. Schnetzler" allegedly of the same N.Y. government office), the harassment appears to involve the use of the U.S. mails to perpetuate criminal frauds and misrepresentations of identity as well as fraudulent claims of legal authority that provide grounds for disbarment and/or indictment for any attorney participating in such a conspiracy.

Much of the repellent history in this matter, including previous communications to your office that may not have reached you, have already been posted online by me. This is only the latest episode in a long history of criminal infliction of emotional suffering and much worse.

I am sure that these blog postings have been disseminated widely.

As I say, I believe there is a substantial audience for these events that includes lawyers and officials from other countries, who now have a wonderful opportunity to witness the workings -- or non-workings -- of the American legal system. 

Some of the crimes that may become evident from an examination of the attached records (many more items pertaining to computer crimes and censorship efforts are available for inspection at your request) include conversion of goods, theft by deception, misrepresentations of legal authority, criminal frauds, threats, underlying offenses attributable to the individuals behind these communications include, I believe, rapes, assaults, thefts of various kinds. 

Perhaps the culprits are now in a place they call: "Swisserland." (See attached letter from "Ms. Castro" and "Mr. Fernandez.")

All previous communications to your office, Justice Department, FBI, Ms. Letitia James, and other government officials have received no authentic response as of the date of this letter. 

This non-responsiveness and inaction has taken place despite the statutory obligation and oaths taken by public officials to respond in "good faith" to all communications from citizens detailing the commission of heinous crimes as well as providing evidence pertaining to such matters. 

It is possible that reasonable persons will infer that an effort has been made to "cover-up" a botched or incompetent investigation of an innocent person believed, mistakenly, to be engaged in inappropriate activity over a thirty-year period. 

It is not unusual for such police or attorney incompetence to be covered-up with vague allegations that the victim of abuse of government power is a "bad person" or "unethical."

Many lives have been and continue to be adversely affected as a result of the actions of these N.J. culprits and their cohorts. 

As far as I can tell the most "inappropriate'" activity that I engage in is an occasional trip to the Opera and reading many books with big words in them. 

Rational explanations of these events would certainly be helpful. 

Continued silence from New York public officials and additional ostensible or alleged "cover-ups" to protect New Jersey politicians and/or other officials perpetuates -- and even encourages -- what I greatly fear may be a real danger to the public in New York.

I have tried to shelter my family members and other innocent persons from hostilities apparently aimed against me. These hostilities are obvious to readers of my blogs who are numbered in the thousands, possibly many thousands, and the numbers are growing exponentially. 

There is a solid basis to conclude that well over 100,000 persons worldwide have read at least some of my writings as of the date of this letter. 

I will also post this letter online and retain all originals of documents in the event that the package sent to you is "lost." Copies of this letter will be sent to the Manhattan U.S. Attorney, Bronx District Attorney, New York Attorney General.

I urge you to give this matter your immediate attention. I welcome the opportunity to discuss all issues further -- privately, if you wish -- at the earliest opportunity by mutually convenient arrangement.

Very truly yours,

Juan Galis-Menendez

cc: 80 Centre Street
      6th Floor
      New York, N.Y. 10013

      Preet Bharara, Esq., U.S. Attorney
      1 St. Andrew's Plaza
      New York, N.Y. 10007

      Robert Johnson, Esq.
      Bronx District Attorney
      198 E. 161st Street
      Bronx, N.Y. 10451
      1-718-590-2000

     Eric T. Schneiderman, Esq.
     Attorney General for the State of New York
     The Capitol
     Albany, N.Y. 12224-0341
     1-800-771-7755  

David R. Camel, Esq. is an Ethical N.J. Attorney?

If I am able to return to this site to continue posting facts (despite the censorship and computer crime) along with items of information drawn from public sources, I will list additional articles relevant to this essay that have appeared in local media over the past month or so. 

Many more items like those listed below may be added to essays like this one that I could post on a daily basis, if necessary. I suggest that there is a serious problem of credibility and legitimacy for New Jersey's legal ethics and court system aggravated by the failure to deal with my allegations. 

The whole world is watching.

Shop HQ is blocked on my television service and strange notices appear on my screen explaining that "service is unavailable." One newspaper title was altered today, other deformations of this text must be expected. ("How censorship works in America.")

Can Ms. Guardagno identify the persons sending emails to me from "Lulu"?

Cristina Rojas, "Former Freeholder Faces Heroin Charge," The Star Ledger, September 24, 2014, p. 21. (Paul Sigmund, former Chief of Staff to the Trenton mayor, was arrested for an alleged hit-and-run and heroin case. It is unclear whether Mr. Sigmund is now an attorney or still serves on the state's legal ethics committee.)

Peter J. Samson, "Husband's Murder Trial Opens: Woman was bound, raped, stabbed," The Record, October 1, 2014, p. L-1. (PEDRO GUTIERREZ, alleged Bob Menendez supporter, is represented by excellent counsel, Brian Neary, Esq. If convicted, however, a very long prison sentence would seem appropriate even if Mr. Menendez vouches for Mr. Gutierrez as a "trusted adviser.")

Michael Tarm, "Trader Accused of Making $1.5 MILLION in Commodities Fraud Case," The Star Ledger, October 3, 2014, p. 9. (MICHAEL COSIA, 52, of Rumsen, is accused of making $1.2 million by illegally placing orders through the Chicago-based CME group -- the world's largest operator of "futures exchanges" -- and European "futures" exchanges in 2011. "Futures" trades is gambling on the status and price of commodities at some future time, say, 6 months from now. Such gambles can be fixed with access to secret or inside information. All aspects of these transactions were facilitated by N.J. lawyers, most of them probably affiliated with large law firms: "Corrupt Law Firms, Senator Bob, and New Jersey Ethics.")

Alex Vargas, "JP Morgan: Breach Affected 76 Million Households," The Star Ledger, October 3, 2014, p. 9. (5 banks were targeted by well-organized and professional computer hackers affiliated with foreign intelligence agencies from nations affected by the global financial crisis, allegedly. Depositors are protected by federal insurance. I expect that we will see nations using self-help against protected criminals in America. Each of these banks has in-house and external legal counsel. No lawyers have been charged as part of the financial investigations of Wall Street.)

AP, "Ex-Guttenberg Official Involved in Scandal Dies: Bid Rig, III," The Star Ledger, October 3, 2014, p. 13. (Former Guttenberg Councilman VINCENT TABBACHINO, 73, was sentenced in 2012 to 41 months in prison on a federal bribery and attempted extortion conviction and admitted to laundering $125,000, but died from complications following a heart condition. Mr. Tabbachino was associated with Anthony Suarez, Esq. who "beat the rap." "Anthony Surez Gets a Walk.")

Michael Phillis, "Public Wins Access to Police Videos: Judge Says They're Open Records," The Record, October 11, 2014, p. A-1. (Can I get the real OAE secret records and videos pertaining to me, including any of the taped hypnosis and torture-rape sessions? "Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture.")

Richard Cowen, "Suit Claims Jail Delayed Treatment: Ex-Inmate Says He Had Broken Foot For 12 Days," The Record, October 11, 2014, p. L-1. (A former inmate at the Passaic County jail is one of many persons denied medical treatment while incarcerated, often for an unconscionable period of time, due to sheer incompetence and not necessarily malice, even in cases where persons are afflicted with treatable cancers and delays result in murder or death. "Would you have helped Katherine 'Kitty' Genovese?")

