Archive | July, 2007

The Goldsmith-Katyal proposal for a “National Security Court” that could authorize preventative detention has provoked an extensive debate in the comments to this post at Opinio Juris. At Is That Legal? Eric Muller thinks the proposal “has a lot going for it,” but is surprised that Goldsmith and Katyal would propose authorizing the preventative detention […]

In just one week, the long-awaited final book of the Harry Potter series will be out. So this week is your last chance to indulge in speculation about the plot. To facilitate that important purpose, I am creating this open Harry Potter thread, so that VC readers who are also Harry Potter fans can ponder […]

The Providence Journal reports: The attorney general’s office yesterday dropped a case against a 48-year-old Narragansett man who had been charged with raping a woman 32 years ago when both he and the alleged victim were 16 years old…. The case against [the man] was based on memories that the alleged victim had repressed until […]

The New York Times has this piece on the superiority of British chocolate over American standards like the Hershey bar. What the article misses is that chocolate everywhere, not just Britain, is better than U.S. chocolate. Forget Belgium–even places that I wouldn’t have expected to be chocolate havens, like Israel and Greece, have basic chocolate […]

Over at the The New Republic’s Open University blog, Cass Sunstein has an interesting post about the future direction of the Supreme Court.   I think there’s a key distinction underlying Sunstein’s post that needs to be brought out here: the difference between the relative political orientation of the Justices and the relative political orientation of […]

Today the Ninth Circuit amended its earlier habeas decision in Irons v. Carey, and I was intrigued by the following dicta that Judge Noonan added to his concurring opinion: The great writ exists, by negative implication, in Article I of the Constitution of the United States. It was initially understood to extend only to prisoners […]

The Second Circuit just handed down Husain v. Springer, which strikes me as quite odd. The case is complex, but the short version is this: A college student newspaper endorsed a slate of candidates for student government. The university president thought this was unfair and a violation of student government election rules, so she canceled […]

because “this is not a case that should occupy the mind of a person who has anything consequential to do.” I kid you not; the opinion, dissenting from a 44-page majority opinion that finds a university president’s actions violated the First Amendment rights of a student newspaper, is here. It’s too bad that the dissenting […]

Last year, I wrote a series of posts criticizing Columbia University’s plans to potentially use eminent domain to seize land it coveted in the Manhanttanville neighborhood in Harlem (see here and here). I am happy to be able to report that, according to the New York Times, Columbia has decided to renounce the use of […]

Responding to a commenter who used the phrase “this data,” another commenter writes: Not to be pedantic or anything, but I’m sure you meant these data. Perhaps it’s old-fashioned, but I feel anyone with a PhD should be able to use “data” correctly. Anyone else, and I don’t particularly care. What puzzles me is what […]

This question comes up every so often, so I thought I’d pass along what seems to be the best data out there — from Laumann et al., The Social Organization of Sexuality 311 (1994). All numbers are percentages. 1. Sexual partners: Last year (men / women) Past 5 years (men / women) Since age 18 […]

I recently recorded a podcast on the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Brendlin v. California, the Fourth Amendment traffic stop case, for the Federalist Society’s “SCOTUScast” series. If you’re interested in listening to my ruminations about the case, you can listen here. (Approx length: 15 minutes.)

I’d often heard of “the unwritten law,” under which a husband who caught his wife and another man having sex would be acquitted for killing the other man — not just found guilty of mere manslaughter rather than murder (which tends to be still the law today, under the right circumstances), but entirely acquitted. I […]

I have just uploaded a draft of a new essay, Updating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, forthcoming in a symposium issue of the University of Chicago Law Review. It’s a short article, about 22 pages. Here’s the abstract: This essay argues that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act should be restructured to account for changes in […]

Slate‘s Jack Shafer thinks “Yellow journalism now comes in a new color: green.” Often as sensationalistic as its yellow predecessor, green journalism tends to appeal to our emotions, exploit our fears, and pander to our vanity. It places a political agenda in front of the quest for journalistic truth and in its most demagogic forms […]