In honor of Black History Month, Scotus blog is running a series of guest posts on race and the Supreme Court. My post appears today, entitled “The Neglected Case of Buchanan v. Warley.” It’s an excerpt from my Rehabilitating Lochner book, due out next Spring from University of Chicago Press. Here’s the beginning: Buchanan v. […]
Archive | 2010
The Supposed Settling of the Question of “Secession” at Appomattox
I keep hearing the claim that the legitimacy of secession from the U.S. was “settled at Appomattox,” and I wanted to say a few words about why I think that makes little sense. To begin with, let me stress that I think that modern talk of secession is both foolish and pretty obviously empty posturing, […]
Journalistic Ethics and Outing Judges
An interesting discussion at Kashmir Hill with David Lat of Above the Law; the immediate occasion for it is the public revelation of Judge Vaughn Walker’s homosexuality, but of course the issue can arise in lots of other situations as well. UPDATE: I originally said David Lat was “formerly of Above the Law,” but he […]
Goldstone Report Co-Author is a Nutter?
I wrote back in September, re the Goldstone Report on Israel’s actions in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead: My inclination is to dismiss out of hand any report that emerges from the U.N. Human Rights Council, which includes such human rights stalwarts as China, Cuba, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. I’m even more inclined to do […]
Snow to Hell
That’s my name for our latest D.C. storm. I grew up in New York City, lived in New England for six years and Michigan for one, and I’ve never seen so much snow, in such rapid succession.
Will Allowing Gays in the Military Really Impair Unit Cohesion? The Relevance of Allies’ Experience
In my view, the strongest argument against President Obama’s proposal to allow gays to serve openly in the military is the claim that it will somehow impair unit cohesion. Yet as columnist Steve Chapman points out, several of our allies allow gays to serve openly with no such ill effects: It’s not completely implausible that […]
Justice Thomas at University of Florida
A pretty interesting conversation, via Michael Dorf.
Preference for Public School Over Homeschooling — and Maybe Private Schooling — Because It Provides “Exposure to Different Points of View”?
I blogged about this case several months ago; Gavel to Gavel reports that the New Hampshire legislature is considering whether to pass a “bill of address” asking the governor to remove the judge who issued the decision: A bill of address requires only a simple majority of both the House and Senate and need not […]
Reports from the Front Lines of “Snowmageddon”
Megan McArdle summarizes the post-“snowmageddon” state of Washington, DC, which isn’t good: You will probably have noticed that I did not post this morning. That’s because sometime before 8 am, I decided that I should get to the grocery store and pick up my lung medicine in the hiatus between snows. Four hours later, I […]
The Misunderstood “Reasonable Expectation of Privacy” Test
Discussions about the Fourth Amendment sometimes include arguments that look like this: The Fourth Amendment protects reasonable expectations of privacy. I expect privacy in _________, and I’m pretty reasonable, so I have a reasonable expectation of privacy in ________ and the Fourth Amendment should therefore protect it. This reasoning is really common, but it’s also […]
Smoking out a Dubious Lawsuit: Massachusetts Woman Sues Real Estate Broker over Second-Hand Smoke in Condo
A Massachusetts woman is suing her real estate broker over exposure to second-hand smoke in her condo, which the broker helped her purchase: Alyssa Burrage says she was smoked out of her new $405,000 condominium. Burrage, a 32-year-old advertising company employee with a history of asthma, had smelled cigarettes when she first visited the bright, […]
Did Political Ignorance Help Cause the Financial Crisis?
Political scientist Jeffrey Friedman has an excellent article arguing that political ignorance by both regulators and voters played a key role in causing the financial crisis: You are familiar by now with the role of the Federal Reserve in stimulating the housing boom; the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in encouraging low-equity mortgages; […]
Network Engineering and the Slime Mold:
I’ve written a fair bit – in my book, in a couple of articles here and here, and on this blog from time to time – about the extraordinary development of the new science of networks, an amalgam of research in biology, physics, systems engineering, mathematics, sociology, and other disciplines, all focused on unraveling the […]
The Surprisingly Narrow Top-Side Merits Brief in City of Ontario v. Quon
Last week the petitioners in City of Ontario v. Quon filed their merits brief. Quon is the pending Supreme Court case on Fourth Amendment rights of government employees in their text messages created using government-provided text pagers. I’ve read the brief, and it makes a surprisingly narrow argument: I suspect that this narrow framing will […]
White Out, a Novel
From the online diary of Mr K, inhabitant of the snowbound city of W. Day 1.15. As the snowdrifts begin to build, making it impossible to go about to Superfresh or Starbuck’s or Pain Quotidien or any other of the city W’s cherished Spring Valley locations, as it mounts just beyond the door, making it […]