I mentioned earlier a panel discussion I participated in on robots, law and society at Stanford Law School a couple of weeks ago. Adam Gorlick at Physorg.com has a good article summing up the discussion. Ryan Calo, of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, raises some of the fundamental liability issues and the […]
Archive | November, 2009
Conflicts of Interest for Diplomats, Former Diplomats, and the UN: Ruth Wedgwood on Peter Galbraith
Ruth Wedgwood’s new column at Forbes.com takes up the uncomfortable question of Peter Galbraith and his financial dealings with regard to Kurdish autonomy, oilfields, and Galbraith’s consulting deal with a Norwegian company that could conceivably pay him somewhere up to $100 million. That discussion is very important and fraught with issues – Galbraith has not been […]
Against Congressional Briefs
I have occasionally criticized judges and Justices who use their official positions to try to influence the legislative process. In this post I want to criticize the mirror image: Legislators who sign on to “congressional briefs” in the Supreme Court, such as the one David Kopel links to below, designed to influence the outcome of […]
A Volokh Conspiracy Drinking Game
At least for VC readers who regularly follow the comment threads: Every time commenter “J. Aldridge” mentions John Bingham, you have to drink.
Kopel brief in McDonald v. Chicago
Available on SSRN. (This is the abstract page. To read the full brief, click “Download,” then on the new screen click the button for which city’s server you will use for the download.) The brief is filed on behalf of the two major police training organizations in the United States: the International Law Enforcement Educators […]
Institute for Justice brief in McDonald v. Chicago
Counsel of record is Clark Neilly, who was Alan Gura’s right-hand man in Heller. The most important part of the brief is Part III, which begins: “To enslave a class of people requires three basic things: destroy their self-sufficiency, prevent them from fighting back, and silence any opposition.” The brief then goes on to argue that the […]
Congressional brief in McDonald v. Chicago
By David Kopel on November 23, 2009 3:26 pm in Congress, Constitutional History, Fourteenth Amendment, Guns
Available here. Joined by 58 Senators (including 19 Democrats) and 251 U.S. Representatives (including 78 Democrats, although my count here may not be exact). Counsel of Record is former Solicitor General Paul D. Clement. Much of the brief recapitulates the lengthy historical record of congressional action (including but not limited to Reconstruction) to protect the […]
Academics for the Second Amendment brief in McDonald
By David Kopel on November 23, 2009 2:52 pm in Congress, Constitutional History, Fourteenth Amendment, Guns, Press
Available here. Co-authored by Joseph Olson (Hamline), David Hardy, and Clayton Cramer. Key point: From 1789 to 1860, popular and legal understanding of the Second Amendment became much less militia-centric. Well before Reconstruction, the Second Amendment was considered to be mainly a guarantee of a right to own and carry guns for personal protection. Back […]
Duty to Tweet?
Josh Blackman points to this Newsday story: An album signing … for teen sensation Justin Bieber at Roosevelt Field mall was canceled because a crowd of 3,000 young girls and their parents started aggressively pushing and shoving, police said…. Five people were taken to area hospitals with minor injuries. Police arrested a senior vice president […]
NYT Policy on Illegally Acquired Documents
The NYT‘s environmental blog, Dot Earth, covered the disclosure of e-mails and other files from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, noted that the files are available on various other website, but did not reproduce any files on its site. As Andrew Revkin explained in the post: The documents appear to have been […]
Cato brief in McDonald v. Chicago
By David Kopel on November 23, 2009 2:02 am in Civil Rights, Constitutional History, Constitutional Theory, Fifth Amendment, Fourteenth Amendment
Available here. An outstanding brief, as one might expect. The bulk of the brief (21 pages, comprising Part I) shows that from the Founding Era into through the framing of the Fourteenth Amendment, national citizenship was paramount to state citizenship. Part II briefly argues that Slaughterhouse violated canons of constitutional construction–such as by interpreting the […]
NYT: “Wave of Debt Payments Facing U.S. Government”
Wait, you mean we’re expected to pay all that money back?
Puffery Plaintiffs
The NYT reports that more companies are challenging claims made in competitors’ ads. Companies that were once content to fight in grocery-store aisles and on television commercials are now choosing a different route — filing lawsuits and other formal grievances challenging their competitors’ claims. Longtime foes like Pantene and Dove, Science Diet and Iams, AT&T […]
WaPo on Climate E-mails (and More)
The Washington Post covers the disclosure of e-mails from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit — e-mails that appear to have been subject to an FOI request and that were either hacked by an outsider or stolen and released by an insider. In one e-mail, the center’s director, Phil Jones, writes Pennsylvania State […]
Thoughts on Sarah Palin and Going Rogue
Like Ilya, I’ve been reading Sarah Palin’s book and following her media appearances. It’s difficult to say anything original about a polarizing figure such as Palin. And no matter what you say, around half of the VC readership will be convinced you are a complete idiot (which half depending on which side you take). But […]