[Eugene Volokh, 9:37 PM]
More Web stuff from and about the apparent Case Western killer: Reader Mike O'Ronain e-mailed this, and I thought I'd pass it along (with a few omissions of irrelevant material); I don't have the time to turn the URLs into links, but you know what to do. Please note that I haven't checked the links or their contents.

Biswanath Halder's Domain was created om June 19, 2001 from Cleveland, OH

http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois?STRING=halder.ws&SearchType=do

".ws" stands for "Web Site" http://www.ws/

"Biswanath Halder's Homepage"
http://www.halder.ws/

IP Address: www.halder.ws [216.27.95.35]

"Guest Book" for this page points to: http://junior.apk.net/~halder/GuestBook.html

Alternate "Biswanath Halder's Homepage" http://junior.apk.net/~halder/

IP Address: junior.apk.net [207.54.158.21]

Resume(s) of Biswanath Halder

http://junior.apk.net/~halder/resume.html

http://www.halder.ws/resume.html http://www.halder.ws/chronology.html

http://www.usrecruitersonline.com/OnLine/BiswanathHalder.htm

http://www.wst.nu/resumes1/0000027a.htm



This web site is a BLOG in Cleveland, Ohio from the same apartment building
as Biswanath Halder!

http://www.iancharnas.com/contact.php

http://www.iancharnas.com/journal/archives/archive-082000.php
Tuesday, August 8, 2000 (comments)

I'm less sick, and livin' it up at DMS! PS...Biswanath Halder (that odd old
Indian guy you always see at Fribley and Leutner) lives on the third floor
of my apartment. . . .

http://www.iancharnas.com/journal/archives/archive-012001.php
Saturday, January 13, 2001 (comments)

Woke up to the sound of Biswanath Halder calling so I can take him to this
place where they'll fix his computer. He's this wierd Indian guy that lives
on the third floor, I could go on and on about it but he gives Indians a bad
name so I won't. . . .

Could Biswanath Halder Indian Muslim?

[click here]

The E-mail address is one of the ones he uses.

UPDATE: Reader Neil Farbman points out:

The link in the last part of your posting of Mike O'Ronain's email (the part asking asking "Could Biswanath Halder Indian Muslim?") seems to be a vote by Biswanath Halder against the creation of a discussion group for Indian Muslims, so I think it's hardly evidence that he is Muslim.

Sounds right to me. I should also have made clear in the original post that I haven't checked the links or the contents (I've added that to the first paragraph now), but was just passing along the e-mail that I received.

 
[Eugene Volokh, 7:01 PM]
Alleged Case Western's killer past libel lawsuit: Reader Gerry Canavan points to this site that contains various documents relating to this suit. I haven't looked closely at them, but they do seem to shed some light on Biswanath Halder's personality. Some details of the libel seem connected to how he was behaving during the killings.

 
[Eugene Volokh, 5:33 PM]
"Hospital seeks Klingon speaker": I found the key factual assertion -- that of the 60,000 mental patients in Multnomah County, enough insist on speaking only Klingon that this justifies hiring a special interpreter -- to be hard to believe; but I thought I'd pass this article from cnn.com along in any case:

Position Available: Interpreter, must be fluent in Klingon.

The language created for the "Star Trek" TV series and movies is one of about 55 needed by the office that treats mental health patients in metropolitan Multnomah County.

"We have to provide information in all the languages our clients speak," said Jerry Jelusich, a procurement specialist for the county Department of Human Services, which serves about 60,000 mental health clients. . . .

"There are some cases where we've had mental health patients where this was all they would speak," said the county's purchasing administrator, Franna Hathaway.

County officials said that obligates them to respond with a Klingon-English interpreter . . . .

 
[Eugene Volokh, 4:45 PM]
Soft America and Hard America: InstaPundit is right: This piece by Michael Barone is definitely worth reading.

 
[Eugene Volokh, 1:27 PM]
A rare opportunity: Little Green Footballs points us to a Web page that apparently belongs to the alleged Case Western killer, Biswanath Halder. LGF specifically points out to Halder's antiwar activism, but the rest of the Web site, including his resume is interesting, too. I doubt that it gives one that much insight into the killer's mind, but who knows -- perhaps it might; and anyone with an Internet connection can try to figure it out.

     One point that may be worth flagging: His older resume reports that he got his B.S. degree in India in 1963, which suggests that he's likely (though of course not certainly) about 60; news accounts say he's 52. Obviously, this might mean the site belongs to the wrong guy, but it does show him as a 1999 MBA from Case Western, which matches the Web site; and it seems unlikely that there'd be two Biswanath Halders that fit this description. In any event, perhaps that is an interesting item, albeit a fairly small one, that one can get from the site (assuming, of course, that the site is honest, and that this is the same Halder); might there be other such items?

UPDATE: The AP story has been revised to say that Halder is 62, which fits the resume better; and other details suggest that this is the same Biswanath Halder.

 
[Eugene Volokh, 12:12 AM]
Case Western shootings: Matt Rustler has some thoughts.

 
[Eugene Volokh, 5:04 PM]
Hypocrisy: Apropos this post from yesterday morning, Tom Round pointed me to a nice quote from an article by Jamie Boyle (a lawprof at Duke whom I know mostly through his work on intellectual property):

For some, integrity is attractive because we have given up on the notion of objectively correct moral positions and seek only consistency within a single person. (This idea can often be seen in the contemporary media where it is assumed that values are relative and actual assessments of good and evil impossible. In such a world the only way to sin, is to fall short of a standard that one has set oneself; thus hypocrisy and cover-up become the ultimate sins.)

