Archive | September, 2009

SCOTUSBlog has posted links to briefs filed by the Office of the Solicitor General in pending cases before the Supreme Court. Among the briefs that caught my eye is that in Pottawattamie County, Iowa v. McGhee, in which the Justice Department supports absolute immunity from Section 1983 suits for prosecutors who (as alleged in this […]

The Obama Administration is preparing to announce a new policy that would limit the use of the state secrets privilege, according to reports in the New York Times and Washington Post. The policy will take effect October 1. From the Post: The new policy requires agencies, including the intelligence community and the military, to convince […]

reports The Journal (Martinsburg, W. Va.). Thanks to GeekPress for the pointer.

The BLT has an interesting report on a case in the DC Circuit that raises a fascinating Fourth Amendment issue: Does it violate a person’s Fourth Amendment rights if the government wrongfully obtains an arrest warrant authorizing the person’s arrest if the warrant is quickly withdrawn and never actually executed? More specifically, if the person […]

Here’s the announcement, from the NYU Federalist Society. TOMORROW (Wednesday) @ 4:30 in Vanderbilt 204 David Bernstein Law Professor at GMU and Blogger at the Volokh Conspiracy Speaking about his forthcoming book Rehabilitating Lochner — Lochner v. New York is a famous Supreme Court case from 1905 that invalidated a maximum hours law under an […]

will stay in Florida temporarily, though perhaps only briefly, and not with the family with which she had been staying: A Florida judge said Monday that a teenage girl who ran away from her New Albany home over religious beliefs won’t immediately be returned to her parents. The judge ruled that she will stay in […]

It looks like major modifications to the CFPA are on the table, including eliminating many of the most troubling elements, such as the “plain vanilla” proposal, the consumer comprehension tests, and the application to non-financial firms. Details here.

At the invitation of the Foreign Policy blog, I wrote some brief comments on the differences between Obama and Bush’s approaches to international law. If you’re curious, go here.

The headline is not from the Onion. Tampa Bay Online reports:   With guns drawn and flashlights cutting through darkened rooms, Polk County undercover drug investigators stormed the home of convicted drug dealer Michael Difalco near Lakeland in March.  As investigators searched the home for drugs, some drug task force members found other ways to occupy their […]

I appreciate Randy’s clarification below. Where we differ, I think, is that Randy believes that we need a correct conception of what it means to say something is “constitutional” that we should use even with people who disagree with it. Randy acknowledges that his personal views of the Constitution need not be used, but he […]

The Independence Institute, where I work, is a think tank that speaks on a wide variety of issues. In 2005, we produced extensive research and public information about Colorado referenda C and D. (C was the largest tax increase in state history, and D was a debt increase. C passed and D was defeated.) The […]

From the Wall Street Journal Environmental Capital blog: Speaking on the sidelines of a smart grid conference in Washington, [Secretary of Energy Steven] Chu said he didn’t think average folks had the know-how or will to to change their behavior enough to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. “The American public … just like your teenage kids, aren’t […]

So I thought I’d pass this along, seeing how today is “One Web Day” . . . one of the interesting things about writing a book is that readers do all sorts of interesting things with it. I posted, a while back, Ken Liu’s lovely “moose” characters that he was inspired to put together after […]

One follow-up thought about corporations and constitutional rights; I argue that corporations should generally possess free speech rights and various other constitutional rights, but not because corporations are “persons” and therefore should have the right that persons have. The corporation-as-person is a valuable legal fiction, and it’s built on the same sort of metaphor we […]

Orin, earlier I think you and Professor Jost were reducing the Constitution itself to the Supreme Court’s opinions about its meaning–or even reducing it to the Supreme Court’s rulings in a given case regardless of whether the Court is even claiming to be interpreting the Constitution rather than interpreting its own prior decisions. Now I […]