A Public Service Environment

marquette1When I was hired by the Law School in October, I joked that my basketball affections were for sale – Go, Golden Eagles – but, especially when I was writing in my own reporting voice, I didn’t expect to change my journalistic standards (there really are such things) after more than 35 years of newspapering in Milwaukee. So if you want to consider this hopeless pandering to my bosses, I can’t stop you. But I regard this as just a blog item in my voice.

The annual Law School Public Service Conference was this past Friday at the Alumni Memorial Union, with a theme of “Water and People.” It’s one of the centerpieces of the Law School’s involvement in public issues and its commitment to promoting knowledge of and involvement in those issues.

But I’ve been impressed in the four months I’ve been hanging around the building with how strong the public service environment is in the Law School and with how little of the reason for saying this is rooted in once-a-year events. Consider a partial list:

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A Chemistry Lesson from the Seventh Circuit

seventh-circuit51Under the federal sentencing guidelines, sentences in drug-trafficking cases turn largely on weight — that is, how much of each type of drug was sold by the defendant — which can cause all sorts of problems in sentencing long-time dealers who were not considerate enough to keep meticulous records of their sales for the police.  Witness the case of crack dealer Joshua Hines, who admitted acquiring 1.531 kilograms of powder cocaine.  The district judge assumed that Hines cooked this powder into an equivalent weight of crack for resale, which resulted in a sentence of 168 months in prison.  Given much harsher treatment of crack than powder, the guidelines would not have resulted in nearly so long a sentence on the basis of the 1.531 kg of powder alone.  So, is it fair to assume that a crack dealer who possessed a certain weight of powder also possessed the same weight of crack?

No, said the Seventh Circuit in United States v. Hines (No. 08-3255).  Writing for the court, Judge Posner offered a little chemistry lesson, explaining that the process of cooking powder into crack removes hydrochloride from the drug.  Under ideal conditions, cooking results in an eleven-percent weight loss.  But, given the potential for careless waste during cooking, it is not clear that even the eleven-percent loss should be assumed.  The court concluded, “[If] the government wants the sentencing judge to infer the weight of the crack from the weight of the powder from which the crack was manufactured, it has to present evidence, concerning the cooking process, that would enable a conversion ratio to be estimated” (3).  (Judging by the mess on my kitchen counter most mornings, I am guessing that the “conversion ratio” when my six-year-old cooks oatmeal into hot cereal is about 2:1.  Fortunately, and notwithstanding its cholesterol-lowering benefits, the street value of oatmeal remains a lot less than cocaine.)

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To Zone or Not to Zone

simtropolisAfter my property ASP, I ended up in an interesting conversation about zoning. I know nothing about zoning both because I am a 1L and because I am from Houston, the only city in the country (to my knowledge and pride) without zoning.

As I listened to a few anectdotes and told a few of my own, I was reminded of the “mainland” in Second Life (r) (SL). I think of what I have been told about the reason that Houston “is the way it is,” generally meaning that there is a lot of mixing of buildings for public and private use and much city sprawl. I also begin to think of the mainland on Second Life (R). A chaotic place to say the least.

In an effort to better understand the basics of zoning, I looked it up in the dictionary and on Wikipedia. Here is a bit of what I’ve found. 

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