Joe Malchow, who has been of great help to us with the technical side of the blog, reports that the Conspiracy should now look better on the iPhone than it did before. Our normal wide format has been a bit hard to read on mobile devices, so Joe set things up so that anyone reading […]
Archive | 2010
Canadian University Restricting Graphic Posters That Compare Abortion to Genocide
By Eugene Volokh on April 21, 2010 1:20 pm in Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Speech at Colleges and Universities
From the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: The University of Calgary is threatening to expel a group of students who refused to move a graphic anti-abortion display on campus…. [In november 2008, the group] refused university administrators’ requests to make the posters [of aborted fetuses] — which compared abortion to the Holocaust and the genocide in Rwanda […]
Muzzy v. Wilkins
If you’re interested in Framing-era judicial thought on religious freedom, check out Muzzy v. Wilkins, 1 Smith’s (N.H.) 1 (1803) — a little-cited but very interesting case that illustrates how strong religious freedom and separation-of-church-and-state rhetoric and belief coexisted in at least some judicial minds of the era with strong support for certain kinds of […]
Interview on the Healthcare Channel
Here are 2 YouTube videos of my recent interview for the Healthcare Channel. In the first, I discuss the unconstitutionality of the individual health insurance mandate under the Commerce Clause and the tax power. Those who want a close examination of how the mandate runs afoul of current Commerce Clause doctrine should look at my […]
San Francisco Program on Anna Nicole Smith Case:
Next Tuesday April 27 I’ll be in San Francisco talking about the 9th Circuit’s opinion in the Anna Nicole Smith case (which I blogged on here). The Pacific Research Institute is sponsoring. The program will be at the Ritz-Carlton at noon. Details here.
Kansas Now Allows Threat of Deadly Force in Self-Defense, and Not Just Use of Such Force
You wouldn’t think that it would take a statute to do this. After all, if it’s OK to kill someone to defend against a threat of death or serious injury, the lesser harm of threatening to kill someone should be fine, too. But last year the Kansas Supreme Court held that existing Kansas law only […]
North Carolina Tax Officials Allegedly Seeking Names of All Amazon Customers in North Carolina
From the Complaint in Amazon.com, LLC v. Lay (W.D. Wash., filed yesterday): 25. On December 1, 2009, as part of an audit of Amazon for compliance with state sales and use tax laws, the DOR sent an Information Document Request … to Amazon ….
Prisoners Retain Right to Refuse Medical Treatment
An interesting opinion from Maryland’s highest court just handed down yesterday, Stouffer v. Reid. An excerpt: The respondent, Troy Reid …, an adult male, was committed to the custody of the Commissioner of Correction in 1995 to serve a forty year sentence. Reid’s medical history while in the institution revealed a diagnosis of high blood […]
The Next iPhone — and the Criminal Law Angle
It appears that an Apple employee with a top-secret next-generation iPhone prototype lost the phone at a bar. The folks at Gizmodo paid $5,000 to get the phone from the guy who recovered it. They then disassembled the phone to see what made it tick before contacting Apple to have Apple request the return of […]
First Amendment Exceptions and History
The Court has repeatedly held that some kinds of speech is categorically excluded from First Amendment protection (at least setting aside certain kinds of content-based discriminations within those exceptions, see R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, which I won’t discuss here). The standard list is obscenity, incitement, libel (or, more precisely, false statements of fact), […]
The Future of “Serious Value” Safe Harbors
The legislature bans a certain kind of speech — for instance, depictions of animal cruelty, or publication of leaked trade secrets — but recognizes that the ban would on its face be very broad, and would cover certain kinds of journalism, art, research, and the like. The legislature therefore exempts works which have “serious religious, […]
Timothy McVeigh Was No Libertarian: The Fallacy of Conflating Two Very Different Types of “Anti-Government” Movements
Some commentators are associating the Oklahoma City bombings of 15 years ago and other far right violence with the rise of “anti-government” sentiment in opposition to the Obama health care bill and other recent expansions of federal spending and regulation. Former President Clinton’s recent New York Times op ed is a good example of this […]
The Supreme Court and Presidential Signing Statements: United States v. Stevens
One of the things that struck me during the kerfuffle about presidential signing statements during the Bush Administration was the widely held belief that presidential signing statements were immediately and consistently implemented throughout the Executive Branch. In my experience, signing statements are typically used simply to “lay down a marker” with Congress by saying where […]
United States v. Stevens: A Brief Analysis, Plus the Future of Animal Cruelty Depiction Bans
In today’s United States v. Stevens decision, the Court struck down on overbreadth grounds 18 U.S.C. § 48, which reads: (a) Whoever knowingly creates, sells, or possesses a depiction of animal cruelty with the intention of placing that depiction in interstate or foreign commerce for commercial gain, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned […]
Annual “Jumps” and “Slips” in the U.S. News Ranking
I recently received this e-mail from a student deciding among various law schools (with actualy school names replaced with numbers by me): I read your blog all the time and I’m very impressed with your knowledge and intuition. I’m currently deciding between School 1, School 2, and School 3. School 1 just jumped in the […]