Archive | June, 2009

The Chicago Journal of International Law has a new symposium issue coming online soon on the topic of a multipolar world. I have a piece in it, so does my co-blogger Chris Borgen of Opinio Juris, John Yoo, and some others – I’ll post a link to the issue when it appears. My own piece […]

From Jones v. Graham County Bd. of Educ. (N.C. Ct. App. June 2) (some paragraph breaks added), an interesting discussion of the issue: (Show the case excerpt.) We first address Plaintiffs’ contention that the policy violates Article I, Section 20 of the North Carolina Constitution, which provides as follows: General warrants, whereby any officer or […]

A Georgia trial court imposed such a ban in 2007; the Georgia Supreme Court just set it aside on Monday, in Mongerson v. Mongerson: There is no evidence in the record before us that any member of the excluded community has engaged in inappropriate conduct in the presence of the children or that the children […]

From U.S. v. Kincannon (7th Cir.): The government

In modern English, second-person pronouns have the same form in the singular and the plural — “you,” for instance, can mean either one person or a group. (I set aside the now almost entirely archaic “thou,” and the regional “y’all.”) The same is true in some other languages, at least as to the formal second-person […]

I am no expert on finance. Therefore, I cannot tell whether George Soros’ proposals for increased regulation of the financial system have merit or not. Soros has probably forgotten more about finance than I ever knew to begin with. However, Soros’ position has at least one serious weakness that is common to many arguments for […]

That’s the law in Arkansas (§ 5-14-125(a)(6)(B)), and a proposed law in Louisiana. (Right now, Louisiana makes it a crime to have sex with under-19-year-old students, but the bill, which unanimously passed both chambers of the legislature, would change that to sex with under-21-year-olds. The crime is a misdemeanor for the first offense in Louisiana, […]

George Mason economist Bryan Caplan has some excellent advice on how to increase your “social intelligence.” As a teenager and for years thereafter, I had many of the same problems as Bryan and partially overcame them in much the same way. As Bryan puts it, I “at least managed to claw my way up to […]

on their twenty-five years of marriage, this just past Tuesday.

In a brief and perfunctory prepared statement, read carefully from a script, President Obama just signed an order a presidential memorandum directing federal departments to grant some benefits to employees’ same-sex partners requesting federal departments to review over the next 90 days whether they can grant some benefits to employees’ same-sex partners under federal law. […]

George Soros has a very interesting opinion piece in the Financial Times, June 17, 2009 (might be behind subscriber wall at the FT, but I received it by email from his office, so I’ll quote some bits from there). The essay outlines in short form his principles for reform of financial regulation. I am still […]

Because of growing controversy over the firing of AmeriCorps IG Gerald Walpin, the White House has proffered additional reasons (some might say “reasons”) why the President had lost confidence in him. After Senator Claire McCaskill (D. Mo.) expressed

That’s how I read the proposed amendment to Michigan Rule of Evidence 611 that was apparently adopted today: The court shall exercise reasonable control over the appearance of parties and witnesses so as to (1) ensure that the demeanor of such persons may be observed and assessed by the fact-finder, and (2) to ensure the […]

Craigslist’s Motion to Dismiss in Gibson v. Craigslist, Inc. struck me as quite good. But I noticed a particular usage choice that I thought might have been unwise, and I wanted to think what others thought of it. Craigslist appears to consistently identify itself as craiglist, uncapitalized, and the motion does the same, with paragraphs […]

That’s the conclusion of Monday’s Gibson v. Craigslist, Inc. (S.D.N.Y.), applying the service provider immunity of 47 U.S.C. § 230: Craigslist isn’t liable for the ad, even if the ad itself is tortious: Plaintiff seeks to hold [Craigslist] liable for its alleged failure to block, screen, or otherwise prevent the dissemination of a third party’s […]