Last Friday I presented a series of Continuing Legal Education lectures for the federal bar in Puerto Rico that was hosted by the U.S. District Court for the District of Puerto Rico. The lectures aren’t online, but the slides I developed have been posted and I thought some VC readers might be interested in them. […]
Archive | October, 2012
American Court Enforces United Arab Emirates Divorce, Mahr, and Child Custody Judgment
By Eugene Volokh on October 8, 2012 5:03 pm in Child Custody and Constitutional Law, Islamic Law in the American Legal System
An interesting case, S.B. v. W.A. (N.Y. trial court Sept. 26, 2012). A quick and oversimplified summary: 1. In 1998, S.B., an American professional woman, married W.A., an Egyptian immigrant who eventually became an architect. They lived until 2006 in America, where their two children were born. They then moved to the United Arab Emirates, […]
Quite the Speech Code
By Eugene Volokh on October 8, 2012 4:23 pm in "Hate Speech", Freedom of Speech at Colleges and Universities
FIRE’s Speech Code of the Month, from SUNY – New Paltz: This policy applies to all members of the campus community, individuals doing business with the campus, any person utilizing campus facilities. This will include SUNY New Paltz’s campus, any off-site facilities, and work-related travel…. Examples of Prohibited Conduct … Distribution, display or discussion of […]
Does the Growing Exposure of Scientific Fraud in Social Psychology have Implications for Behavioral Law & Economics?
In case you missed it, Daniel Kahneman has issued a warning to social psychologists, whose field has been rocked recently by a series of exposures of high-level scientific fraud and falsification by several social psychologists. All of them work in the same general field. One thing I wondered reading the story is whether it is […]
English University Student Government Excludes Atheist Group from Freshmen’s Fair for Blasphemy
By Eugene Volokh on October 8, 2012 3:10 pm in Blasphemy, Freedom of Speech at Colleges and Universities
Here’s the atheist group’s statement about the incident, which seems consistent with a Daily Mail (UK) account and with a statement from the student union (quoted in the article): Today, the Reading University Atheist, Humanist, and Secularist Society (RAHS) participated in the Freshers’ [i.e. Freshmen’s -EV] Fayre organised by Reading University Students’ Union (RUSU). We […]
Michael Greve on the Constitutional Challenge to Dodd-Frank
My colleague Michael Greve has a two part analysis of the constitutional challenge that has been filed to Dodd-Frank (Part I and Part II). Let me commend it first by noting that regardless of whether one agrees with Michael’s analysis and final conclusion his posts are a useful and succinct summary of the issues in […]
Huawei, ZTE Hit By House Intelligence Committee
The House Intelligence Committee has issued a detailed report on its investigation of Huawei and ZTE, the Chinese telecom equipment giants. It’s a professional and bipartisan piece of work, some 50 densely footnoted pages long. In 2011, Huawei asked for an investigation so it could answer suspicions that it might enable Chinese interception of US […]
D.C. Metropolitan Area Transit Authority Ordered to Accept Bus Advertisement
The advertisement, which the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority was also ordered to run a few months ago, is this one: The D.C. agency originally accepted the ad, scheduled to run Sept. 24, but then “deferr[ed]” it indefinitely on Sept. 18 “due to the situations happening around the world at this time” (apparently referring to […]
What Does Lochner Have to Do with “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo”?
Nothing, though maybe Honey Boo Boo likes to read the old U.S. Reports in her spare time. Frank Pasquale at Balkinization begs to differ, but his point seems to be that public morality should overcome the right of people to embarrass themselves in public, especially because he thinks that such people are not true free […]
Cybersecurity and Attribution — Good News At Last?
No, we’re not suddenly turning into the Huffington Post. But trust me, this photo is directly relevant to the topic at hand: How the US should respond to massive state-sponsored cyberespionage. Right now, policymakers are intent on improving network security, perhaps by pressing the private sector to improve its security, or by waiving outmoded privacy […]
Camille Paglia on the Visual Arts in America Today
Camille Paglia writes an essay in the weekend Wall Street Journal Review on the state of the visual arts in America today (seems to be open access on the website). As I imagine is true of many readers, I blow hot and cold on Paglia; some things are dead on and others dead misses, but […]
“Free Gaza” Movement Founder Greta Berlin Promotes Anti-Semitic Nuttiness
First she sent out a tweet on Sept. 30 from @freegazaorg, stating that “Zionists operated the concentration camps and helped murder millions of innocent Jews.” The tweet linked to a video claiming, among other things, that the word “Nazi” combines the words “National Socialist” and “Zionist.” Berlin and the movement later put out an improbable […]
Ward Farnsworth’s ‘The Legal Analyst’, and a Note on the Hegemony of Economics in Academic Law
When I came back to posting here at Volokh after a summer away with family duties, I mentioned that I had found more time for reading than posting, and that I wanted to share a few books with readers. In this post, I want to raise one I believe particularly useful for my introductory course […]
Bank Fees and Number of Unbanked Rise
According to Bankrate.com, bank fees rose again last year. Meanwhile the percentage of accounts eligible for free checking, which had risen to 76% in 2009, fell again last year, now to only 39% of accounts and eligibility requirements for free checking became more onerous (such as larger minimum balances). Other fees rose as well. And according […]
Ninth Circuit Treats Supreme Court Individual Mandate Necessary and Proper Clause Ruling as a Binding Precedent
Co-blogger Jonathan Adler recently posted on United States v. Elk Shoulder, a recent Ninth Circuit decision which may be the first court of appeals case interepreting the Supreme Court’s individual health insurance mandate decision in NFIB v. Sebelius. When NFIB came down, some commentators argued that Chief Justice Roberts’ conclusion that the mandate was not […]