"What Killed Kenwin Garcia?," The Star Ledger, Special Section, October 1, 2014, p. S1. (KENWIN GARCIA's heart stopped during, or just after, a struggle with state troopers. Mr. Garcia's offense was that he was "walking along Interstate 287." Please see "Driving While Black [DWB] in New Jersey" and "Albert Florence and New Jersey's Racism.")

Todd South, "Man Charged With Sexual Assault of a Girl, 10," The Star Ledger, October 1, 2014, p. L-1. (FAVIO F. MALDONADO, 30, is an alleged Bob Menendez supporter who faces "sexual assault and endangerment of a minor" charges after a tryst with a 10-year-old girl. Men like Mr. Maldonado are even found among police officers in Elizabeth, New Jersey. No wonder I am still dealing with the "nonsense." "New Jersey Welcomes Child Molesters" and "New Jersey is the Home of Child Molesters.")

Mark Mueller, "N.J. Diocese Pays $610,000 in Priest Sex Case," The Star Ledger, October 3, 2014, p. 1. (Chris Naples, 42, was sexually abused as a teen by Rev. Terence McAlinden and the matter was covered-up by the Church.)   

Peter J. Samson, "Fort Lee Lawyer Suspended Over Bid to Deceive IRS," The Record, October 11, 2014, p. L-1. 

"Fort Lee attorney David R. Camel has agreed to a three-month suspension for resorting to deception by fabricating a phony legal notice in a bid to get the IRS to release a tax lien placed on a client's bank property." ("New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System.")

The elaborate attempted fraud on the IRS by an attorney ostensibly acting on behalf of a client's bank property suggests (to me) that the attorney was, in fact, "fronting" on a matter for organized crime, or was the real owner of the property. ("Mafia Influence in New Jersey Courts and Politics" and "Joe Ferreiro is Bergen's Godfather.")

There certainly must have been some kind of personal interest by the attorney giving rise to conflict of interest issues entirely apart from the fraud. ("2 New Jersey Lawyers in School Lunch Scam" and "New Jersey is the Home of the Living Dead.")

My guess is that the deception was detected by the IRS and brought to the attention of the OAE, only after the U.S. Attorney was aware of it, because Mr. Camel is not the sort of offender that the OAE would go after in Trenton, or (if he were caught) who would ever have a real problem as a "connected" insider. Maybe this situation would have cost Mr. Camel a few dollars. That's about it. ("John McGill, Esq., the OAE, and New Jersey Corruption" and "New Jersey's Disgraced Judiciary.")

Apart from personal interest for the naughty lawyer, Mr. Camel, this situation makes no sense. ("New Jersey's Failed Judiciary" and "New Jersey's Judges Disgrace America.")

The three-months' suspension will turn into permanent disbarment if  Mr. Camel cannot cover-up this little problem. My ironic suggestion is to get on the phone, Mr. Camel, and call the politicians and judges you know. As one of New Jersey's prominent legal officials explained: "Everything can be fixed in New Jersey!" ("New Jersey's Political and Supreme Court Whores" and "Stuart Rabner's Selective Sense of Justice.")

After all, if New Jersey's legal ethics rules were followed consistently -- based on the posts found at these blogs that are supported by thousands of public sources alone -- all of the following lawyers should also be disbarred: Mr. Rabner, Ms. Poritz, Mr. Menendez, Ms. Guardagno, Ms. De La Cruz, Mr. Christie, and many more. ("New Jersey Lawyers' Ethics Farce" and "New Jersey is Lucky Luciano's Havana" then "New Jersey's Feces-Covered Supreme Court" and "Union City, New Jersey is Meyer Lansky's Whore House.")

About 10% of N.J. judges are known to suffer from some form of substance abuse problem. This is a fact (I think the number is greater than this) that is not even communicated to the public in dereliction of the OAE's duty to protect the public from incompetence and corruption in the state's soiled legal profession. Shame on you in Trenton. ("New Jersey's Office of Attorney Ethics" and "New Jersey Supreme Court's Implosion.")

A much higher number of judges and other officials, I believe, makes use of the services of prostitutes. This includes women who are judges, such as Estela De La Cruz and, perhaps, the state's Lt. Governor and former federal prosecutor, Kim Guardagno. ("Menendez Consorts With Underage Prostitutes" and "Marilyn Straus Was Right!" then "Diana's friend Goes to Prison" and "Trenton's Nasty Lesbian Love-Fest!")

An alarming number of such persons seem to prefer underage prostitutes. ("Senator Bob, the Babe, and the Big Bucks" and "Wedding Bells Ring For Menendez!" then "N.J. Female Professor Rapes a Disabled Man" and "Jennifer Velez is a Dyke Magnet!") 

"Carmel has personally paid the Internal Revenue Service $14,186 plus interest to extinguish the lien, because he believed he 'alone was responsible.' The board [of legal ethics'?] chief counsel, ELLEN A. BRODSKY, [lesbian?] said in a letter to the clerk of the Supreme Court." ("Deborah T. Poritz and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey" and "Sybil R. Moses and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")

Ms. Brodsky is a "friend" of Kim Guardagno and denies a "cover-up" in my matters as well as all "lesbian affiliations," despite a suspicious fondness for "Orange is the New Black." 

Is Ms. Brodsky a softball player? ("Is America's Legal Ethics a Lie?")

Mr. Carmel has done no worse than John McGill, Esq. of the OAE who fabricated evidence, tampered with the record, and LIED about doing these things -- as well as much worse -- against me, from behind my back, and well before grievances were filed against me when he lacked jurisdiction to act against me at all. ("What did you know, Mr. Rabner, and when did you know it?" and "Have you no shame, Mr. Rabner?" then "No More Cover-Ups and Lies, Chief Justice Rabner!")

Do you ladies and gentlemen of the New Jersey Bar Association speak to me of "ethics"? ("Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "Neil M. Cohen, Esq. and Conduct Unbecoming to the Legislature in New Jersey" then "New Jersey's Politically-Connected Lawyers On the Tit.")

Restoring Ties to Cuba.

Attempts to reach the website for the Bronx District Attorney were blocked at NYPL computers. I have copied the bogus notice appearing at Google Chrome when I attempted to do so. 

This "blocking" of a website could place New Yorkers' lives in danger by preventing persons from reporting crimes in their communities. It is difficult to believe that corrupt police officers from New Jersey would be willing to take such risks in efforts to intimidate me. ("New Jersey's Office of Attorney Ethics" and "New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System" then "John McGill, Esq., the OAE, and New Jersey Corruption.")

I will be posting an open letter to Mr. Vance, with copies to the Manhattan U.S. Attorney and also to Robert Johnson, Esq., the Bronx District Attorney. Computer crime always makes it very difficult to know whether I will be able to continue writing at this site. ("How censorship works in America" and "Censorship and Cruelty in New Jersey.") 

Attacks on this text are always expected and likely. The size of letters in several paragraphs has been altered. Other deformations of sentences and paragraphs cannot be ruled out for the time being. There is always a danger that I will be prevented from returning to this site. (Again: "How censorship works in America.")

"The Moment to Restore Ties to Cuba," (Editorial) The New York Times, Sunday Review, October 12, 2014, p. 10.

