I’ll leave it to the professional pundits to determine whether House Republicans, President Obama, or someone else got the better deal with last week’s announced compromise. One winner in the deal, however, is the ethanol lobby. Although conservative Republicans, environmental groups and even Al Gore had come out against extending ethanol’s tax breaks, Iowa lawmakers […]
Archive | 2010
Derivatives Clearing Houses
Although I have a few reservations about the tone of the article being just slightly conspiratorial, Louise Story’s front page NYT story today on the evolution of derivatives clearinghouses is highly informative and very well done. The graphics showing how the bilateral trades would turn into centralized clearing are quite good and would be useful […]
“Cultural Defenses” and Incest
By Eugene Volokh on December 12, 2010 6:38 pm in Cultural Defenses, Religion and the Law, Sexual Conduct Restrictions
If you want a look at pure cultural defenses that do set up a separate legal rule for people who belong to a particular group, check out Rhode Island General Laws § 15-1-4: The provisions of §§ 15-1-1 – 15-1-3 shall not extend to, or in any way affect, any marriage which shall be solemnized […]
Distinguishing Descriptive From Normative Readings of Constitutional Law
In a recent comment thread, commenter Leo Marvin asked an interesting question on why it is so common to blend together interpretations of what constitutional law “is” with what constitutional law “should be.” That is, why is it so common for people to infuse their readings of the current state of constitutional law with their […]
Law and Morality
Some comments on the incest thread seem to argue that incest should be banned just because it’s immoral. I don’t think this can be right. There is lots of immoral behavior — cruelty, ingratitude, and a variety of other things — that is not illegal. (On a related point, for a list of violations of […]
Incest
Given the recent news story about father-adult daughter incest, I thought I’d ask a few questions about adult-adult incest (speaking specifically of parent-child, grandparent-grandchild, or brother-sister, and setting aside cousins and the like): (1) Should it be illegal, and, if so, exactly why? Is it just because it’s immoral? Because legalizing incest would, by making […]
Coasean-Style Praise for the ‘Coherence’ of Institutions – Hayekian Praise, Too!
One further comment, while I’m thinking of Chris Caldwell. He is, after all, a reminder that there are journalists who are much smarter, intellectual, and certainly better read than most academics, including me. We had lunch recently, while he was working on his euro-zone essay. I was then ordering books for my spring law and […]
The Political Economy of the Euro Crisis
Chris Caldwell, of the Weekly Standard and the Financial Times, took up Western Europe as his journalist beat at a time, in the 1990s, when all the cool kids were off doing Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and the Balkans. Coverage of Continental Western Europe by newspapers like the Times meant a cushy assignment […]
Some Stereotypes Are Accurate
Something I noticed the Should Western Democracies Build Barriers to Sharia Law? thread: The first comment says “obviously yes.” The second comment says “obviously no.” The third comment, posted by a law professor (me), says “it depends.” As it happens, I think the answer with regard to broad legal questions indeed usually is “it depends.” […]
“Cultural Defenses” and Underage Marriage
Here’s another case showing how American law applies to people with different cultural assumptions from our own, State v. Al-Hussaini, 579 N.W.2d 561 (Neb. Ct. App. 1998); I think the result is correct. Note that in the de minimis case and the mistake of fact hypothetical, the defendant’s claim was that the defendant’s culture was […]
“Should Western Democracies Build Barriers to Sharia Law?”
By Eugene Volokh on December 11, 2010 12:25 pm in Islamic Law in the American Legal System, Religion and the Law
That’s the title of a Western Word Radio online radio program, which will be streaming live from 1:30 to 3:30 pm Eastern tomorrow (Sunday, December 12), and will available on the site after that. The details are available here, but the short summary is that the panel seems to be large and quite balanced: Eugene […]
Roger Cohen’s “Real Jews” Column
The column, which is receiving a great deal of attention, is about how mainstream Jewish groups are alienating liberal Jews through their intolerance of dissent about Israeli policies. Cohen doesn’t seem to notice the irony of how his column starts: Ira Stup was raised in Philadelphia attending Jewish day school and camps. He found his […]
Elephant Law + Hard-Core Pornography
Cal. Penal Code § 596.5 bans certain forms of elephant abuse, and Aaron Leider argues that the L.A. Zoo is engaging in “abusing behavior” towards its elephants by, among other things, giving them only 3.5 acres per elephant of space. Judge John Wiley — a former criminal law professor here at UCLA — rejected this […]
Final score on 2d Amendment in the November elections
Now that all congressional races have been decided, here the final tallies for how the election affected Second Amendment support in Congress, according to the NRA’s top federal lobbyist Chuck Cunningham: 19 of 25 U.S. Senate candidates endorsed by the NRA-Political Victory Fund won their races. The net gain is +7 votes (Ark., N.H., N.D., Oh., Penn., W.V., […]
D.C. Circuit Denies Stay Request in Greenhouse Gas Cases
Today the D.C. Circuit (panel of Ginsburg, Tatel, Brown) denied the request of those challenging the EPA’s suite of greenhouse gas regulations to stay the regulations pending the outcome of the litigation. The order is available here.