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Minding Your P’s, Q’s, Lists, and Spaces

Two friends of the WEblog recently commented on typography in legal writing.

Susan Moon earlier this month was concerned by Oxford’s (potential) abandonment of the serial (a.k.a. Oxford) comma (which only referred to their PR department, and not their editorial staff). David Lat at Above the Law last week opened a can of worms with a poll about typing one space or two between sentences.

Partisans among all of the sides argue about the historical reasons, the practicalities, and just whether it “looks right” or not. For the record, I am pro-serial comma, as you can see from this post’s title. I am also in favor of one space between sentences.

From what I gather, my opinion about the serial comma is arguably “old-fashioned” (it is credited to Oxford, after all), and my single-space stance is “modern” (before laser printers, it was usual to use two spaces between sentences when using a typewriter; it was also usual to underline instead of using italics).

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Obama Judicial Appointments Infographic

Obama Judicial Appointments Infographic

Seen on Twitter from @jesseclee44, great infographic about Obama’s successes and obstacles encountered in making appointments to the bench.  While Obama has made great strides in increasing diversity on the bench, including doubling the number of APAs on the bench, he has faced lengthy confirmation delays – 151 days for circuit judges, 103 days for district court.  Take a look and share your comments.

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Registration now open for AABANY Fall Conference 2011

Registration now open for AABANY Fall Conference 2011

We are pleased to announce that registration for the 2011 AABANY Fall Conference: Diversify sponsored by Wells Fargo is now open.

AABANY Fall Conference 2011 at Skadden

Click on the image above to go to the registration page. 
Members get discounted rates. 
Save even more by registering early, by Sept. 1.

We have 4 slates each with 4 CLE programs for a total of 16 programs to choose from:

  • 6 in Areas of Professional Practice
  • 6 in Law Practice Management
  • 3 in Ethics and Professionalism
  • 1 in Skills

Each program offers 1.5 credits and you can take up to 4 programs from which you can earn up to 6 CLE credits.
Questions?  Send them to [email protected] or come to the End of Summer Happy Hour at Roam on August 31 and ask the organizers directly.

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Q&A: Why Redistricting Matters to APAs

Last month, AABANY announced that it joined ACCORD, the Asian American Community Coalition on Redistricting and Democracy.  We reached out to James Hong, Civic Participation Coordinator at MinKwon Center for Community Action, the lead organization behind ACCORD, to tell us more about what ACCORD is all about.

AABANY: What is ACCORD?

MinKwon (James Hong): We are a group committed to APA and minority communities’ opportunity to meaningfully participate in the political process.  Such opportunity is fundamentally changed by the results of redistricting, which completely re-organizes boundaries of districts, and hence creates the population that will be voting in elections. 

A: Why does redistricting matter to the APA community in New York?

M: Redistricting matters to all communities, ethnic and otherwise.  However, APA communities – and the enclaves in which they live – face a history of having their neighborhoods gerrymandered and thus having their voters split into multiple districts.

APAs living in ethnic enclaves are routinely divided into several adjacent populations/districts so that they constitute only a minority of those districts, when they could easily be the majority population of a single district.  Therefore, hundreds of thousands of APA voters often cannot exert the power of their numbers, even though – and this is the real point here – numbers are the foundation of democratic government, where the will of the many is supposed to be expressed in the political process.

I believe one reflection of this is that despite the APA population being 13% in NYC – meaning 1 out of 8 people is an Asian American – there is not a single State Senator or Congressman that is APA (overall, only 1 in 50 of the elected officials representing the city’s various districts are APA), and less than one-quarter of 1% of public spending goes toward Asian or Asian-led social service organizations.  While ACCORD is not promoting APA candidates, these discrepancies are revealing.

A: How can the APA community learn more about redistricting?

M: This guide has been a good reference for me: http://www.advancingequality.org/attachments/files/410/Impact_of_Redistricting_in_YOUR_Community_2010.pdf.

And if you aren’t aware of what your own district looks like, use the NYC GIS to see how the lines are currently drawn (click “Show Additional Data on Map” module on right side of page):  http://gis.nyc.gov/doitt/nycitymap/

For the legally-minded, this page focuses on the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and its relevance for redistricting:  http://www.publicmapping.org/what-is-redistricting/redistricting-criteria-the-voting-rights-act

A: What is ACCORD doing now to educate the APA community about this issue?

M: We are holding educational sessions at various community organizations, in English, Chinese and Korean.  If you or your organization are interested in hosting a meeting, please contact ACCORD at [email protected] or James Hong at the MinKwon Center for Community Action (718-460-5600).  We can come out and do a 15-minute presentation to your group and have Q&A.

A: What is ACCORD doing now to advance the cause of redistricting for the APA community?

M: Each of the ACCORD member organizations plans to give public testimony in the upcoming public hearings on redistricting.  This is the first of two rounds of hearings, with each borough having one hearing each round.  We will be focusing on bringing both testimony and constituents to the Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan hearings, for both rounds.  All first-round hearings begin at 10am and the locations/dates are as follows: 

  • Queens is on Wednesday, September 7th at Queens Borough Hall, Meeting Room 213-1&2, 120-55 Queens Boulevard, Kew Gardens; 
  • Brooklyn is on Tuesday, September 20th at Brooklyn Borough Hall, 209 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn; 
  • Manhattan is on Wednesday, September 21st, in the Assembly Hearing Room at 250 Broadway in Manhattan.

If you would like to get more involved with ACCORD, let us know at [email protected].

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BYOB (Bring Your Own Bag)

NAPABA Trailblazer award winner Gary Locke, former governor of Washington and recently U.S. Secretary of Commerce, took his new post as U.S. Ambassador to China on August 17th. People on the Internet, especially in China, took note that he toted his own backpack and bought his own coffee. “Took note” may be too casual a phrase –  “observed in shock and awe” would be more accurate. While a small proportion wondered how someone as high-ranking as Locke could not have an entourage, the majority approved of his humility.

I have a lot of admiration for people who carry their own bags, or who as one of my storied professors said, “don’t drop their briefcase and run”.

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U.S. Patent 8,000,000 Issued

U.S. Patent 8,000,000 Issued

A patent milestone was reached on August 16th when U.S. Patent 8,000,000 was issued for a “Visual Prosthesis”. As fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation know, such a device, called a VISOR, was worn by the character of Geordi La Forge to enable him to see. The real inventors don’t claim 20/20 vision, but it “enhances visual perception for people who have gone blind due to outer retinal degeneration.” My father could have used one.

Many other inventions were foretold by other episodes of Star Trek, including the communicator (today’s mobile phone), the hypo-spray (called the “SonoPrep”), and the PADD (you can figure out what that is).

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