Archive | June, 2009

Given interest in how Judge Sotomayor has approached cases involving race, the case of Brown v. City of Oneonta is worth a look. The panel opinion (as amended) is at 221 F.3d 329 (2nd Cir. 2000). The opinions respecting the denial of reharing en banc are at 235 F.3d 769 (2d Cir. 2000). Judge Sotomayor […]

The Department of Justice’s FY 2010 budget request includes materials discussing and describing the role of the Office of Legal Counsel within the Department. (Hat tip: Ed Richards at LSU.)

From Politico: “I understand that during her career, she’s written hundreds and hundreds of opinions. I haven’t read a single one of them, and if I’m fortunate before we end this, I won’t have to read one of them,

To follow up a bit on Ilya’s post below, I think the survey question is too poorly worded to be used as evidence for or against racism among Jews: “Would you be in favor of a close relative marrying a black?” As Ilya points out, the vast majority of blacks are gentiles, so some fraction […]

More proof that the Internet is the greatest invention ever. The quality of the jokes varies; this one is my favorite. A long setup, but well worth it.

Ilya’s serious post gives me an excuse to repeat my unserious question from several years ago: The overseas Chinese are sometimes called “The Jews of the Orient.” But what is the common bond between Jews and Koreans? The answer is: (Show the answer.) They are both the ChoSen people. (Hide the answer.) A poor joke, […]

Atlantic blogger Ta-Nehisi Coates has two interesting posts discussing data on Jewish attitudes towards intermarriage with blacks (see here and here). He points to General Social Survey data indicating that 38% of Jews would “oppose” or “strongly oppose” a close relative marrying a black person. Coates worries that this data is an indication worsening relations […]

The story is at CNSNews.com, and it begins: Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor ruled in January 2009 that states do not have to obey the Second Amendment

One of the remarkable developments in federal computer crime law in the last few years is Congress’s elimination of the federal jurisdictional hooks that Congress has traditionally required for crimes to be a matter of federal rather than merely state or local concern. These important changes have gone almost entirely unnoticed, but I was really […]

The case is People v. James, just decided today. Here’s the core of the analysis: [As Heller holds,

The Manhattan Institute recently posted a podcast I did on Judge Sotomayor’s important property rights decisions with Jim Copland, my law school classmate and director of the Institute’s Center for Legal Policy. Jim had a good related column on Sotomayor and the limits of empathy as a guide to judicial decisionmaking in yesterday’s National Law […]

on screw-ups by the US government mishandling secret material and posting information it shouldn’t be posting online? I can’t possibly be the only person who finds it weird that the New York Times’s story about the mistake the US government made in posting a confidential report on nukes in the US quotes former CIA director […]

Just as improper as through any other means. No surprise to most of us, I’d expect, but it apparently was to the judge. Thanks to Victor Steinbok and Legal Blog Watch for the pointer.

Daniel Hemel has published in Forbes what I think is an unpersuasive defense of Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s ruling in the Didden case, which I criticized here. In that case, a the Village of Port Chester condemned a property when the owners refused to pay $800,000 to the city’s designated developer for the area. For reasons […]

in his Forbes column — this time criticizing the conservative judicial minimalist case against her: Alas, the inescapable truth is that constitutional law contains no magic bullet that condemns judicial activism and lauds judicial restraint. The public outcry over the Supreme Court’s rendering of the “public use” language in Kelo v. City of New London […]