Archive | September, 2004

When 60 Minutes II ran its story based on crude forgeries of Texas Guard documents, the humor site, Sharp as a Marble, ran a mock story entitled, “Dan Rather: Nigerian Mail is Authentic. Will be Retiring After Money is Transferred.” Dan Rather, of CBS News, is reported to have tendered his resignation from 60 Minutes […]

The 2004 MacArthur Fellows have been announced. Information here. As Brian Leiter has noted, these awards are often but misleadingly described as “genius grants.” It would seem more accurate to say that the awards are given to interesting people doing interesting work that the fellowship committee finds commendable and wants to recognize with an award. […]

Here’s an excerpt from a Institute for Religion & Democracy study of “Human Rights Advocacy in the Mainline Protestant Churches (2000-2003)”: Research Design We analyzed human rights criticisms made by four mainline Protestant denominations (the United Methodist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Episcopal Church and the Presbyterian Church U.S.A.) and two ecumenical […]

I was just thinking back to a particular set of incidents (the details need not detain us), and it struck me how important it is both to think outside the box and to understand why the box is there and why 95% of the answers are within it. So the catchy slogan “think outside the […]

I’ve gotten a bunch of messages from people who say they’re surprised that we haven’t posted anything about the Laurence Tribe copying controversy (see here and here). Here’s a tip: Never be surprised when people don’t invest a good deal of time and effort into stuff that they aren’t really required to do. Actually, my […]

A draft of a new forthcoming essay of mine, Digital Evidence and the New Criminal Procedure, is now available on SSRN. The essay studies the differences between traditional criminal investigations and investigations into computer-related crimes, and argues that computer-related crimes will trigger new rules of criminal procedure in response to those differences. It’s a fun […]

Fellow lawprof Joe Olson passes along this quote, from John O’Sullivan: This high-minded timidity [of treaties and conventions enforced only against those who agree in advance to be bound by them] permeates modern culture at high and low levels. For instance, a recent thriller about hostage-taking, “Man on Fire,” directed by Tony Scott and based […]

One item I forgot to ask — will Johnnie Cochran decide to argue the case himself? He was represented in the California Court of Appeal by two lawyers from Nemecek & Cole, a fairly small L.A. firm; and he’s not primarily an appellate lawyer or a First Amendment lawyer, though he did argue and mostly […]

(as seen through the eyes of the Yale Daily News). As the election has drifted into deadly serious exposes of the lives of George Bush and John Kerry in the early 1970s, I thought a look back at a lighter time in their lives might be fun (no, there are no smoking guns in this […]

The Supreme Court has just agreed to hear a First Amendment case involving injunctions against speech. Ulysses Tory, one of Johnnie Cochran’s ex-clients, started accusing Cochran (apparently falsely) of all sorts of bad things, and picketing his office to publicize these allegations. Cochran sued, the court found that the statements were libelous (the trial was […]

In a couple of thoughtful posts (here and here), Wisconsin law professor Ann Althouse recounts the evolution of her thinking about John Kerry. They are worth reading, whomever one favors in the election.

SCOTUSBlog has the scoop.   The most interesting case is Kelo v. New London, No. 04-108, which considers whether the Takings Clause allows governments to take real property under its power of eminent domain for economic development purposes. The case was brought to the Court by the Institute for Justice, and our own former co-blogger Sasha […]

At Slate, Christopher Hitchens asserts that at least some Democrats are hoping for bad news in Iraq (via Roger Simon): There it was at the tail end of Brian Faler’s “Politics” roundup column in last Saturday’s Washington Post. It was headed, simply, “Quotable”: “I wouldn’t be surprised if he appeared in the next month.” Teresa […]

I’m delighted to report that Jim Lindgren will be joining us here on this blog. Jim is a law professor at Northwestern University law school, and he’s written about demographics, blackmail, bribery, gun ownership history, legal ethics, pornography, scholarship, and much more (see here for his impressively long and varied list of publications). I’ve long […]

I’ve received lots of great responses to my three questions about Iraq. In case you haven’t seen the initial post, here are the three questions I posed to the pro-war blogosphere: First, assuming that you were in favor of the invasion of Iraq at the time of the invasion, do you believe today that the […]