The Moot Court/Op-Ed Café.

I was going to put up a photograph of the snow — yes, we have a spring snow — but, after taking the trouble to open and lean out of my 3rd-floor window, the camera battery gave out. That prompted me to substitute this orchid from a few weeks back to set up today's café, where you can talk about what you want while I — after frittering away Friday and Saturday — apply myself to 2 tasks that must be done today: writing an op-ed with a Monday deadline and prepping for and judging the final round of the Evans Constitutional Law Moot Court Competition at Wisconsin Supreme Court Hearing Room:



And let that orchid symbolize what you — and I mean you — know it symbolizes.

Watch Justice Scalia do a moot court competition.

Video here. (Via Orin Kerr.)

Moot Court Day: a vlog.

Here's the U.S. Supreme Court case I talk about: Ableman v. Booth.

UPDATE: In the vlog, I say, "I think it's from all over the country," but I think wrong. It's the intra-law-school contest. Photos of the courtroom soon. The problem involved the 5th and 6th amendment rights to counsel and had some complicated material about dual sovereignty. The criminal procedural part of constitutional law isn't something I teach -- except to the extent that it intersects with Federal Jurisdiction -- so it was tricky getting up to speed on the doctrine. I needed to read Texas v. Cobb, a case about a terrible double murder:

After a short time, respondent confessed to murdering both Margaret and Kori Rae. Respondent explained that when Margaret confronted him as he was attempting to remove the Owings’ stereo, he stabbed her in the stomach with a knife he was carrying. Respondent told police that he dragged her body to a wooded area a few hundred yards from the house. Respondent then stated:

“I went back to her house and I saw the baby laying on its bed. I took the baby out there and it was sleeping the whole time. I laid the baby down on the ground four or five feet away from its mother. I went back to my house and got a flat edge shovel. That’s all I could find. Then I went back over to where they were and I started digging a hole between them. After I got the hole dug, the baby was awake. It started going toward its mom and it fell in the hole. I put the lady in the hole and I covered them up. I remember stabbing a different knife I had in the ground where they were. I was crying right then.”

ADDED: I see that an episode of "Law and Order" was based on the Cobb case, with Ludacris playing the role of the murderer:

"Look, I'm guilty of murder here, so I'm not going to make any excuses," Ludacris starts. "I stabbed her with my knife, and then I killed her baby. ... I dug a hole and buried them, and there's where they've been for the last three years. Should I write it down now?"

His confession is so cold, so matter-of-fact, you might get chills...

Ah, but see? They toned down the facts. What really happened was too terrible to use in a fictionalized story. It's too maudlin.

If you want to know if Cobb was executed, the answer is no:

Following an order from the U.S. Supreme Court, Gov. Rick Perry [on June 22, 2005] issued 28 commutations that will require death row inmates who were 17 at the time they committed their crimes to serve life in prison...

"While these individuals were convicted by juries of brutal murders and sentenced to die for their heinous crimes, I have no choice but to commute these sentences to life in prison as a result of the Supreme Court ruling," Perry said.

The inmates with commuted sentences are: ... Raymond Levi Cobb...