 
[Eugene Volokh, 3:49 PM]
Judicial fashion errors: Patrick Belton's (Oxblog) complaints about proposed new attire for the English judiciary remind me of this unfortunate dress choice, from the highest state court of Maryland (the Maryland Court of Appeals):

And, no, it's not just this one judge's fault -- it's apparently their uniform, doubtless handed down from earlier days when people thought it actually looked good. Thanks to How Appealing, where I first saw these robes; incidentally, I vaguely recall some picture that also included a hideous-looking cap, just to complete the ensemble -- if that's not my imagination, and someone actually has a pointer to it, please e-mail it to me at volokh at law.ucla.edu.

UPDATE: It gets worse; reader Margaret Marks e-mailed me a pointer to this picture of the German Federal Constitutional Court, from Der Spiegel:

Ow.

FURTHER UPDATE: Reader Yasser Mawji writes "The pictures you've posted thus far are actually quite tame compared to the almost farcical Santa Claus outfits worn by the Justices of the Supreme Court of Canada," and points me to the following as evidence:

Yup, we have a new winner. (STILL FURTHER UPDATE: Reader Ken Landa points out that these are ceremonial dress robes, and not the normal ones; the court's usual robes are much more sedate.)

 
[Eugene Volokh, 3:39 PM]
Anne of Green Gables meets Sonny Bono: Well, not quite, but close enough. I understand that there's something of an Anne of Green Gables Cult, especially among the fairer sex, so I thought some readers might be interested in reading the following, from BNA's Internet Law News:

CANADA INTRODUCES L.M. MONTGOMERY COPYRIGHT TERM EXTENSION ACT

Canada has introduced a bill that would extend the copyright term for certain posthumously published works. Bill C-36, which may become known as the Lucy Maud Montgomery Copyright Term Extension Act, is of particular interest to the hiers of the Canadian author of Anne of Green Gables fame, whose unpublished work, including ten volumes of previously unpublished diaries, was scheduled to come into the public domain on January 1, 2004. If enacted, the bill would delay that until 2018. Bill at <http://shorl.com/dabyryvalebro> [Canadian Parliament] Backgrounder at <http://shorl.com/hijigrifrelito> [Industry Canada]

(Actually, this isn't quite as troubling as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which extended the term of protection for a huge range of published works, though some people might object to both laws on similar grounds.)

 
[Eugene Volokh, 2:32 PM]
Gun industry: I was talking to a journalist recently about gun laws, and he suggested that many gun control proposals fail because of opposition from the "powerful gun industry."

     Whatever one might say about the merits of gun control, the journalist's claim is mistaken. The gun industry, as the New York Times has pointed out (Mar. 18, 2000, and June 15, 1999), is composed of "small, marginally profitable companies," with a combined revenue of $1.5 billion to $2 billion per year. "By contrast, Ford and General Motors have revenues of over $140 billion a year each," and despite that, car design and use is pretty heavily regulated; likewise, alcohol, gambling, and many other industries (many of which are quite heavily regulated) are much more powerful than the gun industry. According to opensecrets.org, in the 2000 federal election cycle (the last one for which they have full information), the total political contributions (counting only those of $200 or more) from industry members, PACs, and employees were under $4.4 million, which made the industry the 64th ranked contributor out of the over 80 that opensecrets.org counted.

     The political power of the gun-rights movement stems not from the wealth or power of the industry, but from the number and passion of pro-gun-rights voters. The main force in these campaigns isn't the industry but the NRA, and, in the words of Prof. Robert Spitzer, a strong proponent of gun control,

The key to the NRA's effectiveness lies in its highly motivated mass membership and the organization's ability to bring pressure from that membership to bear at key moments and places. Central to this effectiveness is the fact that gun control opponents are more likely to engage in political action -- letter writing, contributing money, attending meetings, and the like -- than gun control proponents. As Congressional Quarterly observed, the NRA's strength rests with "a body of gun lovers linked by a common activity that continues even when the legislative front is quiet." And the New York Times observed: "The real power of the rifle association stems from the fervor of its members, their apparent devotion to a single, overriding issue, and their determination to judge politicians on a 'for-us-or-against-us basis."

(Robert Spitzer, The Politics of Gun Control 108.)

     I'd also say that the gun movement benefits from the support of many people who aren't NRA members but who are strong gun rights enthusiasts. But it's the pro-gun voters and activists, and not the gun industry, that are the main political force in favor of gun rights; and even the NRA itself is powerful only because of those pro-gun voters and activists.

 
[Eugene Volokh, 2:14 PM]
Assault weapons ban: Jacob Sullum criticizes it, quite soundly, in my view.

 
[Eugene Volokh, 1:34 PM]
Arggh: Just got out of a nearly 4-hour-long faculty meeting. At UCLA Law School -- though not at all law schools -- decisions about whom to hire and to promote are ultimately made by either the entire tenured or tenure-track faculty, or sometimes by the entire tenured faculty. Specialized appointments committees do play a role, but the ultimate decision whether to hire or promote someone is ultimately the faculty's, not the dean's or (generally speaking) the committee's. Whether this is a good system is an old debate, which I won't rehearse here. Suffice it to say, though, that while this system might be better than the alternatives, it sure isn't terribly pleasant. I love my job, but faculty meetings are not among its high points.

