Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
For the week ended Dec. 20, The CDT Roundup saw 11 transactions reported with a total value of about $10.2 billion, which is roughly on par with the prior week's 15 deals for nearly $10 billion, though up from the 11 transactions at $3 billion this time last year. The week's top transactions and more in this edition of CDT Roundup.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and state Sen. Angela Paxton, R-McKinney, agreed to unseal the documents in their divorce proceeding Thursday. Counsel for the media intervenors and the attorney general told Judge Robert Brotherton Friday morning at their scheduled hearing that “appropriate” redactions may be made.
When I set out to write this column, I thought about all the ways in which I’d try to impress you. Law is, after all, a see-and-be-seen profession! Perhaps I’d start with William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and its dense stream-of-consciousness prose (I can’t stand it). Or the scope and cultural impact of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (I couldn’t get through it). Or maybe I’d do something unexpected about influential children’s books and write about Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree (a truly awful, dreadful thing – I won’t be taking any questions at this time).
But what I kept coming back to was something that plays a huge role in my personal and professional life: humor. So, I chose five books that never fail to make me laugh.
A proposal by Southern Methodist University to move the four buildings that comprise Dedman School of Law to a new campus east of U.S. 75 has ignited blowback from students and alumni caught off-guard by the swiftness and apparent secrecy behind the move. (Photo courtesy Southern Methodist University)
Digital assets are no longer on the margins of wealth management. Today, cryptocurrency represents a meaningful portion of many estates, from Bitcoin and Ethereum to non-fungible tokens (NFTs), stablecoins and illiquid tokens. According to an article published by State Street Investment Management, 31% of high-net-worth investors hold crypto. With that shift comes a new reality: estate plans that don’t account for digital assets are incomplete.
When I was a teenager, my grandmother told me that her grandmother, “Nana,” marched for women’s suffrage.
What impressed my grandmother was not just that Nana walked the streets with throngs of other women clamoring for voting rights; it was that she did so despite being a woman who personally had little to gain from equal suffrage.
Nana was a married, middle-aged mother who, as my grandmother put it, “wore black chiffon at night.” In other words, she was a woman of means. As such, Nana benefited from the status quo. Practically speaking, she had reason to resist change. Still, she believed women should have the right to vote. So, she marched.
She also wrote.
I have more than five favorite books. This list represents a smattering of what I have enjoyed most across different genres: ancient history, historical fiction, anti-western, philosophy and theology, and non-fiction.
Buckingham Senior Living Community cited between 1,000 and 5,000 creditors who are owed between $100 million and $500 million, according to court documents. Buckingham has hired McDermott, Will & Schulte as its lead legal advisor. Partner Marcus Alan Helt of the firm’s Dallas office filed the first day documents in the case.
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