Archive | June, 2009

Earlier today the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit issued a potentially significant environmental decision in Friends of the Everglades v. South Florida Water Management District. The court upheld the Bush Administration’s controversial regulation adopting a “unitary waters” theory of the waters of the United States for purposes of Clean Water Act permitting. […]

The WSJ has a story today that we are increasingly likely to hear in some version. The one-child policy and preference for boys has led to a well-documented shortages of marriageable women in China, particularly in some parts. In this story, brides marry rural men, extracting a bride-price, and then running away with the money. […]

Over at Simple Justice, Scott Greenfield is blogging about a very unusual New York state court decision on whether a suspect can be tased into compliance with a court order to submit to DNA testing.   In this case, the government obtained an Order to Show Cause (OSC) ordering the target to appear and show cause […]

I wanted to blog a bit more about the Ninth Circuit’s Nelson v. NASA case, on which the Ninth Circuit has just denied rehearing en banc. In Nelson, various contract employees working indirectly for NASA, challenged NASA’s new background check policy, among other things under a federal constitutional right to informational privacy. The Ninth Circuit […]

The National Journal‘s Ninth Justice blog has posted expert predictions on the timing and final tally of the vote to confirm Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Most of the “experts” they asked expect a vote before the August recess, and somewhere between 63 and 80 votes in favor of her confirmation. If I had […]

makes its first appearance in a published court opinion. For more on this beast, see here. For links to the other opinions in the case, see here. For my earlier thoughts on why the panel decision was mistaken, see here. I might have more after I read the opinion related to denial of rehearing en […]

Just uploaded: Jon Caldara and I discuss the 7th Circuit decision in NRA v. Chicago. 12 minutes. In another podcast, Amy Oliver and I discuss the Montana Firearms Freedom Act, which attempts to exempt guns manufactured and possessed within Montana from federal laws based on the interstate commerce power. 16 minutes.

Political science professor Helen Knowles, the author of The Tie Goes to Freedom: Justice Anthony M. Kennedy on Liberty has posted Justice Kennedy

The WSJ reports today that financial services industry groups are pressuring Congress and the administration to delay or weaken the effects of an accounting rule change slated for next year that would force banks and other financial services firms to keep, or take back, on their balance sheets assets shifted into special purpose entities (SPEs […]

I was recently reminded of one of my favorite quotes, generally attributed to Albert Einstein: The best explanation is as simple as possible, but no simpler.

One of the ads that’s now running here (I saw it on the comments page for the Muslim population post) is for Muslima.Com, “The International Muslim Matrimonials Site!” (exclamation point in original). I wish all our Muslim readers — as well as all our other readers — happy marriages, and if such a happy marriage […]

The Second Circuit hasn’t.

I’m please to report that there’s now a published Japanese translation of Academic Legal Writing (translated by Professor Makoto Ibusuki and Ms. Naoko Iwakawa):

I should have noted in my post below that the 5-to-7-million American Muslims estimate was one of the higher-end estimates. Estimating the Muslim Population in the United States by Tom W. Smith of the National Opinion Research Center (2001) reports that The best, adjusted, survey-based estimates put the adult Muslim population in 2000 at 0.67 […]

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi should be commended for her recent effort to increase transparency and accountability within Congress. The Washington Post reports: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said yesterday that the House will soon start posting online quarterly records of how members use their personal office funds, giving watchdog groups a chance to examine staff […]