 
[Eugene Volokh, 5:18 AM]
Victory Day: Today is "Dien' Pobiedy" (Victory Day) in Russia; I assume it's still celebrated there, as it was in the Soviet years, when it was a huge holiday, much more than V-E or V-J Day in the U.S -- on May 9, 1945, the Germans surrendered to the Russians.

     The Russians -- in this post, I include under that name all the other nations of the Russian Empire, such as the Ukrainians -- did tremendous evil in Eastern Europe (though probably less than they did to their own people, in part because the absolute worst of the Soviet regime was mostly over by 1945); and many of their devastating losses in World War II (the number that I'd heard was 20 million Russians killed) flowed from Stalin's crimes and folly, both before the war and during, as well as from Hitler's invasion. Nonetheless, had the Soviet Union surrendered, and spared themselves some of that blood, Hitler would likely have been able to retain Europe, and kill and enslave who knows how many more people.

     Western Europe thus probably owes its freedom to the Russians as much as to the Americans, though obviously the Russians quickly depleted after the war any goodwill to which they might have been entitled. Likewise, my parents, who as Russian Jews would have been butchered had the Nazis prevailed, owe their lives to Stalin's refusal to surrender, though they rightly loathed nearly all of the Soviet regime's other decisions. It is of such odd realities that history is made.

 
[Eugene Volokh, 4:24 PM]
Another Bushism of the Day. Here's today's Bushism of the Day:

"I think war is a dangerous place." -- Washington, D.C., May 7, 2003

Here's the full context, which, as I keep saying, would have pretty useful for Slate to at least link to:

Q: Well, President Bush, you have expressed your condolences because of the death of the two Spanish journalists in Iraq. My question would be, do you think this was a mistake, firing against the Palestine Hotel, under which fire Jose Couso died? And, if so, would you apologize, do you think it's necessary to apologize before the Spanish government and the family of these journalists?

BUSH: I think war is a dangerous place. And I think that nobody would kill a journalist intentionally.

     With the context, it seems to me, the "Bushism" feels quite a bit different. While I might be wrong, the amusement value of the Bushism doesn't come from the reference to war as a place -- a reference that's literally unsound (a war is an event or a state of an affairs, not a place), but that might actually be either a permissible figurative usage (various non-places, for instance, are sometimes said to be "a bad place to be"), or at least a minor slip (check out the syntax of the first question that Bush was answering; people often do make slips in their oral remarks).

     Rather, the amusement comes from the quoted statement's seeming vacuousness: "I think war is a dangerous place." Well, duh!, one might think; what a rocket scientist he must be, declaiming sagely that he thinks war is a dangerous place. "War is hell," only derivative, bland, and mealy-mouthed.

     When one sees the context, however, the statement means something very different: Bush is stressing that these accidents will inevitably happen (because battlefields are dangerous places), probably suggesting that war correspondents knowingly face danger, and implicitly saying that since all we're talking about is an accident ("nobody would kill a journalist intentionally"), the condolences were enough and no further apology is required.

     Now I realize that the Bushism of the Day column is mostly trying to make a joke; but I think that, like many political jokes, it's a bit more than a joke: The suggestion is that Bush's statements substantively deserve to be mocked. But this time, like in some past Bushisms, looking at the statement in context provides a very different perspective. It's too bad that Slate doesn't provide any of that context, not even via a link.

 
[Eugene Volokh, 3:06 PM]
Academic Legal Writing now available through the West Group site: See here. Thanks to Alice of a mad tea-party for letting me know; the publisher told me it would be up soon, but I didn't realize it would be that soon.

 
[Eugene Volokh, 2:57 PM]
High school: Just came back from giving a lunchtime talk on guns to a student political club at Crossroads, a local private high school. They only gave me 30 minutes, so there wasn't time for a debate; I just gave some of the key data, and explained why I'm skeptical of gun control -- they should have someone else next week to present the other side. There were about a dozen students there (plus a teacher), and they seemed really interested in the subject. I much enjoyed it, as I expected I would.

 
[Eugene Volokh, 2:04 PM]
"Nullius in verba." This is one of my favorite mottoes -- it's the motto of the Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge, founded in 1663, and it means "nothing in words," a commitment to knowledge through experiment rather than scholastic theorizing.

     Of course, it does consign my own profession to irrelevance; but I like it anyway.

UPDATE: A little knowledge, or perhaps a little research, is a dangerous thing. Though I have certainly seen "nullius in verba" translated this way, Dr. Weevil (who knows his Latin) tells me, and Sasha echoes, that this is not the best translation (and possibly not even a plausible one, though that's less certain); the better translation is apparently "in the words of no one," and it might allude to a quote from Horace. That, the claim goes, would express a preference for experimentation as opposed to reliance on authority -- think of the Royal Society as an early version of the "Show-Me State."

     But, hey, I now like the motto of both translations, correct and otherwise. Double the fun!

 
[Eugene Volokh, 1:48 PM]
Political extremists vandalize professor's homes: The UCLA Daily Bruin reports the following, and a memo from the Vice Chancellor bears this out:

Animal rights protesters vandalized the home of two UCLA researchers last week, according to a police report filed by the victims.

