where I am guest-blogging. Old Myths Die Hard (Long after historians debunked the notion that the Supreme Court’s liberty of contract jurisprudence arose from Social Darwinism, this notion continues to appear in history books as fact.) On a Certain Type of Historical Error (Historians reading present-day political alignments into the the past, and making assertions […]
Author Archive | David Bernstein
A Lesson for Israel Advocates from the OBL Reaction
The nonsense spewing from the various usual suspects–the European left, left-wing NGOs, leftist international law experts [update: here’s an excellent example from an Israeli commentator]–regarding the takedown of Osama bin Laden by U.S. forces should provide an important lesson for advocates of Israel. The hostility emanating to Israel emanating from these sources is not, primarily, […]
Cato Rehabilitating Lochner Event Now Online
On Monday, I spoke at the Cato Institute about Rehabilitating Lochner, with comments by Michael Seidman of Georgetown and Greg Maggs of G.W. You can watch a video of the event, or download a podcast of it, here. Interestingly enough, the biggest controversy was whether the title of the book properly reflects its contents.
Pew Center Study of American Political Attitudes
The new study can be found here. Of particular interest to many readers of this blog, Pew finds that 9% of Americans and 10% of voters fall into the “libertarian” camp. This does not mean that they are doctrinaire libertarians, but, in Pew’s definition, that they tend to be pro-free market, suspicious of the government, […]
How Twentieth Century
I received a promotional postcard from X Law School, bragging about one of its professors. The text of the card starts, “It would be wise to add [Professor ___] to your Rolodex. Because nobody knows more about training a new generation of lawyers than she does.” Rolodex? I half expected the postcard to conclude with […]
More Human Rights Watch on Bin Laden
When the news broke that U.S. forces had killed Bin Laden, HRW went with its natural instincts to use the occasion to urge the U.S. to “no longer resort to torture, ill-treatment, and other violations of basic rights in their understandable quest to prevent further strikes.” That apparently didn’t sit well even with HRW’s base, […]
Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch on Bin Laden: “Not Justice”
More on Law School Scholarships
Paul Caron of TaxProf links here to various reactions to the purported scandal that not all 1Ls who receive scholarships can expect to maintain a high enough GPA to retain them. Let me throw my two cents in. I think part of the problem is that incoming law students are unaware of how law schools […]
More on Atlas Shrugged the Movie
So at my wife’s insistence, we went to see it again, this time in Fairfax City at a matinee. At the end of the movie, the elderly couple sitting in front of us was beaming. The wife said, “what a wonderful movie.” The husband said, “if it wasn’t for the sex scenes [which were pretty […]
The Cult of International Law Revisited
Back in 2006, I wrote: “I’ve noticed in a variety of contexts that there are some rather well-educated, articulate individuals out there who have what seems to me to be a fanatical, quasi-religious belief in ‘international law’, and the idea that it should trump any other conflicting consideration.” This analysis from Der Speigel, with the […]
Short Blog Review
of Rehabilitating Lochner can be found here. The author is John Kranz of threesources.com. Conclusion: “five stars.”
Guest-blogging at the Legal History Blog
This month, I’ll be guest-blogging at the Legal History blog. Not surprisingly, my posts will focus on matters of interest to producers and consumers of legal history. My first post, “Why Write a Book?,” is up.
The Atlas Shrugged Movie
I’m sure many people have been discouraged from seeing Atlas Shrugged Part I because of its terrible reviews. I saw the movie with my wife yesterday at the Arlington Cinema & Drafthouse (where it is showing once a day through Thursday). I thought I was dragging her to a disaster I was only going to […]
Rehabilitating Lochner Event at the Cato Institute Monday at 4 pm
VC readers in the DC area are invited to a book form on Rehabilitating Lochner at the Cato Institute on Monday at 4:00 p.m. Here are the details from the Cato website: Speakers: David Bernstein, George Mason University School of Law; with comments by Louis Michael Seidman, Georgetown University Law Center; and Gregory E. Maggs, […]
I’ve Posted the Introduction to Rehabilitating Lochner
on SSRN. Here is the abstract: This paper is the Introduction to David E. Bernstein, Rehabilitating Lochner: Defending Individual Rights against Progressive Reform (University of Chicago Press 2011), which will be officially released in May [but is already shipping from Amazon]. The Introduction makes the following points, which are elaborated upon and defended in the […]