HOUSTON (November 7, 2017) -- Two years ago, I sold one of the last American offshore drilling vessels to a foreign buyer. The Ocean Titan was an obsolete jack-up rig, an equipment platform for deepwater exploration and development. Over its forty-year lifespan, American shipbuilding had been ravaged by rivals abroad and burdensome regulations at home. Today, the industry falls grievously short of the hope expressed by the drafters of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920: “that the United States shall have a merchant marine of the best equipped and most suitable types of vessels.”
The legal academy is a strange place.
It differs from other intellectual disciplines in that legal scholarship is published mainly in student-edited law reviews, not peer-reviewed journals. Most faculty members at elite law schools have never practiced law, or have done so only briefly and usually without professional distinction. The curricula at many of the nation’s law schools are larded with trendy courses devoted to identity politics and social issues du jour. Elite law schools eschew the teaching of “nuts and bolts” fundamentals, deriding such practical instruction as resembling a “trade school.”
For years, I’ve been chronicling some of the best, worst, and most unusual aspects of the legal system. Many of the strangest claims, defenses, and even the litigants themselves deserve their own special kind of notoriety, so I made up the “Justie” Awards, for some of the weirdest denizens of our legal system.
TYLER - The author of a copyrighted poem has filed a federal lawsuit alleging several companies are selling unauthorized versions of her work on quilts and pillows.
Over the years, I've said that some of what goes on in the legal realm is so bizarre that it merits its own recognition � sort of an Academy Awards for the civil and criminal justice systems if you will.
