I’m at Penn Station, waiting for the train from New York City back to DC, happy but slightly dazed after the intense three day conference in celebration of the 35th anniversary of Michael Walzer’s Just and Unjust Wars that I mentioned in an earlier post. My thanks and congratulations to Gabby Blum, Ian Scobbie, and […]
Archive | 2010
“Kristallnacht and Memory”
Eric Muller has a post by that title at Faculty Lounge.
George W. Bush on the Miers and Alito Nominations
Over at her Crossroads blog, Jan Crawford reports on what George W. Bush’s memoir of his presidency says about his Supreme Court selection process. “After he tapped Roberts for chief justice when William Rehnquist died,” Crawford explains, “he only considered women candidates to replace O’Connor” because Bush “didn’t like the idea of the Supreme Court […]
A Quantitative Look at Reasonable Doubt
Prof. Steven Landsburg (The Big Questions) has a very interesting post on this, with a follow-up that cites my brother Sasha’s n Guilty Men article.
People v. La Voie and Killing in Self-Defense
I recently taught one of my favorite criminal law cases, People v. LaVoie, 395 P.2d 1001 (Colo. 1964), and I thought readers might enjoy weighing in on the case. LaVoie is a self-defense case that is only a page long, so the facts are very simple. The ultimate question is, did the defendant have a […]
Rivalries Among Justices — And Why the FDR-Era Supreme Court is Different From Today’s Supreme Court
Writing in Slate, Harvard Law prof Noah Feldman argues that Justice Sotomayor and Justice Kagan “are fated to define their judicial careers in relation to each other.” He writes: In a sense, they have been shadowing each other for 30 years. Each woman is a strong-willed New Yorker with an identifiable ethnic identity, and each […]
Standing to Challenge Laws that Allegedly Endorse or Disapprove of Religion
I blogged yesterday about the Oklahoma anti-sharia amendment case, and suggested that the plaintiff may not have the legally sufficient standing to challenge the law. Among other things, I wrote: 1. The plaintiff argues that the amendment is unconstitutional because it impermissibly expresses governmental hostility to Islam, and provides for discrimination against Muslims. But the […]
Senator-Elect Mike Lee and Andrew Napolitano Discuss Repealing the 17th Amendment
Senator-elect Mike Lee discussed repeal of the 17th Amendment on Freedom Watch last week. Here’s the video.
“Nazism, Firearm Registration, and the Night of the Broken Glass”
Reichskristallnacht was 72 years ago. Stephen Halbrook’s 2009 article in the St. Thomas Law Review details the close connection between the disarmament of the German Jews and what came next. From the conclusion: Over a period of several weeks in October and November 1938, the Nazi government disarmed the German Jewish population. The process was carried […]
District Court Temporarily Enjoins Oklahoma No-Use-of-Sharia-Law-in-Court Constitutional Amendment
[UPDATE, Wednesday 1:40 pm: I have a follow-up post that suggests there is a recent precedent supporting the district court’s decision that the plaintiff had standing, but that ultimately concludes — as did this initial post — that the weight of precedent cuts against finding standing.] The decision was announced yesterday, but the opinion was […]
Ban on Words that “Humiliate,” “Insult,” or “Scare” Held Unconstitutionally Vague
From City of Greenville v. Bane, decided yesterday by the South Carolina Supreme Court: Appellant was convicted of violating a City of Greenville ordinance (the ordinance), entitled “Molesting, disturbing, or following persons,” which provides [in relevant part that “i]t shall be unlawful for any person to: … (3) Molest or disturb any person by the […]
Should We Teach Kids to Play to Win?
Political scientist Barry Rubin has an interesting column criticizing the modern tendency to teach kids that playing to win is bad: My son is playing on a local soccer team which has lost every one of its games, often by humiliating scores. The coach is a nice guy, but seems an archetype of contemporary thinking: […]
Upcoming Talk at University of Florida Law School on the Individual Mandate Litigation
This Wednesday at noon, I will be giving at talk at the University of Florida Law School on the Obamacare individual mandate litigation, which I recently wrote about here. The speech is sponsored by the UF Federalist Society and Health Law Society.
A Celebration of 35 Years of Michael Walzer’s Just and Unjust Wars
I am privileged this week to be in attendance at a marvelous conference at NYU celebrating the 35th anniversary of Michael Walzer’s Just and Unjust Wars, with Professor Walzer himself in attendance, and a host of luminaries among moral philosophy, law, and other fields. I don’t really have internet access at the conference, and the […]
How Progressives Misunderstand Much Conservative Skepticism of Climate Policy
By Jonathan H. Adler on November 8, 2010 6:51 pm in Climate Change, Conservatism, Environment, Uncategorized
In yesterday’s Washington Post, Bracken Hendricks of the Center for American Progress laments widespread conservative opposition to “government action on climate change.” Responding to the threat posed by global warming should be a conservative cause, Hendricks argues, because a warmer world will breed bigger government. Many conservatives say they oppose clean-energy policies because they want […]