On-campus demonstrations that coincided with World Week for Animals in Laboratories were followed by protests in some researchers' neighborhoods Monday.

John Schlag, a neurobiology professor, and Madeleine Schlag-Rey, a neurobiology researcher, two targets of animal rights activists, said their home was damaged by protesters.

At 10:15 p.m. Monday night, Schlag said they heard a lot of noise on the street, followed by loud banging and kicking on their door.

"The way it proceeded . . . we felt that the door was going to be kicked in," Schlag-Rey said.

The Schlags, whose research focuses on the mechanisms of human sight, filed a police report with the Los Angeles Police Department that listed a broken street lamp and a broken door window as a result of the vandalism. Neighbors told the police that the suspects were wearing masks and dark clothing.

It is not yet known whether anyone has been arrested in connection to the incident.

The following morning, the Schlags noticed that a screen in the front of their house had been broken by a large rock thrown from the street. . . .

Though the police report labels the suspects as "protesters," Erica Sutherland, a member of the loosely organized animal rights group that ran the past week's events on campus, said members of her organization "don't participate in any illegal activity."

Sutherland, a third-year sociology student, said that she and other Students for Animal Liberation members were involved in demonstrations outside researchers' homes where protesters "educated neighbors."

"I think it's incredibly important that neighbors know that they are living near animal abusers," Sutherland said. . . .

Sutherland explained that she sees home protests as "completely fair" because the animals that are utilized in research can't escape their cages, and so the researchers shouldn't be able to hide or escape either.

Schlag-Rey had a different view. She said she sees the home protests, along with fliers distributed in their neighborhood that label the Schlags as "fanatics," more as a means of intimidation. . . .

The Schlags' studies on visual systems and eye movement in monkeys and humans may help researchers better understand disorders like dyslexia and hyperactivity, they said.

Schlag-Rey added that knowing where visual centers are located in the brain is useful for neurosurgeons who remove brain tumors; this information would allow them to steer clear of damaging patients' visual capabilities.

The Schlags emphasize that the protesters actions will not deter them from their research.

"We as researchers are not intimidated -- we are not hiding," Schlag-Rey said.

Pretty similar story to some anti-abortion extremism; too bad that the Los Angeles Times didn't cover this -- though the crime is fairly minor, the attempt to intimidate researchers for political reasons seems newsworthy. Naturally, such vandalism ought to be punished, though that's hard to do when the protesters wear masks. Cities are also constitutionally allowed to bar even peaceful residential picketing (the Supreme Court so held in Frisby v. Schultz (1989), which involved anti-abortion protesters), but to my knowledge Los Angeles doesn't have such an ordinance.

 
[Eugene Volokh, 11:46 AM]
Bennett's losses: It now appears, according to an interview quoted in The Corner, that one of the authors of the stories about Bill Bennett is saying the total losses were somewhat over $1 million over ten years, not $8 million -- i.e., a $100,000/year hobby:

SCARBOROUGH: OK, did he lose $8 million, though? He reported $8 million in losses, but is it minus $8 million?

GREEN: No, no, let's be real clear about that. No, no, let's be clear about that. That is net loss more than $1 million. These gambling records that we've got, they show losses, they show wins. He hit plenty of jackpots, $10,000, $15,000, $40,000, up to $80,000 jackpots. The problem is, is, he'd turn around and he would play them right back.

Makes me especially glad that I updated my original post very shortly after I initially posted it to reflect the uncertainty about the facts:

Bill Bennett and gambling: People are condemning Bill Bennett, who has taken on the role of a spokesman for virtue and morality, for what seems to be a gambling habit that has lost him $8 million over the last ten years. (UPDATE: Several people suggested the $8 million might be gross losses, without any offset for winnings; I checked several press accounts, and they've generally said that he's lost over $8 million over the last decade, which in normal parlance means net losses. The Newsweek article, for instance, says "Some casino estimates put his total losses over the past decade at more than $8 million." Nonetheless, Bennett suggests that he's "come out pretty close to even," though others doubt this, so it's possible that the reported losses don't include winnings. See here for the New York Times account, which reflects this uncertainty.)

Losing over $1 million is still not "pretty close to even" in my book, though the term "pretty close" is a relative one; when the initial allegation is that you lost over $8 million, a response that, no, you came out "pretty close to even" means something different that if you were initially alleged to have lost just the $1 million. But more importantly, the change in accounts reminds us that we're not sure what the actual number was -- over $1 million, more, or less.

 
[Eugene Volokh, 10:30 AM]
Have a friend or family member in law school? If you do, it seems to me that my brand spanking new Academic Legal Writing: Law Review Articles, Student Notes, and Seminar Papers -- personalized, if you'd like -- would be a thoughtful and useful gift. If the person is on a law journal, he may need to write a so-called "student note," which is essentially a student-written scholarly article; but in any event, if he takes any seminar classes, he may need to write a seminar paper. Unfortunately, while law schools require students to write these sorts of works, they never really teach them how to do it; the first-year writing class teaches legal writing generally, not academic legal writing in particular.

