Good Stuff at the Judicial Conference
I’m having a great time at the 9th Circuit Judicial Conference in Sun Valley. Even though I’m a mere spouse, I’ve attended a number of the sessions. I’m definitely piling up the CLE (Continuing Legal Education) credits.
This afternoon, I sat in on an excellent session on Federal Indian Law Basics. Alaska is, of course, home to a large Native and Indian population. I’ve always been curious about Indian law and sovereignty. I learned quite a bit from the session. But I’m still confused on several basic fronts. Evidently, that’s not uncommon. Even the US Supreme Court has confusion issues.
The talk of conference was this morning’s session, Executive Power: Does the President Have to Obey the Law? It was fabulous - the panel was a group of superstars; Walter Dellinger, Ken Starr, Kathleen Sullivan (what a powerhouse), Seth Waxman, and Paul Clement. Clement was sitting in for John Yoo who had flight difficulties getting out of Oakland. Yoo, if you remember, was the author of the infamous torture memo. All the panelists were way beyond bright. I have to say that even Ken Starr was good - he started out by reviewing Lincoln’s use of executive power during the Civil War.
The presentations and discussion were world class. The audience questions were also quite good - the very first questioner grabbed the bull by the horns - could the current administration face War Crimes charges. The panel thought that some of the torture victims will most likely end up receiving reparations. But no one on the panel touched the War Crimes question.
My favorite part of session came at the last. Dellinger, who was the moderator, ended with the following scenario (heavily paraphrased by me):
A guy has a placed a suitcase nuclear bomb in mid-town Manhattan. The guy is in custody. The President orders the guy to be tortured. After the event has come to a conclusion, the President turns himself over to law enforcement.
The rule of law still holds.
Dellinger then closed with, “Our service men and women make greater sacrifices every day”. Powerful stuff.
Hello. I am 
Moses passed down ten laws.
The code of Hammurabi contained 282 laws. All the citizens knew learned those laws as part of their basic education.
Last I heard almost anywhere you go in the United States we are subject to no less then 500,000 local, state or laws. In some places that list of laws exceeds 2 million. One of these systems is doing something wrong.