This is the time of the year when critics and pundits come out with their top (and, sometimes, bottom) ten lists. Bexis will soon recite his most and least favorite court decisions of the year, with his usual withering wit and disproportionate enthusiasm. Some writers have already entered the fray on the mass culture front. Our favorite television critic, Alan Sepinwall, made a pretty good case for the best ten television shows of the year. We found ourselves nodding at almost all of Sepinwall’s selections. We also found ourselves thinking of some of the DDL cases we ran across this year. What does that mean? Clearly, we don’t get out enough.

Here are our tv favorites of 2011, along with our sometimes-logical-sometimes-puerile associations with legal rulings we encountered over the past twelve months.