by Charles Siegel Sun went down in honey And the moon came up in wine You know the stars were spinning dizzy Lord the band kept us so busy We forgot about the time That is a verse from “The Music Never Stopped,” a song written by Bob Weir and John Barlow, and recorded on…

by Charles Siegel Last week I learned of the recent death of Roberto Chaves Chavarria, of San José, Costa Rica, aged 90. His work benefited thousands upon thousands of his countrymen, and many thousands in other countries as well, who will never know his name. And he had a profound effect on my career as…

by Charles Siegel Last month I attended two conferences a week apart, one in Norway and one in Italy.  The first conference was held in Bergen.  From there, my law partner and I proceeded down the coast to Stavanger, for a meeting with a lawyer there about some potential cases. Our meeting was late on…

by Charles Siegel There can have been very few musicians who played such key roles, in so many different bands in so many different genres, as Danny Thompson.  When he died at 86 in September, music lost one of its great connectors. I first learned of Thompson as a freshman in college, when my roommate…

by Charles Siegel Sixty-five years ago this month, the John Coltrane Quartet entered Atlantic Studios in Manhattan for three days of recording sessions, over the course of a week. It was the first time the band recorded together. The four musicians  — Coltrane on tenor and soprano saxophones, McCoy Tyner on piano, Steve Davis on…

by Charles Siegel In the first part of this depressing column, I looked at Congress’ spineless surrender of its power to Trump’s turbocharged executive. In the second part, I tried to set out how that same executive has waged war on the judicial branch, and has rapidly transformed the Department of Justice into its private…

by Charles Siegel In the first part of this column last month, I set out the ways in which the separation of powers among the three branches of American government is rapidly being eroded. The legislative branch isn’t playing its part in the system of “checks and balances;” it isn’t interested in checking Trump at…

by Charles Siegel Americans learn about “checks and balances” from a young age. (Or at least they do to whatever extent civics is taught anymore.) We’re told that this doctrine is a corollary to the bedrock theory of “separation of powers.” Only through the former can the latter be preserved.  As John Adams put it…

by Charles Siegel Oh the streets of Rome are filled with rubble Ancient footprints are everywhere You can almost think that you’re seeing double On a cold, dark night on the Spanish Stairs Those are the first lines of “When I Paint My Masterpiece,” a song written by Bob Dylan in 1971. I remember that…

by Charles Siegel On April 30th my firm joined the Texas Civil Rights Project, the Southern Poverty Law Center, Muslim Advocates, and the CLEAR Project to file a habeas corpus petition in federal court, seeking the release of our client Leqaa Kordia, a New Jersey resident who has been held for over two months at…

by Charles Siegel “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers” is one of Shakespeare’s most famous lines. It lives on, four centuries after it was written, on countless t-shirts and coffee mugs. People who have never read another word of Shakespeare know the line well, and think that Shakespeare hated lawyers and…

by Charles Siegel We are barely two months into the second Trump administration, and already certain themes are beginning to feel stale. One of them is that “it’s impossible to keep up with everything.” “The jaw-dropping outrages just keep coming, day after day.” The idea that it’s all a deliberate effort to bludgeon us –…

by Charles Siegel The dishonest and cynical way in which RS 5000 was tested and marketed reflected a culture within Celotex stretching back to at least 2009. That was a key finding of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry’s “Phase 2” report, released on September 4, 2024. The finding appears at the beginning of a long, meticulous…