A new book claimed that the first lady had communicated, through a spirit medium, with the dead Eleanor Roosevelt; and the image of this super-rational lawyer resorting to psychic comfort was cruelly entertaining.
But Mr. Obama, the intelligent, thoughtful, rational constitutional lawyer, must know that the law can work against only obvious efforts to proselytize and discriminate.
Nor was Sen. Schumer speaking in a fit of passion; the video shows the cool-headed, rational Harvard-educated lawyer calmly miming the action of strangling with his clenched right fist.
"He makes Todd Akin look rational," said Otis Carroll, a Tyler lawyer, referring to the Missouri congressman and candidate for Senate who incited an uproar by suggesting that victims of "legitimate rape" have a natural response that prevents pregnancy.
Yesterday, the court declared that no defendant had the power to waive the right to a lawyer if "no rational defendant would knowingly and intelligently desire that attorney's representation".
The anecdotes about distinguished trial lawyers' weird rituals are highly amusing, yet your gloss — that lawyers are highly rational and thus would not be expected to engage in such tomfoolery — misses an important nuance.
A lawyer, she was generally rational.
"They surpassed rational limits," said Antonio Passos, a church lawyer.
It requires that a defendant have "sufficient present ability to consult with lawyer with a reasonable degree of rational understanding" and a "rational as well as a factual understanding of the proceedings against him".
Under Texas law, a person is considered competent to stand trial if he or she has "sufficient present ability to consult with his or her lawyer with a reasonable degree or rational understanding," and "a rational, as well as a factual, understanding of the proceedings against him or her".
