A few weeks back I commented on a petition organized by Berkeley law students calling on Professor John Yoo to repudiate the opinions he expressed in legal memoranda while working at the Justice Department or resign his post at the law school (see posts here, here, and here). These posts produced some back-and-forth with Michael […]
Archive | June, 2004
Slate praises the National Enquirer:
No, really; and I’d heard similar things from others.
Sunday Song Lyric:
Former Midnight Oil frontman Peter Garrett is once again running for Parliament in Australia. (He left the band in 2002.) While I’ve never been much of a fan of Garrett’s politics (or those that infuse Midnight Oil’s lyrics), I’ve always been a big fan of the band, especially once I saw them live in 1988 […]
Brief Berlin Blogging:
Soon I leave for the airport, and thence to Amsterdam; and,if KLM functions more efficiently this time than it did on the way here, thence to Chicago in very short order. A few days on the ground, followed by Salt Lake City,followed by…no travel. Idouble checked my Palm Pilot to be sure of this when […]
E-Hugo Black:
Justice Hugo Black, it is said, always carried a copy of the Constitution in his pocket. Now you can be a high-tech Hugo Black, with the Constitution for the iPod, brought to you by the American Constitution Society. Thanks to Ian Millhiser for the pointer.
Interviews and game theory:
How do you elicit accurate character information from people who are completely on guard? “Some interviewers have been known to call job seekers at home and pose as telemarketers to gauge how those candidates react. Are they rude? Do they yell? Or are they polite but insistent that they don’t want to purchase anything? How […]
Jordan and the West Bank:
A further indication that Israel is exercising the “Jordanian option” to stabilize the West Bank, and that Jordan is going along.
Torture memo:
Several people have e-mailed me asking whether I’ll blog about the torture memo. The answer is probably “no,” and I thought I’d briefly explain why not — partly to forestall future e-mails, and partly because I think it’s interesting to think about how various writers decide what to ewrite about, and maybe this post might […]
Quid pro quo theory of the Religion Clauses:
I generally support an equal treatment view of the Religion Clauses; the Establishment Clause generally bars discrimination in favor of religion, and the Free Exercise Clause generally bars discrimination against it. There are plausible arguments against such a view, especially (as to the Establishment Clause) if one is an originalist. But given the precedents that […]
Rights and corporations:
A reader asked me to elaborate on my comment about corporations having rights; I thought I’d therefore repost something I put up over two years ago, in the first months of the blog’s life. Note that the following speaks only of corporate constitutional rights — naturally, corporations have many rights protected by common-law and statute […]
They’re Making It Up:
Every so often I’ve heard people argue that “states and nations can’t have legal rights.” The claim isn’t just that states and nations don’t, as a moral matter, have basic human rights; it’s that it’s somehow wrong to talk about their legal rights. (For instance, some argue that the Second Amendment must secure individual rights, […]
Potsdam blogging:
On serious jetlag and KLM-induced annoyance, but enjoying the conference on religion and constitutionalism that brings me here. I hope to have a few hours to go to Berlin (for the first time) on Saturday before I leave; seems appropriate for the day after Reagan´s funeral. Looks like there´s lots of blogstuff I should be […]
One more item on positive rights,
and then I hope to stop. Steve Bainbridge writes: I locate the term “positive rights” in the context in which it was typically used in Cold War debates between Western democracies and the Socialist bloc. The latter typically defended their abysmal human rights records by saying that their system provide certain positive (a.k.a. economic a.k.a. […]
Rights:
Given my recent exchange with my friend and colleague Steve Bainbridge about positive and negative rights, I thought it might be interesting to give a slightly broader perspective on rights, at least as that term is used in American law and legal thinking. (None of this is new to Steve, but I thought it might […]
The Burning City:
Just finished rereading Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle’s The Burning City, and liked it as much as I did on first reading. I highly recommend it. I generally like most of what they’ve written, either together or separately; but this ranks as one of the best.