The latest installment of the Washington Post‘s “Five Myths” series takes on abortion. Number three among the “Five Myths about Abortion” identified by author Rickie Solinger is “Roe led to a huge increase in the number of abortions.” Here is Solinger’s explanation for why this is a “myth”: According to the Guttmacher Institute, at least […]
Archive | April, 2013
How the Federal Government Charged Dzhokar Tsarnaev with Using a “Weapon of Mass Destruction”
The federal government has filed a formal criminal complaint against accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokar Tsarnaev. One of the charges is “Use of a Weapon of Mass Destruction.” This may seem odd at first. Yes, federal prosecutors did charge a jealous housewife with violating the Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act for trying to poison her […]
Plastic Grocery Bag Bans and Public Health
Jonathan Klick and Joshua Wright have argued that the San Francisco plastic grocery bag ban was associated with an increase in food poisoning: Recently, many jurisdictions have implemented bans or imposed taxes upon plastic grocery bags on environmental grounds. San Francisco County was the first major US jurisdiction to enact such a regulation, implementing a […]
My Upcoming Testimony on Drones and The War on Terror Before the Senate Judiciary Subcomittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights
For those who may be interested, on Tuesday at 4 PM, I will be testifying at a hearing on “Drone Wars: The Constitutional and Counterterrorism Implications of Targeted Killing,” held by the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights. My testimony will focus primarily on the issues addressed in this post. […]
“Why Is Congress Trying to Make Our Internet Abuse Laws Worse, not Better?”
Larry Lessig and I have published a short commentary on CFAA reform in The Atlantic.
Law Professor Predictions and Disguised Advocacy
I wanted to add a quick point on Nick’s post below about predictions on the Affordable Care Act challenges. In my view, the problem with such public predictions is that the people making them often were trying to create reality as much as predict it. As many have noted, courts are widely thought to be […]
Why Did Law Professors Misunderestimate the Lawsuits against PPACA?
I quite enjoyed reading David Hyman’s new article of this title. It vividly illustrates a point that I tried to make three weeks ago at the Intellectual Diversity Conference at Harvard Law School (Panel 2 – 47:00) — which is that the liberal echo chamber of elite law schools has made them startlingly poor at […]
Speaking Engagements This Week
By Dale Carpenter on April 21, 2013 4:25 pm in Flagrant Conduct: Lawrence v. Texas, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Speech at Colleges and Universities
On Monday I’ll be speaking before the ACS chapter at Yale Law School on the topic, “What Has Lawrence Meant? Litigation and LGBT Rights on the Tenth Anniversary of Lawrence v. Texas.” The presentation will be in Rm. 129 from 1-2 p.m. On Tuesday I’ll be speaking at Minnesota State University-Mankato on “The Role of […]
PDF Page Links [UPDATE: Actually, a Bug Keeps This from Working]
This may well be old hat to you, but I just learned it myself — if you want to link to a particular page in a PDF, you can do that by saying something like, http://www.law.ucla.edu/volokh/2am.pdf#page=5 In a triumph for computer programmers — but perhaps confusing to most others — the pages are numbered started […]
“Smoking Saves Lives!”
Mary Lee Malcolm: OMG–I can see the tobacco lobby newsletter now: SMOKING SAVES LIVES! “Watertown man Dave Henneberry steps outside for cigarette, finds bomb suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev hiding in his boat” Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/watertown-man-finds-bomber-holed-boat-article-1.1322387#ixzz2QyAG8tiK On the other hand, maybe we should credit his wife for insisting that he smoke outside. Or maybe the dog.
Czech, Chechen, Slovak, Slovene, Iceberg, Goldberg
From the Czech embassy: As many I was deeply shocked by the tragedy that occurred in Boston earlier this month. It was a stark reminder of the fact that any of us could be a victim of senseless violence anywhere at any moment. As more information on the origin of the alleged perpetrators is coming […]
Second Amendment Challenge to Gun Dealer Ban in Chicago Suburb Can Go Forward
So holds a federal district court in northern Illinois, in Kole v. Village of Norridge (N.D. Ill. Apr. 19, 2013): Although the Supreme Court [in Heller] explained that laws regulating the commercial sale of firearms are “presumptively lawful,” it did not purport to exempt those laws from constitutional scrutiny…. The Seventh Circuit’s analysis in United […]
Tsarnaev and Miranda Rights
Law enforcement has successfully captured Dzhokar Tsarnaev, and DOJ has announced that Tsarnaev is being interrogated without first being read his Miranda rights because the DOJ thinks that the public safety exception to Miranda applies. Back in 2010, I blogged a lot about Miranda in this setting. Here are a few reminders about the law […]
House-to-House Searches and the Fourth Amendment
Current events in Boston raise the question of whether the Fourth Amendment allows the government to conduct house-to-house searches for an armed and dangerous suspect on the loose. Assume the police enter a home without consent searching for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; does the entry violate the Fourth Amendment? The answer depends on whether such home entries […]
U.N. Committee Says: This Speech Must Lead to a Criminal Prosecution of the Speaker
The German government decided not to prosecute the speaker based on this speech, but the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has recently stated the contrary, TBB v. Germany (Feb. 26, 2013). Here’s the speech that, according to the Committee, must lead to a criminal prosecution in countries that have ratified the International […]