Today In Wyoming's History: Wyoming History in the Making: January 28, 2014 ...

Today In Wyoming's History: Wyoming History in the Making: January 28, 2104 ...: In a 3 to 2 decision, with a blistering dissent, the Wyoming Supreme Court struck down the decision restructuring the state Dapartment of Ed...

Mid Week At Work: Enlist in the Ordnance Department

Brrrrr. . . .it's cold outside! And maybe that's not that unusual.

Pathfinder Reservoir a couple of weeks ago.  Last year it wasn't even frozen fully in this bay, at this time of year, although normally it certainly is.

This winter has been really cold.  Everywhere in the US, it's been cold.  It's been on the news constantly.  Particularly when a big cold snap or storm hits the East Coast, although this year its been so cold that cold snaps or heavy snow even out in the West have been making the news.

But maybe what's newsworthy there isn't that its really cold.  It is. But that the last several winters have been so mild that we find cold newsworthy.

After all, it's winter.

 

 State highway outside of Casper on Sunday afternoon, in the morning it had been bright and sunny.

Truth be known, the winter we've been getting isn't odd at all, it's just normal by  historical standards, not even really a particularly brutal one.  It's just that we've had warm winters long enough, say a decade or more, that people are caught by surprise.  For some people, say who were children a decade ago, that's probably not surprising.  For folks who've moved from one region of the country to another it probably isn't either.  But by and large, at least people in their 40s, and certainly people in their 50s, should remember winters normally being pretty nasty.  That's why some people dreamed of moving to warmer climates in the south.

Now, according to a recently article in the Casper newspaper, December are actually no worse than they ever were, in spite of people approaching geezerhood may recall.  When I read that, I was briefly convinced, but I no longer am.  I can definitely recall even Decembers being like this when I was a kid, and its January now. And brutal winters were certainly not out of the norm when I was in my teens and twenties.

I'm not making an argument here about the cause, or whether we should be concerned or not.  I'm only stating an observation, and relating it to the news.  I'm amused, frankly, by the degree to which weather that was routine even relatively recently has slipped out of the public mind and is now regarded as newsworthy.  It shows our evolving, or rather our temporary, concept of what is normal, and what is not.

Oh goody. . . another Iglitch

Yesterday, I plugged in my Iphone to update my podcasts.

As of last night, none of my podcasts and some of my music (maybe a lot?) is no longer functioning.

Not that this is novel.  It's happened before, last time when they did a major update to their system. That one was so destructive I had to take all the pocasts off and reload them.

Apple has a good product.  But they can't seem to help themselves.  Their "updates" seem to lack a little testing, and they seem to serve no apparent purpose.  If I could readily dump the system and keep all my tunes on Itunes (and perhaps I can?) I'd do so in a second.

The Big Picture: Ft. Vancouver Washington.

The increasing irrelevance of the American Bar Association

I recently posted this item from the Minnesota Bar Association, which was a review of the book Bowling Alone.  It noted:

For example, in almost all professional organizations, including the American Bar Association and eight leading national professional organizations, the ratio of actual members to potential members ("penetration rate") has declined steadily since the mid 1960s. Active participation has declined even more sharply than membership. By all measures, overall active involvement in associations has declined by half since about 1965

What this observes is quite true, and what the book Bowling Alone (apparently) observes about the overall decline in participation in organizations in the television, and now Internet, era is also undoubtedly true. But I wonder with the ABA in particular if it simply is because the organization has become irrelevant, and it's current actions make it more so.

The ABA is an old organization. It was founded in 1878.  And it was  reformist organization.  The reform it sought was to the practice of law itself.

In 1878, while law was a profession, it was one that was tainted by the bottom end of the practice, over which there was very little regulatoin. There were always lawyers with high standards, but there were at that time a lot of lawyers with low ones, and overall there was little that was done about it in the profession.  Lawyers have always been a largely self regulating profession, an there wasn't much self regulating going on at the time.

Along came the ABA with a mission to address that. It's goal was to raise the standards of practice.  It sought to do this by creating standards where it thought that there should be some, to create ethical standards that pertained to the practice of law, and to even re-define the professional nature of practice itself.  Whereas law was a profession which people had generally entered by apprenticing themselves to a practicing lawyer (reading the law) and then taking the bar, the ABA sought to encourage lawyers to be university educated at a doctorate level. The goal wasn't accidental, in doing that it sought to put law on the same plain occupied by medicine, with a similar claim to educational requirements.

The ABA was amazingly successful, over a very long period of time, in achieving its goals. It accredits law schools, with some states requiring applicants to their bars to have graduated from an ABA accredited law school. It opines to Congress on the qualifications of judicial nominees. And much of what it sought ot do in terms of elevating the standard of practice it achieved.  Maybe so much so, that it made itself irrelevant.

Membership in the organization has been declining for years and I think a lack of relevancy to the practice is part of, or much of, the reason why.  The ABA really was having an impact on the profession by the mid 20th Century and most of its reforming work was done in the second half of the 20th Century.  Like most organizations that have been really successful in reform, its cast about for things to keep itself relevant.  It isn't wholly succeeding.

