Greetings From Libertarian Paradise

Likko here. The Transplanted Lawyer is mobile tonight, sippin’ on a gin and juice here in lovely Reno, Nevada. Which, as it turns out, looks rather a lot like nearly any other city anywhere else in the USA, at least in the portion of it that I’ve found myself. Two days of depositions here take me away from my home, away from my animals, away from my friends, and worst of all, away from my wife.

The mountains are higher here but the buildings all look the same, the client is briefed and prepared for tomorrow’s festivities, and the lobby is full of Parents Of The Year downing beers while their children shriek and hoot loudly running up and down the halls. I prefer to remain here in my somewhat sound-insulated room where it is quiet and the fact of the matter is I don’t need another drink to relax; I need honest, wholesome sleep to prepare for a solid day of intensive work tomorrow.

Nevada always fascinates me from a legal perspective. In so many ways, it has made choices very different from California in terms of its politics and the way its laws and government are structured. Seems to me that this is the most libertarian state in the nation. The full flower of that state of affairs, of course, is Las Vegas, the entertainment metropolis to the south and east of my current location on the east slope of the Sierras. Legalized gambling has formed the foundation of a massive playground for adults, a place where fools and their money willingly part and usually happiness — or more precisely, pleasure — is the result of that parting.

If a Californian is going to buy a gun, chances are reasonably good that the gun was sold in Nevada. I know lots of Californians who come here to buy cars to dodge high taxes back home. You can still get a book shipped to you here from Amazon. Zoning laws are significantly less stringent here and I have no idea how water rights are allocated although I suspect that is the source of bitter legal wrangling since I’m in about the only part of the entire state — which is larger than New York and North Carolina combined — that has anything approaching plentiful water. Yet lawyers here frequently look to California law as the persuasive authority when their own courts have not developed an independent jurisprudence.

There are still places here where you can smoke a cigarette inside a building. Scandalous.