Author Archive | David Bernstein

The Nichols case: Freeman also defended assigning Hall, a 5-foot, 51-year-old woman, to guard Nichols, a muscular, former college linebacker. Freeman said the deputy had transported “murderers, convicted felons, rapists” on numerous occasions and had been a “long-term employee” who did “an excellent job.” “You can’t discriminate based on gender,” Freeman said. “A deputy sheriff […]

At last night’s Purim schpiel (satire) at Washington D.C.’s largest Conservative synagogue, Adas Israel, the story line was that the evil Chancellor Haman of the “Persian Institute of Technology” had decided to do away with a “woman in science” fellowship because he believed that women lacked competence in the sciences. Poor Esther had to give […]

A realtor quoted in the New York Times: “South Florida,” he said, “is working off of a totally new economic model than any of us have ever experienced in the past.” Shades of the “new economic model” that jusified a Cisco P/E of 180 at the height of the NASDAQ bubble. Around these parts (D.C. […]

Received the following email from SSRN (Social Science Research Network) Today: SSRN is pleased to announce a new service: We now list Top Law Schools based on downloads from SSRN’s eLibrary. This list will be revised monthly. The Top 20 Law Schools as measured by downloads of their faculty’s papers from SSRN over the last […]

Wally Olson reports: Auto Connection has some new material on the astounding $31 million verdict against Ford from Zavala County, Texas, last discussed in this space Mar. 7. A few snippets: In the testimony that followed [a Feb. 22 mistrial motion by Ford], it was revealed that not only had [juror Diana] Palacios failed to […]

The American Lawyer has a remarkable account of the Fen-Phen settlement fiasco, which foundered on a flood of apparently fraudulent claims by plaintiffs, acting in concert with hired-gun physicians, some of the latter of whom, contrary to professional ethics, worked on contingency fees. After reading the piece, I was left with two questions: (1) how […]

Very disturbing accounts over at MarathonPundit about the case of Thomas Klocek, an untenured professor suspended for the rest of the semester for essentially arguing vigorouly with student manning a pro-Palestinian booth in the student union. I’m sure all the left-wing bloggers who’ve been agitating on behalf of Columbia Middle East Studies professors accused of […]

From David Beito over at Liberty and Power.

An interesting article in last week’s New York Jewish Week (that I can’t find on-line) explores why, with the peace process finally looking up, “mainline” Protestant groups have decided to start a campaign of divestment from companies doing business with Israel. The article concludes that the main reason is not hostility to Jews or even […]

AP:The arts and sciences group is “the least representative faculty, the most out of touch with the real world, the most ideologically extreme,” law professor Alan Dershowitz said in a telephone interview Wednesday. “It’s not the heart and soul of the university for a lot of reasons. In some respects it’s the orphan child of […]

What are local governments in doing with all the extra property tax revenue they are taking in due to the unprecedented rise in housing prices? Where I live, they’re wasting it, and there is going to be hell to pay when the bubble bursts, tax revenues stagnate or even decrease, and prudent fiscal policy has […]

My wife and I were in Ann Arbor this past weekend looking at rental houses for the coming academic year. On Saturday, as we drove past Ann Arbor’s only biggest synagogue (Beth Israel), we noticed a small motley group of protesters holding up some placards outside. On closer inspection, it turned out that they were […]

It’s pretty simple, isn’t it? The far left at Harvard is extremely frustrated with political trends in the U.S. Their votes and activism against Bush were not only completely ineffectual, but they don’t even have a Democratic governor in one of the most liberal states in the country. So they pick on the closest thing […]

The March issue of the Law and Politics Book Review carries a very favorable review of Ken Kersch’s extremely important book, Constructing Civil Liberties: Discontinuities in the Development of American Constitutional Law. My own very favorable review will soon appear in the American Historical Review, but meanwhile read this one, and then buy the book.

whether produced by Bush political appointee minions, or by any other government officials, are an appalling use of government money. Though much of the controversy has been over videos that seem to support specific Bush Administration policies, equally troubling in a somewhat different way are p.r. campaigns by government agencies that seek to build support […]