Maggie Wittlin

@maggiewittlin.bsky.social

4927 Followers 1396 Following

Professor at Fordham Law. Evidence, law teaching, crosswords, jokes.

The final scene of Melancholia. Three people sit cross-legged in a bare tepee structure made of sticks, as a large ice planet looms on the horizon.
I -- a 40-something Jewish woman with glasses and longish, curlyish brown hair -- wearing casual clothes, including a purple t-shirt that says "don't talk to strangers" -- sit in an office and tell the joke you can hear.
An old but energetic Jewish man wearing a suit gives an open-mouthed smile that looks like he's just delivered a punchline.
SHE'S GOT BETTE DAVIS['S] EYES:* ASSESSING THE NONCONSENSUAL REMOVAL OF CADAVER ORGANS UNDER THE TAKINGS AND DUE PROCESS CLAUSES
A colorful drawing of a budding tree with a treehouse in front of a blue sky. Dated March 19, 2020. From Hockney’s book, 220 for 2020.
I Saw the TV Glow, written in pink, with Justice Smith’s face on the right.
Akmaev watch with two koi over blue water. No paint was used: it’s all different colors of metal. Handmade.
Palantir logo
Version 2 of the chart. It looks basically the same, but there are changes, including the what falls in the Judaism category.
Search results showing three Yale Law Journal articles that cite the urban dictionary.
A back view of a person in brown pants with a pink handkerchief in their right back pocket.
The word "person" is highlighted in the following rule of evidence: Rule 404. Character Evidence; Other Crimes, Wrongs, or Acts (a) Character Evidence. (1) Prohibited Uses. Evidence of a person’s character or character trait is not admissible to prove that on a particular occasion the person acted in accordance with the character or trait.
The smiling face from the meme inversion: Heartwarming: The Worst People You Know Are Fighting
A scene from The Simpsons at Moe's. Moe has the phone in his hands and is calling out to the patrons, "Hey, I'm looking for A Panda Huggenkiss. Why can't I find A Panda Huggenkiss?"
A dilute calico cat looks down at you from up close. A painting and keyboard are in the background.
A chart of results from the Pew Research Center, with the top line described in the post.
A still from the movie No Other Choice. A man in a hard hat stands by an industrial sized paper roll.
About 45 people in conference-appropriate attire stand on the steps of Vanderbilt Law School.
The two sheep from Paul Noth’s iconic “he tells it like it is” cartoon. They now have wings and halos, and one is saying, “He ate us, just like he said.”
The second picture above. A happy looking medium brown Icelandic horse has its mouth open near the ear of an uncomfortable looking dark brown Icelandic horse.
The Trump administration faces one significant hurdle. Under the law, the federal government may only conduct executions in states that allow capital punishment and carry them out according to state protocols. For years, federal executions have taken place in Indiana, which only allows for capital punishment by lethal injection. The Justice Department, acknowledging that limitation in its report, recommends the federal government find a new location to conduct executions, in a state that allows other methods. Mississippi, the report states, allows executions by electrocution, or firing squad if lethal injection or other methods are not available. The report called for the Bureau of Prisons to submit a report “detailing the options to relocate or expand federal death row, or to construct a second federal execution facility in a state that permits additional manners of execution.”
Meme: Really? Right in front of my funeral for a former mayor a few blocks away?
Two Trump Truth Social posts. The top is most of the block of text posted above. The bottom is a video from Savage Nation.
Inspector Gadget, with his left arm in "go, go, gadget arm" mode, reaching out to outside the frame.
A man’s face is seen looking out from inside a full bear suit. The wood wall in the background glows with flames. It is from the movie Midsommar
An older man stands in a blue sweater over a collared shirt stands next to the brick wall of a heavily damaged building and talks in Farsi. Images of ruined areas pop up periodically.
When the faculty readers are finished, the scores are tallied. All applicants who receive a 12 (straight fours) and most who earn an 11 are admitted. The readers are assigned a distribution for how many fours, threes and twos they can award so that there are exactly the right number of 12s to fill the class, Rangappa said.
Moments before the eclipse ends. The sun's corona stretches out from the left side of a dark moon, with enough sun visible to disrupt the smooth curve of the moon.
Jodie Foster in Contact: "They should've sent a poet."
A barely lit crescent moon in the foreground. Just to its right, a small, partial, thin bright crescent: the Earth.
The side of a Streit’s unsalted Matzo box. There’s a purple highlight box around the phrase “Not for Passover use.”
A view of the lake in Central Park. A branch of cherry blossoms cuts across the top of the frame. Several rowboats are in the lake with people rowing. The Beresford, a stately apartment building with little towers at the corners, looms in the background against a light gray sky.
A plane flies over buildings.
A chunky raccoon on a large rock in a park.
The Sofia D.O.P. from Pop's place in Ljubljana
“I welcome anyone to publicly debate me on my article’s thesis. You versus me, live, no AI, and we’ll all see whether the arguments are mine or Claude’s.”
Clippy the anthropomorphic paper clip.
A text message thread: I send my friend a screenshot of the “Professor Status Confirmed” email with the message “Glad to get the confirmation” My friend responds with “Congratulations!,” which sets off the iPhone’s confetti animation.
The final scene of Melancholia. Three people sit cross-legged in a tepee-like structure made of sticks. A large ice planet looms on the horizon. The scene is cast in blue.
Maybe the ground beneath the last turtle is pure mathematical necessity, or consciousness, or a principle so fundamental it doesn't need support because it is the precondition for support meaning anything. This is the most intellectually ambitious answer.
