The AP has an interesting story about three Republican electors who might refuse to vote for the Romney-Ryan ticket if they are elected. At least three Republican electors say they may not support their party’s presidential ticket when the Electoral College meets in December to formally elect the next president, escalating tensions within the GOP […]
Archive | September, 2012
Rejoinder to Akhil Amar on the Application of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Government
By Ilya Somin on September 13, 2012 6:23 pm in Constitutional Theory, Originalism, Racial Discrimination
I am grateful that Akhil Amar has taken the time to respond to my post criticizing his theory that the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment bans racial discrimination by the federal government as well as the states. Akhil makes some good points, but I think he continues to fall short on the central point […]
New Obamacare Challenge: The Origination Clause
The Pacific Legal Foundation has filed a motion in its pending suit against Obamacare asking the judge (1) to rule that, when it enacted the Senate health care reform bill that includes a “tax” for not purchasing health insurance, Congress violated the Origination Clause, which says that all revenue bills must originate in the House; […]
“[National Hispanic Media Coalition] Renews Call for Federal Government to Study Hate Speech in Media”
So says a Coalition press release. Some excerpts: Tomorrow the NHMC will file letters with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), sharing this new poll data and renewing unanswered requests that NHMC made back in 2009 for the agencies to study the impacts of hate speech in media. […]
Harvard Human Rights Journal Editor “a Little Concerned” About a Prospective Author’s Having Clerked for a Conservative Supreme Court Justice
David Lat (Above the Law) reports on an interesting e-mail exchange among the editors of the Harvard Human Rights Journal (which, like the great majority of law reviews, is edited by law students); I quote a long excerpt below. Here’s my take: It’s almost inevitable that an editor’s judgment of the quality of a law […]
Wa Po Turns on the Volt
Now even the Washington Post is turning on the Chevy Volt. According to this article even though GM can hardly sell of the things it is still losing tens of thousands of dollars on every unit it sells. For me, one question here relates to the efficacy of the auto bailouts and the government’s ownership of […]
Former Yale Dean Harold Koh (Now Legal Adviser at the State Department) on Dealing with “Hate Speech” by “Applying … the Transnationalist Approach to Judicial Interpretation”
Related to my post about Prof. Peter Spiro’s views on how international law could be used to diminish the force of U.S. First Amendment protection, I thought I’d note again some thoughts that I noted in 2009 from Harold Koh, former dean of Yale Law School and now Legal Adviser at the State Department, in […]
Quick Response to Amar
I’m busy today teaching two classes, but I can’t resist a quick response to Akhil’s rejoinder. First, while I have a great deal of respect for Jed Rubenfeld and Laurence Tribe, I don’t find their adoption of the “Lochner as redistribution” thesis terribly compelling. Professor Tribe’s 1972 article adopts a surprisingly sophisticated understanding of Lochner–surprising […]
Prof. Peter Spiro on Why “Hate Speech” Should Be “Ban[ned]” in the U.S. — and on How It Might Be Done, Using International Law
By Eugene Volokh on September 13, 2012 11:27 am in "Hate Speech", Blasphemy, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Speech Restricted by Thugs
From yesterday’s Opinion Juris post by Prof. Peter Spiro, one of the leading international law scholars in the country: The deplorable killing of Chris Stevens in Libya suggests a foreign relations law rationale for banning hate speech. Remember, the Benghazi protests were prompted by this film depicting the prophet Mohammed in not very flattering terms. […]
The Rise of Secessionism in Catalonia
Time has an interesting recent article highlighting the rise of secessionism in Catalonia. Many more Catalans than in the past want to secede from Spain because of the way the central government takes far more money out of the province than it puts back in: Sept. 11 always brings Barcelonans into the streets to dance […]
A Too-Quick Response to David and Ilya
Earlier this week, I said that I probably would not have time to respond immediately to any comments that my fellow Conspirators might post in response to my guest blogs this week. And in fact, I don’t have time to do a proper job — I am on the road this week — but the […]
Akhil Amar on the Application of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Government
I am grateful to Akhil Amar for his comment on my post challenging claims that the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment allows affirmative action because Congress, in the 1860s and 70s adopted programs that gave “racial preferences” to recently freed African-American slaves. In my earlier post, I pointed out that these were federal government […]
On Equality and the Federal Government: A Reply to Somin
In a recent posting, Ilya Somin says the following: “Beginning with the famous case of Bolling v. Sharpe (1954), the Supreme Court retroactively applied the [Fourteenth] Amendment’s restrictions on racial discrimination to the federal government. But no one imagined that the amendment applied to the federal government at the time it was enacted.” In Chapter […]
Criminal Mockery of Islam?
By Eugene Volokh on September 12, 2012 6:52 pm in Blasphemy, Freedom of Speech Restricted by Thugs, Religion
That’s what MSBNC contributors Mike Barnicle and Donny Deutsch, the University of Pennsylvania’s Prof. Anthea Butler (Religious Studies), and of course the Egyptian government argue with regard to the movie that mocks Mohammed: Prof. Butler: “Good Morning. How soon is Sam Bacile going to be in jail folks? I need him to go now.When Americans […]
Timed Retirements and the Balance of the Court
In an op-ed in the USA Today on the importance of the Presidential election for the future of the Supreme Court, Gregg Nunziata writes that “[t]he next president could fill as many as three, perhaps more, Supreme Court vacancies.” That’s certainly true. It’s interesting to note, though, that the fact that Justices in recent years […]