The New York Court of Appeals – the state’s highest court -is about to consider an important property rights case, Goldstein v. New York State Urban Development Corporation. The case involves a challenge to the condemnation of large amounts of property for the purpose of transferring the land to influential developer Bruce Ratner, who plans […]
Archive | October, 2009
On Obama’s Nobel
Unlike some, I don’t think the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama during his first year in office is all that shocking. For many years the Nobel Peace Prize has been given as much if not more for what the committee hopes recipients will accomplish as for what they’ve already done. Just […]
Oral Argument Audio from OT08
Via Howard, I learn that Oyez has now posted the audio from all the oral arguments the U.S. Supreme Court held from the Fall of 2008 to the Spring of 2009 (in Supreme Court parlance, October Term 2008). I’ve written before that I favor same-day release of the audio of Supreme Court arguments, and I […]
Public Choice Concepts and Applications in Law Now Available:
My book “Public Choice Concepts and Applications in Law” (co-authored with Maxwell Stearns) is now available. Just in time for Christmas! You can order your very own copy here.
Socking It to (Some of) the States
Kimberly Strassel’s column in today’s WSJ details several provisions of the Baucus health care reform bill outline that give special treatment to certain states to reduce the impact of health care reform. A central feature of the Baucus bill is the vast expansion of state Medicaid programs. This is necessary, we are told, to cover […]
Why the U.S. is Doomed to Have an Expensive and Inefficient Health Care System
I found this to be an extremely enlightening post, by Megan McArdle. It’s too good to summarize, read the whole thing. But I do want to highlight one point: government control, whether in a single-payer context like the Medicare system, or via various government mandates as in Massachusetts, has not led to lower costs. Someone […]
Top Ten Reasons Obama Won the Nobel Peace Prize
With David Letterman somewhat distracted, I thought I’d solicit nominations for a top 10 list. Here’s a few to start off: Consolation prize for losing the Olympics Who gives a rat’s you-know-what about Afghanistan, anyway The Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry, and Biology were already taken “We couldn’t give an ‘un-prize’ to George W. Bush, […]
Stalin’s Grandson Sues Russian Newspaper, Claiming It Defamed Stalin
The BBC reports: The paper published a piece referring to declassified death warrants which it says bore Stalin’s personal signature. Mr Dzhugashvili — who was not at the court as the case was brought on Thursday — says that is a lie, and that Stalin never directly ordered the deaths of anyone. It is the […]
C-Span on the Supreme Court
Supreme Court geeks are going to have to watch the whole C-SPAN series on the Supreme Court. The main video is here. I’m part of the way through the main video, and it’s terrific so far. A lot of the focus is on the remarkable Supreme Court building. I’ve generally thought that American law would […]
“NBC Pressures Leno to Have Affair”
“Network seeks scandal for ratings-starved host.” From the Borowitz Report.
May U.S. Court Determine Whether Foreign Religious Wedding Was Religiously Valid?
From Madireddy v. Madireddy, decided Tuesday (and to my knowledge not covered by any other media) by a New York intermediate appellate court: In an action for a divorce and ancillary relief, the defendant appeals, and the intervenor separately appeals, by permission, from an order of the Supreme Court, Nassau County (Falanga, J.), dated September […]
A Lot of Books
Cornel West in his office. (Just an interesting picture– not a news story.)
Copyright as a Government Program
In this, my last post – thanks so much Eugene and to those who took the time to comment – I will address remarks by Brian, the devil’s advocate. He very politely stated: “While Orin let you off the hook, I think you, and maybe he given his acquiescence, miss the full import of his […]
Boston Area Jewish Delis
My previous post on delis reminded me of how disappointed I was in the quality of the Jewish delis in the Boston suburbs when I arrived in college from Queens. Here are two actual conversations, the first at a “kosher-style” deli in Newton on Commonwealth Avenue, the second at the kosher Rubin’s in Brookline. In […]
Who Sent You that Book? Did You Pay for It?
The Federal Trade Commission’s new rules guidelines requiring bloggers (and others) to disclose freebies the have received from those they blog about have generated lots of comment, mostly negative. Walter Olson comments and rounds up some other reactions from the blogosphere. UPDATE: Slate‘s Jack Shafer on “The FTC’s Mad Power Grab.”