Archive | September, 2007

This Thursday I will be participating in a panel, “Enforcement of the Clean Water Act,” sponsored by the Federalist Society’s Environmental Law and Property Rights Practice Group in Washington, D.C. Also appearing on the panel will be Maryland Law Professor Robert Percival, Vermont Law Professor Patrick Parenteau, and Reed Hopper of the Pacific Legal Foundation. […]

according to “Clare Short, a member of the British Parliament and Secretary for International Development under Prime Minister Tony Blair until she resigned in 2003 over the Iraq war”? One hint–it’s not the Protestants.

Sentencing Guideline 2K2.1(b)(5) (now advisory, not binding) calls on judges to substantially increase a convicted defendant’s sentence where he had used or possessed a firearm “in connection with another felony offense,” for instance assault or homicide. All well and good, but you’d think that this would mean, well, a felony offense, and using a firearm […]

Brian Leiter’s new study is here, with appropriate caveats provided by him. The top four, not surprisingly, are Yale, Chicago, Harvard, and Stanford. I’m pleased to report that George Mason, home of Conspirators Bernstein, Somin, and Zywicki, is ranked number 21 by mean citation count, and 24 by median citation count. Citation counts, as Leiter […]

The D.C. government’s petition for certiorari in the D.C. gun ban case is here, via SCOTUSblog. It’s a somewhat unusual petition: it spends relatively little time on the split and its consequences, and instead uses much of its space to argue the merits (usually pretty irrelevant at the cert stage). I gather the authors figured […]

“We’re one bomb away from getting rid of that obnoxious court.” (Source: Jack Goldsmith, in the excellent Jeff Rosen piece linked to by Jonathan below). Wow.

Today’s divided Sixth Circuit opinion in a habeas case is Ferensic v. Birkett. In this case, Judges Gilman and Clay affirmed the decision of the federal district court to grant the habeas petition. Judge McKeague dissented. Judge Gilman’s opinion for the majority begins: A Michigan state jury convicted Robert Ferensic in 1999 of armed robbery, […]

Next Sunday, the New York Times Magazine will feature a profile of Harvard Law Professor Jack Goldsmith written by Jeff Rosen. The profile centers on Goldsmth’s work on international law and national security issues, and his brief tenure as the head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel during the Bush Administration. It also […]

Bjorn Lomborg is back with a new book on global warming, Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming. I review the book today on NRO here. I generally liked the book, though I think Lomborg’s account understates the degree of uncertainty in climate forecasts. Uncertainty is not, in itself, an excuse for inaction, […]

The U.S. Judicial Conference is considering limits on clerkship salaries in an effort to control costs, according to this National Law Journal story. The primary effect of the measure would be to limit the use of career clerks by federal judges. The recommendations would curtail the judges’ freedom to hire lifetime clerks as of Oct. […]

Over at National Public Radio, Nina Totenberg has an interesting segment on Justice Robert H. Jackson’s stint as Attorney General under FDR. Several of the most interesting insights are from Jackson scholar (and e-mail list administrator) John Q. Barrett.

In a communication with alumni earlier this summer, Chairman of the Board Ed Haldeman expressed his personal opinion that Dartmouth’s alumni are “confused” about the 1891 Agreement that gave alumni the right to elect half of the Dartmouth Board of Trustees. He made two basic arguments: first, that there was, in fact, no “agreement,” and […]

At George’s Employment Blawg, where else.

Has the Grand Ole Party become the Grim Old Party? Robert Novak reports on the current woes of the GOP. Among other things, Novak notes that the Democratic Party has a “commanding lead” over Republicans in fundraising for the 2008 election: Such an unusual disparity is at once a symptom and a contributing cause of […]

Larry Solum has live-blogged the APSA panel on the “New Originalism,” featuring Sandy Levinson, Jack Balkin, Keith Whittington, Sot Barber, Jim Fleming, and our own Randy Barnett. From Larry’s write-up, it sounds like it was a very informative and engaging panel.