Archive | July, 2007

A reader asked for analysis of the Tiahrt Amendment, which will be voted on today in the House Appropriations Committee. The amendment, which has been a BATFE appropriations rider since 2004, protects the privacy of law-abiding gun owners by restricting disclosure to third parties of various federal records of lawful gun purchases, by enforcing a […]

Americans for Safe Access, an organization that promotes the legalization of medical marijuana, is launching a legal challenge against the federal government’s claim that marijuana has “no currently accepted medical use.” According to this story, ASA is using the Data Quality Act to challenge the scientific basis of such statements, in an effort to force […]

Amber Taylor describes an egregious example of incompetence by the Washington, DC police: Yesterday, two men tried to break into my friend’s home while she was inside. One man attempted to pry the door open and the other tried to get in the window. She called the police and, because the men were still milling […]

Yesterday, in Hartman v. Bagley, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit denied capital defendant Brett Hartman’s appeal of the denial of his habeas corpus petition. Hartman was convicted for the brutal murder Winda Snipes — he tied her up, stabbed her over 130 times, and then cut off […]

Then read this article. The two most salient points are that becoming a tenure-track law professor is far from “retiring,” and the job is primarily “a writing job, not a teaching job.” If, for example, you have no law review publications, almost no one is going to take you seriously as a faculty candidate, and […]

Vanderbilt law professor Brian Fitzpatrick looks at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (where he clerked), and how it fared before the Supreme Court this past year. The 9th Circuit, which hears appeals in federal cases in the Western United States, is the largest of the 13 such courts, with 28 active […]

We’ve now had more than 2,400 responses to the reader poll on your political views, and I find the results really interesting. The single biggest category was self-identified libertarians, 29% of the responses. That’s not surprising: we’re a libertarian-leaning group, even if we sometimes occupy the Ninth Circle of Libertarian Hell.   I was surprised by […]

Yesterday the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing on “The Surgeon General’s Vital Mission: Challenges for the Future.” According to Committee Chair Henry Waxman (D-CA): Political interference is compromising the independence of the Office of the Surgeon General. On key public health issues, the Surgeon General has been muzzled. The Surgeon […]

When the Taliban demolished statues of the Buddha, many people all over the world, including many non-Buddhists, denounced the destruction as an act of barbarism. The government of China has announced plans to perpetrate a similar atrocity. In Tianjiajing, Henan province (east-central China)is a century-old sanctuary of the Virgin Mary. The sanctuary was nearly destroyed […]

Over at Balkinization, Michael Stokes Paulsen has an entertaining post about the Cal Tillisch approach to constitutional interpretation.

From the amicus brief of the Committee of Concerned Social Scientists, State (New Jersey) v. Michaels, one of the bogus child care sex abuse cases of the late 80s and early 90s: After reading a number of these interviews, it is difficult to believe that adults charged with the care and protection of young children […]

An interesting post by Adrian Vermeule on the Oxford University Press blog.

I’ve joked before that if you want to top all the SSRN rankings, write a piece about privacy or computer hacking and submit it to Slashdot. Dan Solove proved the point this week by submitting a forthcoming symposium article, “I’ve Got Nothing to Hide” and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy, forthcoming in the San Diego Law […]

In this essay in the American Scholar (hat tip Daniel Drezner), Yale Professor William Deresiewicz claims that there is a new negative stereotype of academics in films and other pop culture media: The alcoholic, embittered, writer-manqu

Some comments to Ilya’s post on Brink Lindsey reminded me that I get puzzled when I see libertarian and conservative think tanks (and individuals) go ballistic whenever anyone suggests having the government require “universal health care.” See, e.g., the controversies in Massachusetts and California. It seems to me we already have universal health care; by […]