Today’s decision is Lavan v. City of Los Angeles, and it divided the Ninth Circuit. The majority opinion by Judge Wardlaw (joined by Judge Reinhardt) rules that the general practice of seizing the unattended property of homeless persons violates the Fourth Amendment, while the dissent by Judge Callahan concludes that it does not. I have […]
Archive | September, 2012
Posner on Financial Industry Deregulation, Greve on Posner
Posner: “I was an advocate of the deregulation movement and I made — along with a lot of other smart people — a fundamental mistake, which is that deregulation works fine in industries which do not pervade the economy,” he said in the appearance on Spitzer’s viewpoint.” “The financial industry undergirded the entire economy and […]
Two Takes on Fact-Checking
Clive Crook offers two commentaries on the current rage of “fact checking” political arguments: One with a heavy dose of satire, and one without.
Lincoln on “Liberty” and Slavery
Apropos the claim that slaveholders lost “freedom” when slavery was abolished, Eugene reminds me of what Abraham Lincoln said in his Address at a Sanitary Fair, in Baltimore, on April 18, 1864: The world has never had a good definition of liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in need of one. We all declare […]
Echoes of Robert Hale
By David Bernstein on September 4, 2012 5:00 pm in Constitutional History, Constitutional Law, Constitutional Theory, Rehabilitating Lochner
Dale’s post below on Robert Delahunty’s claim that the end of slavery came at the cost of slaveholders’ freedom, and that likewise legally recognized same-sex marriage would come at the expense of the freedom of those who want to live in a society without such things, reminds me of the great Progressive legal and economic […]
Slaveholders Lost Freedom Because of Emancipation, Argues Con Law Prof
University of St. Thomas Law Professor Robert Delahunty argues in this morning’s Minneapolis Star Tribune that “whenever the law expands the freedoms of one person or group, it necessarily contracts those of another.” Thus, he asserts that if gay couples are granted the freedom to marry, gay-marriage opponents will lose the freedom to live in a world without gay marriage […]
Minnesota Law on Private Employer Retaliation Based on Employee Political Activity
Dale blogged yesterday about an interesting campaign contribution disclosure case. An employee of a Catholic organization in Minnesota (called John Doe for purposes of the litigation) donated $600 to a group opposing a proposed Minnesota constitutional amendment that would have provided that under Minnesota law marriage may be only between a man and a woman. […]
Is Organic Food Healthier or Safer?
A new study fails to find scientific support for claims organic food is healthier or safer than conventional alternatives and everyone acts as if this is a surprise. It shouldn’t be. Scientific research has fairly consistently failed to validate the claimed superiority of organic food, as I’ve noted in prior posts over the past ten […]
Private Employees’ Speech and Political Activity: Statutory Protection Against Employer Retaliation
My article on this subject just came out, but I neglected to blog about it. Here is the Introduction, which briefly explains the issue, and provides a very quick — and, I hope, interesting — bit of history about it. The article itself is aimed at describing the law, both by quoting the relevant statutes […]
Comments Related to the Questions Posted Below
This is a placeholder post for comments on the questions I posted below for our religious readers and our irreligious readers. Please do not use it to answer those questions, or to criticize others’ answers to those questions.
A Question for Our Irreligious Readers
Below, I asked a subset of our religious readers a question that I think many irreligious readers might want to know the answer to. Now, I’d like to ask our irreligious readers a question that I think many religious readers might want to know the answer to. Again, I ask this out of respect for […]
A Question for Our Religious Readers
[I asked this question nearly seven years ago, and found that it led to an interesting discussion, so I thought I’d ask it of our current readers.] My sense, from reading comments and reader e-mail, is that this blog has many articulate and thoughtful readers who are pretty deeply religious, and many who are pretty […]
Anonymity Granted to Catholic Donor Opposed to Marriage Amendment, But Amendment Supporters Object
By Dale Carpenter on September 3, 2012 10:01 pm in Constitutional Amendments, Election Law, Gay Marriage, Gay Rights, Same-Sex Marriage
In Minnesota, pro- and anti-gay marriage activists are fighting over political campaign disclosure laws, though this time the usual roles are reversed. On August 17, the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board ruled that the group working to defeat a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage does not have to disclose the name of a Catholic contributor to the […]
Fifth Circuit Cell-Site Case: The Lack of Hardship to the Party Seeking to Invoke Jurisdiction
This is the third in a series of posts on the pending Fifth Circuit case about a magistrate judge’s power to deny statutory applications to collect records under the Stored Communications Act in light of fears that (depending on how one interprets the Fourth Amendment) the execution of the order might violate the target’s Fourth […]
My Father was a Simpleton
No, not MY father, but that’s the theme of this op-ed by one Marie Myung-Ok Lee in yesterday’s New York Times. Why, for example, was her father a dedicated Republican? “For one thing, the platform is easy to understand.” And so it continues, as she continuously portrays her dad as a simpleton to publish an […]