Archive | July, 2004

The New York Times: “In Israeli cities like Tel Aviv and Haifa, it is possible now to forget about the conflict, at least for a time. But on this side of the barrier, the conflict suffuses life. In June, Israeli forces regularly raided Jenin by night, arresting or killing young men the Army accused of […]

Ted Nugent. Yes, really.

Citizens of McLean, Virginia can relax. A local thief, who had stolen lawn ornaments from several properties in McLean and was captured in the act on video tape last week, has finally been caught. No charges are going to be filed against the bandit, who goes by the name “Magnum,” presumably because Magnum is a […]

An excellent column. An excerpt, though there’s a lot more good stuff there: On Hannity & Colmes, Gallagher asserted that the plank was a simple statement of a numerical fact. “If a neighborhood had 82 percent of the population that was Italian or a town had 82 percent of the population that was Polish, we’d […]

Saw Chris Isaak and the Silvertones tonight in Boston at the Fleet Pavilion. It was a great concert, though the sound system for the vocals was pretty harsh. Anyhow, here is what I wrote about last summer’s concert at Foxwoods: When is Real Faux? Which was actually a follow up to this previous post that […]

that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional. So said Sen. Rick Santorum on the NewsHour (see here, roughly at the 9 minute mark), explaining why the Federal Marriage Amendment is needed: The Supreme Court case in Lawrence versus Texas last year was very clear. The majority opinion was very clear. It signaled clearly that […]

Interesting little illustration of the way lawsuits against federal officials sometimes work, from the AP — both as to who pays, and as to the resulting limits on punitive damages. I express no opinion about whether this is the proper result, but it seems interesting: Former U.S. Rep. Bill Janklow was on duty when he […]

I hope to put out a second edition of my Academic Legal Writing book eventually. If any of you have used it, can you suggest any changes, or let me know what you’d like to see added? Please let me know, at volokh at law.ucla.edu. And if you run a legal Weblog that has some […]

Some research I was doing recently reminded me of the familiar line, “rape is a crime of violence, not a crime of sex.” It’s certainly true that rape (setting aside statutory rape and a few other unusual situations) is a crime of violence. I also suspect that most rapists aren’t just after ordinary sexual gratification, […]

In debates on Internet surveillance law, I often end up arguing that reports of privacy’s death have been greatly exagerrated. For example, I wrote a law review article in 2002 describing the effect of the USA Patriot Act on Internet surveillance law as The Big Brother That Isn’t. Two weeks ago, however, the First Circuit […]

France will have a referendum on the proposed EU constitution in the second half of 2005. (Story is in French.) Other bits and pieces from the President’s Bastille Day interview: Chirac reaffirmed his commitment to the 35-hour workweek but expressed support for liberalizing the law to increase the freedom of workers “who want to work […]

I’m struck by one thing on the list of who voted how on cloture on the FMA. The Republicans voting against cloture were Campbell, Chafee, Collins, McCain, Snowe, and Sununu. Campbell’s an odd duck. McCain is a funny combination of highly principled and incredibly self-important, devoted to his public standing as a contrarian, Republican who […]

Some research I was doing recently reminded me of the familiar line, “rape is a crime of violence, not a crime of sex.” It’s certainly true that rape (setting aside statutory rape and a few other unusual situations) is a crime of violence. I also suspect that most rapists aren’t just after ordinary sexual gratification, […]

In response to my post on statutory rape law in Brazil, a reader from the Phillippines informs me that the Phillippine penal code provides that in cases of rape “the subsequent valid marriage between the offender and the offended party shall extinguish the criminal action or the penalty imposed.” I find this a little less […]

Last week, the WSJ ran an op-ed by University of Chicago law professors Eric Posner and Adrian Vermeule that could best be described as anti-anti-torture memos. Although not defending the specific conclusions of the individual OLC memos on torture, the applicability of the Geneva Conventions to enemy combatants, and so on, the op-ed strongly challenged […]