Looks like he will not be getting a federal judgeship after that embarassing Senate grilling.

Probably not as bad a couple of previous worthiness interviews.

If he gets rid of the beard, might have a great chance and being a General Authority.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_S._Petersen

I'd heard vague references to a judicial nominee providing lame answers to committee questions, but now learning that it was a BYU mormon, I've come to grips with the situation and I'm feeling good about the whole thing.

In other words, it all makes sense now.

LOL..yeah, it's priceless. Makes a lot of sense now. I wonder if Brother Peterson was relying on the voice of the spirit to guide him through the questioning? Did he receive a priesthood blessing before hand? I would think most would have brushed up on basic law 101 just in case, but mo mo's tend to subjectively rely upon feelings of the spirit, and so perhaps he felt good going into the questioning. Yeah makes sense now.

Yes, it was embarrassing-if a person has any sense of the word. But, given today's political climate, don't be shocked when this Trump loyalist is confirmed. That's all Trump cares about. Qualifications be damned.

I have been practicing law since 1970, including trial practice, and have never heard of the "Daubert standard" and only twice in my practice has there been a "Motion in Limine". I can also note that I am fairly expert on election law, not only in its application, but in my thesis at MIT in Political Science.

I've been practicing law since 1995. I learned about motions in limine in law school criminal procedure class. I've filed several motions in limine in civil cases.

The Daubert standard is basic evidence law. Its mentioned in federal and state Rule 702, and relates to when expert testimony is admissible. I learned it early with respect to experts in child custody cases, but it includes all kinds of experts who claim to offer scientific or expert opinions.

An attorney who does not try cases may have forgotten this information but I think there's no excuse not to refresh one's memory if one knows they are up for a federal court appointment and testifying before Congress. By the way, Bar review courses also mention the Daubert standard as it could potentially arise in a bar exam question.

Utah Rules of Evidence: https://www.utcourts.gov/resources/rules/ure/0702.htm

http://media.straffordpub.com/products/rule-702-and-daubert-standards-for-expert-witness-testimony-2014-02-12/presentation.pdf

Having recently graduated from a law school, I have heard of both and I know that the Daubert Standard is definitely tested as part of a bar exam on the MBE portion of the testing. For a law school graduate, from a lower tier school, this is surprising. However it is gratifying to know that there are lower tiers - BYU.

As a civil litigator, Daubert and motions in limine are my bread and butter. I am confident there are attorneys out there who don’t know about them. They’re just not good attorneys.

+10 :)

My pre-law student son knew what they were!

I have observed, in court, attorneys who were clueless about areas of law. I was present in observing a case in which BOTH attorneys were clueless although they had both charged their clients fees in six figures! I told the judge (outside of the hearing of the parties) what the law is in the matter he had just heard. As for the Daubert Standard, I am quite familiar with the standards of expert testimony but the particular term came in more recently and, hence, was not a term I would have learned in law school. I would like to add that our judiciary is decidedly deficient in technical knowledge and often fails that give the proper weight to physical and scientific evidence.

Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. was issued by SCOTUS in 1993, and utterly changed the landscape of both state and federal evidentiary standards across the country. 509 US 579 (1993). Anyone who has ever done anything with evidence since then knows about Daubert. If they didn’t know Daubert, then they committed malpractice. It is as foundational to evidence law as Miranda is to confessions or International Shoe is to jurisdiction.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/20/2017 01:09PM by resipsaloquitur.

His undergrad degree, in philosophy, was from the Y. His JD from Virginia Law. I’d imagine there’s more concern in Charlottesville than in Provo.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/17/2017 12:48AM by BYU Boner.

Spencer not for hire? What about Hawk?

Saucie is my Susan!

Can I be the baby?

BYU Boner Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Can I be the baby?


I'll check with the dog but I'm sure you'd make a wonderful bby Boner.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/18/politics/trump-judicial-nominee-petersen-withdraws/index.html


Not surprising.

Right after I graduated college, I was getting desperate to find a job, so I started firing off my resume for just about every posting I could find - just to see if I could get something to stick. One day, I got a call for an interview for a position that I applied for that seemed like something I could handle. I brushed up on my basic interview questions and went in feeling hopeful. Turns out, the job was MUCH more complicated than the posting made it seem. They asked me questions about my experience with various programs I've never heard of, relevant job experience, knowledge of terminology, etc. The only part that I did reasonably well on was the small talk before the interview actually started. At the end, I apologized to the interviewer and left. They never called me back and I never bothered following up. We both knew the result.

As satisfying as it is to see D.J. Tangerine Dream get embarrassed, I was cringing hard for Petersen. As someone who has been there on a much smaller stage, it's not a fun chair to be sitting in when you are completely and totally unqualified for a job you are interviewing for.

The difference is that no one hid the ball here.

There have been hundreds of these interviews, probably dozens are recorded. And the administration should have prepared him. It is standard practice to do practice briefings, practice interviews, etc.

This was an embarrassment for Peterson and for Trump, and both should indeed feel embarrassed.

Some last-minute cramming might have helped, but might not have.
The real issue was that he was manifestly unqualified for the job. He had zero experience in the kind of law the job would have required.

