Stand Your Ground Laws and the Right of Self-Defence in Pennsylvania

December 4, 2013

Nationwide, there have been recently two slayings in which homeowners, believing themselves to be threatened by an intruder, shot and killed someone who turned out to be a non-threatening after-hours visitor to the home.  In one case, the victim was a young woman apparently under the influence of some (disputed) amount of intoxicants, who was looking for help and ringing a doorbell after a nearby auto accident.  In another case, the victim was an elderly man suffering from Alzheimer’s, who […]

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John Locke, Robert Filmer and the Federalists

December 1, 2013

As noted in a previous post, Locke’s First Treatise of Government is an extended refutation of Robert Filmer’s manuscript Patriarcha or the Natural Power of Kings.  Today, Filmer’s arguments supporting absolute monarchy and the divine right of kings appear so absurd that it would not be possible to recite them at any length without being justly accused of wasting everybody’s time.  Filmer’s position was that all government originated with Adam and governing power was only justly conveyed from the first […]

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What Happens in a Pennsylvania Mortgage Foreclosure (Part 1)

November 26, 2013

A mortgage foreclosure in Pennsylvania is the culmination of a lengthy series of personal and financial events.  For each mortgage foreclosure, there is a story of how one person, a couple, or occasionally, a group of people, arrived at this unhappy state.  Each time I am called about a mortgage foreclosure, if my caller is a new client, he or she wishes to explain to me how it happened.  Naturally I listen, but legally it hardly matters how we got […]

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Middle Class Criminal Defendants

November 21, 2013

When middle class people commit crimes and become involved in the criminal justice system as defendants, they form a very distinctive group.  First, they have no prior criminal record whatsoever.  Typically, the offense(s) which they are charged permit of no defense with respect to the underlying acts.  Generally, they have ‘snapped out’ for some reason, often having to do with emotional stress, sometimes combined with alcohol or medication.  But there is nothing planned in advance, no measures taken for concealment […]

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Advance Health Care Directives or Living Wills

November 20, 2013

HEALTH CARE DIRECTIVES, OR LIVING WILLS   By Thomas Wolpert, Esq.   Pennsylvania now employs a term ‘Advanced Health Care Directive’ that used to go by a more common term of ‘Living Will.’   The same general thought is also captured in the phrases  ‘Durable Health Care Power of Attorney’ or ‘Health Care Agent.’  The importance of naming someone to make health care decisions for you when you cannot make them for yourself grows every year.   Medical technology each year increases […]

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John Locke and the Foodstamp Program

November 19, 2013

My mother used to say that when all else failed, ‘read the instructions.’  In the current political confusion, it helps to go back to primary sources.  John Locke is a primary source for American political thought, a British philosopher of the 17th century whose political writings were a major influence with the American revolutionaries.  Locke’s Two Treatises of Government and a Letter Concerning Toleration are a foundation for the political agitation which led to the American Revolution.  Much of what Locke argued for is now accepted as self-evidently true –  today, the premise that lawful government relies […]

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