     If your friend or relative has just gotten onto a law journal, is just entering law school, or is starting the second or third year (most academic writing happens in those years) -- or is even out of law school, but interested in getting into teaching, or in writing law review articles for other purposes -- the book could be very useful. For some blurbs for the book from some top people (former Stanford dean Paul Brest, New Republic legal affairs editor and law professor Jeff Rosen, Bryan Garner [editor of Black's Law Dictionary and noted writer on legal writing], and others), plus the Foreword (by Judge Kozinski), the Table of Contents, the Introduction, and part of Part I, see here. The book is 189 pages long (not counting the endnotes and the index): meaty and thorough, but not daunting.

     If you'd like to buy a personalized copy of the book, just send me (volokh@mail.law.ucla.edu) a paypal draft for $23.95 ($18.95 cover price, plus $4 to cover postage and the envelope, and $1 to cover the paypal fee), or $25.60 if you're in California, to cover the sales tax (yes, I will pass it along to the state), together with (1) the name and address to which you want the book sent, and (2) the inscription you'd like me to use. Or, if you prefer snail-mail, just send a check (for those amounts minus the paypal $1) and those two all-important pieces of information to:

Eugene Volokh
UCLA School of Law
405 Hilgard Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90095

If you'd like an unpersonalized copy, I'd be happy to provide that, too, though you'll also be able to buy the book soon from amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com, and it's already available from the West Group site.

 
[Eugene Volokh, 9:00 AM]
Mark Kleiman on drugs: Mark Kleiman, who's one of the nation's top drug policy experts, reacts to a Slate piece on hallucinogens.

 
[Eugene Volokh, 8:53 AM]
From Stu's Views, which I recommended a week or so ago:

 
[Eugene Volokh, 7:23 AM]
Hypocrisy: Jonah Goldberg, in The Corner argues (as I have) that many of the "he's a hypocrite" arguments against Bennett actually rest on claims that his distinctions are wrong, and not really that he's hypocritical. He then goes on to say:

But for some reason this culture has a real problem saying people are wrong, but thinks it's easy to call people hypocrites. Worse, our culture thinks it's worse to be a hypocrite than to be wrong.

     I think this is an accurate and important point. Many people are reluctant to argue that people as wrong, because we realize that many moral disagreements come down to differences in fundamental moral axioms. We may believe that people who don't share our axioms are wrong, but we know we can't prove our axioms or disprove theirs, so arguing that they're wrong seems unsatisfying. "You're wrong, life doesn't begin at conception." "No, you're wrong, it does." People who like logic, and like to feel that they've won on logical grounds, don't much like these arguments -- some are embarrassed by them (perhaps because out of a sort of moral relativism as good manners, which suggests it's impolite to condemn others' moral axioms), some think they're practically unlikely to persuade, and some think that they're just logically unsatisfying.

     Arguments based on supposed inconsistency, though -- either hypocrisy, where a person's actions are allegedly inconsistent with his theories, or simple inconsitency, where two of his theories seem inconsistent each other -- seem more promising. The arguments don't require people to accept your moral axioms, or require you to condemn theirs; they operate based on logic alone. "X's arguments aren't just inconsistent with my views -- they're inconsistent with X's own. X, you should change your views. Others, you shouldn't accept X's positions." And sometimes such arguments can indeed be very effective: If you can show something to someone using arguments drawn from their own worldview, they're much more likely to accept it.

     But often these arguments about logical inconsistency are actually just arguments about moral axioms pretending to be purely logical arguments. "Those conservatives are such hypocrites -- they say they're pro-life, but they also vote for capital punishment." Well, that's because they draw a moral distinction between the lives of innocents and the lives of murderers. You may disagree with them on the merits, but this disagreement turns on differences in moral axioms, not the other side's lack of logic. (One can also object that "pro-life" is a bad term because it doesn't embody this distinction, and I'm therefore not wild about it; but, just like "pro-choice," which is surely not in favor of all choices, it's a term we're more or less stuck with for now, for want of a really good and politically acceptable alternative.) Likewise when people say "Those liberals are so inconsistent -- they support sexual freedom and freedom of expression, but not economic freedom." That's not inconsistency -- it may be error, but not inconsistency; liberals simply draw a moral distinction between noneconomic and economic life that others don't fully accept, and one can't dismiss this distinction as logically inconsistent, even though one can argue that it's morally or pragmatically unsound.

     Incidentally, this has a parallel in constitutional arguments: At times people argue that the courts shouldn't enforce liberty claims (such as ones based on substantive due process or a right to religious accommodation) outside certain specific enumerated guarantees, or at least grudgingly accept that the courts won't enforce such claims, because they concede that the legislature is generally entitled to enact its moral judgments (whether about sex or about economic life) into law; but they suggest that courts should apply equal protection rules to require that the judgments be implemented consistently. "OK, we reluctantly accept that the government may regulate sexual practices because it thinks they're immoral, but it should do so evenhandedly, without discriminating between homosexuals and heterosexuals." "Fine, we have no basis to set aside the legislature's judgment that businesses shouldn't charge above a certain rate, but there's no reason for it to impose them on some businesses but not on others." "We concede that the legislature may choose to ban marital status discrimination in housing without providing an exemption for landlords whose religion prohibits them from renting to unmarried couples, but the legislature may not then carve out an exemption for small apartment buildings where one unit is occupied by the landlord without also providing an equal exemption for the religious landlords."

