Today was graduation day for the GW Law Class of 2010, and I wanted to congratulate the graduating class on-blog. For that matter, congrats to the graduating classes at other law schools, too: May you all pass the bar exam and may the market for 1st year associates get back to normal. With the academic […]
Archive | May, 2010
Sunday Song Lyric
Paul Weller has a new album out. NME likes it. I’ll need to give it a listen at some point (perhaps when I’m done grading exams). He’s put out some good stuff solo and with The Style Council, but my heart stays with his early work with The Jam, one of my favorite bands. He […]
Elena Kagan’s Paper Trail
Some commentators have suggested that Elena Kagan is a nominee without much of a paper trail. I think this is overstated on two counts. First, her academic writing is more substantive than some have given her credit for (see here and here). Second, there appears to be a substantial amount of material from her time […]
Stormhammer Deathclaw Firebrand
Better even than Snaphappy Fishsuit Mokiligon — and certainly than Richard Smith.
The Lawyer-Poet:
An interesting profile in First Things of Michael J. Astrue, lawyer and head of the Social Security Administration, who moonlights as A.M. Juster: “formalist poet, comic versifier, and classical translator.”
A Historic Victory
Tonight the Philadelphia Flyers overcame a 3-0 deficit to win the seventh game of their playoff series with the Boston Bruins — a series in which they trailed 3-0. In the process they became only the third NHL team to win a seven-game series after losing the first three games, and the first such team […]
Miguel Estrada Writes in Support of Elena Kagan’s Confirmation
Estrada, you may recall, is the brilliant conservative lawyer whose nomination for the D.C. Circuit was blocked by Democrats early last decade; his letter supporting the nomination of Elena Kagan — whom he knows from law school — is here. The letter is quite substantive and graceful, as is to be expected from Estrada, and […]
The Battle for the Internet:
Bernard Kouchner, the Foreign Minister of France and a founder of Doctors Without Borders, has an interesting but somewhat unsettling op-ed in today’s New York Times. Entitled “The Battle for the Internet,” it’s a call to arms in the battle of ideas . . . between the advocates of a universal and open Internet — […]
Virginia Circuit Court Opinion Issues Preliminary Injunction Shutting Down a Web Site, Reverses Itself the Next Day
I just noticed this decision, from a few weeks ago — Burfoot v. May4thCounts.com (Va. Cir. Ct. Apr. 22) (Poston, J.): Today the Court sua sponte vacates the Order of April 21, 2010. In that Order the Court granted plaintiffs Motion for Entry of a Temporary Injunction prohibiting the defendants from using a website entitled […]
Epstein, Murphy, and Kerr On the Third-Party Doctrine
Last year I published an article, The Case for the Third-Party Doctrine, 107 Mich. L. Rev. 561 (2009), defending the widely-criticized Fourth Amendment rule that what a person discloses to a third party cannot retain Fourth Amendment protection. The Berkeley Technology Law Journal has now published three essays on the third party doctrine at least […]
PC
A tip for lawyers (and others): The standard phrase for certain kinds of unsigned court opinions is “per curiam,” not “per curium” — except perhaps in science fiction stories involving decisionmaking by artificially intelligent radioactive-element-driven quantum computers. A quick Westlaw search through Allcases (date > 5/1/2010) confirms that “per curium” is still nonstandard: “Per curiam” […]
Error in Many Versions of the United States Constitution
No, really (or so it seems to me). I’ve just noticed that — according to what I take to be the original handwritten copy of the Constitution, posted at the National Archives — the Archives’ official transcript, as well as the Commission on the Bicentennial, Cato, and Heritage pocket reprints, include a mistranscription of the […]
Create a Constitutional Theory Out of This
In the Date Clause of article VII (see the high-resolution version of the original), which gives the date as “the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven,” the “Eighty” is capitalized but the rest of the year is not. Aha!
Kagan’s record on guns
Discussed by Brian Darling, of the Heritage Foundation, in an article this morning for Human Events. Hopefully the confirmation hearings will provide an opportunity for Kagan to explain whether her views of the Second Amendment have evolved or changed since her days as a clerk or a Clinton staffer.
“We Cannot Ask a Man [Being Considered for the Supreme Court] What He Will Do”
Whenever a Supreme Court confirmation hearing approaches, this quote from Abraham Lincoln tends to come up (e.g., here): We cannot ask a man what he will do, and if we should, and he should answer us, we should despise him for it. I thought I’d pass along, though, the full context. The quote, as best […]