Charles Halpern Extols Benefits of Mindfulness

idealawg, February 9, 2012 by Charles Halpern
http://westallen.typepad.com/idealawg/2012/02/two-mindfulness-in-the-law-events-coming-up-.html

The students are not the only people whose effectiveness and health are undermined by stress and anxiety. Faculty members, lawyers, and judges can benefit from the cultivation of a meditative perspective in their work. Recent scientific discoveries have affirmed that regular meditation can have an impact on health and happiness, affecting the structure and function of the brain.

Barry Krisberg Lauds Alameda County’s Rehab Program

The Wall Street Journal, February 9, 2012 by Vauhini Vara and Bobby White
http://on.wsj.com/AovwcK

Alameda is “taking seriously the idea of reducing unnecessary incarceration and investing most of the money in treatment services” unlike those counties that are investing little in treatment services while increasing their jail capacity.

Joan Heifetz Hollinger Analyzes Prop 8 Legal Strategy

Talking Points Memo, TPMMuckraker, February 8, 2012 by Jillian Rayfield
http://bit.ly/xxMbeV

“I think it will depend on their guess and their estimate of what will happen if they appeal to the Supreme Court,” Hollinger said, and “if they do that, the U.S. Supreme Court does not have to agree to hear this case, because the way in which the panel crafted it is narrowly focused on California, and on the consequences of Proposition 8 for California.”

Stanley Lubman Downplays Impact of China’s Criminal Law Reform

The Wall Street Journal, February 7, 2012 by Stanley Lubman
http://on.wsj.com/y2fQU0

How the new law operates will depend on the mindset of participants in the Chinese “political-legal system” who will be required to put the law into practice…. An illuminating new piece of research demonstrates that it will take more than revising laws on paper to raise the level of legality of China’s criminal justice given the value system that underpins it.

Jesse Choper Comments on Prop 8 Legal Battle

-KPIX-TV, February 6, 2012 Host Allen Martin
http://cbsloc.al/AF7xxm

There is validity in the argument that … striking down Prop 8 would be a victory for equal protection. “And that is to say, this proposition evidenced hostility or an effort that shows dislike for a minority group—and that is gays and lesbians. If you can show that, then the court says there is no rational basis, it is hostility…. therefore, it is pretty much automatically unconstitutional.”

-Reuters, February 8, 2012 by Peter Henderson and Dan Levine
http://reut.rs/zighhq

Jesse Choper, a University of California, Berkeley, Constitutional law professor disagreed that the ruling would affect whether the high court took the case. However, the Supreme Court justices also might prefer a chance to limit any ruling to California, he said.

-The Christian Science Monitor, February 8, 2012 by Daniel B. Wood
http://bit.ly/zS3SNH

“The chances of them taking it are very high,” he says. “The issue is the striking down of a vote by people in the biggest state in the country on a very controversial issue that everyone is watching.”

-San Francisco Chronicle, February 8, 2012 by Debra J. Saunders
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/02/07/EDTG1N44P4.DTL&tsp=1

“It’s simply one step along the way,” opined Jesse Choper, a UC Berkeley law professor.

Jesse Choper Discusses Case Against Obama’s Recess Picks

Bloomberg, February 3, 2012 by William McQuillen
http://bloom.bg/zAql74

“They were certainly in a formal way in session, though the administration will take the view that this was more or less fiction,” said Jesse Choper, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, who isn’t involved in the case. Challenges may continue until courts provide definitive guidance, Choper said.

Franklin Zimring Studies New York Police Tactics

-The New York Times, February 3, 2012 by N. R. Kleinfield, Al Baker and Joseph Goldstein
http://nyti.ms/wWPYie

Franklin E. Zimring, a criminologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who has studied New York’s crime record, said, “In a funny sense, the department is and has been for some time a victim of its own success.” He added: “Anybody in that job has got to play a constant game of, ‘Can you top this?’ And that has been a hard game to play.”

-Chicago News Cooperative, February 10, 2012 by James Warren
http://www.chicagonewscoop.org/warren-new-yorks-lessons-on-fighting-crime-2/

Nothing really seems to account for New York’s differences other than increases in police resources and strategies focused on serious crime, and not, according to Mr. Zimring, the often mythologized “quality of life,” or so-called “broken windows” strategies that concentrate on, say, public prostitution or gambling.

-The New York Times, February 11, 2012 by Ross Douthat
http://nyti.ms/wakIJr

Prison is a school for crime and an anchor on advancement, and there’s a large body of research — from scholars like U.C.L.A.’s Mark Kleiman and Berkeley’s Franklin E. Zimring — suggesting that swift, certain punishment and larger police forces can do as much to keep crime low as the more draconian approach to sentencing that our justice system often takes.