Some readers have been complaining that they’ve started to see pop-up ads on this site. That’s not our intention, and we’d like to stop it, but we’re not sure just who’s serving the ads. If this happens to you, could you please take a screen shot and e-mail to volokh at law.ucla.edu? Thanks! UPDATE: Just […]
Archive | October, 2012
South Carolina Supreme Court Creates Split With Ninth Circuit on Privacy in Stored E-Mails — and Divides 2-2-1 on the Rationale
In the last decade, lower courts have divided on the proper privacy protections that apply to opened e-mail held by Internet service providers. The Stored Communications Act gives high privacy protection to e-mails in the course of delivery, and then gives lesser privacy to remotely stored files in the cloud. The difficult question is how […]
The Significance of West Coast Hotel v. Parrish: Originalism vs. Living Constitutionalism?
By David Bernstein on October 10, 2012 3:48 pm in Constitutional History, Constitutional Law, Constitutional Theory, Rehabilitating Lochner
In West Coast Hotel v. Parrish (1937), the Supreme Court upheld a minimum wage law for women, reversing two earlier contrary precedents. West Coast Hotel is often seen as the end of the so-called “Lochner era.” Some conservatives celebrate West Coast Hotel, not simply as a victory against “judicial activism,” but because the Court purportedly […]
Court Preclears South Carolina Voter ID Requirement
A three-judge panel precleared South Carolina’s new voter identification requirement under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Judge Kavanaugh wrote the opinion for the court, and summarized the case as follows: This case concerns South Carolina’s new voter ID law, Act R54. The question presented is whether that new state law is lawful under […]
Where Is the Unified Agenda?
The federal government is supposed to publish the Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions twice a year. This document provides a rundown of all the various regulatory (and deregulatory) actions that are in various stages of the regulatory pipeline. In this way, the agenda provides an overview of the federal government’s regulatory activities, and […]
Case Symposium on Executive Compensation and Upcoming Talks
This Friday, the Center for Business Law and Regulation at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law is hosting a symposium on “Executive Compensation: New Developments & Emerging Trends” from 9am-3pm. Speakers include Professors Jesse Fried (Harvard), Jill Fisch (UPenn), Todd Henderson (Chicago), and David Walker (BU), as well as Stephen Brown of TIAA-CREF […]
The Political Philosophy Litigation
Oceana, Inc. v. Locke.
Thoughts on Fisher v. University of Texas
I have little to add to my previously posted on thoughts on Fisher v. University of Texas, the major affirmative action case that the Supreme Court is about to hear. But here are some links to earlier posts on the subject that might interest readers who follow the issue. Here is my initial post about […]
Reader Experiences With Affirmative Action
Over at Slate, Emily Bazelon has an interesting column reporting feedback from her readers about their personal experiences with affirmative action — both pro and con.
The Novelty of Fisher v. University of Texas
The Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments in the Fisher v. University of Texas case tomorrow morning, so I thought I would republish here the essay I wrote for Scotusblog a while back: I recently attended a panel discussion on Fisher v. University of Texas at an academic conference. Each panelist began his remarks by […]
Do Surveys Overestimate Political Ignorance?
In a recent Language Log post, Mark Liberman argues that surveys overestimate the extent of political ignorance. Unfortunately, his evidence is far from compelling. He notes a few examples where scholars or reporters simply misstated the results of a particular survey. That surely happens. But it doesn’t account for more than a small fraction of […]
More on the Challenge to the Canadian Lock-Up Agreement in GM Case
Last week I linked to a news story about a new challenge to the GM bankruptcy that dealt with a “lock up” agreement that directed a large amount of money to creditors of GM’s Canadian subsidiary in order to keep them from driving that subsidiary into bankruptcy. The problem, as I understand it from news […]
How Are Things in Russia?
Occasionally, people ask me how things are in Russia, and I say that I haven’t been following Russian events in any detail. Still, I do have an opinion, albeit uninformed, and it echoes a poem by Bulat Okudzhava, my favorite Russian singer. As I mentioned eight years ago, the poem was written in 1989 — […]
Interesting Article on United States v. Collins , Case on Ex Ante Limitations on Computer Warrants
In a recent article, Ex Ante Regulation of Computer Search and Seizure, 96 Va. L. Rev. 1241 (2010), I wrote about the relatively new practice some magistrate judges have adopted of imposing ex ante restrictions on the scope of computer warrants that control how and when the computer is analyzed after it is retrieved from […]
99% Chance That This Florida Attorney General’s Brief Was Filed by Someone Not Licensed to Practice Law
Odd, you say — wouldn’t it be pretty likely that whoever is signing the brief is likely licensed to do so? Well, I can prove it: Less than 1% of the Florida population is licensed to practice law. Thus, given the small percentage of the population that is licensed to practice law, the overwhelming majority […]