I mentioned it earlier, and the video is now available: I speak at the 14-minute mark and then again during the Q&A. At the 52:30 mark, I get the (surprising) opportunity to give advice to President Obama on how he should approach judicial nominations.
Archive | 2010
BigLaw Supreme Court Practices
It’s interesting how many big law firms have started or bolstered their appellate and Supreme Court practices recently by hiring a former Assistant to the SG or otherwise added an experienced Supreme Court practitioner to the roster. The BLT notes the latest such example, Douglas Hallward-Driemeier at Ropes & Gray, and mentions a few more, […]
Final Cert-Stage Briefing in McCane v. United States
Earlier this afternoon I filed the Reply Brief in McCane v. United States, a pro bono Fourth Amendment case that asks the Supreme Court to review whether the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies to changing law. Here’s the full set of the cert-stage briefs: 1. Petition for Certiorari 2. Brief in Opposition 3. […]
“Who Are You Who Are So Wise in the Ways of Science?”
Just wanted to echo Jonathan’s recommendation of Peter Leeson’s Boston Globe article about the surprising effectiveness trial by ordeal. [UPDATE: Here’s the full paper by Leeson, on which the Globe piece is based.] To be fair, the article’s thesis would apply to boiling water trials, and probably not trials by weighing against a duck. Of […]
Corporate Speech About Candidates: One Important Fact
As the New York Times reports, even before the Citizens United decision, 26 states didn’t restrict independent corporate (and, I take it, union) speech about state-level political candidates. This means two things: (1) We should take with a grain of salt claims that Citizens United will substantially transfigure American political life. Unless there’s some reason […]
50 Years Ago Today – Sit-Ins Challenged Segregation
Today marks the fiftieth anniversary of the student sit-in at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C. This was the first of what would become a broad movement of sit-in protests as literally thousands of African-American students sat at lunch counters across the South, refusing to leave until they were served. These protests are often […]
David Boaz on Avatar as a Defense of Property Rights
In a recent LA Times op ed, David Boaz of the Cato Institute joins economist David Henderson in interpreting the blockbuster film Avatar as a defense of property rights: Conservatives have been very critical of the Golden Globe-winning film “Avatar” for its mystical melange of trite leftist themes. But what they have missed is that […]
Asset Forfeiture: “A License to Steal”
Radley Balko has an interesting article in Reason detailing the many abuses of the asset forfeiture system, which often allows police to seize property without compensation – even in cases where the owners have not been convicted of any crime: Over the past three decades, it has become routine in the United States for state, […]
Symposium on “National Security, Privacy, and Technological Change”
This Friday I’ll be in Austin, Texas at a symposium hosted by the Texas Law Review on “National Security, Privacy, and Technological Change.” The symposium is a little different than most law review symposia in its diverse mix of people. In addition to the usual group of academics, the symposium will include current and former […]
A (Relatively) Brief Followup/Clarification re Roscoe Pound
[You should probably scroll down and start with Orin’s first post on Glenn Beck if you want to follow this thread] First, thanks to Orin for the nice plug for my Rehabilitating Lochner book, which probably won’t be out until about a year from now. Second, just to clarify, my broader concern in criticizing Roscoe […]
Political Quote of the Day
My favorite recent political quote is this one by John Edwards: On many nights, my phone would ring and I would hear the senator [Edwards] on the other end. Sometimes he sounded petty and irritated by ordinary events. He especially hated making appearances at county fairs, where ‘fat rednecks try to shove food down my […]
Interrogating the CIA
By Kenneth Anderson on January 31, 2010 11:02 pm in Counter-Terrorism Policy, International Human Rights Law, Targeted Killing, War on Terror
I just finished up the initial draft of an essay for the Weekly Standard on drone warfare, self defense, and the CIA, riffing off of my chapter in Ben Wittes’s book. One of my observations is that the Obama administration (and really the whole US government) seems to be remarkably sanguine about the other shoe […]
Roscoe Pound, Glenn Beck, and Judicial Restraint: A Quick Response to David B.
In response to David’s bewilderment that I would be bewildered by Glenn Beck’s segment about Roscoe Pound, I think it’s helpful to distinguish two very different claims. The first claim is the one that Glenn Beck appears to be making in the clip, which is that Roscoe Pound invented the concept of thinking of the […]
Roscoe Pound, Enemy of American Constitutionalism
Below, Orin expresses amazement/bewilderment that Glenn Beck deems Roscoe Pound an important enemy of American constitutionalism, by which I assume Orin means a proper understanding of the U.S. Constitution. I watched the clip, and I’m not going to vouch for Beck’s bizarre claim that Pound was somehow responsible for American lawyers interpreting the Constitution via […]
Glenn Beck Has Found the Enemy of American Constitutionalism…
… and that enemy is Roscoe Pound. No, seriously. Roscoe Pound. Check it out starting the 0:50 mark: