This is a request to readers who may have contacts at Amazon, or work there. Amazon recently inexplicably raised the price for the Kindle version of my book Democracy and Political Ignorance from the initial $15.37 to 20.19, even though (judging by Amazon’s own rankings) the Kindle version was doing well at the initial price. […]
Archive | September, 2013
“Messiah” Returns
A month ago, a Tennessee judge ordered that a child’s first name be changed from “Messiah,” reasoning: “The word Messiah is a title and it’s a title that has only been earned by one person and that one person is Jesus Christ,” Judge Ballew said…. According to Judge Ballew, it is the first time she […]
“Liking” a Facebook Page Is Presumptively Protected Speech
So holds today’s Bland v. Roberts (4th Cir. Sept. 18, 2013), I think correctly. The trial court had held that “[s]imply liking a Facebook page … is not the kind of substantive statement that has previously warranted constitutional protection,” but the court of appeals disagreed: On the most basic level, clicking on the “like” button […]
Does Windsor Require States to Recognize Out-of-State Same-Sex Marriages?
I’ve blogged before about Obergefell v. Kasich, the first post-Windsor decision to raise the very interesting question of whether states are required to recognize out-of-state same-sex marriages. I’ve now written a short essay on that question, which is forthcoming in the NYU Journal of Law and Liberty’s inaugural Supreme Court Review-Preview. Here is the introduction: […]
Federal Judge Dismisses Lawsuit Challenging Richmond, CA’s Plan to Condemn Underwater Mortgages, on Procedural Grounds
Federal District Judge Charles Breyer recently dismissed a lawsuit by mortgage lenders challenging the constitutionality of the City of Richmond’s plan to condemn over 600 underwater mortgages, while paying compensation far below market level. Judge Breyer dismissed the case on procedural grounds, because it is not yet “ripe” due to the fact that the city […]
Conan the Librarian
The Library of Congress’s The Constitution: Analysis & Interpretation — a clause-by-clause treatise summarizing U.S. constitutional law and citing to relevant cases — is now out. (The URL is http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GPO-CONAN-2013/pdf/GPO-CONAN-2013.pdf.) The PDF is huge; if it’s taking too long for you to load, go here and follow the link you need for the particular Article […]
My (Mostly Critical) Thoughts on the August 2013 FISC Opinion on Section 215
The FISC has released an August 2013 opinion, authored by Judge Claire Eagan, on the lawfulness of the NSA’s telephony metadata program. I thought part of the opinion was persuasive but most of it was unpersuasive. Here are my thoughts on the opinion in the order that the issues appear in the opinion, which end […]
Michael Dorf on the Social Practice of Originalism
Michael Dorf has an interesting blog post recounting some of his Constitution Day remarks: Suppose that Americans decided tomorrow to abandon the Constitution and to organize our legal and political systems in some other way. . . . [N]o one disputes that it would be possible — as a matter of brute fact — for […]
Libel Insurance and Online Commenters
Say you posted a comment online — on a site such as Yelp, on a blog, or elsewhere — and now someone is threatening to sue you for libel. What do you do? Well, if you have homeowner’s insurance (or renter’s insurance), look at your policy — such policies, to the surprise of many people, […]
What the Hell Happened? The Campaign Against (and Defeat of) SOPA
I trust that most of you remember the rather astonishing events of late 2011/early 2012, during which something resembling an Internet insurrection helped stop the Administration’s proposed “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA) dead in its legislative tracks. [I was pretty actively involved in the efforts, and blogged about the events on a number of occasions […]
My New Article on the Supreme Court’s Important Recent Takings Clause Decisions
My new Cato Supreme Court Review article on the Supreme Court’s major recent Takings Clause decisions is now available on SSRN. Here is the abstract [But see important update on technical issues with the PDF below.]: Property rights protected by the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause have long been “relegated to the status of a poor […]
Signing Off and Some Parting Thoughts
My many thanks to Eugene for allowing me a guest stay here at the Volokh Conspiracy to blog about Unprecedented. I attended law school at George Mason, and often felt like I had much of the VC as my faculty. It was an honor to blog among them. There’s still time to hop onto the […]
Brains on Trial: Part 1, Determining Guilt
An interesting episode from a new PBS special on the role of neuroscience in criminal law, featuring Nita Farahany. I tend to be skeptical about the usefulness of this sort of evidence, but it’s an interesting issue.
Triggering the Second Amendment: Lund v. Rosenthal
This afternoon, in honor of Constitution Day (and because the Byrd Amendment requires it), Case Western Reserve University hosted a debate between Professor Nelson Lund of George Mason University School of Law and Professor Laurence Rosenthal of Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law. The forum, “Triggering the Second Amendment: The Constitutionality of Gun Rights and […]
Constitutional Structure on the Roberts Court
During the debates over the Affordable Care Act, a common criticism of the challengers was that the commerce-clause based attack was really a liberty-based challenge in structural clothes. Legal positions, the argument went, which were ostensibly framed in terms of Congress’s abilities to regulate interstate commerce, or to tax and spend, were really efforts to […]