Category Archives: Miami

U. Miami Makes Top 20 in New Law School Ranking

Posted on March 14, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

I've yet to see a ranking system for law school that I trust. Leiter's was the least bad, and it had problems. US News is so badly constructed that it's a joke, and the fact that it now is morphing into a self-referential feedback loop just makes it worse (studies show that USN rankings increasingly define reputations, and a lot of the USN ranking is based on … reputation).

But if we're going to have biased ranking systems, I prefer those that are biased in our direction. So may I introduce you to the Lawdragon 25 Leading Law Schools, based on where members of the Lawdragon 500s graduated from law school. They put the University of Miami School of Law at #18 in their rankings.

Which sounds great, but shouldn't be taken too seriously. Even if we trusted Lawdragon to tell us who the best lawyers in the US are, the survey is strongly biased to large schools, since it compares total number of law school alumni among the 'elite' without discounting for school size.

But that bias works for us, so I guess now we can claim to be a “top 20 law school”.

Realistically, however, I would not put UM among the top 20 US law schools if only because we don't have the resources that come with the sort of massive endowment the top 20 schools tend to have, and because first year classes here are very big.

For what it's worth, I do think that we ought to be somewhere low in the second 20. US News, which is as biased against size (and location in provincial legal markets) as Law Dragon is biased for bigness, ranked UM at 65 — a massive problem for the school. Average the two scores [ (18+65)/2 = 41.5] and you get something more plausible although not methodologically defensible.

Posted in Law School, Miami | Comments Off on U. Miami Makes Top 20 in New Law School Ranking

How Can We Tolerate This?

Posted on March 8, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets or steal bread.”
— Anatole France

Well, not in Miami, baby.

In Miami, the law in its majestic stupidity and evil requires three poor people to sleep under a bridge.

Yes. Really.

The Miami New Times has the story:

Swept Under the Bridge — It's 5:45 a.m. and still completely dark when a car pulls off NW Twelfth Avenue and makes its way silently through the complex of streets just south of the county criminal court. The car turns into the jury parking lot, otherwise completely empty. It creeps past the massive concrete pillars under the State Road 836 bridge, makes an abrupt turn, and stops. The door opens and a stocky, middle-aged man exits. He walks over to a pile of cardboard, bends down, picks up a flap, and peeps. Then he does the same to a pile of rags. Finally he re-enters his car and leaves. After a minute, the rags and cardboard begin to stir — three men stand up and begin packing their things.

The men are convicted sex offenders. The car, which visits every morning before dawn, belongs to Benito Casal, a state Department of Corrections (DOC) probation officer who enforces their 10:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. curfew. If they aren't under the bridge between those hours, he will have them hunted down and arrested.

…

Court files, DOC documents, and probation case notes reveal that state authorities are not only aware the three sleep at the location just north of the Miami River — they sent them there. Unable or unwilling to find housing for the offenders as they left prison, probation officers Benito Casal, Kimilyn Cohen, and Robert Leiry began sending them to the bridge more than six months ago. Several circuit court judges may have known of the placement. Miami-Dade Police are aware of their location as well. Two of them list their address in the county's sex crimes bureau database as NW Twelfth Avenue and Twelfth Street, and the third is incorrectly registered as living at his victim's address.

…

The idea to stash offenders under the bridge seems to have originated within a county probation office; very possibly it was Casal himself who started the practice. On June 12, 2006, Casal's notes indicate that he notified the court that “if the subject is released without a residence, I will have to place him under the bridge….” Sanchez would be sharing the location, the probation officer added, “with another sex offender that is residing there.” The other offender is not identified, and it's unclear whether there were others before him.

On August 17, 2006, Casal ordered Sanchez under the bridge. But he wasn't acting alone. According to his notes, he informed a probation officer named Ilzee Rabel, who works in Circuit Court Judge Diane Ward's division, of his decision. Whether Ward herself was ever told is unclear. She didn't return several phone calls or an e-mail seeking comment. But one thing is clear: By this past February 9 Casal had visited the site near the child abuse center at least 118 times to enforce Sanchez's curfew.

That's right: the government is requiring people — maybe people who are very not nice, but still people — to be homeless and to sleep under a bridge.

Repeat: the government is requiring people to be homeless and to sleep under a bridge.

Posted in Law: Criminal Law, Miami | 1 Comment

Donna Shalala Gets a New Part-Time Job

Posted on March 6, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

Dole, Shalala to Head Health Care Probe:

President Bush today appointed former senator Bob Dole and former health and human services secretary Donna E. Shalala to co-chair a new presidential commission that will look into problems at the nation's military and veterans' hospitals.

Shalala is of course also the President of the University of Miami — and a Hillary Clinton supporter.

Posted in Miami, Politics: The Party of Sleaze | 1 Comment

Sometimes Miami Law Is Just Like on TV

Posted on March 3, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

I like to tell prospective and incoming law students that real-life law is nothing like what you see on TV. But the trouble is, we live in Miami, a place where much more often than it should be real-life law is just as wacky as what you see on TV.

Take for example this account of the past five days in the annals of Miami Law:

(1) a murder trial in which the witnesses give credible evidence that detectives threatened them (including in one case threatening to take the witness's kids into care) in order to get them to give perjured testimony incriminating the defendant — but the increasingly pathetic-looking Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office says it has no intention of investigating whether the cops are bent;

(2) another murder case that lacked a body now features a lead detective who, on the witness stand, was made to admit to sleeping with a key witness.

(3) A local lawyer who runs a massive ticket-fixing business shot and killed an armed mugger by using the handgun he keeps in the glove compartment of his black Mercedes.

In other local traffic news, six-year-old girl foils carjacker by beating on him


“I smacked him on the head with my book”.

(4) Local Hollywood Police Chief James Scarberry blew a three-year-long FBI sting operation into corruption by officers on his force by blabbing about it to at other cops and local politicians. Not surprisingly, word quickly got out to the prime suspects who immediately tried to resign, stopping the investigation into their associates in its tracks and wasting a giant amount of police work. When first confronted about it the Chief told the press a series of lies, which he's gradually been recanting.

(5) A prominent local builder was jailed yesterday, charged with embezzling public funds to buy a sculpture of a giant watermelon slice. He very vigorously contests the charges, and was photographed giving the finger to a reporter.


Local slice of life

(6) Cops arrest blogging photojournalist for taking crime scene photos.

(Post inspired by Justice Building Blog.)

Posted in Law: Criminal Law, Law: Practice, Miami | 2 Comments

Do-It-Yourself Book Banning in Miami Schools

Posted on February 23, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

Local uber-blog Stuck on the Palmetto reported it first: Book Banning: Business As Usual In Miami-Dade County (UPDATED).

It seems some parents are tired of waiting for the school board to hear their complaints, so they are seizing copies of a book that is insufficiently anti-Cuban for their tastes from right off the school shelves. Not state action here — pure vigilantism.

And the Herald got there eventually.

Posted in Miami | 1 Comment

NOVA Behaving Badly

Posted on February 20, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

The University of Miami may not have behaved as well as one might wish in dealing with the demands of its striking janitors last year, and worse with students who supported the union, but at the end of the day the University stepped up to the plate and offered a decent contract.

The same cannot be said about Nova Southeastern University, which is engaged in a very unfortunate — I almost wrote something much worse — campaign to prevent a similar unionization of its workers. Their jobs are being handed off to new sub-contractors. Workers active in the union movement are not being rehired by these new contractors.

Coverage of NOVA behaving badly can be found in the article linked right above, and in Better wages, healthcare not enough, a column by Ana Menendez.

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