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Archive | 2010
One Sting Too Many
It’s one thing to pretend to be a pimp when interviewing ACORN employees. It’s quite another to pretend to be a telephone repairman to gain access to a U.S. Senate office and its telephone system. Apparently noted ACORN-sting filmaker James O’Keefe and some compatriots did not see the difference, and are now facing federal charges […]
Dorf on Thomas on Noriega
Michael Dorf has an interesting post explaining why he thinks Justice Thomas (joined by Justice Scalia) was correct to argue that the Court should have accepted certiorari in Noriega v. Pastrana. Professor Dorf concludes: What I admire about Justice Thomas’s Noriega dissent is that he presents the legal issues without even hinting that he thinks […]
Public Service Announcement
Always back up. Even when you think you are automatically backing up, manually back up. Manually save documents. Not a computer crash and really not the end of the world, but Word for Mac seems to be a particularly unstable program (for me at least), often when I am working on long, involved documents for […]
Formerly Socialist Israeli Kibbutzim Discover the Virtues of Private Property
Israel’s collectivist kibbutzim were once one of the world’s most highly touted experiments in socialism. But, as the Financial Times reports [HT: Tyler Cowen], they have increasing switched over to private property rights: Set amid rolling hills in central Israel, Kibbutz Nachshon is a cluster of simple houses shaded by pine trees and surrounded by […]
Hayek v. Keynes Rap Video:
Russ Roberts explains the financial crisis via rap video.
Copenhagen on $2,200 a Day
CBS News has been reporting on what the government spent to send over twenty members of Congress, along with staff, spouses, and others, to the Copenhagen climate conference, and what they’ve uncovered isn’t pretty. More here.
Worst ConLaw Movie Ever?
Gerald Magliocca thinks the worst constitutional law movie ever is Tennessee Johnson. Is he right? I’m not sure what’s the best (or worst) ConLaw movie, but a few years back I identified what could be the best CrimPro Exam Fact Pattern song lyric (and that song apparently prompted some Harvard law students to write a […]
Whence Comes Section One? (Second Notice)
By Randy Barnett on January 26, 2010 2:42 pm in Civil Rights, Constitutional Theory, Fourteenth Amendment, History, Originalism
Last week, when I posted a link to my new article, Whence Comes Section One? The Abolitionist Origins of the Fourteenth Amendment, I received several messages telling me that SSRN was inaccessible. Presumably, it is working now, so if you were unable to download it, you should try again. Here is the link, and here […]
Really?
Washington Post headline: “Some Obama goals for administration have still not been met.”
Twitter Libel Suit Dismissed
This is the suit I blogged about here; law.com reports: [A] Cook Country, Ill., circuit judge dismissed a defamation suit filed by a Chicago-area real estate management company against a former tenant who tweeted about mold in her apartment…. Attorneys at The John Marshall Law School’s Center for Information Technology and Privacy Law represented 25-year-old […]
More Criticism of Mirandizing the Christmas Day Bomber
Yesterday I expressed my concern about the decision to Mirandize the Christmas day bomber. Today’s Wall Street Journal has this excellent editorial forcefully criticizing the Administration’s decision to do so. Here’s an excerpt: On “Fox News Sunday,” Chris Wallace asked White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs whether the President was told that Abdulmutallab was Mirandized after only […]
Supreme Court on the Kindle
I received an Amazon Kindle over the holidays, and I like it quite a bit. I’ve downloaded lots of free books and reference materials, in addition to some current reads. One disappointment I have is that many legal books I would like to download, such as Akhil Reed Amar’s America’s Constitution: A Biography, are not […]
Liptak on Stevens — A Minor Error and Not-So-Minor Omission
I was not particularly bothered by Adam Liptak’s highly favorable treatment of Justice Stevens in the NYT article David highlights below. Justice Stevens appears to be nearing the end of a long, honorable, and important tenure on the Court. He’s entitled to the occasional puff piece. I was struck less by the uncritical nature of […]
Puff Piece on Justice Stevens
Some “tough journalism” from the Times’s Adam Liptak. We learn of Stevens’s “plainspoken style,” his “common sense” and “moral clarity,” and that he is “the leader of the court’s liberal wing.” While in his early years on the Court “his views often seemed idiosyncratic,” he has since “emerged as a master tactician,” who uses the […]