Rush Limbaugh made comments on his radio show (scroll down–if you find this post of great interest, you should probably read the whole three-paragraph monologue, which makes the relevant context abundantly clear) suggesting that Pres. Obama may be subtly appealing to anti-Semitism through his attack on “bankers” and “Wall Street,” and that Jewish voters, in […]
Author Archive | David Bernstein
Writing Well Matters, Even in Academia
A while back, a prominent law review asked me to review a book on a topic of interest to me. I readily agreed, on condition that the review be relatively short. When it came time to sit down and read the book, however, I found it extremely difficult to understand; the book was loaded with […]
Here’s a Good Reason to Allow Internet Access on Airplanes
Maybe a flight attendant or passenger could have looked up what “tefillin” is, and saved the passengers on this flight a lot of inconvenience, and the airline a lot of embarrassment. (A flight was diverted when flight attendants became concerned that a teenager’s Jewish ritual object, tefillin was actually some sort of a bomb). Aside: […]
The Libertarian Vote
David Kirby and David Boaz have published a new Cato Institute study estimating the size of the “libertarian vote.” They conclude that about 14% of American voters are libertarian in the sense of broadly opposing government regulation in both the economic and social realms. As a libertarian think tank, Cato obviously has a strong interest […]
Homeopathy
I’ve met a lot of well-educated people who think that a “homeopathic” remedy is simply a “natural” remedy. Here’s a welcome reminder that it’s actually quackery of the highest order. Meanwhile, if you have “brusing and injury”–or any other malady, really–I’d be happy to sell you patented Bernstein© brand Placebo Pills for an even lower […]
John Eastman for Attorney General?
Looks like Chapman Law School dean John Eastman is running for the Republican nomination for California attorney general. It’s hard to believe that California voters would elect someone so competent and qualified, but good luck, John!
Excluding Unfit Workers: Social Control Versus Social Justice in the Age of Economic Reform
By David Bernstein on January 11, 2010 10:48 am in Civil Rights, Constitutional History, Economic LIberties
I’ve just posted this article, co-authored with Tim Leonard of the Princeton Economics department, on SSRN. Here’s the abstract: Contrary to their modern reputation as egalitarian liberals, many of the original progressive architects of American labor reform were partisans of human inequality. The labor legislation they pioneered was, in important respects, designed to exclude immigrants, […]
Declining African American/Mexican American Matriculations to Law School?
A few days back, while I was away at the Federalist Society Faculty Division conference in New Orleans, Orin linked to a study out of Columbia’s “SALT” that reported declines in the percentage of African Americans and Mexican Americans matriculating in American law schools since 1993. Orin tentatively attributed this decline to law schools becoming […]
Biden
It’s kind of amusing to go back and read Obama partisans’ defenses of Biden in August 2008 (e.g., “The comparisons between Biden and Quayle seem way off. Biden has always been more outspoken, articulate, coherent, and respected than Quayle ever was”), and then read what Obama had to say (privately) about Biden a month later: […]
Mitchell’s Loan Guarantee Threat
I suspect that U.S. envoy George Mitchell’s threat that the U.S. may withhold loan guarantees from Israel if Israel fails to adhere to U.S. policy re the West Bank would have more “bite” if Israel’s fiscal house wasn’t currently in much better order than the U.S.’s.
Getting to Causation in Toxic Tort Cases
I’ve posted this article, published in the Brooklyn Law Review, on SSRN. It’s intended to be a more or less practical guide for judges and attorneys to causation issues in toxic tort cases, not a philosophic treatise (not that there’s anything wrong with that!). Here’s the abstract: Since the issue first arose in earnest in […]
Typical Human Rights Watch Dishonesty
HRW’s website has published this piece on the Geneva Conventions and Israel by director Ken Roth. There are many things wrong with it, but I’ll focus on one piece of blatant dishonesty. Here’s Roth: Instead, there is strong evidence that Israel wanted Gazan civilians to pay the price for Hamas’s abuses, and that the decision […]
From Date to Mate
That’s the name of a mock reality show available online on Shalom TV. It’s about four single Jewish twenty-somethings in Manhattan who have agreed to have their online dating life followed by t.v. cameras for eight months. I’ve watched the first two episodes, and two things strike me. First, because Shalom TV is aimed at […]
More ABA Mischief?
Taxprof notes: The Standards Review Committee of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has proposed revising accreditation standard chapter 3 (Program of Legal Education) to incorporate “Student Learning Outcomes.” The committee will discuss the proposed standards as part of the AALS Annual Meeting Program on Friday January 8, 2010, from 4:00 p.m. – […]
MLA Panel on Jewish American Literature
Inside Higher Education has a very sober account of a panel at the annual Modern Language Association meeting on why English departments tend to ignore American Jewish literature, while spending significant resources on other ethnic literature. Despite its sobriety, the account left me alternatively laughing and shaking my head (and sometimes both: “Jewishness has been […]