The Daily Judge
© 2010 Burton Randall Hanson
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"All the news that gives judges and lawyers fits."
BurtLaw's Daily Judge is not an online newspaper and is not affiliated with or intended to be mistaken for any existing or previously-existing newspaper or journal. Rather, this is a so-called "blawg," a law-related personal non-profit pro bono publico First-Amendment protected "web log" or "blog," one with a subjective, idiosyncratic, and eccentric sociological and social-psychological slant that focuses not on the latest judicial decisions of supposed great legal importance but on a) the institution of judge in the United States and in other countthroughout the world, b) the judicial office and role, c) judicial personalities, d) the great common law tradition of judging as practiced here and throughout the world, e) judges as judges, f) judges as ordinary people with the usual mix of virtues and flaws, etc. We link to newspapers and other sources in order to alert you to ideas, articles, stories, speeches, law books, literary works and other things that have interested us and that may interest you. In linking to another site or source, we don't mean either to suggest we necessarily agree with views or ideas expressed there or to attest to the accuracy of facts set forth there. We urge you in every instance to click on the link and read the entire story or other printed source to which we link. We often use the linked piece as a springboard for expressing our opinion, typically clearly labelled "Comment."

About links.  a) Links, like judges, eventually retire or expire, some sooner than others. b) Access to all stories via these links is free, at least initially, although some sites require free registration. c) Free access often turns to fee access after a day or a week or some such period. d) Entries, following the typical blog format, are in reverse chronological order.

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About Burton Hanson. Burton Hanson is a graduate of Harvard Law School, admitted to practice in the District of Columbia and Minnesota. He has devoted his entire professional career to the public interest. He worked one year as Hennepin County District Court Special Term (Civil) Law Clerk, two years as law clerk for the late Justice C. Donald Peterson of the Minnesota Supreme Court, and over 26 years as Deputy Commissioner of the Minnesota Supreme Court. He was a nonpartisan candidate for Chief Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court in the general election in November 2000 and a liberal anti-war candidate for Congress in the Republican primary in the Minnesota Third District in September 2004. He was one of the first law bloggers (blawgers). He began planning his first blog, BurtLaw's Law And Everything Else in 1999 but delayed starting it until after the 2000 general election. His campaign website, the no-longer extant VoteHans.Com (archived here), contained a personal campaign weblog, possibly the first campaign blog. In 2004 he also used the personal blog format in his primary campaign for Congress. That site, BurtonHanson.Com, has morphed into a public interest political opinion blog and also contains the archives of his 2004 campaign web pages and blog postings.

 "BurtLaw's Law And Everything Else, a Web Site produced by Burton Hanson, is part of the Library of Congress September 11 Web Archive and preserves the web expressions of individuals, groups, the press and institutions in the United States and from around the world in the aftermath of the attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001. Dates Captured: September 20, 2001 - December 17, 2001"



 A note to our Minnesota readers on a matter of great public importance. Legislators in MN and other states with judicial elections are being feverishly "courted" by members of the judicial-legal-political-media power elite in well-financed campaigns to do their part in changing their populist state constitutions to deprive voters of their distinctly-American role in selection of judges in exchange for the fake one-candidate "retention elections" offered by the plan long beloved and advanced by college political science professors and bar association types, "the Missouri Plan." A couple of years ago I posted a detailed critical essay on this topic, and I link to it here for the convenience of not only  Minnesota readers but also of voters in other states who are being so "courted": Strib. urges longer terms for judges, no role for voters in their selection. In Campaign to deprive voters of a role in judicial selection you will find links to some of many of my earlier as well as later postings relevant to this important public policy question. In a Special section on Minnesota Judicial Retirements, Selections, and Elections, I offer links to several recent postings covering developments of interest to Minnesota voters who want to continue to have a real role in judicial selection.


 Special section on Minnesota Judicial Retirements, Selections, and Elections. a) MN's Magnuson quits as chief -- and the game of Judicial Keep-Away continues. b) A MN governor's ideological judges and Missouri Plan Judicial Retention Whack-A-Mole. c) Will Missouri voters dump the professorially-beloved Missouri Plan? d) Annals of merit-based judicial selection, Canada-style. e) Headline of the Day: 'Ruth Bader Ginsburg says she would forbid state judicial elections.' f) Quote of the Day: Judge Jack Nordby says beware of elitists' plan to eliminate contested judicial elections in MN. g) Retention 'elections' as selection obscurant and incumbent protective. i) Can you guess who wants to deprive voters of a role in picking judges in MN? j) Are elected judges better or worse? -- you might be surprised. k) The Not-So-Ancient 'Minnesota Scariners' are at it again. l) The Rime of the Not-So-Ancient 'Minnesota Scariner.' m) The Wichita benchman is still on the bench -- at 102 (herein of the discriminatory Minnesota judicial policy treating all judges as incompetent to hold judicial office once they reach 70). n) Sandra Day O'C is embarrassed by democracy, thinks voters are ignorant. o) The Iraqi Shiite solution to messy democracy -- and the Missouri Plan's alternative. p) Of bald eagles in Edina, calmly but warily eyeing the frolicking dogs below. q) On those nice laws protecting presumptively-ignorant voters from free speech. r) SCOTUS nixes ban on corporate campaign speech -- will the sky fall? [i. Why MN's great Senator, the late Eugene McCarthy, is smiling in his grave. ii. Is the decision, by the Court's conservatives, 'liberal'? What gives? iii. Will the sky fall as a result of the decision? iv. Citizens United and judicial elections.] s) An oldie-but-goodie: Laski says mandatory retirement of judges is bad.



 Note to readers. I'm taking a break to do some much-needed reading of books (you may have heard of them) & writing of books (the never-finished kind). I will resume posting when I resume posting. This is, after all, a non-profit, non-commercial blog that primarily serves as a running list of links to (a sort of bibliography of) interesting stories about judges, in all their glory or lack of it -- i.e., judges as judges and as ordinary mortals -- with the links serving as springboards for the expression of personal opinions. As always, we urge folks to go to the sources (click on the links) & read the stories in full and peruse the fine newspapers, etc., that publish them.



 History of political campaign blogging. Some credit the Howard Dean presidential campaign in 2004 with maintaining the first campaign blog. Others cite as the first campaign blog one maintained by a congressional candidate in 2002. Actually, one has to go back earlier, to 2000. I was a nonpartisan candidate for Chief Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court in the general election in November 2000. I began planning my first law blog, BurtLaw's Law And Everything Else, one of the pioneering law blogs, in 1999, but I delayed starting it until after the 2000 general election. My 2000 campaign website,  the no-longer-extant VoteHans.Com, contained a personal campaign blog (weblog or web journal), i.e., a blog actually written and maintained by the candidate, not by some staffer. I like to think it was the first campaign blog (a/k/a weblog or web journal), although it's quite possible someone else independently came up with the idea and executed it contemporaneously in 2000 also. Because most "web archivers" were not in business in 2000, there has been no web record of my campaign website and campaign blog. For archival purposes and in the public interest, I have reproduced and reposted as near as I can, given software changes, the backed-up contents of what was VoteHans.Com as it appeared in 2000. Here are the links: Campaign Home Page; Campaign Journal; Earlier Journal Entries; Even Earlier Journal Entries; Earliest Journal Entries; Endorsements and Contributions; Mandatory Retirement of Judges; Judicial Independence and Accountability; Questions and Answers; BRH Speech; Emerson for Judges; Quotations for Judges; MN Const. Art. VI; About BRH.
Our Motto - "Ridentem dicere verum quid vetat" (Horace). Loose translation: Does anything prevent telling the truth with a smile?

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