The New Orleans Times Picayune reports: A portrait of Jesus Christ that hangs in the lobby of Slidell City Court violates the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, specifically a mandate calling for the separation of church and state, according to a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday by the Louisiana ACLU…. Vincent Booth, acting executive director […]
Archive | July, 2007
The Supreme Court and the Libby Case — A Dialogue:
Two lawyers, one very liberal and the other very conservative, meet over a beer to chat about recent legal stories in the news. . . . Lib: I’ve been thinking a lot about the new Supreme Court. Those new Justices are totally political — they vote the conservative way every time. I’m just glad the […]
Freedom of Speech and Mens Rea:
It looks like my new project will be when courts do, and when they should, organize free speech tests around the speaker’s mental state — for instance, around whether the speaker is negligent or reckless about certain circumstances (consider the constitutional libel tests, which focus on negligence or recklessness about the falsehood of the statement), […]
The Chinese-Egyptian axis:
Remember the Chinese-Albanian axis? Now not only are China and Egypt both suppressing free speech, but Chinese and Egyptian liberals are teaming up to fight them. See the Free the New Youth 4! web site, dedicated to the case of four students sentenced to 8-10 years in prison for running a discussion group. Now see […]
How Conservative This Court?
Is the Roberts Court really that conservative? I don’t think so. As I see it (and argue in this NRO article) the Supreme Court’s 2006-07 term did not reveal a conservative ascendency, so much as it suggested the beginning of the “Kennedy Court.” Justice Kennedy is the swing justice, and the pattern of judicial decisions […]
Laws of General Applicability and Cohen v. Cowles Media:
I continue the posts excerpting my article, Speech as Conduct: Generally Applicable Laws, Illegal Courses of Conduct,
Birthday Wishes:
Happy 231st birthday to the USA, happy 40th to me, and, as of this past Sunday, happy blogversay to one of the oldest (and one of my favorite) legal blogs, Overlawyered.com. To be honest, when Wally Olson announced he was staring the Overlawyered site, well before the word “blog” was invented, I thought posting stuff […]
What Would George Washington Do?
A special July 4 issue of the Boulder Weekly asks what the Founders would think about various modern issues. The article begins with an interview with Jim Hightower, the former Texas Agriculture Commissioner, who is now a populist political commentator (and whose column appears in the Boulder Weekly). After that, the article asks a series […]
IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776:
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and […]
The Libby Pardon, the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, and the Ashcroft Memorandum:
Articles in both the New York Times and Slate suggest that Bush’s decision to commute Libby’s sentence was hypocritical because of the Administration’s views on sentencing law. Specifically, Bush relied on arguments about what should be relevant to a sentence that his own Justice Department has rejected in the context of legislation and litigation over […]
How Many Current Law Students Are There in the U.S.?
The answers to this question (140,000 J.D., nearly 150,000 total) and many more are available at this ABA site. Cool.
Judges Sentelle and Henderson Are Anti-Bush Hacks, Dersh Says:
Over at Huffington Post, Alan Dershowitz makes the case that the D.C. Circuit judges who denied Libby’s appeal — a panel that included Federalist Society favorite David Sentelle and solid conservative Karen LeCraft Henderson — are anti-Bush political hacks who only denied Libby’s appeal for partisan political reasons. Now, I know what you’re thinking — […]
“Man Charged 32 Years After Alleged Rape”:
The Providence Journal reports: A 48-year-old Narragansett man has been charged with raping someone 32 years ago when both he and the alleged victim were 16 years old, the attorney general’s office said this week. Harold Allen, of 30 Riverview Rd., was indicted last month on a charge of first-degree sexual assault, and he pleaded […]
Traces of Asia in American State Names:
The names of many American states are derived from indigenous American languages. The names of some stem from words or proper names in European languages, chiefly English but also French and Spanish (and of course indirectly Latin, e.g., Virginia, and Germanic languages, e.g., North Carolina). At least two names of American states, however, indirectly stem […]
Weird Behavior by the Padilla Jury:
Over at the Southern District of Florida blog, David Markus reports on some strange behavior being exhibited by the jury in the Jose Padilla trial: “[the] jurors showed up today all dressed up. Row one in red. Row two in white. And row three in blue. I’m not kidding. And this isn’t the first time […]