NYU law professor Rick Hills argues that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s ban on large soda pop servings is justified by the existence of government subsidies for health care: I am inclined to think that denouncing Bloomberg’s proposal as Orwellian is like ridiculing the Food, Drug, & Cosmetic Act as a Stalinist plot or attacking […]
Archive | June, 2012
Criminal Charges Against Aaron Walker Dropped
I’m pleased to say that the criminal charges against Aaron Walker, arising from his blogging about Brett Kimberlin, have been dropped by the prosecutors, as the Maryland criminal court records system (sorry, no direct link, but you can search) confirms. I’m continuing to consult with Walker and his lawyer on getting a reversal of the […]
Top 50 Law Professors on Twitter
The list was compiled by Clare Kaufman, for WorldwideLearn.com. She explains: “The following top law professors dominate the Twitter-verse, either through the wit, volume or audience. Criteria for selection for this list include the quality of the tweets, the number of followers and the most active users.” For whatever reason, I’m not on the list, […]
The Broccoli Argument Isn’t About Broccoli
Yesterday’s New York Times has an interesting article about how the broccoli mandate analogy came to play a major role in the cases challenging the constitutionality of the Obamacare individual health insurance mandate. It traces the analogy back to various libertarian and conservative sources and suggests that broccoli is a key reason why the mandate […]
Leave No Stone Unturned in U.S. Supreme Court Coverage
It’s hard to interview Supreme Court Justices, and you can’t interview their clerks. But hey, I guess you can always call up the clerks’ parents and see if they’ll talk to you.
And the 2012 John Roberts/Elena Kagan Award for the D.C. Circuit Hopeful Nominated in the Last Few Months of A Presidential Term With No Chance of Confirmation This Late (But A Very Promising Future Next Time) Goes to ….
Sri Srinivasan. Congrats to Sri. (Sorry I’m a few days late with this; I was at a conference with spotty Internet access.) UPDATE: A reader points out that Kagan was nominated by Clinton in 1999, not in the last few months of Clinton’s second Term. This complicates the name of the award considerably! At the […]
High School Bars Student From Wearing an Anti-Same-Sex-Marriage T-Shirt
Here’s a letter the ACLU of Connecticut wrote on the student’s behalf last week (italics added): We are writing on behalf of Wolcott High School junior Seth Groody and his parents. He states that Wolcott High School recently sponsored a “Day of Silence,” designed, in his understanding, to promote tolerance for alternative lifestyles, including homosexuality. […]
Emmy nomination for 1951 Colorado Inside Out
Every year the political roundtable show Colorado Inside Out does a time machine episode. Last year’s 1951 episode has just been nominated for a regional Emmy Award, in the news/interview program category. Our topics for the episode were the firing of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the Korean War, duck and cover training, and the new federal […]
Making the Case for Organ Markets
New Zealand economist Eric Crampton recently posted an interesting interview on organ markets that he did with Radio New Zealand. Like the United States, New Zealand faces a shortage of organs available for transplant, as a result of which many people die before appropriate organs can be found for them. Crampton describes several types of […]
Obama’s United Auto Workers Bailout
My new op-ed in the WSJ based on my paper with James Sherk is available here.
State Constitutional Free Speech Vis-a-Vis Private Landowners
Apropos the post about the New Jersey homeowners’ association case, here’s a quick summary, as of a few years ago, of the approaches taken by the few states that have applied their state free speech clauses to limit not just government action but also some private landowner action: 1. Under California law, large multi-store shopping […]
N.J. Supreme Court: Homeowners’ Association May Not Ban Homeowners From Displaying Political Signs
So holds today’s opinion in Mazdabrook Commons Homeowners’ Ass’n v. Khan (N.J. June 13, 2012), interpreting the New Jersey Constitution. The New Jersey Supreme Court is one of the few state courts that has interpreted its state constitution as restricting at least some private property owners, such as privately owned shopping malls and private universities. […]
The Durbin Amendment in Review
John Kiernan of Cardhub.com asked me what I thought of the Durbin Amendment so I told him.
Interrobang in a Seventh Circuit Opinion?
A sharp-eyed reader reports a sighting in today’s Robert F. Booth Trust v. Crowley (7th Cir.), at the end of the third-to-last line of the first paragraph on p. 8. Or at least it appears to be a ‽ (does that show up on your browser?), though I suppose it might be some sort of […]
Auto Bailout or UAW Bailout?
I have just released this morning a new paper co-authored with James Sherk of the Heritage Foundation, “Auto Bailout or UAW Bailout?” Here’s the Abstract: Abstract: The U.S. government will lose about $23 billion on the 2008-2009 bailout of General Motors and Chrysler. President Obama emphatically defends his decision to subsidize the automakers, arguing it was […]