     Sometimes, this equality argument might work, either because there's just no conceivable explanation for the different treatment, or because we have some reason to think that the grounds for distinction (e.g., race, religion, sex, etc.) are improper. But often the equality argument is just a way to bring up the very sorts of objections to the legislature's moral judgment that used to be made under the now-rejected liberty arguments. The distinctions within the legislative enactment are often as much part of the legislature's moral judgment as is the enactment itself: The legislature might just think that sexual practices done by certain people are morally different from sexual practices done by others, that the relationship between producer and consumer in some businesses is morally different from the relationship in others, or that landlords who have to live in a small complex have greater moral claims to choose their tenants than other landlords.

     Courts could, of course, challenge the propriety of these distinctions. But they'd have to acknowledge that they're second-guessing the legislature's moral judgment, rather than just applying impersonal, objective standards of logic.

     So I say again that it's quite proper to argue against people on moral grounds; and sometimes, it makes sense to claim that one's opponents are inconsistent. But often the other side's supposed logical inconsistencies in reality reflect substantive moral disagreement (or sometimes empirical disagreement), and not logical inconsistency at all. Better then to acknowledge that, and join the debate on the moral or empirical grounds, which are the real grounds of disagreement.

 
[Eugene Volokh, 5:21 AM]
Where are men from? Women, it is said, are from Venus, and men are from Mars. But many men (including me) just aren't very martial. Maybe we're from other planets: The mercurial are from Mercury; the jovial from Jupiter (that's where I'm from); the saturnine from Saturn. Sailors are from Neptune -- there's actually a very old and now obsolete term, "Neptunist," which referred to "[a] nautical person." The solitary (OK, the root is wrong here, but work with me here) are from the Sun. And the really far-out and eccentric are from Pluto.

     What's more -- and I am not making this up -- homosexuals are apparently from Uranus. From my New Shorter Oxford: "Uranian . . . . B n. A homosexual. Now arch. or literary." This is attested to the early 20th century, with "uranism" for "homosexuality" dating to the late 19th; I have seen it credited to Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, a German lawyer and early gay -- er, Uranian -- rights activist. The etymology apparently goes back to Plato, but philosophy makes my head hurt, so I'll leave it at that.

 
[Eugene Volokh, 5:18 AM]
Private detectives and privacy: I've been thinking about writing a very short law review article on this issue some time, but I'm not sure I've fully thought through all the counterarguments -- maybe you folks can help.

     I have long been skeptical about claims that the law should recognize a right of informational privacy -- a right to stop others from communicating certain information that they've learned about you, whether it's your sexual practices, your shopping habits, or what have you. I think that contracts in which one side promises confidentiality should be fully enforceable, and I think that sometimes such a promise should be inferred into a contract (unless one of the parties specifically disclaims any such promise) when social expectations lead people to assume that confidentiality is being promised. But a broader right, often defended as giving us the right to "control . . . information about ourselves", is not proper. I've even argued that such a right would often violate the First Amendment.

     So here's my question: If you believe that people really do have a right to control information about themselves -- and therefore that businesses shouldn't be able to gather and communicate such information (let's set aside the contract argument for a moment) -- then shouldn't private detectives be outlawed? After all, the job of private detectives is generally to find out information about other people, information that they would like to keep confidential. This might be whether they're committing adultery, or whether they're embezzling from their employer, or whether they're involved with someone's daughter -- but all of this involves gathering information about other people.

     And even if the information is something that we think people don't have a legitimate right to keep private (e.g., their embezzling), in the process of gathering this information, the private detective may often gather other information: How much money the subject seems to be spending, what his vices are, who his acquaintances are, what he's bought recently, and so on. They may gather it by following the person, by questioning people from whom they've bought things, and so on. Even when the private detective is investigating a runaway child, whom the parents are entitled to try to find, the detective may report to his employers private information about lots of people who are related to the investigation, but who aren't guilty of any crime. This is the very sort of information that people often say should be kept private, and that the law should prevent others from communicating.

     Now one possible distinction is that private detectives gather information only when it really needs to be gathered (e.g., when someone might be committing a crime or violating a trust), while businesses that gather information about what we buy do so for less worthy reasons. But is that really so? There's no requirement that detectives' investigations be for noble motives; they could be animated by a worthy desire to defend oneself against crime or breach of trust, an unworthy desire to snoop into one's children's lives, or simply economic self-interest, akin to that which animates much gathering by businesses of information about clients and potential clients.

     Another possible distinction is that the detective usually conveys the information only to one person, which isn't much of a breach of privacy. But this person remains generally free to communicate it to others -- and, what's more, the person who hires the detective is often the one in whose hands the personal information about the investigated person will be most dangerous. What's the greater invasion of privacy -- that your personal dealings have been revealed to your parents, your prospective business partner, or your spouse (and perhaps the detective actually doesn't find evidence of adultery, but rather finds that you've done things that are not improper but that you legitimately want to keep private), or that various businesses know the kind of goods you buy at the supermarket?

     Finally, of course, most of us don't have to worry about being investigated by private detectives. Detectives are expensive, and our dealings are rarely of enough interest to people who are rich enough and motivated enough to hire detectives. But that just means that the aggregate privacy harm caused by private detectives to the average person is relatively small; the harm caused to the people who are investigated may be quite large.

