(the one that included "having a future time orientation, emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology, defining one form of English as standard, and identifying only Whites as great writers or composers").

Here's my earlier post about this definition on the Seattle school district's "Definitions of Racism" Web page. Here's the new version of the page, put up in response to complaints that were apparently prompted by today's op-ed in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Andrew Coulson (Cato) (praising school choice as the long-term solution for such problems). Here's Coulson's blog post (Cato@Liberty) on the subject.

L.A. County is out of jail space. The sheriff is therefore releasing some inmates though they've served less than 10% of their sentences. Other inmates, presumably ones whose release would, in the sheriff's view, be especially harmful, aren't being given this break.

There's generally no constitutional problem with that, even when this has unintended disparate racial impacts, or geographical impacts. Just as the police may constitutionally choose to police one area more than another when they think that area needs more police presence, and prosecutors may choose to prosecute some criminals but not others, so the sheriff isn't violating the Constitution (for instance, the Equal Protection Clause) through using his discretion — so long as he isn't considering the inmates' race, sex, religion, political views, or a few other attributes. Such discretionary decisions may be faulted as unfair, unwise, or violative of state law, depending on the circumstances, but they don't violate the Equal Protection Clause or other parts of the federal Constitutoin.

But here's a twist:

Over the years, the Sheriff's Department has maintained different release policies for men and women, even for those convicted of the same crimes.

Male and female inmates are housed in separate jail sections, and sheriff's officials said their release policies are based on the amount of space available and fluctuations in arrests.

Two years ago, women convicted of all but the most serious crimes were released immediately, serving none of their sentences. But in the last year, the department required women convicted of assault to serve 25% of their sentences while men served just 10%.

Klugman said he changed the policy earlier this month. Men and women now are eligible for release after serving 10% of their time....

When one's jail time turns on one's sex, that does pose a potential problem, both under the federal Equal Protection Clause, and under the state equivalent in the California Constitution, which has been interpreted as even more hostile to sex-based classifications.

Now the fact that the policy has sometimes favored women and sometimes men doesn't make it constitutional. Equal Protection Clause rights are individual — that Jane has gotten a break over John because of her sex in the past doesn't mean that Mary can be treated worse than Moe because of her sex today. This pattern does suggest that the sheriff's policy isn't animated by hostility to one or the other sex, but good intentions do not by themselves make sex discrimination impermissible. (Patterico criticizes the Times story for stressing in the lead paragraph only the discrimination against women, and saving the information that the discrimination has been against men in the recent past for later in the story; but whatever the journalistic objections to that might be, the point is not dispositive as a constitutional matter.)

The tougher questions are these:

1. The jail policy is an interesting hybrid. It seems to involve a facially sex-neutral rule: Inmates of less overcrowded jails get smaller sentence breaks. But this rule in turn operates based on the consequences of a facially sex-based rule: Women get put in one jail, men in another.

The separate-jails rule is definitely a sex classification, but it's constitutional (because the classification is needed for inmate safety). Does this mean that other rules that are based on the separate-jail system should also be treated as sex classifications, and should be presumptively unconstitutional? Or should we say that, if the other rules — here the "release based on overcrowding of the jail you're in" policy — are facially sex-neutral, they're OK even if they are based on the underlying sex-based system?

The one case I know of that's somewhat on point (though not identical), Jackson v. Thornburgh, 907 F.2d 194 (D.C. Cir. 1990), said such follow-up rules should be treated as nondiscriminatory: In this situation, the argument would go, women aren't being treated worse because they are women, but because they are in a less overcrowded prison. Likewise, the most on-point (though not very on-point) Supreme Court precedent, Personnel Administrator v. Feeney (1979), held that preferences for veterans in civil service hiring are constitutional: Though the process of becoming a veteran itself involves (constitutionally permissible) sex discrimination — even more in the past than now — any follow-up rules that turn on veteran status are not treated as sex discriminations.

On the other hand, I'm not sure that's right; when the inmates of a women's prison have to serve considerably more time for the same crimes than the inmates of a men's prison, it's hard to see how that can be treated as a sex-neutral classification. Moreover, as I mentioned above, California courts have read the California Constitution as being more hostile to sex classification than the U.S. Constitution is. The current California Constitution rule is that sex classifications must pass strict scrutiny, and not just the somewhat less demanding high-level intermediate scrutiny that the U.S. Constitution requires. Whether the California courts would also be more willing to treat ambiguous classifications as facially sex-based and therefore subject to strict scrutiny is hard to tell.

