We had an exchange student from Germany live with us for a semester last year (attending the local high school), and we enjoyed it very much. I thought I’d plug the program we used, the Academic Year in America program from the AIFS Foundation. (Apparently they like to do full academic years, but one can […]
Archive | June, 2011
How the Precautionary Principle Refutes Itself
I share much of co-blogger Jonathan Adler’s skepticism about the precautionary principle. If consistently applied, the principle actually counsels against its own adoption. As usually defined by its proponents, the precautionary principle states that: When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some […]
Barack Obama on Lochner
In comments to some of my recent posts, some commenters have suggested that few people nowadays get especially worked up about Lochner v. New York. Rather, it’s Bush v. Gore, or Korematsu, or Citizens United, that raises hackles, with Lochner seen perhaps as a quaint anachronism with little modern relevance. I agree that over time, […]
Judges’ Political Preferences Seem to Explain Voting in Single Subject Cases in States with “Aggressive” Single Subject Test
A popular tactic for fighting a ballot initiative is to claim it violates the single subject rule, leaving it to a panel of judges to decide its fate and possibly prevent it from reaching the voters. To understand the role of the single subject rule in initiative politics, then, we have to understand how judges […]
Cyrano de Bergerac at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre
Cyrano de Bergerac was the last play on the Folger Theatre’s roster for the season, following excellent productions of (I take it, the rarely performed) Henry VIII and A Comedy of Errors. Cyrano went oddly awry, however, and I’ve been trying to pinpoint why exactly. This is a play I’ve known and loved pretty much […]
Cornel West: The Dinesh D’Souza of the Left?
Last year, Dinesh D’Souza made waves by claiming that Barack Obama’s left-wing ideology and policies can be explained by his “anti-colonial” attitudes, traceable to his father’s Kenyan background. I criticized D’Souza’s argument here. This year, Cornel West claims that Obama’s racial background is the key to explaining why the president isn’t left-wing enough. West believes […]
Indiana and HHS to Fight Over Planned Parenthood Funding
Indiana lawmakers recently enacted legislation barring Planned Parenthood from receiving money under the state’s Medicaid program. Earlier today, the Department of Health and Human Services informed Indiana that this restriction is illegal, and could jeopardize the state’s participation in Medicaid. Indiana does not appear ready to back down, however. The AP reports: In a letter […]
Administration Abandons Tax Injunction Act Defense of Individual Mandate
In a brief filed today with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, the Department of Justice explained it was no longer urging federal courts to dismiss challenges to health care reform’s individual mandate on the grounds that such suits are precluded by the Anti-Injunction Act. SCOTUSBlog’s Lyle Denniston explains: The Anti-Injunction Act, […]
Law and the Gradual Mingling of the CIA and Military Special Ops
In the Weekly Standard this week, I have a short article talking about the need for law – or at least its public articulation – to catch up to the gradual integration of CIA and military special ops. The title is Law and Order: Targeted Killing is Legitimate and Defensible, but that is not really […]
The Differences Between Public Employee Unions and Private Employee Unions
Eileen Norcross of George Mason’s Mercatus Center has a useful new paper giving a review of the literature on public employee unionism. It broadly takes a public choice approach, although the literature review of history, theory, and empirical studies is considerably broader than that. It’s clear, comprehensive, and would make a good reading assignment at […]
Black or African-American?
A recent post reminded me of the question whether blacks in America generally prefer the label “black” or “African-American.” (In this post, I am speaking only of actual preferences, not whether those preferences should have any legal consequences.) Here are the two most recent studies that I know of, and that I blogged about a […]
Government Agency Imposes Legal Liability for Referring to a Black Woman (Not the Complainant) as a “Black Lady”
Check out this decision in Commission on Human Rights & Opportunities ex rel. Jennifer Swindell v. Lighthouse Inn, Ct. Comm’n on Hum. Rts. & Opps., Jan. 29, 2009, an administrative decision I just ran across. Jennifer Swindell alleged that she was fired based on race, and harassed based on race, by the defendant. The defendant […]
Why So Much of Academic Writing is Virtually Unreadable
It’s because of writing like this, which I just came across in a book review: The NewYork hustler was both homosexual object-choice and heterosexual subject par excellence; he moved between illicit same-sex activity and “legitimate” society in a manner that destabilized the gay world-making ethos of lesbian and gay apologists and, I presume, distressed the […]
Government “Regrets . . . Omission” of Citation to Controlling Beaumont Case in Va. Contributions Briefing
Following up on this post, I have posted the supplemental briefs filed in this case. The government takes responsibility for not citing what it claims is controlling legal authority on the issue before it: the constitutionality of the 100-year-old ban on direct corporate contributions to candidates. Meanwhile, a petition en banc has been filed in […]
Curious Advice
From a new ACS-sponsored guide on how to become a federal judge: “If you want to be a Court of Appeals judge, you should also develop a significant body of legal scholarship.” Yes, because nothing helps a person sail through the Senate confirmation process like a significant body of legal scholarship.