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Elephant habeas and birthright citizenship
The Colorado Supreme Court has unanimously rejected an appeal by the Nonhuman Rights Project seeking to reverse a lower court’s decision holding that people could not seek writs of habeas corpus on behalf of elephants. The key question was whether an elephant is a “person,” and the court said that of course an elephant is……
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The first hostages come home
Despite everything, yesterday was a happy day. Three Israeli hostages, Emily Damari, Doron Steinbrecher, and Romi Gonen, were released alive 471 days after they were kidnapped and have been reunited with their families. Is the ceasefire a good deal or not a good deal? I don’t know, but I have my doubts. On the one……
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Donziger and Post-Truth Politics
We live in a “post-truth” age, and it’s not just a problem on the right. I was struck by an Amnesty International article by Elizabeth Haight that calls on President Biden to pardon Steven Donziger, who as longtime readers know is the American lawyer who led a lawsuit in Ecuador seeking and obtaining a judgment……
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Against Generative AI In Legal Writing
The title of this post is polemical, so I’ll start by telling you that I like using generative AI. I have a ChatGPT subscription. I use it all the time for all kinds of things. Some of them are Letters Blogatory related. ChatGPT has helped me design my new search functionality, and it helped me……
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Legal Writing in 2025
I was speaking with one of our excellent litigation associates who is working with me on a memorandum in support of a motion to dismiss in a lawsuit in federal court. She had given me a good draft of her sections of the memo. One thing I noticed, which I see a lot, from the……