The transcript is available here.
Archive | 2010
The Good Faith Exception and Changing Law: The Benefit of the Exclusionary Rule on Direct Appeal
This is my second post in a planned series on why the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule does not apply when a police officer conducts a search that is lawful when it occurs that is later ruled unlawful before the conviction is final. This issue is being litigated all over the country right […]
First News Report on the McDonald Argument
It’s brief, but here’s what Lyle Denniston has posted at SCOTUSblog: The Supreme Court on Tuesday seemed poised to require state and local governments to obey the Second Amendment guarantee of a personal right to a gun, but with perhaps considerable authority to regulate that right. The dominant sentiment on the Court was to extend […]
Defining Aggression for the International Criminal Court
Over at Opinio Juris, an interesting exchange on the question of defining the crime of aggression as part of the International Criminal Court statute. Professor Michael Glennon discusses his Yale Journal of International Law article, The Blank-Prose Crime of Aggression, and Carrie McDougall, Larry Johnson, and Anthony Arend respond. I broadly agree with Professor Glennon, […]
My Visit to Tuvalu
Reason.tv’s interview with yours truly is now up; I chat with Ted Balaker about free speech, guns, nannies, and sex toys.
The Line for Oral Arguments in McDonald v. City of Chicago
Here it was at 11pm: I thought of trying to get one of the first-come, first-served seats provided to members of the Supreme Court bar, but I figure it’s a lot of lost sleep for 20 minutes of sparks given that we’ll get the transcript anyway. (For some reason, the Justices refused to release the […]
A New Rebel Mascot for a New South – Admiral Ackbar May Replace Colonel Reb at Ole Miss
Students at the University of Mississippi have started a campaign to replace the school’s longtime mascot Colonel Reb with Admiral Ackbar, leader of the Rebel Fleet in Star Wars. Colonel Reb was retired in 2003 because “coaches and athletic boosters concluded that C. Reb and other symbols of the Confederacy hurt the school’s recruiting prospects.” […]
The Good Faith Exception and Changing Law: The Context of the Good Faith Exception
This is my first post in a planned series of posts on why the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule does not apply when a police officer conducts a search that is lawful when it occurs that is later ruled unlawful before the conviction is final. This issue is being litigated all over the […]
Thoughts on the Reverse Yoo Hypothetical
The comments on the Reverse Yoo hypothetical are fascinating, and I wanted to try to draw some tentative conclusions from them. The most interesting result to me is that for a lot of Yoo’s critics, whether Yoo followed the law or not is mostly beside the point. The primary objection is that Yoo’s conduct permitted […]
Appointed Attorneys Are For Indigent Defendants
That’s the lesson of United States v. Wilson, handed down today by the Sixth Circuit in an opinion by Judge Sutton. A public defender was appointed in the defendant’s case based on his perceived inability to hire his own lawyer. But near the end of the trial, the district court learned that the defendant was […]
Cert Denied in McCane v. United States
This morning the Supreme Court denied cert in McCane v. United States, the pro bono case I worked on over the last few months on whether the good faith exception of the Fourth Amendment applies to changing law. Although the Court denied cert in my case, I think it is extremely like that that the […]
Imagining a Reverse Yoo
I have one more question to add on to yesterday’s post on John Yoo and the torture memos. Let’s imagine what I’ll call a reverse Yoo. Here’s the hypo, with the question at the end. The year is 2002, and the CIA has come to OLC seeking a legal opinion about what “enhanced interrogation techniques” […]
Chief Justice Taney on the Privileges or Immunities of Citizens of the United States
How might the Republicans in the 39th Congress have gotten the idea that the Privileges or Immunities of Citizens of the United States included the personal guarantees included in the Bill of Rights? All concede that the Fourteenth Amendment was, among other things, designed to reverse Dred Scott. Here is how Chief Justice Taney described […]
Jacob Howard Explains Privileges or Immunties
This morning Professor Philip Hamburger graciously responds to my blog post reacting to his new paper on Privileges or Immunities. In an email, he also gave me permission to quote his paper. I should mention that Philip and I have been friends for many years, and I have always considered him to be both a […]
A Comment and a Question about the Investigation Into the Yoo/Bybee Torture Memos
I’ve mostly stayed out of the debate over whether John Yoo and Jay Bybee should be disciplined by DOJ for the so-called torture memos. I’ve read some news reports, and followed the issues a little bit, but I haven’t devoted nearly the number of hours to this issue that I would need to in […]