I’m delighted to have been invited to participate in a conference scheduled this fall sponsored by the Washington and Lee Law Review on “Regulation in the Fringe Economy.” They’ve also issued a Call for Papers for anyone else interested. Here’s the announcement: Call for Papers Regulation in the Fringe Economy The symposium Regulation in the […]
Archive | June, 2011
When Facts About Another’s Life Are Also Facts About Your Life
Greg A. Fultz put up a billboard showing himself holding what appears to be empty space, with the words “This Would Have Been A Picture Of My 2-month Old Baby If The Mother Had Decided To Not KILL Our Child!” and some endorsements (apparently later removed) from pro-life groups, including the words “PRO LIFE” and […]
Now There’s Some Chutzpah for You
Murderer sues publishers for writing a book about the murders, claiming that the book violated his statutory “right of publicity.” To be sure, a state statute does provide, “Any person whose name, portrait, or picture is used within the state or advertising purposes or for the purposes of trade without his or her written consent […]
The exclusion of Gary Johnson from the New Hampshire debate
Ilya and I have covered presidential candidate Gary Johnson a few times on this blog: see, e.g., here, here, and here (and see here for a post by Todd). I’ve gotten slightly involved with his campaign in the form of gathering some “Academics for Johnson” signatures. Johnson has now been excluded from the New Hampshire […]
E-Mail Accounts, The Warrant Requirement, and the Territorial Limits of Court Orders
My friend Jennifer Granick points me to an interesting new case, Hubbard v. Myspace (S.D.N.Y. June 1, 2011), that touches on a fascinating Fourth Amendment question: What are the territorial limits of search warrants for Fourth Amendment purposes? To be clear, the Hubbard case itself involved a statutory challenge, not a constitutional one. The plaintiff […]
New Jersey Supreme Court Interprets State Media Shield Statute
In today’s Too Much Media, LLC v. Hale, the New Jersey Supreme Court considered what sorts of online speakers are covered by New Jersey’s Shield Law, which gives people connected with the “news media” an essentially absolute privilege not to disclose sources and other information that they’ve gathered. (This privilege is considerably stronger than the […]
Liberty and Enumerated Powers
My Washington Examiner column this morning concludes by briefly addressing an odd objection I hear on occasion. Some law professor defenders of the individual mandate such as Laurence Tribe, Charles Fried, and Walter Dellinger have complained that my Clause Clause objections are not really founded on “federalism,” but are actually founded on “liberty.” But liberty, […]
No Limits? No Mandates.
Much has been made by law professors on the supposed weakness of drawing a constitutional line at the regulation of “inactivity” as opposed to “activity.” For some reason, law professors have been less inclined to examine critically the limits on the power of Congress to impose economic mandates on the people that have been advanced […]
Link to Glenn Reynolds’s Commentary Review of Rehabilitating Lochner
I mentioned this review before, but it was behind a paywall. It’s now available for free at this link. One line synopsis: “Bernstein … has produced a carefully researched, clearly reasoned, and ultimately powerful case that Lochner has been unjustly demonized.” And did I mention it makes a great Fathers’ Day gift (at least if […]
Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli, Jr.
Congratulations to the new Solicitor General of the United States, Donald Verrilli, who was confirmed by a vote of 72-16. Among other things, this means he gets to be mistakenly called a General.
More on the First Amendment and False Statements of Fact
I’ve often blogged about whether there is (1) a general First Amendment exception for knowingly false statements of fact (though perhaps with some exceptions to the exception), or (2) a bunch of specific First Amendment exceptions, for fraud, defamation, perjury, highly offensive but nondefamatory factual statements about particular people (the “false light” tort), and also […]
Intentional Torts
Some commenters to a recent post on teaching tort law suggest that “intentional torts” very rarely come up in most lawyers’ practice. I think that’s true of some of the intentional torts that are often taught — assault, battery, false imprisonment, and the like. But many torts that are indeed labeled “intentional torts” by tort […]
Supreme Court Practitioners Increasingly Diverse
Tony Mauro has the story in the National Law Journal.
Crime to Post Images That Cause “Emotional Distress” “Without Legitimate Purpose”
Friday, a Tennessee law was changed to provide (new material italicized): (a) A person commits an offense who intentionally: (4) Communicates with another person or transmits or displays an image in a manner in which there is a reasonable expectation that the image will be viewed by the victim by [by telephone, in writing or […]
Losing a Diamond in the Rough
In April 2010, President Obama nominated MIT economist Peter Diamond to a seat on the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors. In October, Diamond received the Nobel Prize in economics for his work on labor markets. Yet Diamond will not be taking a seat on the Fed. As he explains in this NYT op-ed, he is […]