Michael Barbaro, "G.O.P. Right Still Has Doubt About Christie," The New York Times, October 13, 2014, p. A1. (Mr. Christie continues to claim that he will fight for the "least of us" if elected president. More likely, Mr. Christie will work for the "least of us" -- provided that they are multimillionaires -- if elected to the nation's highest office, which seems unlikely.)

Mark Mazetti, "C.I.A. Study Says Arming Rebels Seldom Works," The New York Times, October 15, 2014, p. A1. (U.S. efforts against ISIS and in Iraq are doomed to fail without incentives for prospective Iraqui opponents of ISIS. The Turks are now bombing the most effective opponents of ISIS, the Northern Iraqui Kurds. Claims by Turkish authorities of "cooperation" with the Kurds against ISIS should be greeted with extreme caution.)

"Ernesto Londono," [Manohla Dargis] "Still Pondering U.S.-Cuba Relations, Fidel Castro Responds," The New York Times, October 15, 2014, p. A34. ("Ernesto Londono" is probably Mr. Lincoln Diaz-Balart with assistance from the Cuban American National Foundation as well as the so-called "gang of three": Menendez, Ros-Leghtinen, Rubio. This comment is the past; the editorial quoted below is the future.)

Robert Menendez, "Time to End the Embargo Against Cuba?," The New York Times, October 15, 2014, p. A34. (Sen. Menendez's letter -- emailed from a "sexy" resort beach in the Dominican Republic, perhaps? -- is "derivative" and marred by false allegations of fact. Cuba's human rights record is among the best in Latin America and compares well with most First World states today, including the U.S. record on such issues. Mr. Menendez cannot help ending his epistle with a trite and spent platitude. Time to tell the truth, Mr. Menendez. Is New Jersey's senior senator wearing my Invicta watch? "Menendez Consorts With Underage Prostitutes" and "Menendez Croney's Office Raided.")

Lovisa Stannow, "The Shame of Our Prisons: New Evidence," in The New York Review of Books, October 24, 2013, p. 57. (A new report confirms last year's findings and suggests international condemnation for U.S. prison conditions that violate human rights laws is appropriate. Will Mr. Menendez protest human rights violations in U.S. prisons? "Justice For Mumia Abu-Jamal" and "So Black and So Blue in Prison.") 

As I was preparing my open letter to Cyrus Vance, Jr., Esq., I was surprised to discover that the Editorial Board of America's "newspaper of record" -- after what appears to be a fierce war of conscience -- has published an editorial that is actually reflective of public opinion in the world and among well-informed Manhattanites, for once, concerning the Cuban embargo. 

Is it true that "Manohla Dargis" has threatened to quit over this editorial? If so, this may be one true motive for publishing what amounts to common sense opinion on the issue. ("Time to End the Embargo Against Cuba.")

It is indeed time to end an embargo that causes so much unnecessary suffering to many innocent persons, in both countries, and also to restore diplomatic relations between the two nations:

"For the first time in more than 50 years shifting politics in the United States and changing policies in Cuba make it politically feasible to re-establish formal diplomatic relations and dismantle the senseless embargo. The Castro regime has long blamed the embargo for its shortcomings ... ."

Nearly $1 TRILLION (one million billion dollars) has been lost to the Cuban economy since 1961 because of the U.S.-imposed embargo. 

Every man, woman, and child in Cuba is damaged in his or her life-conditions and -prospects by this material deprivation and impoverishment that is profoundly unjust. 

This fact suggests that there are good reasons to "blame" the embargo for the island nation's difficulties of an economic nature:

"Mr. Obama should seize the opportunity to end the long era of enmity and help a population that has suffered enormously since Washington ended diplomatic relations in 1961, two years after Fidel Castro seized power." 

There are excellent reasons for Mr. Obama to end the embargo: For one thing, this action would align the U.S. position with world opinion on the matter. 

The embargo is nearly unanimously condemned by the community of nations (U.N.), on a regular basis, often with the U.S. as the sole nation favoring the, essentially, illegal embargo and upholding it by veto. An embargo is usually deemed to be an act of war against a people.

After all, it is the same "community of nations" at the UN that the U.S. calls upon when it seeks sanctions against nations deemed by the American State Department to violate international law and that finds, also on a yearly basis, that the U.S. violates international law through the imposition of the embargo against Cuba. 

Russia has neatly sidestepped U.S. condemnations over Ukraine by pointing to the example of Cuba to illustrate claims of American inconsistency and hypocrisy on sanctions and human rights issues. ("American Hypocrisy and Luis Posada Carriles.") 

After relative silence from American officials in response to the Israeli military action in Gaza that resulted in 2,000 casualties of innocent civilians (including "500 babies" as Cornel West pointed out in a recent talk at which I was present), 15,000 wounded persons, 100,000 made homeless -- allegations that concern with human rights in Cuba motivates the embargo seem absurd. ("The Audacity of Hope" and "Israel Heightens Gaza Crisis.")

Senator Menendez does not deny receiving Israeli lobby money. The senator from Union City has remained silent on the human rights issues surrounding the Gaza military action. ("Is Senator Menendez 'For' Human Rights?" and "Is Menendez For Sale?") 

Ending the embargo would demonstrate that the U.S. is not only concerned to mobilize military operations against small countries in the Middle East, or "terrorist organizations" (this usually means "unruly Muslims"), but also can make peace with old adversaries in order to provide an example of progress, say, for Israelis and Palestinians as well as others in the world negotiating for peace. ("Fidel Castro's 'History Will Absolve Me.'")

Cuba is not a terrorist state in 2014. Cuba is leading the effort to bring a resolution to rival factions in Colombia by hosting peace negotiations in Havana; Cuba, according to UN experts,  has released all political prisoners and is willing to negotiate for the release of a probable American spy currently held in custody; and Cuba will participate in meetings of the Organization of American States despite Washington's discontent. 

This is to say nothing of the animosity of Cuban-American politicians to Cuba's revolution and people, which hurts the people of Cuba in many ways that are not usually reckoned in connection with the embargo. 

Much of the battle over this issue in the world today is about who will define the Cuban revolution and Cuba, whether Miami's politicians with access to American media and propaganda machinery -- or Cuba's leaders with no such access -- will establish the identity of the Cuban people is something only history will decide. 

I have also been involved in a similar battle for self-definition against powerful forces in America. Luckily and mysteriously, against all odds, the truth seems to prevail, somehow. 

Cuba and I seem to have managed to tell the truth about ourselves today.  

Among politicians opposed to Cuba are Iliana Ros-Leghtinen (also "Manohla Dargis"?) who is said to be "livid" about the suggestion that the embargo should be lifted. Bob Menendez and Marco Rubio "concur" in efforts to maintain the embargo. ("Menendez Blames Castro For His Prositution Habit" and "Marco Rubio Lies About His Past" then "Cubanazos Pose a Threat to National Security.")

A majority of Cuban-Americans now FAVOR ending the embargo, also restoring normal economic and legal relations between the two countries:

"The generation [of Cuban-Americans] that adamantly supports the embargo is dying off. Younger Cuban-Americans hold starkly different views, having come to see the sanctions as more damaging than helpful. A recent poll found that a slight majority of Cuban-Americans in Miami [and New Jersey] now oppose the embargo. A significant majority of them favor restoring diplomatic ties, mirroring the views of other Americans."

