The American has posted an essay of mine on the precautionary principle, “The Problems with Precaution: A Principle without Principle.” The underlying paper was prepared for a conference on pesticide regulation at the American Enterprise Institute and was included in an AEI book, Crop Chemophobia: Will Precaution Kill the Green Revolution?. The essay begins: It’s […]
Archive | June, 2011
Justice Alito’s Failure to Recuse
Several news organizations (e.g. AP, Bloomberg, and the WSJ Law Blog) are reporting on the revelation that justice Samuel Alito inadvertently failed to recuse himself from FCC v. Fox Television, despite holding 2,000 shares of Disney stock on behalf of his children. Disney had an interest due to its ownership of ABC, which was a […]
How Much Good Could a Good Leader Do?
By Ilya Somin on June 1, 2011 3:30 pm in Constitutional Theory, Democracy, Libertarianism, War on Drugs
Libertarians, economists, and my fellow constitutional theorists are all known for arguing that the conventional wisdom overstates the importance of individual political leaders. Instead, we emphasize the the constraining impact of institutions, public opinion, and political incentives. The structure of the system matters a lot more than the individual leader. Libertarian economist Bryan Caplan, however, […]
Civil Unions Begin in Illinois
By Dale Carpenter on June 1, 2011 1:57 pm in Civil Unions, Gay Marriage, Same-Sex Marriage, Uncategorized
They’re not quite registering June brides, but the joyous end of American civilization has legislatively spread to Cook County and the rest of the Land of Lincoln. Starting today, the state is granting all of the rights and privileges of marriage under state law to same-sex couples. With all the recent excitement in Minnesota over the effort to […]
The Return of ROTC to Elite Universities
By Ilya Somin on June 1, 2011 1:04 pm in Academia, Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT), Military, War and Armed Conflict, War on Terror
The LA Times has an article describing how ROTC programs have returned to many elite universities in the wake of the abolition of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy: Helped by the recession, more active recruiting and a sea change in student perceptions of the military, enrollment in ROTC programs on college campuses is booming. […]
“If Someone Is Attending Speeches … Promoting the Violent Overthrow of Our Government, … They Should Be Deported or Put in Prison”
That’s what Sen. Rand Paul said on the Sean Hannity Show last week. More context, courtesy of ThinkProgress, which also has an audio excerpt: I’m not for profiling people on the color of their skin, or on their religion, but I would take into account where they’ve been traveling and perhaps, you might have to […]
Prosecution for Insulting the King
The Bangkok Post reports: A Thai-born man with American citizenship [Lerpong Wichaikhammat, also known as Joe Gordon] … [has been] charged with lese majeste in breach of Section 112 of the Criminal Code and is also charged with instigating people to break the law under Section 116 of the Criminal Code. The American was arrested […]
Fifth Circuit Chief Judge Edith Jones on Appellate Advocacy
She was my boss in 1992-93, when I clerked for the court. Among other things, don’t refer to the appellate panel as “you guys.”
Five-Year Sentence for Blasphemy (Contained in a Statement to a Neighbor)?
So reports International Christian Concern, with regard to a case in Algeria: Siagh Krimo was charged by the Criminal Court of the Djamel District in Oran, who based their decision on Article 144 bis 2 of the Penal Code which criminalizes acts that “insult the prophet and any of the messengers of God, or denigrate […]
NY Files Fracking Lawsuit
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman filed suit against several federal agencies yesterday for failing to prepare an environmental impact statement under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) before adoptingDelaware River Basin Commission regulations governing hydraulic fracturing in the Delaware River Basin.Commission (“DRBC”) regulations that would authorize natural gas development within the Delaware River Basin. […]
Prison Vouchers — part 2
This is the second in a series of posts in which I’ll be serial-blogging my new article, Prison Vouchers, forthcoming in the Penn Law Review. The first post in the series is here. I’ve skimmed some of the comments to that post — some of the commenters’ concerns were addressed right in that first post, […]
Commentary Reviews Rehabilitating Lochner
The review is by Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds, and it starts like this: With the possible exception of Plessy v. Ferguson, which gave us the racial doctrine of “separate but equal,” the case of Lochner v. New York stands as the most reviled decision of the post–Civil War Supreme Court. As every law student knows, Lochner […]
Iraqi refugees and domestic terrorism
It took twenty years before the Somali refugee program began producing “home-grown” terrorists in any numbers, and they were home-grown in a real sense; many were disaffected second-generation immigrants rediscovering their Somali roots and ancient Somali loyalties. The Iraq refugee program seems to have eliminated the twenty-year lag, admitting at least two fully-formed militant Islamic […]
The Weak Theoretical Justifications for the Single Subject Rule
In yesterday’s post, we explained the basics of the “single subject” rule: initiatives may contain only one “subject” or they are unenforceable. The rule leads to controversy because the concept of a “subject” is not self-defining and state courts have developed different single subject tests. Regardless of terminology, most courts seek to justify their rules […]