     Naturally, the law should prohibit detectives from doing certain things -- breaking into our homes, probably photographing into our bedrooms with telephoto lenses (this may already be tortious), bribing our psychotherapists or lawyers to reveal information that they have a legal duty to keep private. But if you really believe that all of us have the right to control information about ourselves, shouldn't private detective work be per se illegal in the great majority of cases? Conversely, if you think that we should have a right to learn information about people, and to hire others to help them get this information, then how can we at the same time have a right to "control information . . . about ourselves"? Let me know, please, what arguments I've missed -- I may well use your input in my article, though I may or may not respond to it on-blog.

     (Incidentally, for purposes of this question I set aside the situation where the subject has consented to the investigation, perhaps as a condition of being hired into some sensitive position. Let's focus on detectives investigating people without their consent.)

 
[Eugene Volokh, 12:44 AM]
The campaign reform case and retirements: From Roll Call:

The possibility that one or more Supreme Court justices could retire prior to the high court’s consideration of the new campaign finance law is sparking concern among legal experts that such a development could leave the high-profile case one judge short.

Amid speculation that Chief Justice William Rehnquist may hang up his robe when the court’s current term ends in July, and in light of the Democratic-led blockade of judicial nominees in the Senate, some campaign finance lawyers are wondering if the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act might end up being decided by an eight-member court, or if such a court would be able to come to any decision at all. . . .

But if the fate of the McCain-Feingold law is squarely in Rehnquist’s hands, the fate of Rehnquist’s possible replacement could depend a great deal upon folks like Feingold, who is the ranking member on the Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution, civil rights and property rights. If Rehnquist were to retire, “We can expect that if President Bush nominates someone who the [Democrats] view as not being centrist, there’s likely to be a confirmation fight,” [Loyola law professor Rick] Hasen concluded. Indeed, at a hearing this week on the breakdown in negotiations on judicial nominations, Feingold defended Democrats’ right to filibuster judicial nominees with “extreme views” that the “White House seems intent” on pushing through “in the shortest possible time.” . . .

If eight Supreme Court justices were to end up deadlocked 4-4 on campaign finance issues, last week’s controversial lower court decision, which struck some provisions in the soft-money ban and altered how issue ads are regulated, would become the rule of the land for the foreseeable future.

One D.C.-based GOP attorney who is also involved in the case said there is a “real likelihood” that any Bush nominee to the Supreme Court could face a long and sticky confirmation process given the current state of regard to judicial nominees.

“But I would be surprised if Justice Rehnquist or anyone else retires before September or October, when this is likely to be heard or decided by year-end,” the lawyer continued. “In other words, a retirement could come but not be effective until a later date -- and this case would be done by then, I presume.” . . .

 
[Eugene Volokh, 11:17 PM]
Writers' block unblocked (or was it just plain laziness?). I'm happy to report that the article that I've been procrastinating about for the last few weeks -- a short essay on free speech and intellectual property that I promised to a conference put together by the University of Houston School of Law (the conference will fortunately be in Santa Fe, which I'm told is rather more scenic than Houston) -- has now been going very nicely. I've generally found that once I get a rough draft, no matter how rough, about 3/4 done, both finishing the last quarter and polishing the rest are much less painful. That's not true for everyone; some people like writing the first draft, but hate polishing it. But this is the way I work.

     Actually, if I really felt that "it just wouldn't write," and thus had to regretfully withdraw from the conference (something that I don't do lightly, and have never done this late in the process), I had a way to start my withdrawal: "Houston, we have a problem." But I'm certain that I would have felt too mortified to use something that jocular. Fortunately, it won't have to happen; I'm pretty sure that this won't be one of my most significant pieces, I'm sorry to say -- I do have some novel things to say, but not that many, and not that important -- but it ought to be fairly good, and I think it may be useful in some ways. Plus, this is certainly a hot area, so I will be glad to have written some more in it. (One reason I accepted the invitation to the conference was precisely that I knew I wanted to say something about the topic, and I correctly thought that only a looming deadline would be able to make me do that.)

 
[Eugene Volokh, 6:01 PM]
Current release date for Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver appears to be, according to the publisher's site, September 23, 2003. But it's slipped before, and might again.

 
[Eugene Volokh, 4:40 PM]
Time magazine story: I sent the Time people an e-mail referring to Orin's post below, and requesting that they publish a correction. Let's see what they'll do.

 
[Eugene Volokh, 4:27 PM]
Bill Bennett:
.

Here's the column about this, with ordering instructions -- it's apparently a real product. I've been in some measure defending Bennett, but this seems pretty funny, and a fair dig. Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for the pointer.

 
[Eugene Volokh, 1:56 PM]
More on slot machines: A reader, who says he works on slot machine software, reports that the matter varies from state to state:

Actually, there are some video poker machines that have 102% paytables. The casinos don't set many of them to that paytable (for obvious reasons), but they are out there. And if you consider that a 98% slot is just a little worse odds than craps, and better odds than roulette (or most other table games), you can come very close to even or better than even in the long run. . . .

New Jersey doesn't allow any slot to have a payback exceeding 100%.
Minnesota limits payback to less than 95%.
Most reel-based slot machines in Vegas have a top paytable of 98.5-99%, and most of the slots on the floor are set to that paytable. When you're paying 98 cents for dollar bills, volume makes all the difference.

(By the way, I should say that while I've heard of these better-than-even-with-perfect-play machines, I'm rather skeptical that it's practically possible for people to exploit them, especially over the long run -- among other things, I suspect that at some point the casino will kick the best players out. Still, it does seem like slots and video paker can be less of a losing game than some suggest.)