Good old American self-interest favors a normalization of relations. Increased trade between the U.S. and Cuba would mean BILLIONS of dollars for the U.S. economy, especially in the southern portion of the nation, but also for airlines and travel agents as well as hotel companies and commercial enterprises everywhere, like Wallmart, or even Starbucks and Barnes & Noble, all of which could find themselves with a Havana location catering to the global tourist trade.

Enhanced Cuban relations with China and Russia would be matched by similar joint ventures with American partners.

After the new marina and seaport project in Havana, can a McDonald's hamburger restaurant be far behind? Why not Mickey Mouse? Major league baseball? Sabado Gigante?

"Restoring diplomatic ties, [something] which the White House can do without Congressional approval, would allow the U.S. to expand and deepen cooperation in areas where the two nations already manage to work collaboratively -- like managing migration flows, maritime patrolling [war on terror?] and oil rig safety. It would better position Washington to press the Cubans on democratic reforms, and could stem a new wave of migration to the U.S. driven by [economic] hopelessness."

Already it has become evident that "business as usual" is no longer acceptable anywhere in the hemisphere, not even in Miami or New Jersey:

"In April, Western Hemisphere heads of state will meet in Panama City for the seventh Summit of the Americas. Latin American governments [again] insisted that Cuba, the Caribbean's most populous island and one of the [best] educated societies in the hemisphere, be invited, breaking with traditional exclusions [imposed] at the insistence of Washington."      

N.J.'s Luis A. Capazzi, Esq. Steals $1.1 MILLION.

October 11, 2014 at 2:47 P.M. I was obstructed in my initial efforts to reach this blog today. I have copied the bogus notice that appeared on my screen. I can never be certain of being able to return to these blogs. If I am censored, or prevented from writing at this location, I will struggle to create another blog. 

No response from public officials to my communications has been received by me. No U.S. media response has been received even to communications to American journalists from non-U.S. officials and foreign journalists, I believe, coming from more than one country. N.J.'s police response is "no comment." Mr. Rabner's response is "no comment." Ms. Guardagno's response is "no comment." Mr. Menendez, a member of the N.J. Bar Association (NJSBA), and Dr. Melgen, cannot be reached as they are "partying" in the Dominican Republic, allegedly. ("Menendez Consorts With Underage Prostitutes" and "How censorship works in America.")  

October 9, 2014 at 2:41 P.M. A list of sources will be added to this text soon. Please contrast the essay below with "Law and Literature."  

Adam Liptak, "Justices Say Case of Inmate's Beard May Not be the Best Test of Religious Liberty," The New York Times, October 8, 2014, p. A16. (U.S. Supreme Court suggests inmate form a "corporation" which may then assert First Amendment rights that once applied to human beings.)

James C. McKinley, Jr., "Hearing Over, Judge to Decide if Defendant in Patz Case Understood Rights," The New York Times, October 8, 2014, p. A29. (Coerced confessions, more tampering with evidence by police, allegedly, and another abused minority defendant. I am sure Stuart Rabner is O.K. with this type of incident, after all the deeds in the Patz case were so terrible that the Constitution should not get in the way of a conviction. Right, Stuart? "Stuart Rabner's Selective Sense of Justice.")

Colin Moynahan, "City Fights Appeal by Millions Who Say They Were Watched by the Police," The New York Times, October 8, 2014, p. A24. (We are getting used to surveillance in the National Security State. The only time when Latino males are not observed and monitored is when they run across the White House lawn carrying a weapon.)

Steven Strunsky, "Agency Vows to Follow Public Information Laws," The Star Ledger, September 18, 2014, p. 13. (PA claims to follow public disclosure laws, usually by hiding the truth from the people. Will the OAE tell the truth about the cover-ups in my matters? "No More Cover-Ups and Lies, Chief Justice Rabner!")

Michael Phillis, "Panel Favors Keeping Oldest On Job: Assembly to Vote on Retirement Change," The Record, September 23, 2014, p. A-5. (N.J. judges need a place to nap. Courtroom trials will allow judges in their eighties to sleep during the daytime. What else is new? "New Jersey's Failed Judiciary" and "Christie Rails Against New Jersey's Corrupt Judges.")

Michael Phillis, "New Laws Won't Apply to Past Sex Offender," The Record, September 23, 2014, p. A-5. (No ex post facto laws to apply to sex offenders. Stuart Rabner dissented and would apply such laws to everyone, except the "good people" -- like himself and his friends -- in Short Hills, New Jersey.)

Mark Muller, "Pastor Accused of Sex Abuse Steps Down From Ministry," The Star Ledger, October 7, 2014, p. 13. (Msgr. George Trebold, Pastor from Stuart Rabner's neighborhood in Short Hills and Millburn, New Jersey, faces child abuse charges. "That's O.K.," Mr. Rabner is alleged to have said, "he's not one of my people." "New Jersey Rabbi Faces Child Abuse Charges.")

Jeff Green, "Man Pleads Guilty in Scheme to Bilk Turnpike Authority: Withheld Funds From Damage Claim," The Record, September 23, 2014, p. L-2. (Insurance broker and SEVERAL LAWYERS may have bilked an insurance company out of about $900,000 to $1 MILLION. "New Jersey's Politically-Connected Lawyers On the Tit.")

Mary Diduch, "Justices Hear Case of School Trip to Germany: Chaperones appeal charges they had sex with [teenage] students," The Record, September 25, 2014, p. L-1. (As usual, N.J. teachers were having sex with their underage students on a field trip. The kids still got homework.)

Brent Johnson [BJ?], "N.J. Faces $90 BILLION in Unfounded Liabilities," The Star Ledger, September 26, 2014, p. 1. (Pension and other obligations of N.J. government cannot be met with existing or expected revenue. Money is still vanishing -- being stolen? -- from the state treasury, allegedly, every day. Where will the $90 billion come from? Easy, the "idiot taxpayers," as they say in Trenton, will be stolen from again. "New Jersey is the Home of the Living Dead.")

Bill Wichert, "Teacher to Seek Bail Cut On Charges of Sex Abuse," The Star Ledger, September 26, 2014, p. 10. (The attorney for a Maplewood teacher accused of sexually abusing FIVE male students is seeking a reduction of her bail because, allegedly, she is a lesbian feminist. Is she also a "nice Jewish woman"? "N.J. Female Professor Rapes a Disabled Man.")

Peter J. Samson, "Lawyer Charged in $1 Million Swindle: State Requests $200,000 Bail, Judge Ups It to $700,000," The Record, October 3, 2014, p. L-1. (Make it $1.1 million.)

Abbott-Koloff, "Man Charged With Sex Assault of Teen," The Record, October 3, 2014, p. L-3. (Robert W. Cubala, who sexually assaulted a 13-year-old girl, may have to look for new counsel after his prospective lawyer's arrest for theft. "That's Jersey for ya!" The cops said with a merry chuckle.)

More than ten years after leaving New Jersey I am still dealing with Office of Attorney Ethics (OAE) criminality in an effort to cover-up the original fraudulent proceedings against me that are now (finally) subject to a federal and multi-state investigation. 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the lawyers the OAE should be worrying about are stealing under their incompetent and corrupt noses for twenty years, or more. 

How many millions of dollars the morons at the OAE have spent going after me is anybody's guess. ("New Jersey's Office of Attorney Ethics" and "John McGill, Esq., the OAE, and New Jersey Corruption.")

