Today’s Mahoney v. Doe (D.C. Cir.) upholds a content-neutral ban on defacing government property that has been read to ban chalking of sidewalks. The government has a substantial interest in preventing “visual blight,” including “temporary blight” that can be easily washed away, so long as it uses content-neutral means and leaves open “ample alternative channels” […]
Archive | June, 2011
Is Public Opinion Becoming More Libertarian?
New York Times polling expert Nate Silver (who is no libertarian himself) summarizes some recent data suggesting that the public is becoming more libertarian: Libertarianism has been touted as the wave of America’s political future for many years, generally with more enthusiasm than evidence. But there are some tangible signs that Americans’ attitudes are in […]
Mandatory Road Repair Work and the Thirteenth Amendment Ban on Involuntary Servitude
Co-blogger Eugene Volokh recently cited the 1916 case of Butler v. Perry as an example of the reasoning that allows the Supreme Court to hold that some forms of forced labor do not violate the Thirteenth Amendment’s ban on involuntary servitude. Butler upheld a Florida law that required all adult males between the ages of […]
A Dopamine Reset in God’s Own Country
Adieu. I am going off line for everything but a few crucial things while the family is on vacation here in the Owens Valley, Bishop California, God’s Own Country, and the Eastern Sierra Nevada to all of you. This is the land of the perfect, utterly perfect light, and it has been a cool year […]
Chinese Islamic Food
My favorite regional Chinese cuisine is what I’ve seen called “Chinese Islamic,” though I suppose that it might just be the particular Chinese Islamic food that comes from Henan, a province in east central China. If you have a chance to eat at some such restaurant — I expect there are some in New York, […]
If You Don’t Know, Just Say You Don’t Know
NPR’s All Things Considered had a segment today on computer hacking featuring an interview with computer security expert Hugh Thompson. NPR’s Robert Seigel started off by asking Thompson about the law of computer hacking. Thompson is a tech guy, not a law guy. But Thompson tried to wing it, and unfortunately he managed to bungle […]
Nosal Case in the New York Times
Today’s New York Times has a Reuters Breaking Views editorial by Reynolds Holding, Anti-Hacking Overkill (see second item), on the recent Nosal case in the Ninth Circuit on the scope of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. My coverage of the pending petition for rehearing in Nosal is here.
“That All Men Are Created Equal, That They Are Endowed by Their Creator With Certain __ Rights”
What goes in the blank? Prof. Mark Liberman (Language Log) has an interesting discussion; check out the comments, including Ben Zimmer’s, with Mark Liberman’s response following it.
Thoughts on AEP v. Connecticut
As I noted below, today in American Electric Power v. Connecticut the Supreme Court held unanimously that the Clean Air Act displaces federal common law public nuisance claims against emitters of greenhouse gas emissions. It was easy for the justices to agree on this point. Indeed, this outcome was clearly compelled by applicable precedent given […]
Court Unanimously Rejects Class Action Against Wal-Mart
In another big decision this morning, the Supreme Court held unanimously against class action plaintiffs seeking to sue Wal-Mart for gender discrimination in Wal-Mart v. Dukes. While the Court split 5-4 over the scope of the decision, the Court was unanimous that the class should not have been certified. This outcome is not-so surprising given […]
Supreme Court Unanimous that Clean Air Act Displaces Climate Suits
Today the U.S. Supreme Court held unanimously in American Electric Power v. Connecticut that the Clean Air Act displaces suits alleging global warming constitutes a public nuisance under federal common law. As I’ve discussed before (see posts here, here and here), this conclusion was hard to avoid once the Supreme Court held (erroneously in my […]
Supreme Court Justices are Generalists
In his post below, Eugene writes: [T]he supreme courts generally agree to hear only those cases that they see as giving them the most likely law-clarifying bang for their buck. Thus, if you can show the U.S. Supreme Court that there is a disagreement among federal appellate courts or state supreme courts (a so-called “circuit […]
Your Days in Court, and State and Federal Supreme Courts
A commenter on the New Jersey Fourth Amendment case thread writes (some paragraph breaks removed), Eugene – “the Justices rarely grant simply because of an erroneous decision of a state intermediate court of appeals” Eugene, doesn’t that scream out loud to you about the fundamental flaw of ‘a system of laws’ as opposed to ‘a […]
Greenwald on Bush, Obama, and OLC
Glenn Greenwald draws an interesting, if unfavorable, comparison between the actions of lawyers in Department of Justice under President Bush and President Obama. Bush decided to reject the legal conclusions of his top lawyers and ordered the NSA eavesdropping program to continue anyway, even though he had been told it was illegal (like Obama now, […]
Big Week in Freedom
Tim Sandefur (PLF Liberty Blog) reminds me that tomorrow is Juneteenth, a holiday that marks the end of slavery in the United States. As I noted earlier this week, June 15 is the anniversary of Magna Carta. June 14 is of course Flag Day, which celebrates the adoption of the U.S. flag. And on a […]