Even families have disagreements sometimes. One arose in the context of decisions about tenure. As Dean Kronman has observed, the Law School hired eighteen new faculty members in the mid-1950s. The governing board agreed that “everyone” in this group would be granted tenure no later than 1960, without regard to scholarly publication or classroom performance. “Everyone” did not include Ellen Peters. I thought then, and think now, that this decision was unfair. I wondered whether to resign. It seemed appropriate to explore the tenure situation with the Dean. The Dean was perfectly candid. The governing board had reached a decision and that decision would stand. He neither defended the decision nor deprecated it. Instead, he looked to the future. He offered me a reduced teaching load, and additional research assistance, to enable me to demonstrate the scholarly achievements on which the governing board insisted. Most important, he expressed his confidence that I could do the work. It was his encouragement that persuaded me to stay. In 1963, The Yale Law Journal published a major article of mine, and in 1964, the governing board voted my tenure.
Weather forecast for the Upper West Side for the next week. It’s highs in the 40s for the next few days, but then, circled in orange, are highs in the 60s starting on Saturday. Some of those days will even be sunny!
A great blue heron (I think?) stands tucked and on one leg on ice covering part of a lake. There are some ducks behind. Late day light comes from the left. The two towers of the San Remo building are reflected in the unfrozen part of the lake.
P.9.1977–a bridge too far (a) A step beyond what is safe, sensible, or desirable; an act regarded as too drastic to take; (b) something that is likely to prove too difficult; a task that is beyond what one is expected or able to achieve. Popularized by the title of the 1977 film A Bridge too Far (based on the 1974 book of the same name), an account of the 1944 Allied defeat at Arnhem in a battle for a series of strategically important bridges, with allusion to a comment made by Lieutenant-General F. A. M. Browning (see quot. 1944). [1944I think we might be going a bridge too far. F. A. M. Browning in R. E. Urquhart & W. Greatorex, Arnhem (1958) 4Citation details for F. A. M. Browning in R. E. Urquhart & W. Greatorex, Arnhem] 1977Brave though he is to attempt it, monetary union in the absolute form Mr Jenkins is suggesting is all too likely to prove a bridge too far. Economist 24 September 16/2
I.5.c. 1720–beyond the pale (of): outside or beyond the bounds (of). beyond the pale: outside the limits of acceptable behaviour; unacceptable or improper. Cf. senses I.4a and I.5a. The theory that the origin of the phrase relates to any of several specific regions, such as the area of Ireland formerly called the Pale (see sense I.4b) or the Pale of Settlement in Russia (see sense I.4c), is not supported by the early historical evidence and is likely to be a later rationalization.
Footnote 11: SAUSA Isihara stated at the show-cause hearing that prior to joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office as a SAUSA last month, he had not practiced in federal court. Since joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office, he has been assigned nearly 130 cases.
The entrance to a subway station, covered in snow. You can just see the red circle of the 1 but not the name (66th Street). Snowy trees and David Geffen Hall are in the background.
An empty bike cab with a glowing “I ❤️ New York” on a street in snowy Central Park. There’s a single streetlight.
Central Park, February 22, 2026 Snow-dusted rocks with a few bare snow-dusted trees jut out from the right into a frozen lake. There a bare trees in the distance around the edge of the lake. The sky is grey, and no buildings are visible in the background.
How Much More Snow to Expect in NYC, N.Y. The graphic shows bars for different ranges, including a 10% chance for 0.1 to 1 inch, 17% for 4 to 6 inches, and 18% for more than 18 inches.
A camel stands behind a woman with long brown hair, glasses, and a peach cardigan sitting in a generic open-plan office space. It's from GEICO's "Hump Day" commercial.
A publicity image for the 2002 movie "Men With Brooms," starring Paul Gross, Molly Parker, and Leslie Nielsen. In this image, six people stand triumphantly on a floor of curling stones. The five men are all holding brooms.
Prof. Tinu Adediran, a thin black woman with short hair, wearing an ivory dress, sits in a chair, turned to face the audience, and talks and gestures.
The view out my window today, facing northeast. The sky is damnedly blue. The backs of apartment buildings are dappled in light. The two towers of the iconic San Remo building are cast in bright light and shadow. It’s awful.
Hugh Grant in Paddington 2, dressed in pink striped prison garb. Text at bottom: Thank you, thank you! Well! It turns out I didn’t need the West End after all. Just…a captive audience.
Still from the classic video of a woman attempting to show Monster Energy is Satanic. She’s pointing to a highlighted letter Vav in the Hebrew alphabet, about to make the pitch that because it’s 6 in numerology, monster energy is labeled with the mark of the beast.
The John Minor Wisdom Building: United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. It’s a stately building with lots of columns and arched windows, but while it’s wide, it also feels somewhat compact.
From the WD-40 website: TOP TEN MOST POPULAR USES OF WD-40® MULTI-USE PRODUCT 1. Use WD-40® Multi-Use Formula to quiet squeaky hinges. Keep flexible joints lubricated and silent with WD-40® Multi-Use Product. A quick spray will provide squeak relief on automotive doors, windshield wipers, swinging gates, sticking ladders, storm doors, pruning shears, roof ventilators, fire alarm boxes, folding chairs and more. To target smaller hinges, try the WD-40 Smart-Straw® precision stream. For hard-to-reach squeaks, use WD-40’s EZ-REACH® bendable applicator to deliver lubrication in tight spots.
Extraordinary. Four people in their 20s stand behind the title word.