MinnLawyer Blog

I can’t help noting with some sense of serendipity that the Minnesota Supreme Court picked this week of all weeks to hold one of its oral arguments in Hibbing, Minn. (Click here for the court’s official press release.)  Hibbing is, of course, the childhood hometown of music legend Bob Dylan. Dylan has been all over the news this week, having just released his much-anticipated album of yuletide favorites, “Christmas in the Heart.”

The Minnesota Supreme Court spent the morning at Hibbing High School, where it heard oral arguments in State v. Brown. The appeal was from a conviction for attempted second-degree murder. (The Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction late last year). Arguments were followed by a question and answer session with students from Hibbing High and other local schools, who later had the opportunity to join the justices for lunch. It no doubt was a great learning experience for the students — and probably for the justices as well. (The justices’ trip to Hibbing was part a judicial outreach program that has the high court traversing the state like a rolling stone.)

Reviews were decidedly mixed … on the Dylan album that is, not on the oral arguments. Some were disappointed that Dylan essentially did traditional renditions of oft-recorded, overplayed holiday hits; others say he put his own unique and offbeat stamp on the sometimes vanilla genre. (I’m no music critic — and I stopped trying to figure out anything Dylan does years ago — so you’ll just have to click here to hear the excerpts of the songs and decide for yourself if you like them.)

It’s worth noting that the Minnesota Supreme Court is itself not above referencing the occasional holiday classic when doing so helps it make its point. A case in point is a recent high court opinion in which Justice Paul Anderson used amiable Bedford Falls banker George Bailey from the holiday movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” as a metaphor for how far the financial-services industry has grown apart from its community-oriented, neighbor-friendly roots. (Click here for MPR story on the opinion, which was issued last August.)

So — all kidding aside — was there really any sort of cosmic connection between the justices holding court in Hibbing today and the release of native son Bob Dylan’s holiday album? The answer, my friends, is blowin’ in the wind …