Archive | June, 2004

There were floods in rural Haiti (and nearby in the Dominican Republic) over the past few days. Thousands may have died — no one will ever know the casualty figures very exacly, at least in Haiti — and thousands more Haitians lost everything of the very, very little that they had. I spent some time […]

Eugene notes that LA County has decided to remove the cross in response to the ACLU lawsuit, even though he believes LA could have successfully defended the case. Some people are wondering why LA would have agreed to remove the cross in these circumstances. While the costs of defending the lawsuit is one possible explanation, […]

As always, Cathy’s work is much worth reading.

Walter Olson’s Rule of Lawyers: How the New Litigation Elite Threatens America’s Rule of Law is out in paperback. If you didn’t catch the hardback, you have a second,cheaper, chance to The buy the book. I highly recommend it, both for its comprehensive tour of the litigation fiascoes of our time–such as breast implants, tobacco, […]

I got to see The Day After Tomorrow over the weekend, and unlike some grumpy conservatives I could name, I thoroughly enjoyed it. The movie raised many interesting questions, the most important of which was probably, if there were another ice age, what would be the best SUV to have? I noted with amusement that […]

CNN reports (thanks to InstaPundit for the pointer): A group of Vietnam veterans opposed to John Kerry’s presidential campaign demanded Tuesday that he remove a photograph that appears in one of his television advertisements. In Tuesday’s “cease and desist” letter, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth called on Kerry’s campaign to stop what it said was […]

So reports the L.A. Times (thanks to How Appealing for the pointer). Here is my explanation of why the ACLU’s complaints are unsound; I think the County could have easily and successfully (though, of course, at some expense — there’s always some expense) defended the suit on these grounds.

It seems as though the present Israeli government has given up on any hope that the Palestinians will create a government capable of negotiating a stable peace agreement so long as Yassir Arafat is alive. Instead, Israel is activating the Jordanian and Egyptian options: encouraging these countries to be active in the West Bank and […]

Ze’ev Schiff of Ha’aretz reiterates a point I made on the VC a few weeks ago: Given human nature, occupation inevitably entails abuses, and a certain corruption of the occupiers. This isn’t a slamdunk argument against occupation (should the U.S. have not occupied Japan or western Germany after WWII, and let the Soviets march in […]

Hi. My name is Mike Rappaport, and I normally write for the Right Coast. My day job is being a Law Professor at the University of San Diego, where I write about and teach public law, especially structural issues concerning the Constitution. Over the years, though, I have taught and written on a variety of […]

Some time ago I ran across this blog post, Special Randy Barnett Constitutional Cryptograms, on Flog by Daniel Atkinson, but was unable to link to it at the time. So now I am finally posting it for the amusement of those who have heard my lectures or read my book.

As various readers have pointed out, some schmoe has set up his blog (apparently something having to do with search engines) at volokh.blogspot.com, our old home. When we moved our then-blogger-based blog to volokh.com, that freed up the old location, and blogger let people snag it from us. We certainly should have prevented that, presumably […]

As I sit sipping coffee in a plaza outside the Omni Hotel here in beautiful scenic downtown LA, I warmly welcome my friends from The Right Coast to the friendly confines of the Conspiracy. I have known most of them for many years BG (Before Blogging) and they, along with Larry Solum of Legal theory […]

(See UPDATE below.) Quoth Kevin Drum: everyone who looks seriously at federal spending for more than a few minutes knows perfectly well that the vast majority of spending goes to four things: Social Security, Medicare, national defense, and interest payments. Unless you propose large cuts in those programs, you just aren’t serious about “small government.” […]

I’m delighted to say that the University of San Diego law professors from The Right Coast — Gail Heriot, Sai Prakash, Mike Rappaport, Maimon Schwarzschild, Tom Smith, and Chris Wonnell — will be guest-blogging here from Wednesday, June 2 to Tuesday, June 8. This is really a first-rate group of accomplished scholars and thinkers, and […]