Gene Fidell (Yale Law School) and some of his students are putting together an article tentatively titled A Pronouncing Dictionary of the Supreme Court of the United States, which will basically help people know the standard ways of pronouncing Supreme Court case names (such as City of Boerne v. Flores and Gentile v. State Bar […]
Archive | November, 2011
My Assessment of Senator Leahy’s Proposed Amendment to the CFAA
Senator Leahy recently proposed an amendment to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to try to address the overbreadth concerns that myself and others have raised about the current statute, and particularly DOJ’s controversial view that the statute presently allows the government to prosecute computer users for TOS violations. I wanted to blog my thoughts […]
ABA Gives “Not Qualified” Rating to 14 of 185 Proposed Obama Judicial Nominees
Charlie Savage of the New York Times reports: The American Bar Association has secretly declared a significant number of President Obama’s potential judicial nominees “not qualified,” slowing White House efforts to fill vacant judgeships — and nearly all of the prospects given poor ratings were women or members of an ethnic minority group, according to […]
Ideology and Economic Ignorance Revisited
Last year, Zeljka Buturovic and economist Dan Klein published an article showing that political liberals were more likely to be ignorant about several economic issues than libertarian and conservative survey respondents. The study got a lot of media and internet attention. At the time, I noted that its results were interesting, but also pointed out […]
ClimateGate — Part Deux?
On the eve of another UN climate summit, it appears that another batch of potentially embarrassing e-mails by various climate scientists have been released to the public. The Guardian reports: The emails appear to be genuine, but the University of East Anglia said the “sheer volume of material” meant it was not yet able to […]
Another Good Win for Ted Frank
Ted Frank at the Center for Class Action Fairness has had another important victory–obtaining a 9th Circuit reversal of a cy pres award that had been made as part of a settlement with AOL: The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Monday rejected a class action settlement that called for AOL Inc. to give $110,000 […]
Economic Uncertainty, The Courts, and The Rule of Law
My article “Economic Uncertainty, The Courts, and the Rule of Law” is now available on SSRN. It is based on my remarks at the Federalist Society’s National Student Convention last spring at UVA. Here’s the abstract: Abstract Should judges protect private property rights and constitutional rights as vigilantly in times of crisis as in ordinary […]
The 61-Year-Old College Football Kicker
From CNN, a story that interested me even though I don’t follow football at all.
Estimating the Costs of Legal Scholarship
Over at Inside the Law School Scam, Paul Campos reveals that he worked extensively with David Segal in helping Segal with his article on law professors and legal scholarship, and in particular with Segal’s estimate of the price students pay for legal scholarship. According to Campos, the basic methodology is to assume that 40% of […]
My Article on Slippery Slope Issues in the Individual Mandate Litigation
I have recently posted to SSRN a forthcoming article on slippery slope issues in the individual mandate litigation. The article is part of a symposium in Law and Contemporary Problems. Here’s the abstract: The 2010 Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate has given rise to one of the most important constitutional disputes in recent decades. The […]
Is a Serial Fabulist Fit to Practice Law?
Stephen Glass, the disgraced writer for The New Republic who penned stories that were too good to be true (and whose exploits inspired the movie “Shattered Glass”) wants to be a lawyer. But is a journalist exposed as a serial fabricator fit to practice law? The New York Bar said no. Now, The Recorder reports, […]
Herman Cain’s Political Ignorance
Conservative columnist Rich Lowry has an interesting piece on Herman Cain’s ignorance about major public policy: At a meeting with the editors of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Cain was asked whether he agreed with Pres. Barack Obama’s handling of Libya. You would think he had been asked who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan, Cain’s joshing […]
What the NYT Article on Law Schools Gets Right
While there’s a lot worth criticizing in David Segal’s NYT article about law professors and law schools — Matt Bodie covers a lot of good ground in this post at Prawfs — there’s an underlying point that I think is both important and correct: Law professors, at especially the “top” law schools, are becoming less […]
Rare Late-Season Tropical Storm
Just in case you’ve been wondering where I’ve been: Tropical Storm Kenneth has formed in the eastern Pacific Ocean, with forecasters calling it a rare late-season tropical storm. The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said Sunday that Kenneth had maximum sustained winds near 40 mph (65 kph). The storm was centered about 525 miles (845 […]
Protecting (the Government’s) Right to a Jury Trial
State legislators in Ohio are considering legislation that would enable criminal prosecutors to insist on a jury trial even when a criminal defendant waives that rate and asks for a bench trial. The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports: Ohio prosecutors want to change the law to give themselves veto power when a criminal defendant chooses to […]