The Better Chancery Practice Blog

Where in Mississippi is this?

And a close-up …

[Thanks to atty Marcus Evans]

Where? Hint … it’s on a major Mississippi highway.

July 4. Courthouse closed.

No posts today, tomorrow or Friday, so that I can devote some attention to my precious grandchildren.

Have a great holiday.

Tomorrow is the 236th birthday of freedom on this continent. We salute July 4, 1776, as the birthday of our nation, although the actual birth of the United States came some several years later. Nonetheless, the Declaration of Independence in 1776 was our forefathers’ definitive refusal to accept further subjugation by any foreign power.

Lawyers have always been in the vanguard of fighters for liberty in this country. Lawyers figured prominently among the leaders of the revolution and the drafting of the Declaration of Independence, the establishment of a new nation, the federalist debates, and the negotiations toward and drafting of the Constitution.

Through the decades members of the legal profession have continued to serve in leadership roles. More than half of our presidents were lawyers: Adams (both John and John Quincy), Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Van Buren, Tyler, Polk, Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan, Hayes, Arthur, Cleveland, Harrison, McKinley, Taft, Wilson, Coolidge, F. Roosevelt, Nixon, Ford, Clinton, and Obama. Some of them are among the pantheon of the greatest Americans who ever lived. Some were mediocre. Some were shameful scoundrels and failures.

Of this number, I believe that Mr. Lincoln of Illinois was the star.

Lincoln was a prairie lawyer who rode circuit around Illinois, following the courts, just like many lawyers do in this part of Mississippi. Just like I did when I practiced. I can imagine him walking into a country courtroom and crossing inside the bar, meeting and visiting with his colleagues from across the state, swapping tales and greetings, and then tending to his motions or trying his cases. Just like lawyers do here.

He served a term as a Congressman, and then he was elected President of the United States. At his election, the southern states jumped off the precipice into the civil war, and Lincoln devoted his entire presidency to keeping them from leaving the union. How he did it, and the single-minded focus with which he went about his task against formidable obstacles, is an engrossing story. Back in the 1980’s and 90’s, for ten years in a row, I made it a point to read a book a year about him. I found from my reading that he is remarkable in so many ways. I encourage you to get to know him better.  

Lincoln, to me, epitomizes the kind of person who appears in every respect to be unsuited for the almost super-human job he is called upon to do, but grows into it and overcomes enormous odds to succeed. That’s an American story if there ever were one.

Most of all, though, I revere Mr. Lincoln as a colleague in the law who stepped forward into a leadership role and literally sacrificed his life for what he believed was best for this nation, and has proven to be right in the 147 years since his death. To me, he is a model of what every lawyer should be: a person who is willing to employ his talents, legal training and experience and good sense not only for his or her own advancement, but also for the common good.

There were other presidents who may have had superior intellects, or who were better educated or suaver, or who could have out-connived the rough-hewn prairie president, but there are none in my opinion who could have equalled Lincoln’s single-minded pursuit of his goal, against not only his enemies, but also against those who called themselves his friends but worked against him. I only wish he could have lived for its aftermath. I believe we would have been spared the disastrous reconstruction that contributed to nearly 100 years of racial strife.

Politicians have bashed lawyers for their own political gain for the past 40 years, so much so that lawyers are less prominent in leadership roles and politics. That’s a shame, because lawyers have a lot of learning, experience and understanding of people to offer for leadership.  

It’s time for lawyers to pick themselves up, brush themselves off, and step back up to the fore. Critics be damned. Ours is a noble profession, and we have nothing to be ashamed of for what we do. When the politicians use our profession as a whipping-boy, we need to fire back, using facts and reason.

Lawyers have played a leadership role in our nation from its conception. Lawyers crafted the immortal words of our Constitution. Lawyers pushed for the Bill of Rights. It has been lawyers through the decades who have fought for and defended the Constitution and our system of laws. The republic needs us as guardians of what is right.

In this, the 236th year of our republic, I hope we members of the legal profession, lawyers and judiciary alike, keep in mind the need for leadership and vigilence to preserve, protect and defend our Constitution, like our colleague, Mr. Lincoln.