2. Say this is a sex classification, and subject to strict scrutiny; might it nonetheless be upheld? The policy of keeping women inmates locked up as long as jail space allows — even if that means keeping them locked up longer than comparable men inmates are held — would likely be seen as serving a compelling interest: keeping criminals off the streets. (I suppose some of them might be guilty of violating relatively less important laws, such as prostitution laws or drug possession laws, and it's possible but I think unlikely that courts would draw constitutional lines between what they see as the really important crimes and the less important crimes.)

Moreover, there don't seem to be less discriminatory (more "narrowly tailored") alternative means of serving the compelling interest. The sheriff can't lock up the men for the same amount of time as the women, because there's no space. And if he gives women the same break as the men, then he won't be serving the compelling interest adequately. (Apparently that's what the new policy does do, but the question is whether a court should have mandated this policy as a constitutional matter.) One solution is to get more prison space, but that can't be done overnight. Might the county be required to rent space in other counties' jails, to make sure that men serve the same length of time as women? Is that even possible? Would it be so costly that the county could justify not doing this? Not sure what the answer would be.

One could also put this question more broadly, and less legalistically: Even if sex discrimination is presumptively unconstitutional, should this presumption nonetheless be overcome by the need to prevent crime? Is this one of those interests that justifies, especially in difficult-to-fix temporary situations, a departure from our normal antidiscrimination norms?

In any event, this is a really interesting and conceptually complex question. My quick literature search found nothing written on it in the law reviews, but it seems much worth discussing.

Note that the Times story quotes me on the issue, but — as with many newspaper quotes — gives only part of my analysis: It quotes me as saying that the non-sex-related classifications are constitutional, but that the sex-related classifications are presumptively unconstitutional, but doesn't discuss the complicated questions raised in point 1 above.

UPDATE: Whoops! Meant to say "women aren't being treated worse because they are women, but because they are in a less overcrowded prison," but said "in an overcrowded prison" (the opposite of what I meant) by accident. Fortunately, commenter Sebastian Holclaw alerted me to the error -- many thanks.

Why, it "is not in the hands of the Jewish lobby in America." The Democratic Party, on the other hand, "must look quite often to Jewish money to finance candidates." And Israel, of course, "has become very much like adolf Hitler's Germany." That's Rep. Pete McCloskey, in an interview with Spotlight magazine (published by the Liberty Lobby), Oct. 11, 1982, at 14:

The Republican Party is not in the hands of the Jewish lobby in America as the Democratic Party must look quite often to Jewish money to finance candidates. If you look at "Scoop" Jackson, and Alan Cranston, and Teddy Kennedy -- any Democratic candidate for national office has more or less go to look to Jewish money, Republicans don't -- they are more business-oriented....

The battle [over Reagan's peace plan for the Mideast] will be for public opinion in the United States, whether the Congress will be willing to back Reagan and stand up to the Jewish lobby in this country. Congress has invariably knuckled under to the Israeli lobby in the past, and for Reagan's plan to succeed, Congress is going to have to be willing to cut off aid to the Israelis if they continue the West Bank settlements....

That's the same man who has referred to the "so-called Holocaust," in a speech before the Holocaust revisionists at the Institute for Historical Review. That's the same man who called Yasser Arafat a "man of peace" in the same exchange in which he harshly condemned Menachem Begin, Ariel Sharon, and Yitzhok Shamir.

It's also the same man who's running in the Republican primary for a House of Representatives seat, and who has been endorsed by the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times. The Times tells us he's "the best thing that could happen for the district, the state, the nation and possibly the Republican Party."

There's no doubt that Jews, like others, participate in the political process, and promote causes that they care about -- which sometimes include Israel. It's quite legitimate to discuss that. It's quite legitimate to criticize Israel; for all I know (not being particularly knowledgeable on the subject), Rep. McCloskey's substantive criticisms of Israel were quite sound, though the claim that Israel was "very much like Adolf Hitler's Germany" makes me skeptical of his other views.