I am sure that no one could get away with Mr. Capazzi's level of theft from clients for so long without bribing OAE officials monitoring trust accounts on a regular basis. Probably N.J. judges are also on the take. ("Herbert Klitzner, Esq.'s Greed and New Jersey's Hypocrisy.")

These lowlife, frauds and scam artists at the OAE (and their judicial partners in New Jersey) have the nerve to question my ethics when, as with Kim Guardagno, their own unethical conduct (or worse!) is often recorded. ("Kim Guardagno Subpoenaed On Hoboken Issues.")

OAE idiots get into bed with lawyers STEALING from clients, like Jose Ginarte, allegedly, Gilberto Garcia, Edgar Navarrete, and others in order to come after me because I refuse to alter my political opinions or they don't like me or they may be too stupid to know what I am saying. ("Justice For Mumia Abu-Jamal" and "Is America's Legal Ethics a Lie?")

Bob Menendez does not like me? Too bad. You do not have to "like" me, but only to respect my Constitutional rights and explain why you violated them and lied about it for so long. ("Christie's Cover-Up and New Jersey Corruption.")

The problem of corruption among New Jersey lawyers and judges will never be improved or remedied unless and until there is genuine reform of the legal ethics establishment (which is far too political and controlled by big firms that are among the worst sinners) and some effort is made to stop LYING about crimes committed against victims of political bosses, like me and many others. ("Corrupt law Firms, Senator Bob, and New Jersey Ethics" and "New Jersey Lawyers' Ethics Farce" then "Does Senator Menendez have mafia friends?")

Luis A. Capazzi, Esq. of Harrington Park, New Jersey, whose practice was in Oradell (great bagel place there!), who was known to be very friendly with John Molinelli and Kim Guardagno of the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office, and --

" -- whose client list ranged from football players to the entertainer Eddie Murphy was arrested on Thursday on charges of theft by deception for allegedly bilking more than $1 MILLION from dozens of former clients." 

"Theft by deception," for example, is promising to repair someone's watch, keeping the money for the repairs, then not doing the work or returning the watch. ("New Jersey's Office of Attorney Ethics" and "How censorship works in America" then "The Invicta Watch Company" and "The Invicta Watch Company Caper.")

It cannot be confirmed whether Mr. Capazzi admitted to sharing with the OAE or the likes of Stuart Rabner. It would not surprise me. "Lulu," Kim? ("Have you no shame, Mr. Rabner?" and "Stuart Rabner's Selective Sense of Justice" then "New Jersey's Politically-Connected Lawyers On the Tit" and "More Mafia Influence in New Jersey Courts and Politics.")

Bail in the matter was set by Estela De La Cruz's "blood sister" Liliana S. DeAvila-Silebi, a C-student in law school, allegedly, and not someone in danger of winning of the Nobel Prize for physics any time soon. No wonder they assigned her to setting bails. ("Trenton's Nasty Lesbian Love-Fest!" then "Jennifer Velez is a Dyke Magnet!" and "Sybil R. Moses and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey" then "Deborah T. Poritz and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")

Bail was set at $700,000. Mr. Capazzi, 49, is "alleged to have bilked more than 50 of his clients by taking funds for services he never provided, Lynch said. The losses exceed $1.1 million, including $600,000 from Capazzi's brother, he said." ("Christie Gives a Donor  $1 Million of New Jersey Money" and "New Jersey's Judges Disgrace America" and "New Jersey's Failed Judiciary" then "Sexual Favors For New Jersey Judges.")

Randy Mastro, Esq. believes that it is more efficient to bill N.J. taxpayers directly for $9 MILLION in order not to have to deal with the client security fund and the annoying OAE. Smart, Randy. ("Law and Ethics in the Soprano State.")

I never stole a dime from clients. This honesty is not acceptable to the OAE because it makes other New Jersey lawyers "look bad." ("New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System.") 

When other attorneys (or the OAE), in violation of their own ethics rules and criminal laws, secretly contacted my clients (often lying to them about their illicitly-obtained files) in order to tell them to ask for return of fees they had paid to me, I happily returned their money to those who went for the OAE's tactics then threw them out of my office. 

Kim Guardagno, does this ring any bells? ("How censorship works in America.")

Many of these same former clients returned to my office or have tried to contact me since to share the dirty details. 

How can the OAE continue to LIE about this situation with impunity through their silence, knowing the danger to the public in New York and elsewhere along with their obligation to disclose the truth to me while engaging in computer crime aimed at silencing me? (Again: "Is America's Legal Ethics a Lie?")

How much did you steal from my office, Edgar? How about you John McGill, Esq. of the OAE? Do you lowlifes speak to me of ethics? ("New Jersey's Political and Supreme Court Whores" and "New Jersey's Feces-Covered Supreme Court.") 

Law and Literature.

The field of interdisciplinary scholarship focusing on the relation between law and literature has undergone enormous growth. 

There were only a tiny number of scholars discussing the topic when I became interested in the subject way back in the eighties and nineties. 

Today, scholars and literary artists examine and discuss issues in this area of legal academic research on a regular basis. Even practitioners have become interested in the topic. 

Despite threats to prevent me from writing, I will try to complete this essay and post it online, since it may lead others to discover several fascinating intellectual works and to contribute to this important discussion. 

I may find it necessary to post the work after typing the first two points of the essay. I will be adding a third and concluding section as quickly as circumstances (including continuing computer crime) permit me to do so. 

The final quotation is a paragraph whose spacing has been altered by hackers. I have retyped this paragraph twice, but the deformation remains. I will attempt to retype the paragraph, again, from a public computer to repair the harm done fully expecting additional attacks and alterations of the text. 

I will list only a few of the sources that I have found most helpful in commenting on an article by Ian McEwan appearing in a recent issue of The New Republic. 

Primary Sources:

Ian McEwan, "The Laws of Fiction," The New Republic, September 29, 2014, p. 24. ("What is memory?" and "Shakespeare's Black Prince.")

Ian McEwan, The Children Act (New York: Doubleday, 2014).

Ian McEwan, Atonement (New York: Vintage, 2001). (Please notice the opening quotation from Northanger Abbey then see "The Northanger Arms On Park Avenue" and "'The French Lieutenant's Woman': A Movie Review.")

Justin Driver, "Divine Justice: How to be fair to Scalia," The New Republic, September 29, 2014, p. 40. (Book Review.)

Bruce Allen Murphy, Scalia: A Court of One (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014). (Is a legal biography -- or any biography -- a literary narrative, "life story," or a kind of historical fiction?)

Secondary Sources:

Lon L. Fuller, "The Case of the Speluncean Explorers," 62 Harvard Law Review 616 (1949).

Lon L. Fuller, Legal Fictions (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967). ("Ape and Essence" and "Primates and Personhood.")

A. Soifer, "Reviewing Legal Fictions," 20 Georgia Law Review 871 (1986). (A collection of materials focusing on all aspects of law and literature.)

I am in possession of a paperback book given to Donald Davidson by Ian Hacking, the author of the work, examining issues of language in philosophical and, unknowingly, jurisprudential thought that contains Hacking's inscription and note to Davidson signalling the importance of the issue of metaphor, I believe, in law and philosophy. The conversation between these philosophers on the nature of language is important, but not previously made public. ("A Doll's Aria" and "Metaphor is Mystery.")