 
[Eugene Volokh, 12:08 PM]
Slot machine payouts: This is highly tangential to the Bennett matter, but the question came up, so I thought I'd pass along some of the information that I've seen. Press accounts report that at many casinos, the payouts for some machines are over 95% (N.Y. Times, July 14, 1996), and that at some casinos, they're over 98% (Riverside Press Enterprise, Feb. 22, 2002); some Web sites likewise say that some machines pay out over 98%, or even that with perfect play at video poker (highly unlikely, of course) that one can indeed win over the long run, and that the casinos make their profit on the many imperfect players. I'm not sure how trustworthy the Web site accounts are, or for that matter, how trustworthy the press accounts are. But I know that some people have assumed that slot machines usually have a take of 10% or more, and that doesn't seem to be true as to many slot machines.

     Of course, I am not advising that you play the slots; I don't like gambling myself, and I find slot machines to be among the most dispiriting and unpleasant forms of gambling. The limits of my gambling are an occasional game of poker, literally nickel ante, with low raise limits, where people usually leave at most $10 up or $10 down (and of course, with no take for the house). I can see why poker with friends might be pleasant, but solitary gambling in a commercial establishment gives me the creeps. But while gambling is a losing proposition, it appears to be not quite as much of an expected loss per pull as some have suggested.

 
[Eugene Volokh, 11:32 AM]
The book has arrived! Yup, my Academic Legal Writing is here, in print, glossy cover and everything. I'm so excited! Unfortunately, it's not yet available on amazon.com or barnesandnoble.com (the latter has a page set up for it, but lists it as not yet available) -- drat.

 
[Eugene Volokh, 9:51 AM]
i-Loo: A Microsoft press release:

MSN Launches World's First ‘Internet Loo’

New WWW.C Offers Convenience Surfing Relief to Festival-goers this Summer

London - UK - April 30th 2003 - The UK’s most popular website msn.co.uk is creating the world’s first ‘Internet Loo’. The iLoo will be mobile and is part of MSN’s mission to allow instant logging on ‘anytime and any place’.

In time for the summer festival season, MSN is in the process of converting a portable loo to create a unique experience for surfers looking for an alternative to the bog-standard festival loo experience. Users will be able to sit down, undock a wireless keyboard and conveniently access the first ever WWW.C.

A plasma screen will be located directly in front of them which can be adjusted to a desired height level. MSN is also in talks with toilet paper manufacturers to produce special web paper for those in need of URL inspiration.

Tracy Blacher, Marketing Manager at MSN said: “The internet’s so much a part of everyday life now that surfing on the loo was the next natural step. People used to reach for a book or mag when they were on the loo but now they’ll be logging on! It’s exciting to think that the smallest room can now be the gateway to the massive virtual world.’ . . .

MSN plan to install an external ‘Hotmail station’ on the outside of the MSN iLoo so people can do something useful while they queue. This will include a waterproof keyboard and plasma screen enabling users to surf the Internet whilst waiting.

The MSN iLoo has passed the planning stages and is in the early phase of construction. Details of its launch have not yet been announced but the MSN iLoo will be making an appearance at a majority of the summer season festivals. . . .

I wonder, though: (1) Given how unpleasant portable toilets are, wouldn't most people want to be done as quickly as possible, which means with a minimum amount of distraction? (2) If that's not so -- if people will indeed use this -- is it really good to have portable toilets that give people an incentive to occupy them longer, and keep others from using them for more urgent matters than Internet surfing? If I were either a festival organizer, I'd be hesitant to get something that gives users an incentive to linger, unless I get a really hefty cut from the access fees.

     On the other hand, maybe this is just a "performance art as corporate promotion" gimmick.

 
[Eugene Volokh, 9:40 AM]
Another word puzzle: This one is, I think, pretty hard. There's a word that, if you add a "u" to it (not necessarily at the beginning), becomes nearly its opposite. (Just add the "u"; don't rearrange any other letters.) The original word is somewhat vulgar slang, and the new word is rather fancy and somewhat uncommon, though not ridiculously so. The words aren't precise antonyms, but they're somewhat close to it. Certainly calling a person one of these words (there's a hint for you) is practically inconsistent with calling him the other. The answer is here.

 
[Eugene Volokh, 9:39 AM]
Gambling, taxes, and Bennett: My friend and colleague Victor Fleischer, of the Tax Policy blog, e-mails:

The casinos are likely to know how much Bennett won, as well as what he lost. Among other things, if he wins more than $10,000 the casino has to fill out a tax form. (Gambling winnings are, of course, taxable income, and losses may only be offset to the extent of winnings.) [From another e-mail: Nevada Gaming Regulation 6A requires that gaming patrons present identification and complete a currency transaction report, which is submitted to the Board within fifteen days when more than $10,000 worth of chips is purchased.] Casinos also track high rollers very closely, monitoring how much time they spend in the casino and what games they play as well as how much they win or lose.

Nonetheless, it seems possible from the context of the story that the casinos might be out to humiliate Bennett, in which case it's possible they distorted the reporting of his gambling experience by reporting gross losses rather than net. This would be highly unusual, given how gamblers and casinos discuss these things, but I suppose it's possible.

More likely, like most gamblers,