Per the Lauderdale County Chancery Clerk’s office:

ADOPTION $139.00
ALCOHOL/DRUG COM’T/INVOL $149.00
ALCOHOL/DRUG COM’T/VOL $94.00
ANSWER $10.00
BIRTH CERTIFICATE CORRECTION $89.00
BOND VALIDATION $149.00
CASE TRANSFER (as applicable) $149.00
COMPLAINTS $149.00
CONTEMPT/MODIFICATION $149.00
CROSS COMPLAINT/COUNTER CLAIM $25.00
DIVORCE/CONTESTED $149.00
DIVORCE/NON-CONTESTED $94.00
EMANCIPATION $94.00
ESTATE $149.00
FOREIGN JUDGMENT $149.00
GUARDIANSHIP/CONSERVATORSHIP $149.00
INJUNCTION $149.00
LAND DISPUTE $149.00
MENTAL COMMITMENT $400.00
MINORS SETTLEMENT (w/o Guardian) $94.00
MINORS SETTLEMENT (with Guardian) $149.00
MUNIMENT OF TITLE $94.00
NAME CHANGE $94.00
PARTITION SUIT $149.00
PATERNITY $149.00
REMOVAL OF MINORITY $89.00
SEPARATE MAINTENANCE $149.00
STIPULATED AGREEMENT $94.00
TRO $149.00
WRIT OF GARNISHMENT $94.00

• What does the world look like from the point of view of your poodle? There are cameras you can buy to attach to Fido that will record his daily meanderings. Mr. Pet Cam is one model among several. For a more elevated perspective, you can even go to your neighborhood Wal-Mart and buy a remote-controlled helicopter with a camera, too. It may be paranoia, but I think there are some privacy implications here.
• Thanks to all of you who read this blog. Wordpress provides the blogger with stats, so I can track numbers. In 2012, after two years, we are averaging around 450 views a day, a number I find incredible. Now, I don’t know whether that’s unique viewers or the same people making repeated visits; in other words, whether it’s one person viewing 450 times or 450 different people. Either way, I marvel at the numbers. Lawyers and judges from across the state tell me about how things they’ve found here made some difference, and I hear that it’s mentioned at some CLE programs. Good. If it helps, it’s serving its purpose.
• How rational are you? You can take this quiz and get the author’s assessment of where you stand. It seems to me to be more a test of your logic skills. But is rationality simply logic and its mastery? Intuitive folks tend to look beyond logic to connect the dots, and most of us are quite rational.
• John M. MacDonald and Robert J. Samson write in the NYT that mass immigration hurts neither the economy nor public safety, and is in fact beneficial.
• The state’s monopoly over liquor sales was a conservative attempt to regulate citizens’ liberty vis a vis the use of alcohol. It’s the system we employ in Mississippi. Jonathan Turley in USA Today calls it our traditional socialism, and calls for an end to it.
• Meanwhile, in N.Carolina, the legislature has amended its own liquor sales law to allow the state-controlled stores to open during hours more advantageous to delegates, plenipotentiaries, pols and paparazzi who will be in attendance at the Democratic National Convention scheduled for Charlotte in September. Skoal!
• It’s mindbending to someone like me whose sensibility is so firmly rooted in the mid-twentieth century that there could be something like 3-D copying and printing, and that ordinary people are actually using it home to produce remarkable things. But then again, my generation thought things like a watch phone (Dick Tracy), or face-to-face communication by television (or computer), or bionic prostheses and the like were things we’d only ever see in comic books and fantasic tv shows.

Atty 1:   Can you tell the court why you did not call the police right away when you say that he hit you and knocked you down?

Atty 2:   Objection. The witness could not have called because her husband had broken the telephone before he hit her.

That, my friends, is a speaking objection. It’s a pernicious, baleful, noxious thing, odious to judges. So what exactly is the big problem with speaking objections? Let’s look at what predictably happens next in that trial we started above …

Judge:   Objection is overruled.

Atty 1:   Judge says you can answer my question.

Witness:   Well, I could not call because my husband had broken the telephone before he hit me.

How could one expect a different answer after her attorney told her what to say?

One of the most important functions of a chancellor is to weigh the credibility of witnesses and to determine the weight to give to their testimony. I think most chancery judges, if not all, would assign that witness’s testimony on that point almost no weight at all because it was not her testimony.

I have had to caution counsel not to make speaking objections and to limit any comment on objections to legal bases (e.g., hearsay, irrelevant, compound question, etc.).

Speaking objections actually do your case more harm than good.

MEMORIAL DAY. State holiday. Courthouse closed.