Although he was off-blog for a year when he was clerking, Josh Blackman has returned to the blogosphere and is blogging up a storm already as he starts a new gig as an Assistant Professor at the South Texas College of Law.
Archive | July, 2012
Congratulations to Ted Cruz
Congratulations to Ted Cruz, who has won the runoff election for the GOP nomination to the U.S. Senate from Texas. In Texas, the GOP nominee is almost certainly the next U.S. Senator. This was a long campaign overcoming enormous odds; when we first blogged about his announcement to run for the open seat, the campaign […]
Milton Friedman’s 100th Birthday
Today is Milton Friedman’s 100th birthday. Friedman was the greatest libertarian economist of the last century, and one of the greatest economists of all time, regardless of viewpoint. In my view, what separated Friedman from most other great economists, and also most other leading libertarian thinkers, was his ability to speak to both expert and […]
Huawei’s Pride Goeth Before Its Fall
Here’s the head of Huawei’s enterprise business last year, telling the Financial Times that the whole security thing is overblown: Mr Xu said Huawei represented no threat to national security anywhere. “There has never been a single network security breach case that has ever happened with Huawei.” Whoops. Here’s a recent ComputerWorld report on the […]
Recent Developments — Both in the Courts and in Congress — on the Scope of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
I’ve blogged a lot on the scope of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and specifically on whether using a computer in violation of a computer use policy or Terms of Service is a federal crime. I’ve been banging the drum urging courts to adopt a narrow interpretations of the Act for a decade, and […]
“Fermat’s Dilemma”
I’m on a family trip, and will be blogging little if at all this week; but I had a chance to look at a New York Times op-ed titled “Is Algebra Necessary?” and thought it was worth passing along to see what our readers thought of it. My own quick reaction to the op-ed is […]
Harvey Silverglate v. DOJ
Harvey Silverglate, my favorite criminal defense lawyer and champion of civil liberties, has another broadside against the DOJ at Forbes.com: When one steps back and takes in a broader view than Juszkiewicz allowed himself to see, it is apparent that the problem is not just a war against capitalism. When a businessman is harassed by overzealous prosecutors, […]
How to Respond to the Individual Mandate Decision
My George Mason colleague Eric Claeys has an insightful piece at the National Review website on how opponents of the individual mandate should respond to the Supreme Court’s decision upholding it: In NFIB v. Sebelius, handed down last month, the Supreme Court upheld the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) against several constitutional challenges. […]
A Whale of a Federal Case
In today’s Washington Post, George Will describes what I can only call a real whale of an abusive federal criminal prosecution: The huge humpback whale whose friendliness precipitated a surreal seven-year — so far — federal hunt for criminality surely did not feel put upon. Nevertheless, our unhinged government, with an obsession like that of […]
Arms Trade Treaty conference ends without agreement
By David Kopel on July 27, 2012 5:47 pm in Genocide, Global Governance/World Government, Guns, International Human Rights Law, International Law
The weeks-long conference at the United Nations to produce an Arms Trade Treaty is ending without the creation of a treaty. None of the draft treaties which have circulated in the past several days came remotely close to finding consensus support. The impossibility of achieving consensus involved a wide variety of issues and nations, far […]
Munich and the Politics of the IOC
Tonight’s opening ceremony for the 2012 Summer Olympics has been marred by the International Olympic Committee’s refusal to hold a brief moment of silence for the 40th anniversary of the murder of 11 Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Olympics in Munich. IOC president Jacques Rogge claims that the reason is that “the […]
When Is a Dog Sniff in Your Car Not a Search?
Today the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit decided United States v. Sharp, a dog-sniff case. Here’s the court’s summary: It is well-settled that a dog’s sniff around the exterior of a car is not a search under the Fourth Amendment. Defendant appeals the district court’s denial of his motion to suppress because […]
Cite me, maybe?
This is crazy?
Corporate Speech and Corporate Purposes
Here’s one argument I’ve heard with regard to Citizens United, most recently on this thread but also from others: Once upon a time, corporations were seen as having to announce a specific set of purposes in their charters — e.g., to make money by selling cheese — and couldn’t go outside those purposes. If only […]
Citations to Law Faculty Blogs
Prof. J. Robert Brown, Jr. (The Race to the Bottom) writes about how often law faculty blogs have been cited by Westlaw-accessible courts and legal publications — the count as of June 2012 turns out to be 88 court citations and 6340 legal publication citations. Sentencing Law & Policy is still the titan of the […]