Archive | December, 2004

A really cool site for First Amendment junkies — thanks to my former student Matthew Liebman for the pointer. Here’s a list of what they have: . . . The “Conscription” cartoon in Masses Publishing . . . The two-sided circular in Schenck . . . The speech in Debs . . . The circulars […]

Dirk Olin has an essay in Slate objecting to the practice of allowing peremptory challenges in jury trials. Peremptory challenges allow a lawyer to dismiss a small number of potential jurors from the jury pool without giving a reason. (The word peremptory means “precluding a right to debate;” the dismissals are called peremptory challenges because […]

I much appreciated Orin’s post criticizing the “Nearly Half in U.S. Say Restrict Muslims” reporting of a recent survey. As Orin pointed out, here’s what the survey actually measured, quoting this report: 1) Muslim civic and volunteer organizations should be infiltrated by undercover law enforcement agents to keep watch on their activities and fundraising. 2) […]

Reader Kieran Jadiker-Smith writes: I am a gay man, and, on a few occasions, I’ve gotten the “what a waste” remark from straight women. I haven’t found this offensive; generally it’s said in a playful, joking manner, and is not meant all that seriously. I suppose if someone said it with wide-eyed seriousness, I would […]

We’ve been using Chris Lansdown’s PowerBlogs service for several months now, and I’ve been very pleased — pleased enough that I wanted to pitch it to all of you. The interface has lots of nifty features: tools to help create tables, bulleted lists, and numbered lists, a way to link related posts together, support for […]

The CivPro version of “99 Problems” is fun, but criminal law junkies might be partial to “Twas the Night before Booker” or “Take a Walk on the Blakely Side.” I’m partial to the first one myself. Both items are courtesy of Begging the Question’s Milbarge. A VC reader with somewhat different musical tastes than my […]

One argument I occasionally hear from opponents of the Patriot Act is that the Patriot Act was unfairly named. “With a name like Patriot Act,” the arguments runs, “How could anyone vote against it? No one wanted to be seen as unpatriotic in the weeks after 9/11.” The suggestion seems to be that the Patriot […]

On the subject of inserting pop culture references into exams and other academic material, noted libertarian author Tibor Machan, who teaches business ethics at Chapman University, writes: Although I do not know enough pop culture to reference it routinely, I wish I did. At 65 I need every pedagogical device available to connect with my […]

My student Patricia Stringel — who hastens to stress that her interest in this is purely academic — passes along an interesting bit of trivia: In 19 states, including California, New York, and most of New England (so no Beverly Hillbillies jokes, please), first cousins are apparently perfectly free to marry. While parent-child, sibling-sibling, and […]

I’m pleased to report that a couple of weeks ago, the California Supreme Court held that people are free to tell the truth about others’ past crimes. Thirty years earlier, the court had held, in Briscoe v. Reader’s Digest, that when a crime was long enough in the past, it would be an “invasion of […]

Every Saturday, the CrimProf blog shines their spotlight on a different criminal law professor. The goal is to “to help bring the many individual stories of scholarly achievements, teaching innovations, public service, and career moves within the criminal justice professorate to the attention of the broader criminal justice community.” This past Saturday, I was in […]

In response to my posting an excerpt of Jay-Z’s “99 Problems,” a Harvard law student offers his take on the song, “99 Problems but 12(b)(6) Ain’t One.” This version was prepared for Professor Heather Gerken’s annual Civil Procedure Poetry Slam, but neither me nor the author vouches for its legal accuracy. (CivPro professors take note: […]

The Justice Department’s website has posted a copy of the Office of Legal Counsel’s September 25, 2001 memo to the White House on the President’s war powers post-9/11. From its first paragraph: [The White House has] asked for our opinion as to the scope of the President’s authority to take military action in response to […]

Ever notice how some professors who feel compelled to prove their hipness by inserting pop culture references into their exams? One of my professors used characters from Austin Powers for all the names in his exam, while another based the exam on a plotline from “Dawson’s Creek,” inserting a murder in the show’s love triangle. […]

Have you heard about the powerful international organization that engages in invasive, Big Brother-esque data mining; creates digital dossiers on people in violation of their own privacy policies; does all of this with no oversight and no judical review; and when challenged, tries to cover-up its practices? Would you believe that the organization is the […]