✏️ Legal Pad
What We Did First Matters
When U.S. forces captured Nicolás Maduro, the headlines, understandably, focused on the spectacle: a foreign head of state snatched by U.S Special Forces, and flown to an amphibious assault ship waiting like a getaway car. It's a Tom Clancy novel.
But the most important part of the story is what happened next, and almost immediately.
We took him to the courthouse.
Not to a military tribunal. Not to a black site. Not to a press conference. We put him in front of a federal judge, appointed counsel, provided an interpreter, and allowed him to enter a plea of not guilty. He was heard. He was interrupted only to be reminded, politely, that there would be a time and place to raise his arguments.
This is the distinction between raw power and legitimacy. The United States didn’t demonstrate its strength by capturing him, it demonstrated it by subjecting itself to due process. The same rules. The same presumption of innocence. The same right to challenge jurisdiction, immunity, and the legality of his arrest.
We’ve seen this before. Manuel Noriega stood in a U.S. courtroom and made many of the same arguments. He lost them- not because they were ignored, but because they were tested. That’s the point.
The rule of law doesn’t mean the government never acts decisively. It means that when it does, it submits its actions to review. Whether the head of a foreign country or a homeless drug addict, each defendant gets a lawyer, a judge, and the right to say, “I am not guilty.”
💡 Sidebar
Restaurant Week and the Problem with Plug-and-Play
It’s Restaurant Week in Greenville, which means prix fixe menus, packed dining rooms, and kitchens turning out the same dishes over and over at full speed. I’ll admit it upfront: I’ve never been a huge fan.
Restaurant Week is good for business. It fills seats, introduces new faces to local spots, and keeps kitchens busy during slower, post-holiday stretches. That matters. But it also forces restaurants into mass-production mode: limited menus, tight execution, and little room for creativity. You’re not seeing what the kitchen can really do; you’re seeing what it can reproduce efficiently, both in terms of speed and cost.
That approach feels familiar. It’s the same strategy some insurance defense attorneys use, trying the same case, the same way, over and over. Same arguments. Same cross examinations. Same assumptions. Cookie-cutter. Plug-and-play. Efficient, sure, but rarely thoughtful, and often disconnected from the facts sitting right in front of them. It’s easy to try the same case 100 times, the skill is in trying 100 different cases.
The real magic in a restaurant doesn’t happen during Restaurant Week. It happens on a random Tuesday night, when the menu isn’t fixed and the chef has room to think, adjust, and take risks. That’s when you see confidence and craft. And that’s what brings people back.
So enjoy Restaurant Week. Support local businesses. Try somewhere new. Just remember: the real show comes when the constraints come off.
And whatever you do- don’t order like an insurance defense attorney.
⚖️ Closing Arguments
It’s big-wave season in Nazaré, and one of my guilty pleasures lately has been watching 100 Foot Wave. There’s something mesmerizing about watching human beings willingly strap themselves to fiberglass planks and drop into walls of water that look less like waves and more like moving buildings.
A hundred feet of ocean doesn’t negotiate. It doesn’t care how prepared you are or how confident you feel. And the people who ride those waves aren’t reckless- they’re disciplined, obsessive, and deeply aware of what happens if they get it wrong. And more than a little crazy, which is also helpful in this particular endeavor. They don’t conquer the wave so much as survive it through preparation and courage.
Watching that kind of commitment is humbling. It inevitably brings me back to Theodore Roosevelt and my favorite Man in the Arena speech- the reminder that credit belongs to those who actually show up, who risk failure publicly, and who accept that the outcome is never guaranteed.
Trial work lives in that same arena. Some cases feel manageable. Others feel like Nazaré. And on the days when a case feels overwhelming, when the stakes are high and the margin for error is thin, it helps to remember that somewhere out there, someone is paddling toward something far bigger, knowing exactly what could happen if they miss.
Perspective matters, and the arena is relative. Here’s to showing up anyway- no matter the size of the wave.
Court is in recess- see you next Friday.