But when someone suggests that the Democratic Party is "in the hands of the Jews," because it is beholden to "Jewish money" (the money of 2% of the U.S. population, a group that's somewhat but not vastly more prosperous per capita than the average person), that suggests a pretty serious lack of perspective. And when coupled with the more recent talk of the "so-called Holocaust" and the shocking double standard in evaluating Arafat and the Israeli leaders, it makes one wonder whether Mr. McCloskey is indeed quite as good as the Times and the Chronicle suggest.

is the name of a chemical, discussed by Real Scientists, And Everything. Thanks to Slate's Explainer for the pointer.

Funny AP story about a contract that apparently was indeed written in blood -- but that one party is still challenging as not being binding. Yes, the blood has no legal effect, but I'd have thought it would have had some moral influence on the signatories. Thanks to How Appealing for the pointer.

Sam Bagenstos, who's a lawprof at Washington University (St. Louis), an expert on (among other things) disabilities law, and in my experience a thoughtful and careful scholar — though one with whom I'd likely often disagree — has a forthcoming paper that takes this perspective. Here's the abstract (some paragraph breaks added); the paper is also available at that page:

This paper argues that, even if one does not endorse anti-abortion politics or agree with the intemperate attacks visited on the judges who were called upon to decide the Theresa Schiavo case, one ought still to conclude that the manner in which the federal courts handled the case offers cause for regret.

The federal courts rushed the case, and in so doing failed to provide meaningful consideration to the Schindlers' nonfrivolous claims under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The state court ordered Schiavo's feeding and hydration terminated for reasons that had everything to do with her medical condition — a condition that is clearly a "disability" under the ADA.

Although there may be good arguments that the state court did not violate the statute, the federal courts did not so much as advert to those arguments. And the case touched on a core concern of many disability rights advocates: the fear that nondisabled people, relying on erroneous understandings of the "quality of life" of people with disabilities, will unjustifiably terminate life-sustaining treatment. Given that background, the federal courts should have taken the time to give the Schindlers' ADA claim at least some serious consideration.

It is certainly understandable that the federal judges assigned to the case wanted to rush things. By the time the case got to federal court, the state courts had considered the matter with care and deliberation through six years of contested litigation. There was no particular reason to believe that the state courts had overlooked something, or that federal court intervention was necessary.

But it was not up to the federal courts to decide that question; Congress had explicitly directed them to address and resolve the Schindlers' claims de novo, notwithstanding any state court proceedings that came before. Federal judges might understandably have been put off by the way the statute singled out a particular case, by the lack of meaningful congressional deliberation in the highly charged atmosphere in which the statute was adopted, and by the attempts by many politicians to use the courts (as weapons or targets) in a political battle. But neither the district judge nor any of the judges on the three-judge appellate panel assigned to the case was willing to conclude that the statute was unconstitutional. In the absence of such a ruling, the federal courts should have given the parties and themselves enough time to give meaningful consideration to the Schindlers' claims.

I'm not a disabilities law expert, and thus can't judge the merits of Bagenstos's arguments. But my quick look, coupled with my respect for Prof. Bagenstos, suggests that the arguments are worth considering.

The appalling George Galloway (a British Member of Parliament) says that the assassination of Tony Blair would be "morally justified." Christopher Hitchens in Slate has the story.

By the way, I do agree that the assassination of an enemy Prime Minister is, as a matter of the laws of war, quite a different matter than the deliberate targeting of civilians who aren't participating in the war effort. Likewise, a Nazi attempt to assassinate Winston Churchill during World War II would not have been a war crime of the same sort as Nazi deliberate murders of civilians. (Depending on the circumstances, it might not have been a war crime at all, or it might have been a far lesser violation of the law of war.) Similarly, if al Qaeda were to simply attack the Pentagon, that too would not be a war crime on the level of deliberate targeting of civilians, though of course it would amply justify continued military retaliation against those who are making war on us. (I can't speak with similar confidence about the actual 9/11 attack on al Qaeda, because it involved a hijacked civilian aircraft, which might make the analysis different.) Not all of one's enemies' military attacks are at the same time inherently atrocities -- for some, the actions' moral repugnance stems from the ends to which they're aimed, rather than the means that are used -- though the attacks should be dealt with by force even when they aren't atrocities.

My point, therefore, is not that Galloway's position is an endorsement of the most serious sorts of war crimes. Rather, Galloway's position simply shows, as the title of the post indicates, that he's on the side of his country's (and my country's) enemies.

