Law Articles
TONE POEM FOR THE DEAF
Sometimes my client's case is heard last. Waiting, I watch the courtroom parade: embattled lovers, siblings snatching deceased parents' assets, deadbeat contractors, shoplifters, deviants, alienated friends. Judges brave the human welter, then decide. The litigants don't feel heard or understood, though many judges listen attentively. ...Read more...
HUNTER-GATHERER COLLABORATIVE PRACTICE
This Family Court Review article, which Brad co-authored with members of Cypress Collaborative Solutions, describes the development of a practice group based on a hunter-gatherer model, with the mission of providing high quality collaborative divorce services, with an emphasis on protecting children and divorcing partners, and expanding access to middle- and lower-income families. The practice group professional disciplines include law, mental health divorce coaching, co-parent coaching, financial analysis, and case administration. These professionals have collectively associated their individual practices to address challenges facing their collaborative practices. With common purpose, the practice group builds skills, generates client base, nurtures trust, and lays a common knowledge base. Collaborative divorce teams formed from its members serve divorcing families with efficient, cost-conscious, interest-based negotiation processes that protect children and help parties productively move on with their lives. ...Read more...
GUNS
I own guns. An 1870s Argentine rifle graces my bedroom wall, an immigrant from father’s Idaho mantle where it hung during my childhood. No one has produced ammunition for that weapon in 100 years. This gun is art and reminiscence. Rifles and shotguns huddle in cupboards, asleep in their form-fitting covers. Boyish enthusiasms made me terror of squirrels and wanna-be deerslayer. In my teens, I woke one morning no longer a hunter. Killing grew pointless. I quit. These guns are retired tools of past fascinations. ...Read more...
CASEY RECONSIDERED: Father's Interest in Mother's Decisions to Abort or Deliver Their Fetus.
Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U. S. 833 (1992), confirmed a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy without governmental interference. Casey, however, also wrongly terminated the constitutional interests of anticipatory fathers in their unborn children. This paper, Casey Reconsidered, proposes reasonable changes to federal abortion law to restore paternal constitutional interests in their fetuses. It also proposes changes that ask mothers to consider the impact of their decision to abort or deliver a fetus on the father of that fetus. ...Read more...
OPEN PUBLIC MEETINGS ACT: POLITICAL WEAPON
This article ran in the Seattle Times on October 23, 2007. It is co-authored by Mr. Lancaster's friend and colleague, Jerry Cronk.
When the Open Public Meetings Act (OPMA) was adopted in 1971, the legislature did not imagine its unintended consequences. OPMA intended to protect the people’s right to remain “informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created.” OPMA provides worthwhile guidelines for the conduct of local government decision making. OPMA says that a quorum of elected officials must conduct business in an open and advertised meeting. ...Read more...
MACK FOR JUDGE
My first jury trial was a shambles. The courtroom was August hot. Courthouse air conditioning faltered, so windows were thrown open. Trucks roared past on Fourth Avenue, intermittently drowning the proceedings. Insulating obesity conspired with nervousness to drench me in perspiration. Perversely, the district court judge kept counsels clad in wool suit jackets. I mopped myself with a washcloth. One cuff of my slacks unhinged. I kept tripping on the loose hem. My trial notebook, neatly organized, cascaded from the prosecutor’s table, splattered across the dusty floor. A juror sighed. Panic gripped me. ...Read more...
COPPICE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Brad presented a paper entitled "Pleistocene Brains, Mirror Neurons, and Family Matters" in October 2009 to a group of Washington lawyers and legal professionals. In it, he describes the Coppice of Consciousness metaphor and suggests some neurological reasons not to litigate your family dispute.
SUICIDE
Friends, an elderly couple I will call Buck and Pearl Greenwood, died, he of Alzheimer’s in 2005, she of a broken heart and multiple organ failure in 2006. Greenwoods planned their deaths. Each made an advance directive to their physician instructing that no heroic measure be taken to prolong their lives, if terminal. Each selected a trusted family member to make end-of-life decisions, if Greenwoods were incapable of doing so. Each expressed to family and friends (me included) that they did not wish to linger in their twilight months. Greenwoods did what Washington law allows to avoid dawdling death. Greenwoods even hatched a private compact of mutual suicide assistance, which Washington law does not (and should not) permit. Still, Buck and Pearl suffered exactly the prolonged deaths they sought to avoid. ...Read more...