Love and Violence: Valentine’s Day Edition

On Monday, February 6, Florida couple Joseph Bray and his wife Sonja got into a fight because, she says, he failed to wish her a happy birthday.  According to the arrest affidavit, the fight escalated; Joseph Bray pushed Sonja Bray onto their couch, grabbed her neck, and raised his fist to hit her, although he did not strike her.  Joseph Bray was arrested and when he appeared in court on a domestic violence charge, you can be sure the judge issued appropriate sanctions.

Or not.

Judge John Hurley ordered in lieu of posting a bond that Joseph Bray get his wife flowers and a birthday card, take her to Red Lobster for dinner, then take her bowling.  And he ordered the couple to see a marriage counselor. 

Continue ReadingLove and Violence: Valentine’s Day Edition

Spreading the Love: We are a Community of Lawyers

I was writing a different blog post this morning, one I will get back to, when I received an email from my son’s high school principal.  One of his classmates, a senior and a boy my son knew, had committed suicide.

Since receiving that email, I have been out of sorts.  There’s the obvious tragedy of a young man taking his own life, of his family and friends left behind.  But it also triggered in me deeper emotions, for he died today, Valentine’s Day, a day marketed to be about love not death.  Today is also the day, twenty years ago, that my father died from lung cancer.  I am definitely out of sorts.

Continue ReadingSpreading the Love: We are a Community of Lawyers

Happy 200th Birthday, Charles Dickens

Today marks the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens’ birth.  As the New York Times notes,

“We can rejoice that so many of the evils he assailed with his beautiful, ferocious quill – dismal debtors’ prisons, barefoot urchin labor, an indifferent nobility – have happily been reformed into oblivion.  But one form of wickedness he decried haunts us still, proud and unrepentant:  the lawyer.”

Dickens included lawyers in 11 of his 15 novels.  Perhaps they made so many appearances because he was enmeshed in England’s legal system.  According the New York Times, at 15 Dickens was hired as an “attorney’s clerk” and later became a court reporter.  “For three formative years he was surrounded by law students, law clerks, copying clerks, court clerks, magistrates, barristers and solicitors . . . .”  And for a time, he was a law student.  One scholar has framed Dickens as a legal historian and another has written a book that examines Dickens’ portrayal of lawyers and others in the legal system.

In honor of Dickens’ birth and his ties to our profession, please share your favorite Dickens quotes.

Continue ReadingHappy 200th Birthday, Charles Dickens
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