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Memorial services for Prof. Katherine Darmer

Professor Darmer, whose death this weekend shocked us all, will be remembered at a service on Saturday, February 25 at 11am at St. Marks Presbyterian Church, 220 San Joaquin Hills Road, in Newport Beach.

Another Rostand translation

Jason Kuznicki has unveiled the second of his translations of Edmond Rostand's poems. You'll recall that these poems, by the author of Cyrano de Bergerac, have never been translated into English before.

The hard questions about legal meaning

I mostly duck them. But I do offer a few thoughts on the way.

Rediscovering Chopin

Today is (probably) the birthday of Frederic Chopin, the poet of the piano, whose music I have lately been falling in love with all over again, thanks to The Complete Chopin, available for only $40. It is astonishing what a body of work this genius left behind in a life that lasted only 39 years. Listening to the sweet melancholy of Prelude No. 4 in E Minor, or the turbulence of the Revolutionary Etude, it is impossible not to be astonished by his ability to express in his music the wordless essence of a life at once buoyant and crucial; sometimes delicate, other times intimidating; tragic and desperately lovely—and yet he somehow avoids histrionics. His music is virtually never clouded by intrusive quirks as Rachmaninov’s sometimes is, or that off-putting tang that blights much of Liszt. He never wrote any single piece as beautiful as the best works of Scriabin, Rachmaninov, or some others, but unlike them, his work was consistently great, almost never alienating or awkward. At his best, he speaks directly, candidly, with a perfect illusion of simplicity. The result is a carefree dream world, in the Berceuse in D Flat Major, or a sky full of stars and silky wonder as in the Barcarolle, or the unafraid intimacy of Prelude No. 13. Most of all, the idea of freedom always seems close at hand when listening to his music, particularly the second movement of his First Concerto, which to me seems like some kind of vortex in which the piano’s voice is free to articulate its profundities without inhibition. Sad as it is that he died so young, I’m grateful he produced so much beautiful work to remember him by.

Why voting isn't due process of law

Or, for once I feel sorry for Alex Hamilton.

Another Waco on the horizon?

Warren Jeffs is preparing his cult for Doomsday.

The conversation on due process continues

I have two new posts up at Cato Unbound, addressing what it means to search for original meaning—and taking on the myth that Dred Scott was “a substantive due process case.” Don’t forget to check out the other conversation posts, too!

George Will on Ike memorial

George Will is right: it would be a shame to construct a memorial to Eisenhower in the fashion proposed. (Or, for that matter, to allow Frank Ghery construct anything ever again; a fashionable, talentless fraud who will be forgotten forever when sense returns to the artistic world.) I can't rate Eisenhower as a president except to say that sending troops to Little Rock was one of the great moments in American history: the exact right thing to do at exactly the right time and in exactly the right way. It should be celebrated more than it is; certainly he deserves more credit on the issue of integration than do the shamelessly waffling, cynical, and manipulative Kennedy brothers.

70 years after Japanese Internment

Today is the 70th anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066.

Another loss

I was saddened to learn yesterday of the sudden death of Chapman University Law Professor Katherine Darmer, who was my criminal procedure professor ten years ago. It's very surprising and sad; the cause of her death hasn't been announced, and she was very young, with two young children. Indeed, I remember when she went into labor in the elevator at school. We all joked afterward that she should name the child Otis. I enjoyed her class a lot. She had a concise, effective teaching style and I remember particularly an amusing story she told of a time when she was an assistant prosecutor in New York. During a trial, the chief prosecutor asked the witness if he could point out the man whom he had seen committing the crime, and for some reason, the witness pointed to a man in the jury box! The chief prosecutor, without breaking stride the least little bit, just kept asking questions, and nobody seemed to notice the weirdness of that incident. An excellent lesson in how important it is to keep your cool in the courtroom. She was a passionate advocate for gay rights, and outspoken in her views on the use of torture in the war. It is sad to see her lost at what ought to have been the top of the arc of life.