Bench & Bar

Every week, the Daily Journal's columnists weigh in on the issues shaping California law. Bench & Bar picks the three you can't afford to miss — and gives you the takeaways in minutes. Brought to by The Daily Journal Network.

Bench & Bar is a commentary podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 0 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Unknown Host hosts Bench & Bar, a commentary show with 0 episodes published.

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  Bench & Bar

  Bench & Bar: August 20

  Aug 19, 20262 min

  Stories in this week's episode: The radicalism of Clarence Thomas UC Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky examines Thomas concurrences from last term arguing equal protection doesn't bind the federal government, Congress's commerce power is limited to cross-state transactions, and the Sixth Amendment provides no right to appointed counsel — positions that would overturn decades of settled constitutional law. A jury is only as fair as who gets to sit Retired Santa Clara Superior Court Judge Philip Pennypacker responds to coverage of Justice Goodwin Liu's jury bias jurisprudence, arguing perceived bias cannot justify excluding a juror without compromising the verdict — and that recent legislation will demand more vigilance from trial judges throughout selection. Variety Media: The appeal that could decide whether CIPA applies to website technologies With oral argument set for August 25th, Variety Media v. Superior Court may produce the first published California appellate decision on whether the state's 1967 pen register statute reaches IP addresses and metadata collected by routine website technologies. Wilson Elser's Jana Slavina Farmer and Lioba Bakker break down what's at stake.

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  Bench & Bar

  Bench & Bar: August 13

  Aug 12, 20262 min

  Stories in this week's episode: Fixing our broken civil discovery culture: The problem of 'any and all writings evidencing or related to' Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lawrence P. Riff argues that boilerplate "any and all" document requests do more harm than good — and lays out how narrower, business-language requests get lawyers the discovery they actually need, faster. The safety valves are failing as ordinary cases produce extraordinary verdicts Two verdicts three days apart this summer — including a reinstated $13.1 million FEHA award — are upending long-held assumptions about venue, plaintiff sympathy and damages caps, Leonid M. Zilberman, a partner at Wilson Turner Kosmo, writes. Four steps for lawyers to harness AI without the risks Wisner Baum partner Crawford Appleby offers a four-step framework for adopting generative AI under the duty of competence, without ending up as the next hallucinated-citation headline.

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  Bench & Bar

  Bench & Bar: August 6

  Aug 6, 20262 min

  Stories in this week's episode: Why? Retired Second District Court of Appeal Justice Arthur Gilbert spends this week's column asking why — from bicyclists riding without helmets to judicial opinions that run past 50 pages, largely ghostwritten by staff attorneys and rarely trimmed. The public defender crisis Clara Foltz tried to prevent As Los Angeles marks 25 years since renaming its courthouse for Clara Shortridge Foltz, William M. Paparian argues the public defender system she invented still hasn't caught up to the balance she demanded between prosecution and defense. Are AI-generated briefs persuasive? Appellate lawyer Myron Moskovitz set ChatGPT and Claude loose on a case he'd already won, and found the AI-written briefs logical and well-researched — but blind to the strategic instinct that may have decided the appeal.

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  Bench & Bar

  Bench & Bar: July 30

  Jul 29, 20262 min

  Stories in this week's episode: California's new jury selection law changes the rules of the voir dire game Felahy Trial Lawyers principal Allen Felahy breaks down Code of Civil Procedure section 231.7, which replaces the Batson/Wheeler test with a "substantial likelihood" standard and makes a wrongly denied objection automatically reversible. The Inland Empire's court congestion crisis With judicial vacancies continuing to strain Riverside and San Bernardino county courts, Justin H. King examines the growing backlog, the dismissed criminal cases that have followed, and practical strategies for litigators navigating crowded calendars. Defending the judiciary's core function: J.O. v. Superior Court and our court's response J.O. v. Superior Court marks a significant shift in the use of blanket judicial challenges. Presiding Judge Sergio C. Tapia II explains how the decision—and Los Angeles County's new general order—promote transparency while preserving the legitimate use of Code of Civil Procedure section 170.6.

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  Bench & Bar

  Bench & Bar: July 23

  Jul 22, 20263 min

  Stories in this week's episode: Patchwork Resentencing Michael J. Raphael, Associate Justice, California Court of AppealImagine a law that granted resentencing only to defendants whose last names fell in the first half of the alphabet. Justice Michael J. Raphael argues that's effectively what California has done under Penal Code section 1172.75 — bestowing sweeping sentencing benefits on some prisoners based on an unrelated technicality, while others are left out entirely. How One Vowel Beat a $6.5 Million Judgment Appellate specialist Timothy M. Kowal, founder of Kowal Law Group, dissects the ruling that erased a $6.5 million default judgment over a single missing vowel in a defendant's legally changed name — and the strict rules of service by publication that made it happen. 10 Steps to Prepare a Witness for Deposition He couldn't remember his own birthdate. After three days of mock depositions, a witness had been coached into blankness. Michael S. Kun opens with that cautionary tale in a ten-step guide to preparing witnesses who are neither under- nor over-rehearsed.

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