That doesn't mean that it doesn't provide some real services.  It administers a lawyers retirement system, which is a real benefit and probably part of the reason a lot of people join it.  It also provides some pretty good Continuing Legal Education, which it should given that CLE requirements are one of the things it has backed.  And it still exercises some muscle in reviewing potential Federal judges and in certifying law schools.

But it also has cast about in movement politics, which has little to do with practicing law, and it's grown increasingly left wing, after having been quite right wing, over the years.

In the 50s the ABA sponsored "Law Day" which should have been a bit of a signal that it was ending the day of being fully practical.  Law Day is an ignored Federal holiday that nobody gets off that occurs on May 1.  The ABA sponsored it to point out that we're a society ruled by law, not one ruled by a proletariat mob like those folks celebrating May Day (you know who you are).  Nobody celebrates Law Day anymore, although even when I was first practing the ABA sponsored some Law Day school stuff.  By and large, however, the day is ignored.  And it probably should be, not because we aren't a society ruled by laws, but because the day was a silly jingoistic effort. 

At that time, the ABA was fairly obviously a right wing entity, but in recent years, the ABA has evolved into an urban-centric, left of center organization, that feels free to tell society what it thinks the law ought to be.  For example, in the most recent issue of the ABA's magazine, there's an article by the president of the entity noting that lawyers are sworn to uphold the law, that the Second Amendment is part of the Constitution, and that therefore, the ABA is for it.  It then goes on to argue that military style rifles should be banned.  And to go further, the ABA has a "Gun Violence" standing committee.

That's not a legal position. That's a social position.  Indeed, it's rather obviously contrary to the provision of the law.  Indeed, its usually at this point in such a debate that people in favor of stricter gun laws start arguing the policy of their views, rather than the letter of the law.  Having views one way or another is fine, but when policy is argued, it's argued because the advocate of that position knows that their argument isn't based on the what the law is, but what they want it to be.

I don't mean to suggest that lawyers can't have opinions on gun control.  My point is that the ABA shouldn't.  It has nothing to do whatsoever with the practice of law.  By taking a position such as it is, it's taking one contrary to the law, and it's making a policy argument on what policy should be, which has nothing to do with the practice of law at all.

Likewise, the ABA also has a "Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity" committee.  Those of a liberal political persuasion probably can convince themselves that this is a legal topic, but it isn't.  It's a social topic that has zero to do with practicing law.  The organization also has a number of committees that are based on racial topics. That might have something to do with the law, or probably did at one time, but currently in an era when minorities are extraordinarily well represented in the legal profession, and the majority of new law school graduates are women, the days when the ABA really needed to regard itself as the vanguard of equal protection are pretty much over.

The fact that the ABA has these types of committees and positions, in addition to the many truly practice sections it has, shows that it sees itself from having evolved from an organization concerned with a high standard of practice to one which now opines on what the law should be.  There are any other number of organizations that do that, but the declining membership of the ABA shows, in my view, that its not going to retain its relevancy by attempting to be one.

The reason for that is fairly simply.  It claims to be a nationwide bar association. What are bar organizations?  Well, they're the collective group of those called to the bar in a certain location.  In my state, every person admitted to the bar is a member of the state association whether they want to be or not, and every lawyer in the county is likewise a member of the county association.  These associations have committees on the practice of law, the nomination of judges, and the rules of procedure and evidence.  But they don't tell the legislature, or the citizens of the state, what the law ought to be.  They limit themselves to the hard work of the nuts and bolts of the practice. So should the ABA.  As an organization the ABA is going to become increasingly irrelevant if it continues to do this, as there's no earthly way that the organization can really claim to advance the views of most lawyers.  At some point, and I suspect some point relatively soon, the organization will begin to loose influence in the areas that its legitimately concerned with.

The Aerodrome: Osa's Ark - A strange Plane

The Aerodrome: Osa's Ark - A strange Plane

Osa's Ark - A strange Plane

Osa's Ark

I was looking through pictures I took to find an interesting picture to start off the blog. I think this fits nicely.





This is a Sikorsky S-38. A quote gleamed from it's Wikipedia Page explains it nicely. 

"The Sikorsky S-38
was an American twin-engined 8-seat amphibious aircraft. It was
sometimes called 'The Explorer's Air Yacht' and was Sikorsky's first
widely produced amphibious flying boat which in addition to serving
successfully for Pan American Airways and the U.S. Army, also had
numerous private owners who received notoriety for their exploits."

This particular aircraft (this might actually be a replica, not sure) is
the "Osa's Ark", which belonged to Martin an Osa Johnson, two American
explorers. There is a whole gallery of original photographs of this
plane here.



Interesting indeed.

Mid-Week at Work: United States Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation.

Bench & Bar of Minnesota: The Decline in Civic Participation: Bowling Alone

Bench & Bar of Minnesota:  The Decline in Civic Participation:
Bowling Alone

The Big Picture: The 118th Infantry, 1918.

Old Picture of the Day: Indian Cowboy

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Old Picture of the Day: Military Hat

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Old Picture of the Day: Sombreros

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Old Picture of the Day: Stetsons

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Old Picture of the Day: Backwoods

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Old Picture of the Day: Bowler Hat

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