Seventh Circuit Weighs in on Bankruptcy Fraud

seventh-circuit51In the wake of a surge in bankruptcies, can a boom in bankruptcy fraud prosecutions be far behind?  If so, district court judges will benefit from the Seventh Circuit’s opinion today in United States v. Peel (No. 07-3933), which addressed a number of unsettled legal questions.

The facts in Peel were unusually lurid for a bankruptcy case.  Back in the 1970’s, Peel had an affair with his wife’s sixteen-year-old sister.  Although the affair ended after a few months, Peel kept several nude pictures of the sister.  Some time later, Peel was divorced from his wife, and bankruptcy followed.  Peel’s largest financial obligation was to his ex-wife: $230,000 plus an additional $2500 per month for the rest of his life, pursuant to the terms of the divorce settlement.  The ex-wife filed a claim in the bankruptcy proceedings in order to ensure that these obligations were not discharged.  Peel then attempted to pressure her into dropping the claim by threatening to release the nude pictures of her sister.  The ex-wife complained to police, and Peel was eventually convicted of bankruptcy fraud, obstruction of justice, and possession of child pornography.

Judge Posner, writing for the court, addressed several issues relating to Peel’s convictions and sentence. 

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Day to Oppose the Use of Child Soldiers

redhandday_goma_08Today, February 12, marks the eighth anniversary of the entry into force of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict.  As IntLawGrrls points out, the U.S. is a party to the protocol (even though it remains one of the only two countries in the world  that has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child itself).

Non-governmental organizations that work to end the phenomenon of child soldiers call the day “Red Hand Day”, and the photo above shows activities in Goma, in Congo DR, marking Red Hand Day in 2008.

An open debate on children and armed conflict in the Security Council last April raised interesting issues.  Radhika Coomaraswamy, the Secretary General’s Special Representative for the issue of children and armed conflict emphasized that the abuse and exploitation of children during armed conflict goes far beyond their recruitment as fighters:

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Langdell’s Curse and Transactional Lawyers

langdell_portrait_vinton_03-150x150In a prior post, I criticized law schools’ heavy reliance on the case-method as a way to prepare lawyers for practice. As I argued in that post, the case method, which primarily teaches students the law through an analysis of the legal reasoning in appellate cases while ignoring most of the factual context for those cases, leads law students to think more like judges and judicial clerks than practicing lawyers.

Still, being able to think like a judge is helpful to some degree to a litigator, for it enables her to place herself in the shoes of her potential audience — the judge – to identify her strongest (and weakest) arguments. Moreover, learning the law through the case method, even absent much of the factual context giving rise to the case, gives students some exposure to what a lawsuit is, who the different parties to a lawsuit are, and how to read and understand the procedural posture of a case. It also helps students to develop legal reasoning skills in the context of a legal problem arising due to existing facts and circumstances. The procedural and evidentiary aspects of litigation are further explored and reinforced through courses on civil procedure and evidence, which are mandatory at many law schools. 

But thinking like a judge is nearly irrelevant to a transactional attorney.

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