Author Archive | David Bernstein

Bork in 1995: Our expensive, capricious and unpredictable civil justice systems present precisely the kind of conflicting and costly state regulation of commerce that the Commerce Clause was designed to solve. Lawsuits, verdicts, settlements and the insurance necessary to defend and indemnify against them, are driving up the cost of goods and services everywhere, and […]

In what I think is a genuine effort to express tolerance and openness, an article in Time Out London about a potential future “Islamic London” often reads like a parody: On the surface, Islamic health doesn

Taipei Times: Enraged mobs from one of India’s myriad lower castes blocked roads with fiery barricades, stoned police and battled rival castes across a wide swath of northern India for a week to make a single, simple point: They want to be even lower. With 25 people dead, the unrest spread to the fringes of […]

(1) The saying that real estate is all about location has never seemed more true. Last Sunday, I attended an open house at a beautiful, well-priced house well inside the Beltway in a nice neighborhood in Bethesda, but not near a metro, and I was one of very few visitors (around 5) for the entire […]

NY Times: Liberals are good people. Conservatives are bad people. Clarence Thomas, who is black and grew up under modest circumstances, and once was liberal himself, should be the first one to realize this. Instead, not only is he conservative, but he hangs around with bad people like Rush Limbaugh. This is an enigma, and […]

I took the test many years ago, and got 50%, no better than guessing. I decided to try my luck again. Once again, 50%.

Advocates of boycotts of Israel and Israelis, such as the British boycott Eugene blogs below, often draw an analogy between Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and South African apartheid. And just as South Africa was boycotted, they argue, so should Israel be boycotted. For reasons that should be obvious to any objective […]

Washington Post: “George Mason University’s Stephen Fuller called up a PowerPoint slide predicting that in 2057, the average annual household income for the region will be $1,307,000. Whoo hoo! That sounded great. Then he pointed out that in 50 years, the average Washington area house will cost a whopping $14,061,000.” Putting aside the absurdity of […]

Eharmony.com, the most profitable on-line dating service, is being sued under California law for discrimination based on sexual orientation for failing to include “women seeking women” or “men seeking men” categories on its website. Eharmony, for its part, claims that its services are based on research regarding what makes heterosexuals compatible, and because it has […]

Dissenting today in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., Justice Ginsburg writes, “This is not the first time the Court has ordered a cramped interpretation of Title VII, incompatible with the statute

I haven’t been able to locate a good D.C. traffic discussion board, but maybe a V.C. reader can help: how is traffic around 8:00 a.m. on the Clara Barton Parkway/Canal Road or MacArthur Blvd going south from Cabin John/Glen Echo/Bethesda? How long does it take to get past Georgetown? Thanks.

Reduce the number of lawyers, reduce pro bono work, increase the requirements for legal study, and raise fees. So says Eitan Erez, candidate for the presidency of the Israel Bar Association.

I have just finished reading Natural Causes by Dan Hurley, an entertaining and informative look at the various degrees of fraud and flimflammery that go on in the supplement and vitamin industry. The book is marred only by Hurley’s exaggeration of his case. He concludes that of all the products that fall within the heading […]

The BBC has a story on Iraqi Jews living in Israel, who remember their former homeland with fondness. My wife is of Iraqi descent, and I think it’s fair to say that both of her parents enjoyed life in Iraq, especially her mother, who was from a very wealthy and prominent family (Khalaschy, which can […]

From reader Jon Lewis: I noticed with great interest your Volokh post on the ethnic background of some of the Arabs in the Galilee. I have been writing on ethnicity and minority rights in the Middle East for the Wall Street Journal and the Middle East Quarterly for several years…. In response to your query […]