So he could have "crammed," but it would be like skipping a whole semester of lectures in a college class, then trying to quickly memorize some "main points" the night before the final, and showing up to take it. You can't possibly learn everything you don't know in one night (or even a week, most likely) -- and you don't know which of the thousands of things you don't know they're going to ask you.

Petersen may very well be an able legal administrator at the FEC. That doesn't, of course, make him a viable candidate for being a judge. He got that nomination because of his political leanings -- not because of his skill and experience. And the senators from his own party called him on it.

Hi Hie,

I'm informed by people who have passed the bar that yes, you can learn a semester's worth of law in a week or even a day. Remember, these people have been through three years of training and know how to learn new bodies of law. You could even buy a commercially prepared summary of a single class and learn it the night before the test.

Moreover, in his law school days Peterson would have learned the material in order to pass his final exams and then to have passed the bar or bars for which he sat. He has been through this material and been tested on it at least twice before, so he'd be reviewing it now. And a bar exam is a helluva lot more challenging than a series of 5-minute interviews by senators.

I'd go further. I'd say that a man who doesn't realize he needs to prepare for a senatorial review exhibits seriously deficient judgment. I'm not sure he has the wisdom necessary to serve effectively on the FEC or in any other senior government job.

That was appalling.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'd go further. I'd say that a man who doesn't
> realize he needs to prepare for a senatorial
> review exhibits seriously deficient judgment. I'm
> not sure he has the wisdom necessary to serve
> effectively on the FEC or in any other senior
> government job.
>
> That was appalling.

No argument there!

I would question your assumption that he ever actually learned the stuff in the first place, though...maybe he managed to hang onto enough short-term facts to pass the bar, but that's not the same as learning :)

Agreed. He may have crammed rather than learning, but that would put him in the same category as almost every other law school grad. I think I'd better defer to the lawyers up above about the specific questions.

I feel sorry for the guy, but it is a sign of disrespect to the country to go into a confirmation hearing without even a cursory understanding of basic principles. I don't know why he would have done that, nor why his administration handlers would have let it happen.

I was talking to my brother, who is a lawyer, the other day about this. He told me that he can't stress enough that these questions were straight out of a Law 101 text book. I cringed for Petersen on a human level, but I laughed out loud thinking about how stupid and disorganized this makes the Trump Administration look.

I would think that even if he could answer those questions, there would be no substitute for actual experience in a courtroom. It made me cringe to watch. He shouldn't have been placed in that situation.

I also wondered why on earth he would even consider taking a position as a federal judge when he had NO experience in the courtroom.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wcD2H92IquU

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=c-zvNnFjk3Q



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/19/2017 02:03AM by steve benson.

J. Reuben Clark School of Law may not have the world's strongest reputation as law schools go, but my wife was relieved to learn that this buffoon didn't graduate from her alma mater. There is information a law student retains just long enough to pass the bar in whatever state he or she is taking it, but the questions Petersen thoroughly bungled were straight out of Law 101 as far as my wife is concerned.

I assume, and possibly wrongly as I know basically nothing about the guy, that Petersen passed the bar in Louisiana. My wife told me that Louisiana's legal system is in many ways different from the legal system of many states, in part because its foundation was primarily the legal system of France at the time the state was founded. Still, one would wonder how much Petersen knows about anything after his brief performance in front of the senate panel that interviewed him.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/19/2017 03:49PM by scmd.

scmd Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I assume, and possibly wrongly as I know basically
> nothing about the guy, that Petersen passed the
> bar in Louisiana. My wife told me that Louisiana's
> legal system is in many ways different from the
> legal system of many states, in part because its
> foundation was primarily the legal system of
> France at the time the state was founded.

"The Louisiana Supreme Court, faced with admissibility of borderline, scientific evidence, adopted the Daubert reasoning in State v. Foret,3 on November 30, 1993. The admissibility of expert testimony for Louisiana state courts will now follow the same standards as set by Daubert for federal courts.Nov 30, 1993"

https://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=5532&context=lalrev

But anyway, he graduated law school in Virginia (in 1999).
His wiki page doesn't say anything about him passing the bar exam in *any* state. :)

I think, scmd, that you are incorrect about Petersen and LA. I don't think he took the bar there.

LA law derives from the continental tradition, as you note, and not the Anglo-Saxon common law. I knew a man from LA who earned a JD from a great US law school and had to go to an LA university for an extra year to learn the unusual characteristics of that system before taking the state bar exam there. There is nothing on Petersen's resume to suggest he studied continental law in LA, so my presumption is that he did not qualify in the unique elements of the state system.

Even if he did, though, he first studied law in VA and hence learned standard common law. In that process he would have had to study procedure, which is what he was quizzed on in the senate.

My guess is consequently that he learned the material at least twice: in law school and then again when he took the bar (either outside of LA or in order to practice federal law in LA). Moreover, he could simply have bought one of the review books on Amazon to refresh his memory. There really isn't any excuse for that remarkable interview.

...law based on the Napoleonic Code...


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleonic_Code

You'd have thought the US could have fixed that anomaly when it bought the place.

States' rights!!

Not to mention being too damn tired after ironing out the 3/5ths Compromise!


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Fifths_Compromise