I blogged my reaction to the panel opinion, on the constitutionality of material witness detention for terrorism purposes, here: al-Kidd v. Ashcroft: Is Pretextual Use of the Material Witness Statute Unconstitutional?:. The opinions concerning the denial of rehearing are here. I think there’s a good chance the Supreme Court would agree to hear this case. […]
Archive | 2010
Challenge to High School Policy That Excludes from Extracurricular Activities Students Whose Out-of-School Speech “Reflects Discredit Upon [the] High School”
From T.V. v. Smith-Green Community School Corp. (N.D. Ind. Mar. 11, 2010); the opinion itself deals with only a preliminary procedural question (it refuses to certify a class action), but the discussion of the facts suggests that there’ll be an interesting dispute on the merits: T.V. and M.K. are sophomores at Churubusco High School in […]
Obama sends his praise for efforts on behalf of health care reform
This afternoon my conversation with a law student friend of my daughter’s was interrupted by a robocall to his cell phone pushing Obama’s health care bill. Then, after reading Ann Althouse, I noticed that, like Ann, I had received an email of praise — directly from President Barack Obama himself — thanking me for my […]
New Supreme Court Website and New URL
The new site is supremecourt.gov, replacing the old supremecourtus.gov. I like the new layout: It provides the info I’m likely to be interested in right up front, such as recent opinions and the argument calendar. Dropping the “us” from the URL makes sense, too, given that Congress has senate.gov and house.gov rather than senateus.gov and […]
$9 Million Alienation of Affections Damages Award
So reports the Greensboro News & Record: A jury in Guilford County District Court this week awarded $9 million to a former Greensboro woman, agreeing that her husband’s lover ruined their marriage…. In the lawsuit, Cynthia Shackelford said her husband began an affair with [Anne] Lundquist before the Shackelfords separated in April 2005. She said […]
No Righteous Gentile Awards, Please
I’ve refrained so far from commenting on the Liz Cheney – AQ7 ad, but I want to make one lengthy statement on it and, I hope, leave it at that. (Background to this kerfuffle. At this point, there is the initial AQ7 ad, then a group response letter drafted by Ben Wittes of the Brookings […]
Reminder about VC March Madness Tourney:
In case you missed it yesterday, we’re doing another VC March Madness Tournament this year. Brackets lock at tip-off of today’s first game. 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 […]
Cheap lodgings near Princeton?
I’m going to be presenting my paper “Why Do Judges Read Statutes?” at the American Law and Economics Association meeting at Princeton this May 7-8. A preliminary version is here. Anyone have any information on cheap lodgings near campus?
Third Circuit Upholds Injunction of Threatened “Sexting” Prosecution
The case is Miller v. Mitchell, just handed down today, and it’s important but complicated. Please bear with me. [UPDATE: For more on this case, and how it could impose stringent constitutional limits on anger management classes, anti-drug/alcohol-abuse classes, or even traffic school offered as alternatives to prosecution, see this follow-up post.] Here are the […]
Larry Tribe to DOJ
This is from late February, but I don’t think I have seen it reported elsewhere (although I may have just missed it): Laurence Tribe ’66, the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard, has been named Senior Counselor for Access to Justice in the Department of Justice, and he will lead a newly launched initiative […]
Would “Deem & Pass” Survive Judicial Review?
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 […]
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 […]