An interesting question, which Carver v. State (Oct. 31, 2013) answers “yes,” following several other such decisions: After a jury trial, Rebecca Michelle Carver was convicted of pointing a firearm at another and reckless conduct…. Her sole [grounds for appeal] presents a question not previously considered in Georgia: whether the trial court erred in denying […]
Archive | November, 2013
My Thoughts on Fernandez v. California
On November 13th, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in a Fourth Amendment case, Fernandez v. California, on the scope of the third-party consent doctrine. Fernandez isn’t the most important case on the Court’s docket. The Question Presented is narrow and the practical stakes are pretty small. But the case raises some interesting conceptual […]
ACA Supporters Must Admit That They Are Taxing the Uninsured
Is Obamacare enforced by a tax or a penalty? In the Supreme Court, the Obama Administration claimed that the “penalty” enforcing the individual responsibility requirement was a tax. Proposals by anxious Democrat Senators, many in vulnerable seats, to delay the enforcement of the Affordable Care Act presents a golden opportunity for the government to finally […]
Illinois House Debating Same-Sex Marriage Now
You can watch it live here. The state senate has already passed the bill. If the state house passes it, the bill would be signed by the governor.
Central Bank Intervention and the Role of Political Connections
I just finished reading a new Mercatus Center study by Benjamin M. Blau, “Central Bank Intervention and the Role of Political Connections.” The findings are summarized: Background The study uses data from a full-scale audit of the Fed conducted by the General Accounting Office to examine whether banks with political connections were more likely to […]
Richard Posner on the Rise and Fall of Judicial Deference
At the JOTWELL site, Emory law professor Charles Shanor reviews an important article by Judge Richard Posner on the rise and fall of “Thayerian” judicial deference to legislatures. Posner traces the history of James Bradley Thayer’s famous argument (first developed in the 1890s) that judges should only strike down a statute if its unconstitutionality is […]
Another Response to Geoffrey Stone
In his post below, Eugene K. responds to Geoffrey Stone’s latest reason why the conservative Justices are terrible, horrible, no good, very bad Justices. According to Stone, the conservatives are intellectually weak political hacks, with the evidence being the party affiliation of the President who nominated the circuit court judges that their clerks worked before […]
The Rationality of Political Ignorance Revisited
By Ilya Somin on November 5, 2013 11:10 am in Democracy and Political Ignorance, Political Ignorance
Bruce Ramsey of the Liberty website isn’t happy with either participant in my recent debate with Jeffrey Friedman over the the rationality of political ignorance at Cato Unbound. He claims that we misrepresent each other’s positions, and that in any case the question we are debating doesn’t matter much. Here is his critique of my […]
Remember, remember
Question for this fifth of November: What does the Fawkes say?
Are Conservative Judges Better? Evidence from Geoff Stone
By Eugene Kontorovich on November 5, 2013 9:25 am in Apppellate Procedure, Conservatism, Judicial Conduct, Judicial Power, Supreme Court
Prof. Geoff Stone argues that conservative Supreme Court justices are more ideologically inflexible and less meritocratic than their liberal counterparts. His evidence for this is that Of the 20 law clerks appointed this Term by the five conservative Justices — Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas and Alito, 18 of the 20 — or an astonishing 90 […]
What Questions Will Be Resolved By Bond v. United States?
Tomorrow the Supreme Court will hear argument in Bond v. United States, a case about a conviction under a statute that purports to implement a chemical weapons treaty. The arguments at the Court raise basic questions about the scope of the treaty power and the scope of Congress’s ability to implement that treaty power. While […]
What are Clothes?
A fun oral argument at the Supreme Court today on that question, Sandifer v. United States Steel Corp.
Upcoming Talks
I have not been blogging much of late; there’s too much on my plate. I am, however, giving a few talks in the next few weeks that may be of interest to VC readers. Tomorrow, November 5, I’ll be speaking about the NLRB v. Noel Canning case before the Federalist Society student chapter at the Villanova University […]
Spell Checker for Legal Documents?
Is there a good spell checker that’s optimized for legal documents? I have in mind features such as: ignoring brackets, as in “revers[ing]” or “[w]here”; allowing a word to be viewed as correctly spelled in italicized text (usually a case name) without treating it as correctly spelled in normal text; automatically recognizing common terms in […]
Georgia Supreme Court Justices on the Second Amendment, Carrying Guns in Public, and Felons
Hertz v. Bennett (Ga. Sup. Ct. Nov. 4, 2013) rejects a Second Amendment objection to the denial of a concealed carry license. The petitioner, the court notes, had pleaded no contest to five felony counts — “three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, one count of shooting from a vehicle, and one count […]