Jonathan Cohn notes that the question of whether the ACA’s (Obamacare’s) Medicaid mandate is unduly coercive to the states is the “sleeper issue of the case: ” The Affordable Care Act expands Medicaid eligibility guidelines significantly, so that, starting in 2014, anybody with income below 133 percent of the poverty line can receive it. The […]
Author Archive | David Bernstein
Seattle University Law Professor Dean Spade versus LGBT Israeli Activists
A delegation of Israeli Jews representing the “Alliance of Israeli LGBT Educational Organizations, a network of groups that support LGBT youth and families,” was visiting the West Coast last week. The Israeli delegation’s visit was sponsored by A Wider Bridge, which describes itself as “a San Francisco–based national organization that seeks to educate people about […]
Discussion: Obligations of Interracial Couples and Mixed-race Individuals
New York Times op-ed: Mixed-race blacks have an ethical obligation to identify as black — and interracial couples share a similar moral imperative to inculcate certain ideas of black heritage and racial identity in their mixed-race children, regardless of how they look. The reason is simple. Despite the tremendous societal progress these recent changes in […]
Life Imitates Rehabilitating Lochner, Again
RL: Modern conservative constitutionalists, meanwhile, though dissenters in some ways from the orthodox interpretation of American constitutional history, also want to see themselves as part of a seamless jurisprudential tradition, and they venerate some of the same Progressive heroes as their liberal adversaries do…. In this tale, the good guys are Holmes, Frankfurter, and other […]
My “Boycott” of the Harvard Law Review
Yesterday, I got a request from the Harvard Law Review to undertake an anonymous “peer review” of an article HLR is considering for publication. I thought I’d share my response, below. In considering your request, I had in mind some comments that Professor Stephen Bainbridge has made about the one-sided nature of these referee requests […]
Gilad Atzmon Update
Readers will recall the controversy over the University of Chicago’s John Mearsheimer’s endorsement of a recent anti-Semitic book, The Wandering Who, by notorious anti-Semitic provocateur Gilad Atzmon. When Atzmon’s background and anti-Jewish passages from the book were called to Mearsheimer’s attention, to even his harshest critics’ surprise instead of backing down he reaffirmed his endorsement. […]
2013 US News Law School Rankings
are up on USN’s website a bit early. I’ve grown weary of all the hoopla around U.S. News, but here they are for what there worth. The one thing that stands out is that Arizona State somehow managed to propel itself to number 26. Comment away. Please keep in mind, though, that US News ranking […]
Congratulations to Orin
and Ainsley!
Sec. of State Clinton–Don’t Believe our Pro-Israel Rhetoric (or Anything Else we Say)
Here’s Clinton speaking in Tunisia. Note that the questioner operates under the assumption that to be pro-Israel is to be against the “common Arab citizen,” and Clinton not only fails to challenge that assumption, but implies that rhetoric that pleases the “Zionist lobby” is somehow anti-Muslim. She then suggests that Americans (and others) are fools […]
A Few Notes on the Cato-Koch Controversy
I love the Cato Institute. I admire the Kochs and greatly appreciate their contributions to libertarian causes. I have ties to both sides too numerous to bore readers with. So I’m distressed that they are at odds. Here’s my small contribution to the debate: (1) In one sense, the Kochs had no choice but to […]
On the Lack of Connection Between Life Expectancy and Quality of Hospital Care
My father-in-law is ill and has been hospitalized for a couple of weeks in Israel. Life expectancies in Israel are the fourth highest in the world (especially impressive given various populations that exist on the margins of the mainstream–Bedouin in the Negev, extremist Haredi sects, Arabs in rural villages), but it’s clearly not because of […]
Something’s Not Kosher about Davis-Bacon
That’s the subtitle Reason Magazine editors gave to this journalistic piece I wrote back in 1991 about the discriminatory origins and effects of the Davis-Bacon Act. Reason recently posted it online, and I’m pleased to see that it holds up pretty well. I explored the anti-black origins of Davis-Bacon in far more detail in a […]
Did Historian Ilan Pappe Fabricate a Quote by David Ben-Gurion?
The quotation in question is “The Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as war.” With regard to the first part of the quotation, “The Arabs will have to go,” this piece makes a strong case that he, at best, relied on a mistranslation of the […]
Substantive Due Process News
By David Bernstein on February 22, 2012 4:06 pm in Constitutional History, Constitutional Law, Constitutional Theory, Originalism
(1) Discussion of SDP continues over at Cato Unbound. Too many interesting posts there to pick out one, so just start from Tim Sandefur’s lead essay and keep reading. (2) Professor Michael McConnell and Nathan Chapman have posted an article on SSRN, Due Process as Separation of Powers. The article cautions against “resorts to originalism […]
HUD on Fair Housing and Discriminatory Roommate Advertising
When I blogged about the Roommates.com case recently, I pointed out the Ninth Circuit seemed to assume that if discriminating in one’s choice of roommates is legal, it would also be legal to advertise a discriminatory preference. I suggested that this wasn’t so clear. Some commentors thought it was absurd to suggest that HUD would […]