In New York, dogs can take the witness stand at a criminal trial. But at least in New York City, they’re not allowed to go into bars. NYC regulators recently banned dogs from bars, even those with outdoor seating areas and those that serve only beverages: [I]t has always been a violation of the city’s […]
Archive | August, 2011
Two Interesting But Entirely Unrelated Posts
I have been working on a new edition of my constitutional law casebook and traveling this summer, so have not had time for much blogging. Now I am getting organized for my Contracts course at Penn. Still, I thought I would break radio silence by passing along links to two unrelated blog posts I found […]
Ryan Calo on Weak AI
Ryan Calo responds to my earlier post on whether a software engineer could win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in a post at Concurring Opinions that is considerably more profound and well-thought out than my original somewhat whimsical post – it being a product of no power or internet at home or at school. […]
Coase on Adam Smith and the Theory of Moral Sentiments
I just finished reading an essay by Ronald Coase I had not read before – indeed, hadn’t realized existed – on Adam Smith’s thought in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. That book has occupied me a lot in the last three years, as an example of the tradition of moral psychology in economics that seems […]
Gut Feeling
This just in: The right kind of bacteria in your gut can literally change your mind – reducing anxiety in stressful situations. Now we know why they call it intestinal fortitude. Because it is.
Review of Doug Kysar’s Regulating from Nowhere
I reviewed Douglas Kysar’s Regulating from Nowhere: Environmental Law and the Search for Objectivity for the Spring 2011 issue of The New Atlantis. Overall, I found Kysar’s book thoughtful, provocative, wide-ranging and well-written, but not persuasive. In many ways, I think Kysar pursues the wrong quarry, and ignores some of the deeper problems in contemporary environmental […]
First Amendment Right to Openly Record Police Officers in Public
Friday’s Glik v. Cunniffe (1st Cir.), held that the First Amendment protects a right to openly videorecord and audiorecord police officers in public: It is firmly established that the First Amendment’s aegis extends further than the text’s proscription on laws “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,” and encompasses a range of conduct […]
Fourth Amendment Remedies and Development of the Law: A Comment on Camreta v. Greene and Davis v. United States
I have posted a new draft essay, Fourth Amendment Remedies and Development of the Law: A Comment on Camreta v. Greene and Davis v. United States, which is forthcoming as a chapter in the Cato Supreme Court Review. Here’s the abstract: This essay considers how the Supreme Court’s recent limits on remedies for Fourth Amendment […]
Distinguishing High Value Targeted Killing and “Signature” Attacks on Taliban Fighters
The estimable Adam Entous and Siobhan Gorman of the Wall Street Journal’s national security reporting team have a good discussion of the targeted killing-drone strike on August 22, 2011 that killed Attiyah Abd al-Rahman, Al-Qaeda’s second in command. A considerable part of the Pakistani government’s irritation with the conduct of drone strikes is that the […]
My New Book, Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind
This week, thanks to the invitation of my friend and colleague Eugene Volokh, I will guest-blog about my book Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind. I am extremely honored and grateful for the opportunity. Later in the week, I plan to discuss some specific aspects of my book, including: (i) why […]
Prof. Timothy Groseclose (UCLA Political Science) Guest-Blogging
I’m delighted to report that Prof. Timothy Groseclose of UCLA’s Political Science Department will be guest-blogging this week about his new book, Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind. The topic (captured well in the title) will surely be controversial, but Prof. Groseclose is an experienced and sophisticated political science scholar; and […]
Wind Power Clipping Wings
Wind power provides substantial environmental benefits, not the least of which is that it produces electricity without emitting greenhouse gases or traditional air pollutants. It can also be useful source of distributed power. But (like anything else) it also has its drawbacks, such as its unsuitability for baseload power and (as some environmentalists are increasingly […]
NYPD’s Antiterror Campaign — And Federal Turf
I have an op-ed in the NY Post, commenting on the role that bureaucratic turf fights may play in the Associated Press story looking for scandal in NYPD’s counterterrorism tactics. Here’s a sample: When you’re done [with the story], you find that NYPD is uniquely determined to find terrorists before they strike. To do that, […]
Prizes for the Algorithmaker?
One hundred years from now, might we see the Nobel Prize for literature awarded to the engineer of the algorithm that, embedded in a machine, produced the novel that might, in our era, have been the reason for the prize? (In my scenario, the algorithm is not literature on its own; it is exactly what […]
Democracy and Natural Disasters
In the wake of a massive hurricane that has caused considerable damage and loss of life in several states, it’s worth asking how well democratic governments handle natural disasters. In this recent post, I summarized evidence showing that democracies generally handle disasters much better than dictatorships (even after controlling for a society’s wealth). Elected office-holders […]