Ian Hacking, Why Language Matters to Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1973). ("Dear Donald, ... Your patience in explaining some of this stuff, when I called on you in Oxford, does, I hope, show in chapter 12. ..." It does indeed. "Donald Davidson's Anomalous Monism.")

Vincent Halliman, "The Case of the Unconscious Killer," in Norman Sheresky, ed., On Trial: Masters of the Courtroom (New York: Viking Press, 1977), pp. 89-97. (States akin to sleep or hypnosis preclude criminal liability and may render an actor blameless even in civil contexts. "Will Texas Kill an Insane man?")

Terry Eagleton, The Event of Literature (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010). 

Susan K. Langer, Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957).

Richard Neeley, How Courts Govern America (New Haven: Yale U. Press, 1981). (" ... in any society there are two systems of government -- the myth system [literature] and the operational system [reality].") 

Two American law cases (among many that are relevant to the law and literature discussion) may be amusing and instructive:

United States v. Socony-Vacuum Oil Co., 310 U.S. 150, 226 n. 59 (1940). (Metaphors and Similes that become reified govern entire areas of law.)

Miles v. City Council, 710 F.2d 1542 (11th Cir. 1983). (The owner of a "talking cat" named "Blackie" challenged, as a deprivation of free speech, an ordinance that required businesses to be licensed, with no exception for the commercial exhibition of talking animals. The way the decision of the court is written does not challenge the owner's belief, for which there was no contradictory testimony, that "Blackie" was capable of speech. Hence, by implication, the claim is accepted as a matter of factual finding by the court -- if only as dicta -- which counsel for "Tommy the Chimp" may find useful. Please see my short story "Serendipity, III.")

Many contemporary novels and other literary forms have examined legal issues or noted court cases. I will limit myself to listing only two of my favorites:

Clifford Irving, Trial (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990).

Scott Turow, Innocent (New York: Grand Central, 2010).

Shakespeare and Dickens, Melville and James were fascinated by law and court cases as well as mastering the rhetoric of the profession, often making use of legal doctrines in their writings, sometimes in very subtle ways. 

Less well known is Jane Austen's interest in law and the unspoken "impossible desire" she harbored to become a barrister -- an insane ambition for a woman in her day -- which obviously underlies many of her plots. (Again: "Master and Commander" then "Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Missing Author.")

G.H. Teitel, "Jane Austen and the Law," Law Quaterly Review, 549 (1984).

Daniel J. Hornstein, Shakespeare's Legal Appeal (New Jersey: Princeton U. Press, 1994). (A focus on the plays from a juridical perspective.) 

Among the many evenings devoted to nefarious activities during my misspent youth, I recall some late nights in my law school's library perusing dusty volumes of the King's Bench Reports and All England Reports. 

Lord Mansfield's admonition -- like a thunderbolt -- lingers in my memory: "Let justice be done though the heavens fall!" 

Yes, My Lord. Among the most important anthologies and collections dealing with these issues of multidisciplinary interest are:

Guido Calabresi, Ideals, Beliefs, Attitudes and the Law: Private Law Perspectives on a Public Law Problem (New York: Syracuse U. Press, 1985). (Ostensibly a study of law and economics in connection with abortion, the book is actually filled with literary examples: "The Gift of the Evil Deity." Please see "Innumerate Ethics.")

Ronald Dworkin, "How Law is Like Literature," in A Matter of Principle (Cambridge: Harvard U. Press, 1985), pp. 146-167.
Ronald Dworkin, Law's Empire (Cambridge: Harvard U. Press, 1986). ("Ronald Dworkin On Law as Interpretation" and "Ronald Dworkin Says 'The Law Works Itself Pure.'") 

Sanford Levinson, "Law and Literature," in S. Levinson & S. Mailloux, eds., Interpreting Law and Literature (Evanston: Northwestern U. Press, 1988), pp. 155-175. 

Richard A. Posner, Law and Literature: A Misunderstood Relation (Cambridge: Harvard U. Press, 1988).
Richard A. Posner, The Problems of Jurisprudence (Cambridge: Harvard U. Press, 1990).

W. Michael Reisman, Folded Lies (New York: Free Press, 1979). (America's political-legal system as a network of "lies" or literature usually generated by lawyers. "On Bullshit.")

Richard Weisberg, Poethics and Other Strategies of Law and Literature (New York: Columbia U. Press, 1992). ("John Banville's 'The Newton Letter.'")

James B. White, The Legal Imagination: Studies in the Nature of Legal Thought and Expression (New York: Little & Brown, 1973).
James B. White, When Words Lose Their Meaning: Constitutions and Reconstitutions of Language, Character and Community (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).

Jay Wishingrad, Legal Fictions: Short Stories About Lawyers and the Law (New York: Overlook Press, 1992).

"The choices for a judge are often limited to the lesser harm rather than the greater good."

I am in my usual spot on a Monday morning, sitting on a thin sliver of the first bench in a large room of the second floor of the county courthouse that is filled with a disorderly crowd of litigants in the Superior Court, Family Division. 

We are waiting to have our cases called. There are many children and old people present, numerous languages are spoken. Stories are overheard only in fragments. The details are sometimes horrible: A mother decides to discipline her child -- a five year-old boy -- by forcing the naked child to sit on a lit stove; a twelve year-old girl is raped by her drunken father and his friends who then rape her mother as she witnesses the scene; grandparents seek custody of a child in "pigtails" working on her coloring book because their daughter (the girl's mother) is in prison for dealing cocaine and is also pregnant, again. 

Lawyers chat about weekend plans or trips to the Opera, theater, or Superbowl tickets. 

The various lives recounted on this one morning alone provide enough material for a library shelf's worth of novels revealing the conflicts and meanings of these people's lives. Also, any typical gathering of suffering souls "dramatizes" (literary term) the fundamental tensions in American society today. 

Racism, poverty, lack of education produce their effects long before persons afflicted or deprived of "life-options" can recognize all that has been taken from them. Many -- if not most -- of these humble lives are over before they have really begun. 

Only a great literary artist could do "justice" (legal term) to the simplest person in this room. 

In a recent article in The New Republic Ian McEwan comments on the "illicit affair" between literature and law. The themes of Mr. McEwan's Atonement come to mind. I felt at several points in reading his essay that I was in the company of Mr. McEwan's "Briony" as she sought to give anonymous lives their moment of transcendent meaning, an explanation of their (our) usually absurd and tragic sufferings, in order to help make ordinary pains (and worse) bearable. Perhaps this is to speak of the reasons for which literature and all of the arts exist:

"The problem of these fifty-nine years has been this: how can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also God? There is no one, no entity or higher form that she can appeal to, or be reconciled with, or that can forgive her. [There is nothing outside the text?] In her imagination she has set the limits and the terms. No atonement for God, or novelists, even if they are atheists. It was always an impossible task, and that was precisely the point. The attempt was all." (Atonement, pp. 350-351.) ("The Wanderer and His Shadow" and "Jacques Derrida's Philosophy as Jazz.")

There are so many ways in which these ancient disciplines (law and literature) that are jointly concerned, as fellow conspirators, with human lives and the mysteries of good and evil as well as the elusive societal quest for justice "interact" that merely to decide on the kind of relation between them to study -- civil or criminal law? novels or poems? -- is worthy of book-length treatment. ("Images and Death" and "Oh, to be in India.")

