Next semester I will teaching the Constitutional Law I class at Denver University. It’s the standard class that almost all 2d or 3d semester law students must take at all law schools: This required introductory course examines the role of the United States Supreme Court and, in particular, the Court’s power in exercising judicial review […]
Archive | November, 2011
Will the Necessary & Proper clause save Obamacare? Not if the Court follows McCulloch v. Maryland
By David Kopel on November 17, 2011 4:33 pm in Constitutional History, Constitutional Law, Health Care, Necessary and Proper
Gary Lawson and I explain why, in an article published last week by Yale Law Journal Online. In short, the Necessary and Proper Clause expressed the well-known agency law doctrine of principals and incidents. That is, the grant of power to an agent (and the federal government was an agent of the people, to exercise certain […]
Ninth Circuit Now Free to Decide the Merits of the Constitutional Challenge to Prop. 8
The California Supreme Court has just decided that the official proponents of an enacted initiative — the group that got it onto the ballot — may, under California law, assert the state’s interest in defending the initiative when state officials refuse to do so. This means, given the Ninth Circuit earlier analysis of the matter, […]
Bleg re Rules re Rights Offerings and Shares Held Short
Having a hard time getting a straight answer on this one. Let’s say you hold 1,000 shares of a stock short. The company announces that it’s doing a rights offering, and for every share a holder owns, you can buy a newly issued share directly from the company for 90% of the closing price on […]
Steven Brint Reviews New Books on Higher Education
Steven Brint is a sociologist at the University of California, Riverside, and the author of a book, In an Age of Experts, I once reviewed in the Columbia Law Review, along with books by Anthony Kronman and Christopher Lasch (mine was a long review essay on the New Class and lawyers and the legal profession). […]
The Less Deadly Catch
The Discovery Channel’s “Deadliest Catch” reality show chronicles the exploits of several Alaskan king crab fishing vessels and their crews operating in the Bering Sea. The title for the show derives from the fact that Alaskan king crab fishing is one of the deadliest jobs around. If the environmental conditions weren’t perilous enough, the traditional […]
Me and Kim Kardashian
Because of the press of business at my day job, I’ve had less than usual worth saying recently. In fact, I haven’t posted in months. But all that blood, toil, tears, and sweat have at least done some good, because yesterday my work was mentioned alongside news that really matters. An amicus brief I did […]
House passes interstate handgun carry reciprocity
By a vote of 272 to 154. (The vote on the motion to recommit was 161 to 263). On the final vote, 44 Democrats voted in favor, and 7 Republicans voted against. H.R. 822 now goes to the Senate. In the previous Congress, a broader bill on interstate carry was narrowly defeated by a filibuster […]
The Hunger Games Movie Trailer
The full-length trailer for the Hunger Games movie is now available here. In a post earlier this year, I wrote about why Suzanne Collins’ popular science fiction series might well make an even better movie than book. If the trailer is any indication (perhaps a dangerous assumption), the movie will not disappoint my expectations. The […]
Peter Wallison on Proposed Systemic Risk Regulations
I acknowledge from the comments that many readers were less impressed than I was with Peter Wallison’s criticism of the concept of “systemic risk” that I posted a couple of weeks back (although I didn’t see anything then or since that has led me to question Peter’s conclusion that the problem was not interconnectedness but […]
Justice Stevens on Kelo
By Ilya Somin on November 16, 2011 3:59 pm in Eminent Domain, Kelo, Post-Kelo Reform, Property Rights
In a recent Wall Street Journal interview, retired Justice John Paul Stevens defended his controversial majority opinion in Kelo v. City of New London, which ruled that it was permissible for government to condemn private property for transfer to private parties in order to promote “economic development.” The Court ruled that this was a permissible […]
Building an Appellate Practice
Interesting thoughts from the SCOTUSblog Community.
Felons and Voting
Some people have asked whether court decisions recognizing that some felons have a constitutional right to bear arms — if their felonies are long enough in the past — would also extend to felons’ having a constitutional right to vote. I think the answer is “no,” because there’s a specific constitutional authorization for denying felons […]
Felons and the Right to Bear Arms [UPDATE: Added Information on Another Such Case Decided by the Same Panel]
Yesterday’s Baysden v. State (N.C. Ct. App. Nov. 15, 2011) (2-1) holds that North Carolina’s ban on possession of guns by a felon violates the North Carolina Constitution’s right to bear arms provision as to someone with two over-30-year-old nonviolent felony convictions. This follows Britt v. State (N.C. 2009), which held the same on similar […]
Cautiously Optimistic After the Judiciary Committee Hearing on the CFAA
I testified yesterday at a House Judiciary Committee hearing that focused in part on the need to narrow the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a drum I’ve been beating since 2003. You can watch the video of the hearing here; the CFAA parts were discussed mostly in the opening statements and in the last 15 […]