About the Blog

My perspectives on the topics covered on this site have been informed by my career as a practicing lawyer in Durham, N.C. There is both a legal culture and a legal way of thinking and analyzing subjects. Those perspectives have also been shaped, and I believe significantly benefited, by my having lived in and experienced a variety of extraordinarily geographically diverse communities and cultures. 

As a result of my father being a career Naval Officer, I was raised within the military’s singular culture while simultaneously experiencing sequentially the differing cultures of a variety of communities throughout the United States and outside of this country. By age 12, I had lived in Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Hawaii, Missouri, the suburbs of Washington, D.C., and Bath, England. I had lived in nine different homes and attended eight different schools.

And then the diversity of my cultural experiences got really interesting. I spent three years as the only American student at Kingswood, a British “public” school in Bath, England. That opportunity resulted from my father’s then serving as the U.S. Naval Attaché to the British Admiralty in Bath. That position also gave me the opportunity to be a spectator to, and peripheral participant in, the whirlwind of diplomatic and social activities which surrounded his service. 

After our time in England, my family moved to Annapolis, Maryland. There my father served as the Head of the Engineering Department at the Naval Academy, another institution with its own peculiar culture. During that time I had the extraordinary experience of attending Deerfield Academy during the tenure of its legendary Headmaster Frank Boyden. 

Beginning at Kingswood I developed a fascination with History. I continued to cultivate that through my years at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill where I then received my undergraduate education, and where I acquired my lifelong condition as an enthusiastic [some might say obnoxious] Tar Heel sports fan. While at Chapel Hill I very seriously considered pursuing a Ph.D. in History before I ultimately decided on law school at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. 

Throughout my legal career, however, I have simultaneously pursued the study of History as my avocation. That has led to my exploration of numerous related academic fields and particularly of Government and Public Policy. I’m hoping to share by this blog my interest in, and perhaps even some helpful and insightful observations about these subjects.