First comes love. Then comes marriage. Then comes the Gulag: If this ruling [in Perry v. Schwarzenegger] is upheld, millions of Americans will face for the first time a legal system that is committed to the view that our deeply held moral views on sex and marriage are unacceptable in the public square, the fruit […]
Archive | 2010
The Individual Health Care Mandate and Enumerated Powers – Event Audio
By David Kopel on August 7, 2010 6:07 pm in Constitutional Law, Federalism, Health Care, Necessary and Proper, Taxing and Spending Clause, Tenth Amendment
The final event at the annual meeting of the Southeastern Association of Law Schools was a Federalist Society panel on the constitutionality of the centralized health control law. Participants were Randy Barnett (Georgetown, VC), Jack Balkin (Yale), Gillian Metzger (Columbia), and me (Denver, VC). The moderator was Bradley A. Smith (Capital). Available here. The recording is 93 minutes, although the event itself ran […]
Associate Justice Elena Kagan
It’s official: Elena Kagan is now Justice Kagan.
Dan Schmutter on McDonald:
Dan Schmutter weighs in on the future of New Jersey’s strict gun control laws in the wake of McDonald. Dan was also on Freedom Watch with Andrew Napolitano this morning and I understand the show will re-air a few times over the weekend. Eventually it will go up on the show’s website here, but as […]
WLF Writing Competition for Law Students:
The Washington Legal Foundation has posted its announcement for its “2010 Freedom and Justice Legal Writing Competition” for law students. The topic is ““How have recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings on civil lawsuit pleading standards impacted litigation, and what are the potential implications of congressional efforts to repeal those judicial decisions?” The essay focuses on […]
Man Stabbed in Australia, Apparently Because He Was a Criminal Defendant Who Objected to a Witness’s Testifying While Veiled
WA Today reports: The man whose trial has led to controversy over the wearing of a Muslim headscarf in court has been “brutally stabbed” after being stopped in his car, his lawyer says. Anwar Sayed, who a court yesterday heard had received written and verbal death threats for supposedly agitating to abolish the wearing of […]
Florida’s brief in health control lawsuit
The brief of Florida and 19 other states, challenging the constitutional of the new health control law, was just filed today. It is a response to the DOJ’s motion to dismiss.
D.C. Circuit Introduces “Mosaic Theory” Of Fourth Amendment, Holds GPS Monitoring a Fourth Amendment Search
Today the D.C. Circuit held that government use of a GPS device to monitor the location of a car on public roads is a Fourth Amendment “search” when conducted over a long-term period (in his case, a month). The case is United States v. Maynard, and it was written by Judge Douglas Ginsburg and joined […]
Is Judge Walker’s Opinion Really that Compelling?
By now I’ve read dozens of blog posts and commentaries attesting to the power and persuasiveness of Judge Walker’s opinion striking down California’s Proposition 8 barring gay marriage. But as far as I can tell, everyone I’ve seen take this position was predisposed to accept Judge Walker’s conclusion. Lots of supporters of gay marriage and […]
D.C. Circuit Strikes Down Limits on Expressive Activity in National Parks
This morning, in Boardley v. U.S. Department of the Interior, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit struck down the National Park Service’s permitting regulations for expressive activities in national parks on First Amendment grounds. The panel opinion, by Judge Janice Rogers Brown, begins as follows: It is unlawful to engage in expressive […]
The Second Amendment and Non-Violent Felons
United States v. Williams (7th Cir., decided yesterday) (Judge Michael Kanne, joined by Judge Ilana Rovner and retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, sitting by designation) upholds — as usual — a conviction for being a felon in possession of a gun, but has this to add: the government does not get a free pass simply […]
SALTLAW Blog
I just learned that SALT — the Society of American Law Teachers, as which bills itself as “a community of progressive law teachers working for justice, diversity and academic excellence” — has a blog: The SALTLAW Blog. Worth checking out.
New Twists in Chevron Ecuador Case and Charges of Collusion
In the midst of so much other legal news in the past few days, you might have missed the latest twist in the on-going saga of the legal case regarding Chevron’s Ecuador operations. My co-blogger at Opinio Juris Roger Alford explains. It is fascinating reading, reaching far beyond international or transnational law issues, going as […]
Parents Who Named Child “Adolf Hitler” Lose Custody of Children, Though Based on Non-Hitler-Related Matters
NBC Philadelphia has the story; the New Jersey appellate decision itself is here. This family first made the news in Fall 2008, when a bakery refused to write the child’s name on his birthday cake. The appellate court held that the parents shouldn’t regain custody of the children, because of various abuse; the Nazi sympathies […]
Total Votes “For” And “Against” the Last Four Supreme Court Nominees
Total votes for and against the Republican Nominees (Roberts in 2005, Alito in 2006): 136 for, 64 against. Total votes for and against the Democratic Nominees (Sotomayor in 2009, Kagan in 2010): 131 for, 68 against. Very close. Plus, if you take out the votes of Democratic Senators for Republican nominees where the Senators have […]