With the holidays approaching, I thought I’d provide a friendly reminder that books by Volokh Conspiracy bloggers make great presents for that special legal theory nerd/historian/law student/libertarian/law geek/Second Amendment enthusiast/educated lay reader/etc. on your list. It’s also a nice way of showing appreciation for our bloggers. And some links for your convenience: Adler, ed., Rebuilding […]
Author Archive | David Bernstein
Obama’s Progressive Mythology
Well, yesterday was certainly a good day for one of my least favorite American politicians of the twentieth century, Theodore Roosevelt, who combined gross economic ignorance with an almost adolescent jingoism. GOP frontrunner (!) Newt Gingrich has (once again) declared himself to be a “Theodore Roosevelt Republican” (though disclaiming the more socialistic Roosevelt of his […]
Newt Gingrich, Right-Wing Progressive?
While Democrats are sure to fall all over themselves portraying Newt Gingrich as a laissez-faire extremist, there is little if anything in the actual public record to support that portrayal. Indeed, I saw Gingrich give a talk at the height of his power, circa mid-1995, via the Smithsonian Associates program. The only reason I remember […]
Thugs in Jerusalem
Jerusalem Post: After 20 months of attacks and a quarter million shekels in damage, a religious bookstore in the ultra-Orthodox Mea She’arim neighborhood of Jerusalem decided on Monday to accede to the demands of extremists responsible for the violence. Under the terms of the compromise, Ohr Hachaim/Manny’s put up a large sign requesting that all […]
Myths of the Brandeis Brief
My latest article in the Green Bag (link will open seven-page PDF file): (1) First, social reform was not in nearly as much danger from Lochner as the standard story suggests…. (2) The supposed simple-minded formalism of late nineteenth and early twentieth century judges has been called into serious question by recent scholarship…. (3) Brandeis’s […]
Weird Comment by Justice Stevens
From the Oct. 31 issue of Time, re Citizens United: I feel strongly that the court made a serious mistake in finding that money is the equivalent of protected speech. If followed out to its logical conclusion, that would have provided First Amendment protection to the Watergate burglars. They were financed with campaign expenditures. Huh?
Israel’s Latest Crime?
According to leftist gay [judging by this piece, she obviously cares much more about leftism than about gay rights] activist Sarah Schulman, it’s the following: “Last year, the Israeli news site Ynet reported that the Tel Aviv tourism board had begun a campaign of around $90 million to brand the city as ‘an international gay […]
Bleg re Rules re Rights Offerings and Shares Held Short
Having a hard time getting a straight answer on this one. Let’s say you hold 1,000 shares of a stock short. The company announces that it’s doing a rights offering, and for every share a holder owns, you can buy a newly issued share directly from the company for 90% of the closing price on […]
Dialogue with Victoria Nourse on Lochner
University of Wisconsin Professor (and Seventh Circuit nominee) Victoria Nourse and I discussed Lochner v. New York for the Federalist Society’s Madison chapter. Wisconsin Eye (Wisconsin’s version of C-Span) was there, and posted this video of the event. In other Rehabilitating Lochner news, attorney Thomas Bowden’s review in the George Mason Law Review can be […]
Undemocratic?
It turns out that various politically active, generally far left-wing Israeli NGOs, some of which deny the very legitimacy of the Israeli government, get funding from various European governments (see, e.g., this detailed NGO Monitor Report, which focuses only on funding through the EU itself; member states provide substantial additional funding). Some of these organizations, […]
My Take on the Individual Mandate Litigation
It hasn’t changed since I wrote the following almost a year ago: What the opponents of the individual mandate had to do was provide plausible arguments that the individual mandate is distinguishable from precedents like Wickard v. Filburn and Gonzales v. Raich. Whether or not the best interpretation of those precedents supports the individual mandate […]
New York Law Journal Reviews Rehabilitating Lochner
The review starts: The book “Rehabilitating Lochner” is about a U.S. Supreme Court decision that generations of lawyers and law students have been taught to scorn as the imposition of obsolete economic dogma disguised as constitutional principle….Comes now Professor David E. Bernstein of George Mason University School of Law, who seeks to set the record […]
Colbert on OWS
This is VERY funny. Hat tip to my colleague Chris Newman. The Colbert Report Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive
Jews, Communists and Jewish Communists
Here’s an interesting article by Stanislaw Krajewski, who asserts ten theses: 1. Marxism, radical leftist ideologies, and “real socialism” constitute not only a fragment of world history, and of Polish or Hungarian histories, but also a chapter in Jewish history. 2. Antisemites have grossly exaggerated the Jewish involvement in communism, distorted the facts, and interpreted […]
A Sad Commentary on the Republican Field
Newt Gingrich is starting to look kind of attractive, relatively speaking. (If only Gary Johnson could get some traction…) UPDATE: On cue, the Washington Post has a story about Republicans giving Gingrich a second look.