From the Department of Health & Human Services: Sebelius calls on health insurers to stop misinformation and unjustified rate increases Affordable Care Act will help lower costs and crack down on unjustified rate increases … U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius wrote America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the national association of […]
Archive | 2010
“Microsoft Suspends Xbox Gamer For Living in Fort Gay”
So reports PC World (heh); the headline is a bit of an exaggeration, but apparently not much: The 26-year-old simply typed in the name of his city [Fort Gay, WV], but was subsequently accused of violating Microsoft’s LIVE Code of Conduct. Among other things, the code stipulates that you shouldn’t “create a gamertag, profile content, […]
“The Quickly Unraveling Clerkship Market”
Dave Hoffman has a very interesting post by that title over at Concurring Opinions.
Kagan’s Recusals
By Jonathan H. Adler on September 10, 2010 2:39 pm in Judicial Nominations, Kagan Nomination, Supreme Court
This week, Justice Elena Kagan “quietly recused herself” from ten more cases to be heard by the Supreme Court during the OT 2010 term, BLT reports. This means Justice Kagan has now recused in twenty-one cases, just over half of the forty cases accepted by the Court for the coming term. The high recusal rate […]
Average Billing Rates Charged by Washington DC Lawyers
The BLT reports: A massive study of billing rates shows that law firm partners in Washington charge the second-highest hourly rate in the nation. On average, partners here bill just over $600 an hour, second only to New York City, where partners charge close to $700 an hour, according to the study by CT TyMetrix […]
Samuel Moyn on the History of the Human Rights Movement
By Kenneth Anderson on September 10, 2010 1:22 pm in International Human Rights Law, International Law
Columbia University historian Samuel Moyn has a new book out, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Harvard/Belknap). I haven’t read it – but I have ordered it from Amazon! – and I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I’ve read it. However, it received a positive (and quite interesting in its […]
Tattoos as Speech
Yesterday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in Anderson v. City of Hermosa Beach, struck down a local ban on tattoo parlors on the grounds that tattooing is “purely expressive activity fully protected by the First Amendment.” This opinion conflicts with several district court and state court decisions that have upheld local […]
The Perils of Interpreting Statutes With Multiple Remedial Schemes: A Comment on the Dicta in United States v. Szymuszkiewicz
By Orin Kerr on September 10, 2010 3:21 am in Fourth Amendment, Stored Communications Act, Wiretap Act
The Seventh Circuit decided an interesting Wiretap Act case today that was largely a replay of United States v. Councilman, the First Circuit case that I blogged about here a bunch of times back in 2004 to 2005. In the new case, United States v. Szymuszkiewicz (glad I don’t have to pronounce that one), the […]
Rosslyn Jazz Festival on Saturday
We have a lot of readers in the DC area, so I thought I would flag a particularly good line-up at the annual Rosslyn Jazz Festival on Saturday. As always, the Jazz Festival is free, and with lovely weather expected for Saturday the event should be a real treat. The location is Gateway Park, the […]
Democratic Panic? (II)
The Democratic Strategist (a website run by, you guessed it, Democratic strategists): “In recent days, as increasingly negative projections regarding the November election have appeared, a substantial number of Democrats have been seized with a genuine sense of panic.” The article goes on to argue that such panic is unwarranted, as the recent polls merely […]
Judge Strikes Down “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”
A federal district court judge in California has held that the military’s policy of prohibiting openly gay members of the military, known as “don’t ask, don’t tell,” is unconstitutional. Here’s a link to the decision (courtesy of How Appealing) and reports from the Los Angeles Times and the AP.
Justice Sotomayor at CWRU
Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor came to Case Western Reserve University today for a Q&A session with students at the School of Law. The private event was well attended by 400-plus students, and Justice Sotomayor spent over an hour fielding their questions on a wide variety of legal subjects. I was fortunate enough to attend, though […]
Unanimity as a Requirement of the Trial by Jury, from 1765 to the Late 1800s
In the discussion of my Herrera v. Oregon certiorari petition, some wondered about the source of the conclusion that the Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury includes the requirement that the jury be unanimous for a conviction. Recall that this is settled under the Sixth Amendment as such, with regard to federal prosecutions; the […]
Labor Versus Clean Energy
Today the United Steelworkers filed a complaint alleging that China is unfairly (and illegally) subsidizing clean energy exports, such as wind turbines and solar panels. China has become one of the world’s largest producers of such technologies, but the Steelworkers allege it has gained market share through unfair trade practices. The Obama Administration has 45 […]
Carp Czar
No, that’s not a typo. The White House has appointed an “carp czar.” More precisely, the President named John Goss, former director of the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, as director of the Asian Carp Regional Coordinating Committee, and intergovernmental group working to reduce the threat Asian carp pose to the Great Lakes ecosystem. Meanwhile, […]