U.S. District Courts are generally known as

The United States District Court for the X District of Y

where X is "Northern," "Southern," "Eastern," "Western," "Middle," or nothing at all, and where Y is the name of the jurisdiction (e.g., Alaska, Texas, Guam, and the like).

Which currently operational U.S. District Courts do not precisely fit this pattern? Partial credit will not be given.

UPDATE: Note that the question is limited (three times!) to U.S. District Courts. If the court you're thinking of isn't a U.S. District Court, it doesn't qualify. If you think some court that isn't called a U.S. District Court is actually a U.S. District Court, please explain your position in any comment you post.

FURTHER UPDATE: If you think some court qualifies because of its nonstandard name -- for instance, one commenter suggests the "Connecticut District Court" -- please point to some evidence that the court is actually called that. The United States District Court for the District of Connecticut, for example, actually seems to be called the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut -- which fits the standard format described above -- and not the Connecticut District Court.

As SCOTUSblog reports, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear a very interesting and important new case on constitutional limits to punitive damages:

The Court said it would rule on two issues raised in Philip Morris USA v. Williams (05-1256). The first: if a court finds that a company's misconduct was outrageous, does that override the constitutional limit that holds punitive damages closely to the actual harm done -- the so-called "ratio" issue. [EV Note: This refers to the rule that punitive damages may not be more than some relatively small, likely single-digit, multiple of the actual harm.] The second is whether the Constitution forbids juries to provide damages to punish a company for the effects of its conduct on others, not directly before the court....

The case involves two rulings by the Oregon Supreme Court -- one decided after the Supreme Court had ordered the state tribunal to reconsider its earlier ruling in the wake of constitutional standards laid down by the Justices in their 2003 decision in State Farm v. Campbell. In both of its decisions, the Oregon court upheld a $79.5 million punitive damages award to a woman whose husband had died of lung cancer. The punitive award far exceeded the $521,485.40 ordered in compensatory damages. The widow's lawsuit was a wide-ranging attack on 50 years of Philip Morris' conduct in marketing cigarettes, and the Oregon court ruled that the punitive damages could be based in part upon injuries it found had been done to many Oregon smokers, not involved in the case.

The company's appeal said that each of the issues raised in the case arises regularly in punitive damages cases, and those questions have resulted in widely varying lower court rulings....

I should note that the firm with which I'm now affiliated (on a part-part-part-time basis), Mayer Brown Rowe & Maw, represents the tobacco company here. One of the reasons I joined Mayer is that they get involved in important, interesting, high-level cases like this one; congratulations to them on getting a certiorari grant.

I should also note that, when I blog about cases that I know Mayer is involved in (whether or not I am personally involved), I'll disclose the involvement (much as other bloggers, especially the SCOTUSblog bloggers, have done).

Today's story in the New York Times says:

Under the Senate bill, approved without objection by the House with no recorded vote, the "Respect for America's Fallen Heroes Act" would bar demonstrations within 300 feet of the entrance of a cemetery and within 150 feet of a road into the cemetery from 60 minutes before to 60 minutes after a funeral.

There are some possible problems with the law, which I discuss in more detail here. But the law does not, as the AP — and now the New York Times — suggests, "bar protests within 300 feet of the entrance of a cemetery and within 150 feet of a road into the cemetery from 60 minutes before to 60 minutes after a funeral."

By the way, does anyone know what's a reasonably reliable way of alerting the AP — not the particular newspaper that has run an AP story — to errors in its stories? Do any of you have a sense of whether such messages would be worthwhile? (For instance, do newspapers that rerun stories work off the master on the AP site, so that if the master gets corrected, future copies will no longer have the error? Have you ever had success yourselves with getting AP to make such corrections?) It would have been good if I could have persuaded the AP to correct the error when the story first ran; on the other hand, I don't want to take the time to send them messages about future errors if it seems likely that such messages will be futile.

Thanks to fellow lawprof Eric Freedman for the pointer.

UPDATE: Commenter Jason Fliegel correctly points out that the ban applies to all demonstrations -- including favorable ones -- not just to protests. I was using protest as an imprecise term for demonstration, but it's better to be precise, especially if all it means is changing one word; I've therefore changed the post (in which I used the term "protest") accordingly.