Tim Egan in the Times: “The Progressives of the early 20th had an amazing run — direct elections of senators, regulation of monopolistic trusts, modernization of public schools, cleaning up the food supply — with only one major blooper: Prohibition.” I’m not a big fan of either the Seventeenth Amendment or of antitrust law, but […]
Archive | November, 2012
Will the Mortgage Interest Deduction Sacred Cow Finally Get Slaughtered?
The Washington Post reports that Congress and the president are considering abolishing the mortgage interest deduction as part of a deal to avoid the “fiscal cliff”: Of all the deductions woven into the sprawling U.S. tax code, few have been more fiercely guarded than the enormous tax break that lets homeowners deduct the interest they […]
Department of Defense General Counsel Jeh C. Johnson on Conditions for the End of the Conflict with Al Qaeda and Affiliates
One of the questions that has troubled many observers of United States government policy from September 11 onwards is what the “end of the conflict” is supposed to look like in this unconventional war. It’s one thing to say with regards to a conventional conflict – I don’t know when the end of the conflict […]
“The Most Significant Cases These Nine Justices Have Ever Considered”
By Dale Carpenter on November 30, 2012 12:22 pm in DOMA, Gay Marriage, Gay Rights, Same-Sex Marriage, Sexual Orientation, Uncategorized
Tom Goldstein at SCOTUSBlog presents the matter succinctly: At their Conference today, the Justices will consider petitions raising federal constitutional issues related to same-sex marriage. These are the most significant cases these nine Justices have ever considered, and probably that they will ever decide. I have never before seen cases that I believed would be discussed […]
Founders betrayed? New Threats To US Democracy And Rule Of Law
A promising conference at the American Enterprise Institute in DC, today at noon. Information here.
David Friedman on Exams
Exam time is coming up at George Mason and most other law schools. Here’s a good comment on exams by famous law and economics scholar David Friedman: I like to say that being a professor is better than working for a living, except when grading exams. One reason is that grading exams is a pain. […]
How They Light Hanukkah Candles at the Technion (Israel’s MIT)
I can’t seem to embed the You Tube video, but here’s a link. Trust me, it’s worth clicking. H/T: Dad
Nevada District Court Rejects SSM Claim
On the eve of the Supreme Court’s consideration of some major gay-marriage cases, Nevada District Court Judge Robert Jones has publicly released a decision (dated three days ago) in which he rejected a challenge to Nevada’s exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage. I haven’t closely read all of Sevcik v. Sandoval, but a quick skim suggests it’s […]
What the UN Palestine Vote Means and What It Doesn’t
By Eugene Kontorovich on November 29, 2012 8:26 pm in International Law, Israel, Treaties, Uncategorized
1) It should be no surprise that 130-odd countries took the rather technical step of of voting recognize Palestine as a “non-member” in the U.N. General Assembly. That is roughly the number of countries that already directly recognize Palestine as a state! If they have already actually recognized the state themselves, voting to extend such […]
Abstracts in Italics
Law review editors: If you publish the abstracts to your articles in italics, please stop. Big blocks of italics are harder to read than ordinary Roman text; that’s why you don’t see books, articles, or newspapers printed all in italics. There are many ways that you as publishers can use to set off the abstract […]
Stop and Frisk in the Ninth Circuit: Some Thoughts on United States v. I.E.V.
Yesterday, the Ninth Circuit decided an interesting new Fourth Amendment case in a sharply divided opinion with Judge Kozinski in dissent. The case is United States v. I.E.V., and I thought I would blog my thoughts on it. First, some background. Fourth Amendment caselaw permits police officers to “frisk” a suspect in close proximity to […]
What is English?
An interesting passage from State v. Gilbert, 13 Vt. 647 (1841), rejecting the defendant’s claim that an indictment was defective because it listed the year of the offense as 1840 “Anno Domini” instead of “in the year of the Lord” — which, according to the defendant, did not provide sufficient notice to the defendant because […]
Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain on GM, Delphi, and Hostess
Bob Price has written up excerpts from an interview with Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain commenting on various issues in the controversial GM, Delphi, and Hostess bankruptcies. While I disagree with some of Price’s points it seems to me that he is correct in his key observation, which is that although the presence of a collective-bargaining […]
No First Amendment Violation in Maine Governor’s Ordering Removal of Mural from Government Building
From yesterday’s Newton v. LePage (1st Cir. Nov. 29, 2012): The question presented is whether the governor of Maine violated the First Amendment by removing a large state-owned mural, commissioned by the former administration, from its location on the walls of a small waiting room for visitors to the Maine Department of Labor (“MDOL”). The […]
Israel’s Borders and International Law
This is a talk I gave this summer to a group of Jewish college students, which in broad strokes outlines the international law reasons the West Bank cannot be considered “Palestinian territory,” independent of the political or equitable merits of creating a Palestinian state there. Please watch the whole thing before commenting. Hopefully I say […]