To be a judge or legal academic is also to be a kind of god of the law library. Judges are the novelists of litigants' lives. Selection and creativity is everything; there are many valid approaches to resolving complex legal issues; many possible views of the best outcome in complex cases, but also an infinite number of ways of characterizing the facts when judges seek to decide a controversy with an eye on justice. 

One might concentrate, for example, on the literary analysis of legal prose to discover creative uses of "fictions," or metaphors, that often govern the lives of persons. 

The very word "persons" designates a kind of legal fiction that includes your grandmother and General Electric Corporation. This fiction or concept ("person") is under enormous strain at the moment generating a crisis for the system that is best explored in literature or philosophical essays. (Compare "The Galatea Scenario and the Mind/Body Problem" with "A Doll's Aria" then "Mind and Machine" with "Conversation On a Train" and "Consciousness and Computers.")

Alternatively, one might concentrate on the hermeneutics of legal advocacy by examining the metaphysics and epistemology of allegorical or analogical reasoning and interpretation: What is "proximate cause" as opposed to "cause in fact"? What is the scope and limit of liability in accident cases? Where do we draw the boundaries on open-ended concepts like "relevance" in evidence law? How are such determinations made or related to judgments concerning public policy, ethical values, or other policies served by the law? ("Roberto Unger's Revolutionary Legal Theory" and "Richard A. Posner On Voluntary Actions and Criminal Responsibility.") 

Judges assign "persons" roles in the dramas constructed by the legal system that then allow these same judges -- like novelists -- to make sense of the chaos that life often is when events remain uninterpreted and unarranged into meaningful patterns. 

Societies and persons cannot live with or as chaos. Hence, the need for order and meaning, pattern, goodness and beauty is cultural and jurisprudential. It may be impossible for any society to fully satisfy this fundamental human need. Absurdly, perhaps, we insist that suffering and loss "make sense" somehow. ("What is Law?" and "Shakespeare's Black Prince.")  

Legal assessments often assume that others will agree on what is lesser as distinct from greater harm. No determination of such matters can fail to evoke underlying values in law. There is no judge -- let alone a great one -- who is a nihilist or relativist, particularly about the "reality" of law. ("The Allegory of the Cave" and "John Finnis and Ethical Cognitivism" then "The Critical Legal Studies Movement.")

In the absence of universally accepted values and the decline of religion in Western democracies, judges (who are ill-equipped for the task) must answer values questions by deciding on the most just outcome of controversies not only in criminal cases, but also in what are called "civil" cases. ("Ronald Dworkin On Law as Interpretation.")

"The blurring of fact and fiction is part of the intellectual climate of our postmodern time -- dominated as it is by epistemological skepticism and Nietzschean denials of the possibility of objectivity that are sweeping through every humanistic discipline, sometimes with cyclonic ferocity. Historians are sometimes the last to know about current fashions, but so powerful have the deconstructive theories become that even historians [lawyers?] can no longer remain ignorant of them." (Wishingrad, pp. xvi-xvii.) ("Charles Fried and William Shakespeare On Interpretation.")

"The law exists to set and live by boundaries."

McEwan is fascinated by the craftsmanship of judges. He notes the elegance of some judicial opinions as texts, their underlying humane wisdom, and even the genuine wit that is occasionally discovered in court opinions. 

Some judges in the common law tradition have indeed been very fine writers. Every lawyer and student of legal prose has a list of such distinguished names. Among my preferred judicial stylists I certainly include Benjamin Cardozo and Oliver Wendell Holmes, also Lord Mansfield in Britain and, perhaps, a few of the so-called "Great Reformers," like Leslie Stephen or William O. Douglas in America. 

I am more interested in McEwan's recognition of something shared by novelists and judges deploying linguistic tools in the doomed effort to control, make sense of, or merely to understand the messy realities of life in complex, fast-moving societies dealing with crumbling belief systems. Among those disintegrating systems is law and the very notion of legality. (Again: "The Wanderer and His Shadow" and "The Allegory of the Cave.")

There is a kind of desperate and proud human faith in the power of reason and effort to tame and transform horror, evil, confusion and conflict into sanity and precision and -- on very rare occasions -- a beauty that we call art, justice, or civilization. No doubt this "faith" is connected to the need to understand and make sense of tragedy and evil.  

Law is an essentially Modern effort to rationalize social life in convenient patterns that is in tension with our currently dominant post-modernist culture in America and Europe that is skeptical of all efforts to make sense of things. (Again: "Roberto Unger's Revolutionary Legal Theory" and "Richard A. Posner On Voluntary Actions and Criminal Responsibility.")

I once ("naively," I was told) believed that law is a force "for" sanity and goodness, that justice could rarely, perhaps, actually be achieved in the "real" world (and not only in novels) through the mechanisms of law, that men and women of good faith (are there any left?), for the most part, could improve the lot of suffering humanity by making things whole, or repairing what is broken in all of us. ("Aaron Schwartz, Freedom, and American Law.")

I do not know whether I can or would make any such grand claims today. I doubt it. 

A generation of legal professionals have been reared in an environment of profound skepticism about law and all values. Legal institutions -- like most institutions in America and the Western world -- have suffered a deflationary and humbling loss of esteem among persons from all walks of life. ("What is Law?")

Many persons -- including American political officials and judges, probably -- argued for nihilism and "absolute relativism" (incoherently) against my defense of ethics in another forum. I am sure that the discussion then (and events since) have drawn a large international audience astonished by what they have seen as well as the apathy of local authorities content to witness the catastrophe and unable or unwilling to prevent crimes against me and innocent members of the public. When lawyers describe themselves as nihilists and worshipers of power, you may be sure that legality has become a joke or a lie. ("New Jersey's Office of Attorney Ethics" then "Why I am not an ethical relativist" and "Drawing Room Comedy: A Philosophical Essay in the Form of a Film Script.")

Laughter greets assertions that law is a social phenomenon that cannot be separated from our moral aspirations, that the mechanisms of law and political institutions cannot function if they are subjected to certain levels of corruption and ineptitude. ("Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "New Jersey is the Home of the Living Dead" then "John McGill, Esq., the OAE, and New Jersey Corruption" and "American Hypocrisy and Luis Posada Carriles.")

Law is necessarily reflective of the moral tradition culminating in the Enlightenment, drawn from ancient religious traditions, secularized in neutral and objective principles meant to apply equally to everyone. Law is not engineering. Law is not merely about power. Law is certainly not merely a "game." ("What is Enlightenment?" and "Derek Parfit's Ethics" then "Manifesto For the Unfinished American Revolution" and "John Rawls and Justice.")

Corruption and mediocrity are rampant as never before in the legal profession. This realization is reflected in the many jokes about lawyers everywhere in the world. The same truth is also seen in the deeper perception among scholars and judges of structural limitations upon the judicial power or activism. 

Law is a blunt instrument for subtle moral surgery in a world of uncertainties and mysteries, none greater than human nature itself. ("New Jersey Supreme Court's Implosion" and "Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture" then "Psychological Torture in the American Legal System" and "American Lawyers and Torture.")

The wisdom gained from the experience of so many legal disasters is that personal autonomy and human dignity must be respected even by the best-intentioned legal paternalist, perhaps, to his or her chagrin. ("An Open Letter to My Torturers in New Jersey, Terry Tuchin and Diana Lisa Riccioli" and "American Doctors and Torture" then "Is America's Legal Ethics a Lie?") 

