Mental driftwood

I just noticed that I've been posting a lot more lately about entertainment and other trivialities at the expense of judicial politics and such. It's not due to an absence of interesting events to comment upon, certainly.

Like Jack Balkin, I've been following the Terry Schiavo case with some interest. As Balkin notes, efforts by state and federal actors to prevent the removal of life support interventions from Schiavo today raise separation of powers, federalism and substantive rights issues that are not as easy to resolve as it might seem at first. Although I may comment at more length later, right now I'll say that I see another issue brought into focus by this case, as well as several others in the news recently. Perhaps it's only my perception, but it seems that people seem increasingly confident to express their dissent with judicial dispositions. Maybe it's because of the popularity of courts on TV, or the illusion of being fully informed that 24 hour news channels create, or something else, but I'm repeatedly struck with how freely people criticize court dispositions based on cursory, even impressionistic, accounts of the cases.

Anyway, as I said earlier, I know I've been writing a lot more recently about pop culture and such and less about law and courts. That may continue for a bit, since I've got a couple more unfinished posts of that ilk in the hopper, but I can't promise an occasional law-related post won't drop in between.