Politico reports that quite a few constitutional experts, in addition to Stanford’s Michael McConnell and Yale’s Jack Balkin, believe the so-called “Slaughter Solution” (aka “Deem and Pass”) could present a thorny constitutional question. McConnell thinks it’s clearly unconstitutional; Balkin believes its constitutionality depends on its final form. To McConnell and Balkin, Politico adds GW’s Alan […]
Archive | March, 2010
Debating Green Jobs — The Conclusion
The Economist.com debate between Andrew Morriss and Van Jones on whether “creating green jobs is a sensible aspiration for governments” is concluding. The full debate, including guest commentaries by economist Robert Stavins and enviornmentalist Daniel Weiss, is available here.
Chess
Ilya’s post prompted me to recall something a bit different about chess and thinking. My father taught me to play chess when I was small. It will help you learn to think better, he said. So I played, and eventually got to be pretty good for a casual player. At some point, quite a while […]
“IM GAY” License Plate “Offensive to the General Public,” Oklahoma Government Agency Concludes
Oklahoman Keith Kimmel asked for a personalized license plate with the text “IM GAY.” No, said the Oklahoma Tax Commission’s Motor Vehicle Division, and a Tax Commission Administrative Law Judge agreed: The license plate is rejected because of a rule that says, “No special license plate will be issued which may be offensive to the […]
Too Smart to Become the Chess World Champion?
Magnus Carlsen became a chess grandmaster at the age of thirteen and is now, at nineteen, the youngest player ever to be ranked no. 1 in the world. The natural assumption is that Carlsen’s success is largely due to his incredible intelligence. In this recent interview with Der Spiegel, however, Carlsen himself claims that one […]
Third Annual VC March Madness Tourney:
Back again for the third annual VC March Madness Tournament. The bracket is available on cbssportsline (so you have to register if you haven’t already): http://volcon.mayhem.cbssports.com/e The password is “Volokh” (be sure to capitalize the V). One bracket per person, please. Note that I’ve configured the rules to multiply the points for the round by […]
UNC Talk Tomorrow (Thursday):
For any VC’ers in the Research Triangle area looking for something interesting to do during lunchtime tomorrow, I’ll be giving a talk (sponsored by the Federalist Society and the Carolina Intellectual Property Law Society) on Jefferson, his moose, the Internet, natural law, and related matters at the U. North Carolina Law School starting at noon, […]
Yoo v. Epstein on Executive Power and the Al-Quaeda 7:
John Yoo and Richard Epstein discuss and debate a variety of issues on a new Ricochet podcast (they are podcast episode number 7, Midnight Blue). Check out some of the others while you are there–Rob Long, Peter Robinson, and Mark Steyn are the three hosts.
Does Hayek Belong in High School Economics Classes?
At the Freakonomics blog, economist Justin Wolfers criticizes a recent Texas Board of Education effort to include the work of F.A. Hayek in high school economics classes. He sees it as a “conservative” ideological mandate that isn’t justified by Hayek’s scholarly influence: Sunday’s New York Times reported on attempts by the Texas Board of Education […]
Lochner v. New York as a Test Case
Many of the most important cases in American constitutional law have not involved true cases or controversies. Instead, they involved individuals or organizations who intentionally set up a test case to challenge a law they disliked. Prominent examples include Plessy v. Ferguson and Griswold v. Connecticut. I think we can add Lochner v. New York […]
Kalt’s Law
Prof. Brian Kalt reports: I thought you might be interested in the following ironclad law of American presidential politics. I call it Kalt’s Law: “Under the modern two-party system, if a candidate has facial hair, the Republican always has as much, or more, than the Democrat.” Some notes. 1. It would be the case that […]
The Good Faith Exception and Changing Law: A Brief History
This is my fifth post in a planned series on why the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule does not apply when a police officer conducts a search that is lawful when it occurs that is later ruled unlawful before the conviction is final. This issue is being litigated all over the country right […]
Why Recalls of U.S. Senators Are Unconstitutional
I wanted to briefly elaborate why I think it’s clear that mandatory recalls of U.S. Senators are unconstitutional, even when authorized by state law. (Advisory recalls, in which the voters vote to ask their Senator to resign, should be just fine, but that’s a separate matter.) The relevant constitutional provision is the Seventeenth Amendment, though […]
New Jersey Appellate Court Allows Continued Signature Gathering for Recall of U.S. Senator Robert Menendez
Here’s the opinion. To my surprise, the court concluded that it’s uncertain whether the recall would be constitutional. (My view is that a mandatory recall would clearly be unconstitutional, since the Constitution expressly states that Senators serve for six years; and while I have suggested that an advisory recall might be fine — though it […]
The Good Faith Exception for Changing Law: Recent Developments
I’ve been running a series of posts about the good faith exception for changing law, and I wanted to flag three new developments just in the last week: 1. Today the Ninth Circuit denied DOJ’s petition for rehearing en banc in Gonzalez, the case rejecting the exception, so the clear circuit split stays: United States […]