I can’t begin to do justice to Michael Lewis’ new story in Vanity Fair, Beware of Greeks Bearing Bonds, and I won’t try. But when I should have been prepping for BA class tonight, I found I could not put it down. But: Here’s a thought that probably would not have occurred to most readers […]
Archive | 2010
Criminal Convictions by Non-Unanimous Juries
I just filed (with a great deal of help from my Mayer Brown LLP colleagues) a petition for certiorari (Herrera v. Oregon) asking the Court to decide whether nonunanimous criminal convictions are unconstitutional. My sense is that it isn’t too legalese, and the issue — and the historical discussion — might be of some interest […]
Podcast on GPS Surveillance, Open Fields, and the Fourth Amendment
I recorded it yesterday for the Legal Talk Network, and it runs about 30 minutes; you can listen here. We start off by discussing Judge Kozinski’s stirring dissent from denial of rehearing en banc in United States v. Pineda-Moreno, which has received a lot of press attention. Among the questions discussed: Who lives in gated […]
An Optimistic Scenario for the Stock Market and the Economy
Predicting the stock market is either impossible or extraordinarily difficult, so I generally refrain from doing so — in print. Even apparently successful investors who trade daily or weekly are wrong nearly as often as they are right. So with the caveat that the chances of my being right are at best not appreciably better […]
Court Issues Preliminary Injunction Against Distribution of Political Fliers, a Likely Unconstitutional Prior Restraint
Josh Gerstein (Politico) reports: Acting on an emergency request from Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler, Prince George’s County Circuit Court Judge Larnzell Martin Jr. issued an order Tuesday evening barring anyone from disseminating a sample ballot for the Sept. 14 primary that was recently mailed to Democratic voters and distributed at an early voting site […]
Duncan Hollis on Cyber Threats
Temple University law professor Duncan Hollis, and my co-blogger at Opinio Juris, has a provocative new paper on SSRN addressing the question of cyber-threats and why he believes the threats need new forms of regulation. Duncan titles his article at SSRN, “An e-SOS for Cyberspace,” and of course I can’t resist adding ‘Sending Out An […]
Democratic Panic?
Earlier today, I received a robocall from a DNC-affiliated pollster asking whether I plan to vote for the Republican or Democratic congressional candidate in my district, and also asking my opinion of Barack Obama’s performance as president. The rub is that I live in Arlington, Virginia, represented in Congress by Rep. Jim Moran. Moran won […]
Tony Blair on Political Ignorance
David Bernstein’s post referencing a commenter who greatly overestimates the extent to which the public pays attention to politics reminds me of an interesting comment on political ignorance from Tony Blair’s recently published memoir: The single hardest thing for a practising politician to understand is that most people, most of the time, don’t give politics […]
Third Circuit Rules That Magistrate Judges Have Discretion to Reject non-Warrant Court Order Applications and Require Search Warrants to Obtain Historical Cell-Site Records
A while back, I blogged at length about the Third Circuit’s pending case involving government access to historical cell-site records. The issue in the case is what legal standard the government must satisfy to obtain orders requiring phone companies to disclose such information. The district court had ruled that a warrant was required, and the […]
The C-SPAN Election?
Froom the comments section on Nate Silver’s 538 blog, where he notes a 1 in 4 chance of the GOP taking the Senate: October is known for its surprises, but I would not be surprised if the electorate became more informed about the facts, and the distortions prevalent on both Network and Cable TV, and […]
Martin Wolf’s Critique of Libertarianism
Martin Wolf, a prominent British economics journalist, has an interesting blog post criticizing libertarianism. Wolf is an excellent writer, but I think this particular piece is not one of his best. Wolf’s criticisms are that libertarianism rules out certain policy options that should be left up to “politics” and that it is “hopeless” politically. The […]
“The Drug Enforcement Administration Is Seeking Ebonics Translators to Interpret Wire-Tapped Conversations”
John McWhorter has thoughts about this in an NPR interview. I generally like McWhorter’s work, and his comments on this in particular struck me as quite apt. Plus he and I agree on what an awful name “Ebonics” is.
Soros Gift to Human Rights Watch
No doubt many readers have seen the press articles announcing George Soros’ gift of $100 million to Human Rights Watch. Most interesting to me was that the gift is aimed, in part, at diversifying the organization, staff, and board away from its current US-centric arrangement. As the AP puts it: But the money also is […]
Law Clerk Ideology and the Principal-Agent Problem
Jonathan links below to Adam Liptak’s front-page New York Times article on the ideology of law clerks, and Jason Mazzone’s critique of it. Echoing the point at the end of Mazzone’s critique, I think the ideology of law clerks roughly matches that of the Justices because the Justices are trying to solve the principal-agent problem. […]
Lawfare!
Lawfare is not just the name of a great new national security law blog, it’s also the subject of a conference this Friday at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law. Details, including information on viewing the webcast, here. UPDATE: Thoughts on “lawfare” and “Lawfare!” by Jack Goldsmith at Lawfare.