Friday Links
- “In another few seconds, I’ll know ‘The Verdict,'” exclaims the apparent defendant featured on the hard boiled cover of Tales of Justice #60, published way back in June of 1956. The series, which billed itself as a compilation of “real rugged tales of justice in action,” does not appear to be the type of lighter superhero fare we typically feature on Friday Links. But there’s a tinge of optimism to the series, it seems, as the cover proclaims that it features “True tales proving that justice always wins!” That’s encouraging.
- There’s a lawsuit over the Dr. Who villain Davros! (Hat tip: Media Law Prof Blog).
- You might recall that in February we mentioned that our own Jim Dedman was doing some music blogging on the side for an Atlanta-based music website. He’s written a review of the new album by Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, which hits stores soon. Check it out.
- Last week, Eugene Volokh of The Volokh Conspiracy mentioned our recent April Fool’s Day post. As you may recall, we wrote about a fictitious court that held that the Star Wars prequels were unreasonably dangerous and defective as a matter of law. Wise jurisprudence, that. That said, we loved reading the comments to Eugene’s post.
- Remember Cracked magazine? Not unlike Mad magazine, the juvenile humor themed Cracked, once a staple of newsstands in long ago days, has made a name for itself in the Internet age by creating lists of famous this or thats in popular culture. Well, this week, Christina H. at Cracked published a column entitled “6 Famous ‘Frivolous Lawsuit Stories That Are Total B.S.,” which includes the Stella Liebeck McDonald’s hot coffee case. All we can say is that Christina obviously didn’t read our FAQ on the case. However, we must confess a bit of jealousy that our friends at Overlawyered are cited in the piece.
- Friend of the blog Ryan Steans of The Signal Watch blog recently visited London for the first time and marveled at the sense of history. Comparing England’s approach to history to America’s, he had this to say over at his blog:
It strikes me that we in the vast, vast majority of the geography of the US do[es] not have memorials to those who died more than 200 years ago, and the further west one travels in the US, the briefer our sense of history as much more than an abstraction of something left behind somewhere else. A lack of living history, of being surrounded by those who’ve gone before (some winning, many not winning) may be what gives us an inflated sense of destiny, like a teenager who sees only a future as a rock star ahead of them when they pick up their first guitar and who can’t be bothered to learn more than the chords of their current favorite songs.
And as hard fought as democracy has been here in the US, it was also the first step we took as a nation. Everything prior to the French-Indian Wars is buried in a sort of primordial soup of witch-hunts and Indian killing that we’d rather not discuss. In England, this period is just short of current events. You can see the change from one-thousand years of feudal clashes to the rise of democracy in the stones and monuments, and there’s something to that, I think. We’re a blip on the continuum, it seems to say, and what we do while we’re here is important, but it will also pass, and those who are remembered are remembered as either good or terrible souls, and history will look back on you with an audio tour that will speak frankly about your deeds as people walk on your grave.
Very interesting.
