Hard to imagine on the day when you set aside $20 billion to pay claims, but this is an instant classic of bad PR: “We care about the small people.”
Archive | 2010
School Board Members May Choose to Remove Their Vice President Based on His Speech
So holds Blair v. Bethel School Dist., decided Monday by the Ninth Circuit. The result sounds quite right to me: [M]ore is fair in electoral politics than in other contexts. It is common for political bodies to have internal leadership structures and for members of those bodies to be openly partisan in voting for and […]
Excellent Review of Todd Zywicki’s and Max Stearns New Book on Public Choice and the Law
By Ilya Somin on June 16, 2010 2:37 pm in Growth of Government, International Human Rights Law, International Law, Public Choice
University of Florida lawprof D. Daniel Sokol has published a very good (and extremely favorable) review of co-conspirator Todd Zywicki’s important recent book Public Choice Concepts and Applications in Law (coauthored with Maxwell Stearns), in the Michigan Law Review. Danny writes that the book is “likely to be recognized as the leading work on the […]
Cybersecurity hearings
I just finished testifying on cybersecurity issues to the House Homeland Security committee. The headline from that hearing is likely to be the bipartisan support that emerged for the broad thrust of the Lieberman-Collins-Carper bill that I blogged about earlier and that I supported at the hearing. Ranking member Peter King (R-NY) announced that he would […]
End of Term Predictions for the Supreme Court?
There are still lots of cases undecided. I’m following the ones having to do with incorporation of the Second Amendment against the states, public university nondiscrimination conditions imposed on student groups, disclosure of who signed a referendum petition, the constitutionality of the appointment procedure for the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, and limits on certain […]
Funny Definition of “Most”
Sixty-nine law school deans have signed a letter endorsing Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court. According to the Washington Post, “The letter was signed by the deans of most Washington area law schools, with the exception of those at George Washington and George Mason universities.” The letter was signed by the deans at AU, Georgetown, […]
First Review of Rehabilitating Lochner
Stumbled across this at goodreads.com. I don’t know who wrote it; only that it’s one of the approximately 50 people who read the book in manuscript form, including colloquium participants at NYU and Georgetown. It’s a nice review, and the good news is that the book has undergone additional revisions/editing since it the review was […]
Clarence Thomas for President?
Kashmir Hill and David Lat of Above the Law have an interesting Washington Post column urging Justice Clarence Thomas to run for president. I know Lat because he was a year ahead of me in law school. He’s a very smart guy, and I have great respect for all the success he has achieved as […]
Brian Tamanaha on the Law School Business Model
Over at Balkinization, Brian Tamanaha has a blistering post on law professors failing to take note – or anyway do anything about – the collapse of the job market for students at non-elite law schools in light of the size of law school tuition. The complaint of the proliferating blogs and other sites from frustrated […]
FIFA v. UEFA Struggle for World Domination:
Marcus Cole on why the battle is ideological, not merely financial. To which I say: “Go US and Barca!”
Josh Wright on the FTC’s Intel Complaint:
He’s not impressed. After reading the paper, neither am I.
Proposals for Increasing Student Achievement
Stuart Buck has two interesting proposals for increasing educational achievement among minority students, based on his book Acting White: The Ironic Legacy of Desegregation: I do suggest one idea that I think has some promise: eliminate individual grades, and let students compete against other schools in academic competitions. This idea is far from original. Rather, […]
Is Legal Ethics the “Least analytically Rigorous and hence Most Subjective” Subject?
Justice Scalia apparently thinks so. Writing in dissent in Holland v. Florida, Justice Scalia (joined by Justice Thomas) wrote the following: The only thing the Court offers that approaches substantive instruction is its implicit approval of “fundamental canons of professional responsibility,” articulated by an ad hoc group of legal-ethicist amici consisting mainly of professors of […]
Sikh or Formerly Sikh American Politicians
Nikki Haley, who seems fairly likely to become the Governor of South Carolina, was raised a Sikh, though she converted to Christianity as an adult. But this would not make her the first, or even the second, fairly high-level American elected official who was or had been a Sikh. Who were the first two?
A Bit Over 500 Westlaw TP-ALL Documents Referring to This Blog
Just thought I’d note our passing this milestone. The references were overwhelmingly in law review articles, though 5% were online treatise sections and probably another 5% were practitioner journals. A few of the references were mentions of the blog as a general example, rather than links to specific posts; but on the other hand, a […]