In a 47-minute podcast from iVoices.org, I provide the history from Operation Wide Receiver in 2006-07, up through the contempt of Congress vote this week.
Archive | June, 2012
ABA Picks Sides on Judicial Nominations
A decade ago, the Bush Administration caused some controversy when it excluded the ABA from having a formal role in evaluating judicial nominees. To the Bush Administration, the ABA was just a liberal advocacy group pretending to represent the legal profession as a whole. There was no reason to give such a group a special […]
Freedom of Speech and Information Produced Using Computer Algorithms
Prof. Tim Wu, writing in the New York Times yesterday, argues that the government should generally have a free hand in regulating speech produced by Google, Facebook, Amazon, and others when that speech is the product of “computerized decisions.” This is partly a response to an argument in a Google-commissioned white paper that I cowrote […]
Williams and the New Wigmore
Earlier this week, the Supreme Court issued a fractured opinion in Williams v. Illinois, a Confrontation Clause case. The bad news (for just about everyone) is that this opinion hopelessly muddles things. The good news (for me and my co-authors) is that four different Justices cited the treatise I co-authored with Penn State’s David Kaye […]
Neil Armstrong on Private Spaceflight
It appears that earlier reports that Neil Armstrong opposes private manned spaceflight are incorrect. The first man to walk on the Moon actually welcomes private “newcomers” in the field. It’s worth mentioning that Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, is a longtime advocate of private spaceflight and private property rights in […]
Turing the tables on scammers
Why would a Nigerian scammer admit that he’s from Nigeria? After all, Nigeria is notorious for fraudulent emails. Shouldn’t the fraudsters claim instead to be from Turkey or South Africa or, really, anywhere but Nigeria? That’s a question asked by Microsoft researcher, Cormac Herley, and seconded by security guru Bruce Schneier. Herley’s insightful answer looks […]
Ezra Klein on “Motivated Reasoning” and the Struggle Over the Individual Mandate
In a widely read recent New Yorker article, Ezra Klein argues that both the rise of conservative opposition to the individual mandate and the greater than expected success of the constitutional challenges to the law is largely a result of “motivated reasoning”: On March 23, 2010, the day that President Obama signed the Affordable Care […]
Suit Filed Challenging Constitutionality of CFPB
The State National Bank of Big Spring, Texas, the 60-Plus Association, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute filed suit against the Consumer Financial Protection Board alleging that the CFPB, as currently structured, is unconstitutional. Specifically the suit alleges that the CFPB lacks political accountability because, among other things, the President cannot remove the Bureau’s director save […]
Updated Version of The Mosaic Theory of the Fourth Amendment
I recently posted a substantially re-written version of my forthcoming article, The Mosaic Theory of the Fourth Amendment. The new version is much tighter; it says more about the purpose of the theory; and it takes a stronger view on whether it should be adopted. Here’s the new abstract: In the Supreme Court’s recent decision […]
Please Change Bookmarks to WWW.Volokh.Com
Our tech people have used their black magic to speed up www.volokh.com, and reduce the risk of brownouts. But apparently there weren’t enough virgins to sacrifice, or some such, and the incantations only worked for www.volokh.com — though volokh.com gets forwarded to www.volokh.com, the forwarding will delay things slightly for the user, and will cause […]
A Preliminary Thought on Florida v. Jardines
A few months ago, the Supreme Court granted cert in two fascinating dog cases — specifically, cases about the Fourth Amendment implications of the use of drug-detection dogs. I’m planning on blogging a bunch about the cases both here and over at SCOTUSblog once the Term ends, but for now I had just a preliminary […]
The Void-for-Vagueness / Fair Notice Doctrine and Civil Cases
FCC v. Fox Television Stations, Inc. doesn’t tell us much about the First Amendment status of over-the-airwaves broadcast radio and television, but it is a reminder that the void-for-vagueness doctrine (including but not limited to its fair notice aspect) is applicable to cases that involve civil penalties and not just criminal liability. There is already […]
FCC v. Fox Television Decided Narrowly on Lack-of-Fair-Notice Grounds
Right now, over-the-airwaves radio and television broadcasting is the stepchild of First Amendment law — a medium that the Court has viewed as uniquely less protected when it comes to content-based restrictions. Most significantly, in FCC v. Pacifica Foundation (1978) the Court upheld limits on vulgarity in broadcasting that it would have (and has) struck […]
Big Data, Big Leagues
Big data reached a new plateau in public consciousness recently. Cheap data storage and analytics mean that our behavior can now be tracked and correlated in remarkably fine-grained ways. That’s already being done for security reasons on computer networks, and in the hunt for terrorists, but it’s been controversial. Privacy groups are using the creepiness factor to […]
Trouble Seeing Comments?
Several readers e-mailed me to say that they can’t see the comments. The problem for all of them seemed to be that Adblock Plus got overenthusiastic in blocking ads, and blocked the comments as well. We have no objection to your blocking our ads; we’d much rather have more satisfied readers than a bit fewer […]