Most students who take a property law class study the famous New York case of Stambovsky v. Ackley, where a New York court ruled that sellers of a house must disclose to potential buyers the fact that the house was reputedly haunted. The court concluded that the house was “haunted as a matter of law” […]
Archive | December, 2013
Ohio Supreme Court Upholds Medicaid Expansion
Shortly before the holiday the Ohio Supreme Court rejected a challenge to Governor John Kasich’s decision to accept Medicaid expansion under the PPACA. This was a controversial decision within the Governor’s party, and prompted a lawsuit. The plaintiffs, six state legislators and two anti-abortion groups, argued that the state could not accept Medicaid expansion without […]
Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, David
Usually the words used to represent letters are “alpha, bravo, charlie, delta, …” but in one instance (that I know of) it’s “alpha, bravo, charlie, david, ….” What is it, and why?
Judge Pauley of the SDNY Upholds NSA Section 215 Program
The opinion is here, and it’s pretty much the opposite of Judge Leon’s recent opinion. Judge Pauley rules that the Section 215 telephony metadata program is lawful both as a matter of statutory and constitutional law. Based on our experience with lower court rulings on Obamacare, I gather that Pauley’s opinion will draw only a […]
HuffPost Live on Cases to Watch in 2014
Around 12:50pm EST I’ll appear on HuffPost Live to discuss legal cases to watch in 2014, with a focus on the Supreme Court. Mike Sacks is the host and the other guests are Carrie Severino of the Judicial Crisis Network and Georgia State University law professor Eric Segall. I’ll post a link to the segment […]
Same-Sex Marriage Heads Back to Supreme Court
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit’s refusal to stay a district court decision invalidating Utah’s ban on same-sex marriage is sending the issue back to the Supreme Court less than six months after last summer’s the Windsor and Perry decisions. Adam Liptak reports: The question for the Supreme Court in the short term will be whether […]
CWRU President and Provost Reject Academic Boycott of Israel
By Jonathan H. Adler on December 27, 2013 8:55 am in Academia, Freedom of Speech at Colleges and Universities, Israel
In a statement e-mailed to faculty and other members of the university community, Case Western Reserve University President Barbara Snyder and Provost Bud Baeslack forcefully rejected calls for an academic boycott of Israel. As they note, academic boycotts of this sort run contrary to principles of academic freedom and “seek to subvert one of higher […]
Mann v. Steyn Mulligan
By Jonathan H. Adler on December 27, 2013 8:41 am in Climate Change, Defamation, Freedom of Speech, Politicizing Science
On December 19, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals effectively erased Michael Mann’s initial court victory in his defamation lawsuit against Mark Steyn, National Review, Rand Simberg and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Here’s how Mark Steyn pithily summarizes the developments: 1. Dr Michael Mann’s lawyer, John Williams, filed a fraudulent complaint falsely representing his client as […]
Upcoming Federalist Society Faculty Conference Presentation on my Next Book – The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain
By Ilya Somin on December 26, 2013 11:25 am in Eminent Domain, Kelo, Post-Kelo Reform, Property Rights
Next week, on Friday, January 3, between 5 and 6:15 PM, I will be doing a presentation on my next book, tentatively entitled The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain at the Federalist Society’s annual faculty conference. This will be a preview of the book, which will […]
Senders’ Fourth Amendment Rights in E-mails Seized from the E-mail Accounts of Recipients
A recent case, United States v. Young (D. Utah, December 17, 2013) (Campbell, J.), touches on a novel, interesting, and quite important question of Fourth Amendment law: Assuming that e-mail account-holders generally have Fourth Amendment rights in the contents of their e-mails, as courts have so far held, when does a person’s Fourth Amendment rights […]
O Hear the Angel Voices
An interesting case, In re Stephen O. (Alaska Dec. 17, 2013), dealing with the recurring question of how religious claims can be relevant to mental commitment proceedings. From the three-Justice majority (some paragraph breaks added): Shortly after Christmas 2009 Stephen O. experienced what he believed to be a religious conversion and, as he described it, […]
Somalia Outlaws Christmas Celebrations
So report GhanaWeb and SomaliCurrent: A directive released on Tuesday by the Ministry of Justice and Religious Affairs stated that no Christian festivities could be held in Somalia…. “We alert fellow Muslims in Somalia that some festivities to mark Christian Days will take place around the world in this week,” said [the Director of the […]
Amended Reply Brief in United States v. Auernheimer
In time for Christmas, we just filed the amended reply brief in United States v. Auernheimer.
Liberals and Conservatives Switch Positions on NSA Surveillance
A recent Washington Post poll asked, “How concerned are you, if at all, about the collection and use of your personal information by the National Security Agency?” I was interested in the different degree of concern among political liberals and political conservatives. Here are the results among political liberals: 26% very concerned 26% somewhat concerned […]
How typical is Phil Robertson’s view of gay sex?
One question that has come up in the Duck Dynasty dispute is how typical is Phil Roberston’s view that homosexual behavior is a sin. In recent years, the public has been moving from a majority believing that sexual relations between people of the same gender is always wrong to roughly equal numbers believing that it’s […]