Archive | June, 2009

According to FIRE, Bucknell’s administrators aren’t fans of satire. The first one is pretty clever: Bucknell’s recent forays into censorship began on March 17, 2009, when BUCC members stood at Bucknell’s student center and passed out fake dollar bills with President Obama’s face on the front and the sentence “Obama’s stimulus plan makes your money […]

Yes, says Mark Tushnet, in this interesting essay, and see his Opinio Juris posts here and here. By globalization of constitutional law, he means

I have just posted a new paper on SSRN (co-authored with Marcus Cole), “The New Forum Shopping Problem in Bankruptcy.” Here’s the abstract: Abstract: The American bankruptcy system is a hybrid of state law and federal bankruptcy law. Under the Butner principle, federal bankruptcy courts preserve non-bankruptcy law substantive entitlements in bankruptcy unless bankruptcy policies […]

Just thought I’d note that you can reach our readers — at an estimated 310,000+ ad impressions per week — for a mere $200/week, or $450/week for the upper right hand corner ad. (Those are the June 2009 prices, which may rise.) And such high-quality readers, too!

In an address given in 1844, abolitionist Charles Dexter Cleveland contended that the U.S. Post Office not only suppressed abolitionist writings, but also provided a massive subsidy from the profitable Northern routes to the unprofitable Southern routes. It occurred to me that this consideration could well have explained why abolitionist Lysander Spooner decided to establish […]

This just in: Professor Martha Minow has agreed to serve as the next Dean of Harvard Law School. She will take up her duties on July 1. I think I speak for my co-Conspirators in wishing her all the best. Press release is here.

Like everyone else, I’ve been following the kerfuffle around “the wise Latina” remark. Here’s my short take on it: 1. I think she probably meant it when she said that she believed that her background and upbringing would make her a “better” judge than a white man (or white woman). I don’t think she meant […]

Last year, I blogged about Stern v. Bluestone, a New York decision that found a malpractice lawyer’s (and legal blogger’s) “Attorney Malpractice Report” newsletter to be advertising, because it implicitly promoted the author’s professional services. I pointed out that the decision’s rationale would apply to blogs, articles, treatises, and other materials that likewise implicitly (and […]

Blogging will be light for me over the next few days, as I am in Palo Alto at the Hoover Institution for a meeting of the Hoover Task Force on National Security and Law. We will workshop some papers over the next day and a half. But I will also add that this is the […]

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has an article describing what seems like a classic example of the use of eminent domain to take private property for the purpose of giving it to politically influential interests (HT: VC reader Rob Driscoll]: Employing a rarely used provision of city code, Milwaukee officials are poised to take two commercial lots […]

From The Financial Times: President Barack Obama is due to unveil a raft of executive compensation reforms as early as Wednesday that will see the pay of the top 100 employees of bailed-out companies vetted by a new official. A new Special Master, expected to be Kenneth Feinberg, the former head of the 9/11 compensation […]

An excerpt: We were disappointed last year when the Supreme Court ruled that the right to keep and bear arms was an individual right, giving short shrift to the first part of the amendment, which refers to “a well-regulated militia.” But we also believe the court has been right to use the doctrine of incorporation […]

The manuscript for my new coursebook with Maxwell Stearns, Public Choice Concepts and Applications in Law, was sent off to West on Monday. We expect page proofs in September or thereabouts with hard copy shipping in October. It will be published by West. If you are interested in seeing the book for possible adoption to […]

My colleague Nathan Sales has posted an interesting working paper on intelligence agency information sharing. Congress has frequently told intelligence agencies to share more information among themselves. Nathan looks at the incentives of the various agencies to do that. Some useful public choice insights. Here’s the abstract:

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Michigan has posted a short interview (11 minutes) with me that was done a couple of weeks ago on the GM Bankruptcy.