Word: legalism
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...written statement to the court, Silverman petitioned for the assignment of a different attorney to represent Purdy during his appeal because Committee for Public Counsel Services regulations do not allow trial counsel to continue on as appellate counsel. However, Silverman will continue to act as Purdy’s legal counsel for the rape trial. —Staff writer Yelena S. Mironova can be reached at mironova@fas.harvard...
...behavior rather than attackers’ guilt. She fails to mention that deliberately false accusations of rape are exceedingly rare; the Duke Lacrosse case is just one sensationalized example. All accounts show that tens of thousands of rape cases each year are unreported or grossly mishandled by medical and legal response centers. She also neglects to explain how changing women’s “sexual behavior” will change males’ responses to women, or why requiring both partners’ explicit consent is not the logical solution to the gray areas she identifies. Worst...
...waiting periods, no training required. Investigators found a receipt for a 9-mm Glock 19 in Cho's backpack, bought last month from Roanoke Firearms, where four homicides have reportedly been tied to 16,000 weapons sold there in the last eight years. Cho's purchases had been legal; he had been under a court-ordered "temporary detainment order," a psychiatric evaluation, which is not the same as an involuntary commitment. Thus nothing showed up on the instant background check at the store. He just presented three forms of ID, including a Virginia driver's license, and paid...
...From a legal standpoint, this distinction is crucial. As law professor Michael Krauss of George Mason University in Virginia points out, "We never judge negligence in hindsight. We always judge it in foresight." And you can make a good case that the Virginia Tech cops and other employees who knew of Cho's erratic, self-destructive, and possibly criminal behavior since the fall of 2005 should have done more to help him or expel...
...rational legal system, the school would be held accountable for its errors. But Virginia Tech is a state institution, and Virginia is a state where the doctrine of sovereign immunity remains quite robust. That doctrine, a relic of English common law, essentially says the state can do no wrong because the state creates the law and thus cannot be subject to it. Many states have relaxed sovereign immunity and made it possible for victims of, say, botched operations to sue state hospitals. But Krauss of George Mason University says the Virginia Tech victims' families would probably have to seek...