Editor’s Foreword Show and Tell: Food Fight in the Courtroom

By Benjamin G. Shatz

Law review journals have prosaically academic — i.e., borrrr…ing! — covers. If you’re lucky, there may be an unimaginative school emblem of some sort, to which no one has paid any attention, possibly for centuries. But perhaps the most enjoyable part of being editor-in-chief of this fine publication is our amazingly talented illustrator, Peter Siu. His skill empowers my imagination to take flight, allowing us to blend articles about automated technology for mass litigation, summary contempt, and the JNE Commission together in a unified montage. Why chefs in the tableau? Well, Ray Gallo’s article about a new model for computerized aggregate litigation arose from litigation brought by graduates of a culinary academy.

We continue with a survey analyzing frivolous appeals from Will Tomlinson, followed by Marc Alexander’s piece sharing thematically related vignettes involving summary contempt. This led (naturally?) to visualize that classic slapstick trope, the venerable thrown pie. With the chefs on their marks, who could resist?

Further on, Lara Krieger, a former chair of the State Bar’s Judicial Nominations and Evaluations Committee, treats us to a JNE 101 primer — and, voilà, our anonymous soon-to-be-schlagged bench officer now has a name. (And how linguistically delicious that Schlag, short for the Viennese Schlagobers (whipped cream, especially as a topping for a cake or pie), corresponds to the German Schlag, a blow, from Schlagen, to strike or hit, which arises, of course, from the Proto-Indo-European (there’s that PIE again) slak, to hit, strike, or throw.) Before Jenny assumed the bench, she apparently drove a truck; Justice Kagan even provides her phone number in American Trucking Associations, Inc. v. City of Los Angeles (2013) 133 S.Ct. 2096, 2100 ("How am I driving? [Call] 213-867-5309").