It is the end of an era in the Solicitor General’s office. Earlier this year I emailed Emily Spadoni of the OSG staff and got an error message. Because I had checked the address before sending, I knew it meant the worst: Emily had retired. I knew it would have to happen sooner or later, […]
Archive | November, 2012
Federalist Society Panel on National Security and International Law
Last Friday, I was pleased to take part in a panel at the Federalist Society convention on national security and international law, and whether they are in conflict (or at least serious tension). It featured an excellent lineup with many different viewpoints: Sarah Cleveland and Rosa Brooks (law professors who had served during the Obama […]
Republicans Going Copyleft?!
The Republican Study Committee in the House of Representatives has issued an extremely interesting (though rather clumsily written and clumsily titled) Report on “Three Myths About Copyright Law, and Where to Start to Fix it.” The Report is posted here Actually, it’s not posted there anymore, having been removed by the RSC itself . . […]
Prisoner Offshoring, or Gaolbalization
By Eugene Kontorovich on November 19, 2012 8:25 am in Constitutional Law, Criminal Procedure, Eighth Amendment, Global Governance/World Government, International Human Rights Law, International Law, Uncategorized
Belgium and the Netherlands have an interesting arrangement, an example of economics and incentives working clearly in the public law field. Belgium has more convicts than it can accomodate in its prisons. Neighboring Netherlands has the opposite problem: not enough prisoners. Several years ago, it was facing having to shutter some facilities. But then the […]
Local Government Forces Homeowners to Cut Down Trees so that Retired Baseball Star John Olerud Would Have a Better View of the Seattle Skyline from his House
Retired baseball All Star John Olerud has persuaded the Clyde Hill, Washington Board of Adjustment to force his neighbors to chop down two valuable trees on their property so that he will have a better view of the Seattle skyline: Nine years after he won his third Gold Glove as a Seattle Mariners first baseman, […]
Public Opinion on Secession
A recent Huffington Post poll shows that some 22% would “strongly support” (12%) or “tend to support” (10%) their state’s secession from the union (complete results here). This result, combined with recent petitions for secession sent to the White House by citizens of Texas and other states, has led to considerable alarmist discussion of the […]
Liberal and Conservative American Attitudes Towards Letting Anti-American Muslim Clergy Speak
By Eugene Volokh on November 18, 2012 8:18 pm in Freedom of Speech, Liberal vs. Conservative Attitudes on Free Speech, Religion and the Law, Religious Freedom
Also from the General Social Survey, though this time with a question that was only asked in 2008 and 2010, yielding a total of 2500 respondents: “Now consider a Muslim clergyman who preaches hatred of the United States. If such a person wanted to make a speech in your community preaching hatred of the United […]
Are Liberal or Conservative Americans More Likely to Support Restrictions on Racist and Anti-Religious Speech?
By Eugene Volokh on November 18, 2012 7:54 pm in Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Speech at Colleges and Universities, Liberal vs. Conservative Attitudes on Free Speech, Religion and the Law
Here’s data from the General Social Survey, limiting the years to 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, and 2010 (with nearly 8000 total responses for each question), with respondents self-identifying as liberals, moderates, and conservatives. (I have flattened out the gradations within each category — extremely liberal/conservative, plain liberal/conservative, slightly liberal/conservative — partly because otherwise some […]
Attribution and Retribution: The Anvisoft Case
Attribution of cyberattacks is getting easier, but we’re still bad at the next step: retribution. A case in point is Brian Krebs’s clever investigation of a new antivirus company, Anvisoft. He offers compelling reasons to believe that Anvisoft is run by a notorious Chinese hacker who helped attack a DoD contractor and others several years […]
The Opposite of Secession
While secession by U.S. states is often seen as the domain of kooks, America also has an accession movement – and a parallel succession movement that seems to have relatively significant support in its locality and is certainly not treated as kooky. One of the more significant, but less discussed questions in the last election […]
Cyberwar and Industrial Controls: A conversation with Ralph Langner
I got a call the other day from Ralph Langner, the man who reverse-engineered Stuxnet. He wanted to compare views on cyberweapons and industrial control systems. These systems have now been installed in most of the infrastructure that supports civilian life. But Stuxnet showed how vulnerable such systems can be to cyberattack. I fear that […]
Blasphemy Prosecution for Putting on Play
Reuters reports: Actors and the producer and director of an American play in Greece that depicted Jesus Christ and his apostles as gay [“Corpus Christi”] have been [criminally] charged with blasphemy [after Bishop Seraphim of Piraeus lodged a lawsuit against those involved in the play] …. A production of “Corpus Christi” in Athens was canceled […]
The Hackback Debates — Together at Last
In recent years, Orin Kerr has debated hacking law with two of his cobloggers, Stewart Baker and Eugene Volokh. The issue: whether federal law prevents network owners from hacking those who are hacking them. Spread over several years and multiple posts and comments, the debates have been hard to find and harder to read. No […]
Little Change in Global Drought
Evidence of global warming can be found in a global increase in the frequency and severity of droughts, right? That’s what scientists thought, but a new paper in Nature finds no evidence that warmer temperatures in recent decades have correlated with (let alone caused) an increase in droughts. Contrary to what the IPCC had concluded […]
Alito on Citizens United
By Jonathan H. Adler on November 17, 2012 11:12 am in Freedom of Speech, Restrictions on Campaign Contrbs. and Expenses, Supreme Court
BLT reports that Justice Samuel Alito addressed criticisms of the Supreme Court’s Citzens United decision in a speech at the Federalist Society’s annual lawyers’ convention in Washington, D.C. on Thursday night. Alito said arguments can be made for overturning Citizens United, but not the popular one that boils down to one line: Corporations shouldn’t get […]