YNN Rochester reports: Amid the filming process for “The Amazing Spiderman 2” in Rochester, film crews and police, have been walking a fine line with media and civilians over public photography rights. The question is: if police and production crews tell you not to photograph or videotape their public work, are they violating your civil […]
Archive | May, 2013
State May Force-Feed Prison Inmate Who Is on a Hunger Strike
So New York’s highest court held today in Bezio v. Dorsey (N.Y. May 2, 2013); for last year’s similar Connecticut Supreme Court decision, see this post.
HRW’s Kenneth Roth Fails Reading Comprehension
Via NY Times “The Lede” Blog: In November 2012, Amnesty International tweeted, “Feel enraged by the violence in #Gaza & #Israel? Demand that @netanyahu & @AlqassamBrigade stop attacks on civilians.” Egyptian activist Mona Seif responded in a tweet, “@amnesty you don’t ask an occupied nation to stop their ‘Resistance’ to end violence!!! SHAME ON YOU!” […]
Some Important Thoughts About Internet Governance
David Bollier and John Clippinger have an extremely interesting short essay on “The Next Great Internet Disruption: Authority and Governance” that is well worth reading. They start from Reed’s Law: When we look back on the past twenty years of Internet history, we can more fully appreciate the prescience of David P. Reed’s seminal 1999 […]
Live: Final Rhode Island Vote for Gay Marriage
You can watch it here. Rhode Island will be the 10th state to recognize same-sex marriage. More to come soon. UPDATE: Watch the R.I. Governor’s signing ceremony here.
France’s Kiobel
By Eugene Kontorovich on May 2, 2013 3:19 pm in Alien Tort Statute, Corporations and Corporate Law, Global Governance/World Government, International Human Rights Law, International Law, Israel, Supreme Court
I wrote yesterday about the French Court of Appeals decision holding that French train companies did not violate international law (and particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention) by building a light rail system in Jerusalem, including areas occupied by Jordan before 1967. The case, PLO v. Alstom, is a perfect foreign coda to the Supreme Court’s […]
Support for So-Called “Honor Killings”
By Eugene Volokh on May 2, 2013 2:34 pm in Religion, Sex Discrimination, Sexual Conduct Restrictions
The Pew Forum’s survey of international Muslim attitudes asks, among other things, Some people think that if a woman engages in premarital sex or adultery it is justified for family members to end her life in order to protect the family honor. Do you personally feel that this practice is [often justified, sometimes justified, rarely […]
“Around the World, Muslims Heralded Religious Freedom”
So reports CNN’s belief blog, as one of the “[f]ive takeaways” from the Pew Research Center’s new survey of Muslims around the world: Despite views that Islam should influence politics and law, an overwhelming number of Muslims told Pew that religious freedom was a good thing. Ninety-seven percent of Muslims in South Asia, 95% in […]
Florida Supreme Court Deepens Lower Court Split on Searching a Cell Phone Incident to Arrest
I recently mentioned my new short essay, Foreword: Accounting for Technological Change, 36 Harv. J. L. & Pub. Pol’y 403 (2013), about how the Supreme Court should resolve the lower court division on the Fourth Amendment rule for searching a cell phone incident to arrest. In light of that, I thought I would flag this […]
Excellent Statement of the Modern Liberal Libertarian Vision
I say “liberal” [UPDATE: judging from the comments, it looks like I need to clarify that I mean liberal in its broad philosophical sense of favoring freedom and tolerance, not in its narrow modern American political sense] because one can be a believer in a minimal state, but still, e.g., be a racist, not care […]
The Health Care Case: The Supreme Court’s Decision and its Implications – Now Available for Pre-ordering
By Ilya Somin on May 2, 2013 11:30 am in Federalism, Health Care, Individual Mandate, Necessary and Proper
The Health Care Case: The Supreme Court’s Decision and its Implications – A new book on last year’s controversial Supreme Court decision on Obamacare is now available for pre-order at Amazon. The book is edited by Columbia law professors Nathaniel Persily, Gillian Metzger, and Trevor Morrison, and published by Oxford University Press. It contains essays […]
Illinois County Public Housing Gun Ban Repealed, Following Second Amendment Foundation Lawsuit
The Warren County (Illinois) Housing Authority had banned gun possession by tenants, even in their own apartments. The Second Amendment Foundation sued on Second Amendment grounds, and the Authority agreed to repeal the ban; the repeal apparently took effect December 1, but I just learned about this today, when the District Court released its opinion […]
The Second Amendment and 18-to-20-Year-Olds
The Fifth Circuit has voted 8-7 not to rehear NRA v. BATF en banc. The panel decision upholds the federal ban on handgun sales by federal firearms licensees to 18-to-20-year-olds; the dissent disagrees. Such a close division on a court of appeals makes it more likely that the Supreme Court will agree to hear the […]
Above The Law’s Employment-Based Law School Rankings
An interesting new project. I haven’t looked closely at how the data is assembled, so I can’t vouch for its quality, but it seems potentially helpful. Note how close the results are to the U.S. News rankings, by the way, for the top 18 schools (a convenient top-schools group to discuss, because it almost never […]
Public Ignorance About Obamacare
A recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll (Kaiser is one of the leading pollsters focusing on health care issues) finds that 42% of Americans are unaware that the Affordable Care Act is still the law of the land. Kaiser reports that that figures includes “12 percent who believe the law has been repealed by Congress, 7 […]