As noted in the Boston Globe last week, it appears that Harvard may have run afoul of federal regulations in apparently identifying Elizabeth Warren as a Native American. Whatever the full story, it appears that Dean Robert Clark was not the unidentified Native American on the Harvard faculty according to an interview in this story: […]
Archive | May, 2012
John McGinnis on the Great Harold Berman
In my opinion (seemingly shared by virtually anyone else who has read his work), Harold Berman is one of the truly great legal thinkers of the 20th century and Law and Revolution is one of the great masterpieces of legal scholarship. Berman has been one of my two most significant intellectual influences, along with Hayek. You […]
Addressing “Extremer Extremists”
Like many of the other bloggers and readers here at the VC, I hold many extreme political views – “extreme” in the sense that they are distant from those of most of the general public. I’m probably among the most libertarian 1-2 percent of the American population. On the other hand, there are clearly libertarians […]
Ted Cruz Forces a Runoff for the Texas GOP Senate Nomination
Several of us VC bloggers have endorsed and/or supported Ted Cruz in his Texas Senate campaign. The news tonight from Texas is that Ted forced a runoff with David Dewhurst in the GOP primary: With 95% of precincts reporting, Dewhurst has 45% of the vote, Cruz 34%, and Tom Leppert 15%. Forcing the runoff is […]
One-to-One Speech vs. One-to-Many Speech, Criminal Harassment Laws, and “Cyber-Stalking”
The unfortunate situation involving the apparent arrest of Aaron Walker for blogging about the convicted bomber Brett Kimberlin leads me to post an early draft of my forthcoming Northwestern University Law Review article, One-to-One Speech vs. One-to-Many Speech, Criminal Harassment Laws, and “Cyber-Stalking”. It’s still a very early draft, with many footnotes still on the […]
Should Courts Only Strike Down Laws as Unconstitutional if “People of All Political Persuasions” Agree?
In his most recent article defending the constitutionality of the individual mandate, Jeffrey Rosen claims that “[judicial] restraint requires deference to all laws passed by Congress and the states, regardless of whether they’re favored by liberals or conservatives, unless they violate principles that can be so clearly located in constitutional text and history that people […]
Pitfalls of the Collective Action Theory of Constitutional Federalism
By Ilya Somin on May 29, 2012 10:05 pm in Collective Action Problems, Federalism, Health Care, Individual Mandate
Co-blogger Jonathan Adler points out several weaknesses in the collective action theory approach to interpreting constitutional federalism advocated by a number of academics, most notably Robert Cooter and Neil Siegel. The theory has been used as a tool for defending the constitutionality of the individual mandate, though I have argued that it may actually cut […]
The Search for a Limiting Principle for Federal Power: Collective Action Problems
Many of those who urge the Supreme Court to uphold the constitutionality of the individual mandate recognize that the Court is unlikely to take this step without identifying a “limiting principle” that cabins the scope of federal power in some meaningful way. While some deride the search for a limiting principle as unnecessary, others recognize […]
Going through high school shorter than Mitt Romney
Browsing my high school yearbook for a family celebration this weekend, I discovered that I may have actual information about a burning issue in the Presidential campaign — namely, whether Mitt Romney was once a high school bully. That’s because I went to high school, or at least grades 7 through 10, with him. We […]
Jeffrey Rosen’s Proposed Limiting Principles for Federal Power
By Ilya Somin on May 29, 2012 5:44 pm in Collective Action Problems, Commerce Clause, Federalism, Health Care, Individual Mandate
In a recent response to critics of his earlier column on the individual mandate case, Jeffrey Rosen claims that upholding the individual mandate would not lead to unlimited congressional power because “Congress [still] cannot use its commerce power to regulate activity that has no substantial effects on interstate commerce and where there are no collective […]
Aaron Walker, Brett Kimberlin, and the Fog of Litigation [see UPDATE at the end]
I’ve been hearing a lot about the latest phase of this controversy, but it’s still hard for me to figure out what is going on. A Maryland court has issued a “peace order” — basically, what most states call a restraining order — against blogger Aaron Walker, ordering him not to “harass” or contact Brett […]
Are Regulatory Restrictions Killing The Law Firm Business Model?
There is an interesting op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today by the Brookings Institution’s Clifford Winston and Robert Crandall, authors of First Thing We Do, Let’s Deregulate All the Lawyers (the op-ed length version of which Jonathan blogged about here). The piece, cheerily entitled “The Law Firm Business Model is Dying,” uses the Dewey […]
Ninth Circuit Finds Substantive Due Process Right to “Control Public Dissemination of a Family Member’s Death Images”
The opinion in Marsh v. County of San Diego is by Chief Judge Kozinski and joined by Judges Paez and Wardlaw. It involves a claim by a mother that her Due Process rights were violated when a prosecutor investigating the death of her 2-year old son copied autopsy photographs of her son and then disclosed […]
NLRB Member Resigns
Over the weekend, Terence Flynn resigned from the National Labor Relations Board. As I noted here, a report of the NLRB’s Inspector General had concluded Flynn shared confidential information with outside parties in violation of the NLRB’s rules. Flynn, a Republican and who allegedly shared internal NLRB matters with an advisor to the Romney campaign, […]
NPR Discovers Privacy Victims, Buries Lead
NPR aired what it must have seen as a heart-warming story about how social media is making it possible to do medical research on people with rare conditions, such as Katherine Leon, who at the age of 38 suddenly suffered a severe heart attack caused by spontaneous coronary artery dissection, or SCAD. It is heart-warming, but […]