I’ve mostly stuck to my announced blogging hiatus, but I’m still reading my co-bloggers posts, and also usually the comments to them. I’m amazed by the overall quality and thoughtfulness of the comments. It makes me feel good to know that I blog for such readers. Kudos!
Author Archive | David Bernstein
A Day Late, and A Dollar Short on Bendectin:
There was once a safe and effective prescription remedy for morning sickness called Bendectin (Debendox in other countries). After a great deal of “phantom risk” hysteria, Bendectin was driven off the American market by thousands of lawsuits, unsupported by valid scientific evidence, claiming it caused birth defects. The litigation continued well after a consensus formed […]
Somin on Kelo and Original Understanding:
My colleague Ilya Somin writes at the SCOTUSblog: Justice Thomas’ dissent does an excellent job showing that the original meaning of “public use” was either actual public ownership of the condemned property or at the very least a legal right of access by the public (as in the case of takings for railroads and other […]
Big Government for Its Own Sake:
A while back, I had a post, “George Bush, liberal darling” stating that liberals should like George Bush for his vast expansion of federal spending. I received many outraged emails, and many links from outraged liberal bloggers, protesting that liberals don’t like Big Government for its own sake, but rather support using the institution of […]
More Signs of the Bubble:
Heard on NPR today that S&P warned investors about some newly popular kind of crazy mortgage where the homeowner gets to choose each month how much he pays, and, if he pays less than the normal mortgage amount, the extra is added to his mortgage. And I thought interest-only loans were a sign that mortgage […]
Obscure Request–Need to Find “Bakers Review”:
I’m finishing up a piece on Lochner v. New York, and have found some very interesting background information from the Bakers Review, a publication of bakery owners. As far as I can tell, I’m the first person to utilize this source (as opposed to the Bakers’ Journal, published by the bakers’ union) when writing about […]
Eight Circuit Judge Takes on the Community Rights Council:
Doug Kendall of the Community Rights Council filed an ethics complaint against Sixth Circuit Judge Danny Boggs for serving on the board of FREE, a Montana-based free market environmentalist group that, among other things, runs education seminars for federal judges. Chief Judge Loken rejected the complaint, and wrote, “Reasonable people, unlike the complainant, do not […]
Craziest Tort Ruling Yet Issued by a State Supreme Court:
My nominee, not surprsingly, is from New Jersey (which provides several other candidates), Canesi ex rel. Canesi v. Wilson 158 N.J. 490, 730 A.2d 805 (1999). Mother takes Provera during pregnancy. PDR tells physician to warn mother about possibility of congenital defects, including limb reduction defects. Doctor negligently fails to warn. Mother gives birth. Baby […]
Law Review Summer Submissions:
I am just about finished with an article I plan to submit to law reviews. The conventional wisdom is that if one finishes an article during the Summer, it’s better to wait until mid-August to send it out to law reviews, because many law reviews shut down for the Summer. The counter-argument is that with […]
Thoughts on Ashcroft (Gonzalez) v. Raich:
Despite my blogging hiatus, I cannot resist making a few quick comments about Raich. (1) The five-member majority of the Court simply does not take federalism seriously. Justice Stevens writes that Congressional factual findings are required when there is a “special concern such as the protection of free of speech.” Apparently, however, the Constitution’s limitations […]
What Peace Means to the Egyptian Government:
This Egyptian government website, which my wife stumbled upon by chance, tells an amazingly distorted story of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in general, and the history of Jerusalem in particular. Of particular note is this page on the “history” of Jerusalem. It starts with the assertion that “[a]ll along human history, Jerusalem has always been an […]
Ridiculous Comment of the Month:
I interrupt my blogging hiatus to bring you the following extreme example of inflated self-importance in the academy: President Bush is visiting Calvin College, an institution that has previously escaped my attention. Says history professor Dale Van Kley, a 28 year veteran of Calvin College now teaching at Ohio State, “I can see that the […]
Holocaust Memorial Day:
Today is Yom HaShoah–Holocaust Memorial Day. My grandmother was descended, on her mother’s side, from a prominent and prosperous family line in Western Poland named Tetenbaum. Her closest Tetenbaum relatives (other than her mother’s sister, who married a man named Bogusz, moved to Germany, had two sons, and were all murdered), the seven sons of […]
A Revisionist View of Bolling v. Sharpe:
In yesterday’s installment of the Sunstein/Barnett debate, Sunstein raised the case of Bolling v. Sharpe, holding that the federal government may not segregate schools in the District of Columbia. Randy responded: You are right to point out that the Supreme Court’s decision in Bolling v. Sharpe is very difficult to reconcile with the text of […]
Hentoff Piece on the “Constitution in Exile”:
I don’t have time or energy to provide an extended critique, but, even aside from its adoption of the phony “Constitution in Exile” meme, this Nat Hentoff piece is extremely weak. For example, he conflates the tiny minority of legal scholars who support a revival of Lochner with the much greater number who think that […]