McEwan mentions a wise judge's decision to save the life of a juvenile who came before him refusing a life-saving blood transfusion because it offended the boy's religious beliefs as a Jehova's Witness. Loving parents shared the boy's beliefs and supported his controversial decision. All were articulate, competent, legally sane individuals and they found a solid basis in legal principles for requesting respect for the young person's autonomous decision. 

The very same legal autonomy is invoked as a basis for unfettered decision-making by women -- many no older than the young Jehova's Witness -- seeking control over their bodies.

Abortion decisions by very young women are often opposed by their ministers or family members who view terminating a pregnancy as murder. 

Judges tend to respect the juvenile's decision in abortion cases, but not in right to die cases where potentially life-saving medical treatment is rejected on religious grounds. 

Adults facing similar or identical tragic choices are usually respected in their unpopular decisions, correctly, as required by human rights laws, since they are no longer children in need of the court's judgment concerning their welfare or interests. 

McEwan's well-meaning judge refuses the juvenile's request to die and comes to know and like him as well as his family. The British novelist reports, sadly, that when the same young man, as an adult, found himself faced, again, with the decision to accept or reject treatment, he chose to reject treatment that violated his religious beliefs, even if this meant that he would die.

The point is not whether the young man was right to die in order to uphold what he felt to be beliefs that defined his identity, as a person, but that it was only for him to make that judgment in a free society.

Analogously, the decision about whether to carry a fetus to term and deliver a human infant into the world must remain only for the pregnant woman to make, not for those (many of whom will be fine, humane, witty judges who have attended Oxford with Mr. McEwan) to make on her behalf, regardless of their good intentions and willingness to socialize with litigants. 

Perhaps one theme of McEwan's typically brilliant new novel is that judges (and novelists?) faced with such dilemmas tend to place great value on their own privacy and should resist the impulse to play God by respecting the privacy of others rather than telling persons how to live their lives. 

Persons and literary characters tend to insist on their freedom. Let us try to respect the wishes of fictional and non-fictional persons. The world in which we live is not fashioned in the image of human compassion, as Briony discovers, and "humane wisdom" as understood by well-educated, privileged elites -- usually white males in powerful positions -- often resembling Mr. McEwan (or myself) may be irrelevant to the wishes of "strangers" seeing the world very differently than we do. 

Democracy, pluralism, demands that we respect the differences among us in ethnically, racially, and otherwise extremely diverse cultures of strangers with conflicting needs and values where violence is always a possibility in order to allow multiethnic societies to thrive. ("Immanuel Kant and the Narrative of Freedom.") 

If we are to coexist, peacefully, persons must be allowed their differences as long as they abide by the laws -- laws against theft and rape, assaults, and computer crimes included. ("The Invicta Watch Company" and "The Invicta Watch Company Caper.")

We will "choose" differently because we are different beings residing in different worlds of meaning while sharing a single empirical reality. Impositions of power that are illicit will not work in "controlling" persons, they will only make things worse for everyone. 

Legal paternalism is an explosive substance to be used rarely and cautiously, never outside legal "boundaries," or secretly in the lives of unsuspecting persons.

Law must not seek to frustrate the valid wishes of competent adults acting within their legal rights, even when the result of respecting persons' wishes may be tragic from the point of view of "elites" commenting in the pages of The New Republic, or of those reading and admiring the writings of authors and judges whose opinions are found in such lofty publications. ("What is it like to be plagiarized?" and "'Brideshead Revisited': A Movie Review.")

"If the judgments had been fiction, they would have belonged in the tradition of moral exploration."

"A central issue within law is therefore the ability to maintain a separation between disinterested legal analysis and interest-saturated political decision-making. Only such a separation allows the litigants to believe that well-trained judges will reach their verdicts without any taint of their personal political views. The decline of a belief in judicially produced right answers derived from techniques of right reading has recently led some analysts, especially those identified with critical legal studies [Again: "The Critical Legal Studies Movement"] ... to assert that legal rules are determined by political and historical contingencies. Given these ambiguities of interpretation, many legal theorists have substituted for the hermeneutics of objective interpretation what Gerald Graff has termed a 'hermeneutics of power,' where one emphasizes the political and social determinants of reading texts one way as opposed to another. Indeed, it is often suggested that the major reason for preferring a reading lies in the political consequences occasioned by it." (S. Levinson & S. Mailloux, eds., Interpreting Law and Literature, pp. xii-xiii, emphasis added.)

A final observation concerns the immediate feeling among lawyers and other Western elites of absurdity and waste that accompanies a person's strongly-held religious belief or the willingness to die for that belief. 

There is a kind of contempt that many educated persons feel for religious believers today, especially the fundamentalist sort of believers who are willing to die for what seems absurd from our secularist and scientifically-minded perspective. 

McEwan, of course, only seeks understanding in order to capture in his work the utterly bizarre perspective of fellow citizens experiencing life so differently from, say, novelists and judges. 

It rarely occurs to any of us who are products of Western educational systems that for many people in the world -- probably a majority -- our philosophical views and much that we accept as valid appears completely ridiculous. I have discussed quantum mechanics and evolution with persons from different parts of the world, for example, who found much of what I said, drawn directly from scientific texts, ludicrous and hysterically funny. I agreed with them. It also happens to be what we call scientific truth in the Western world. ("Dialectics, Entanglement, and Special Relativity.")

A deeper point concerns commitment. In a city and among self-indulgent elites wallowing in callous narcissism, indifferent to so much human suffering, for whom the idea of genuine altruistic or self-giving love, or laying down one's life for an ideal -- any ideal -- is simply laughable "sacrifice" may be meaningless. Life is about "shopping," we are told, maximizing material comforts, greed for possessions, or power over the little brown people. ("Innumerate Ethics" then "Nihilists in Disneyworld" and "America's Nursery School Campus.")

To die for any cause is a joke for kids today. The very notions of good and evil are merely "relative" and easily dismissed by the children of privilege in polite conversations held in the university cafeteria. ("Whatever!" then "Why Jane Can't Read" and "Whatever happened to the liberal arts?")

McEwan reminds us that the notion of self-sacrifice is not all that comical or distant from us, after all, even a generation ago it was pretty common. For persons experiencing the Second World War, for instance, the importance of commitment and sacrifice was well-understood and real. This recognition is a theme explored in McEwan's novels, like Atonement and The Innocent. 

Perhaps Ian McEwan, like many disappointed sixties idealists, needs to remind himself that when life comes down to fundamental realities something must be worth dying for if we are to go on living. 

More likely, this point about the need for self-giving and ideals is one of the lessons of McEwan's literary works. 

One reason to go on telling stories in print may be to find and serve those commitments to human values and/or the persons we love for which we are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice:

"We prefer to think we are remote and well-defended from such sacrifice. But there are always exceptions we might make, as long as we are brave enough: Some scales of moral value, some sacrifices, are superior, more meaningful, than others. We honor the parent who drowns while rescuing a child, as we do the men and women who gave their lives liberating Europe from Nazi barbarity. That in turn summons the complicating memory of the many Jehova's Witnesses rounded up in the Third Reich's death camps and offered their freedom if they would renounce their pacifism. They almost always chose to die." (McEwan, p. 27.)