Erik Sofge has an interesting Slate article about the oppression to which droids are subjected in the Stars Wars universe: George Lucas doesn’t care about metal people. No other explanation makes sense. In a kid-targeted sci-fi setting that’s notably inclusive, with as many friendly alien characters as villainous ones, the human rights situation for robots […]
Author Archive | Ilya Somin
Still Waiting for the Koontz Decision
Among the many important decisions not issued by the Supreme Court this week, it’s easy to forget about Koontz v. St. John’s River Water Management District, which I described here. As co-blogger Jonathan Adler wrote in January, “this could be a very important case — easily the most important property rights case heard by the […]
Return of the People’s Rights Amendment
By Ilya Somin on June 20, 2013 3:41 am in Constitutional Amendments, Constitutional Theory, First Amendment, Freedom of Speech, Restrictions on Campaign Contrbs. and Expenses
The Tester-Murphy Amendment, which Eugene Volokh criticizes here. appears to be virtually identical to last year’s People’s Rights Amendment. I outlined some of the dangers posed by the PRA in this post.
Dick Cheney Unintentionally Explains the Dangers of the NSA Surveillance Program
In this recent article, conservative columnist John Fund highlights some interesting comments by former Vice President Dick Cheney: On Sunday, former vice president Dick Cheney addressed the dilemma many conservatives face in assessing the revelations about the National Security Agency’s data collection. On the one hand, they are suspicious of the federal government. On the […]
The Ongoing Saga of the Private Property Rights Protection Act
By Ilya Somin on June 17, 2013 1:10 pm in Democracy and Political Ignorance, Political Ignorance, Post-Kelo Reform, Property Rights
Last week, the House Judiciary Committee passed the Private Property Rights Protection Act, which would prevent local governments that engage in Kelo-style economic development takings from receiving federal economic development funds. As I explained in a post last year (which explains the bill in more detail), this legislation has been kicking around Congress since 2005. […]
Julian Sanchez on Pilon and Epstein’s Defense of the NSA Electronic Data Collection Program
Last week, Roger Pilon of the Cato Institute and famed libertarian law professor Richard Epstein published an op ed defending the NSA policy of collecting data on millions of Americans’ electronic communications. Pilon and Epstein may be the only prominent libertarian defenders of the NSA on this issue; though, obviously, that doesn’t necessarily mean they […]
Matthew Yglesias on Superman and Opportunity Costs
Matthew Yglesias has a fun Slate piece on what Superman should do with his powers: I don’t want to offer spoilers for the new Superman movie, Man of Steel but suffice it to say that for a while in the film Superman is kind of bouncing around sporadically rescuing people from random accidents. And it’s […]
My Take on Heather Gerken’s Progressive Defense of Federalism
I recently participated in a Tulsa Law Review symposium in honor of Yale Law School Professor Heather Gerken, one of the nation’s leading federalism scholars. Much of Gerken’s work urges her fellow political liberals to rethink their traditional distaste for federalism. My contribution to the symposium is now available on SSRN. Here is the abstract: […]
Cass Sunstein on Taxi Cab Regulation
Famed Harvard law professor and former Obama Administration official Cass Sunstein is no enemy of regulation in general. But in this recent column, he argues that big cities need to deregulate the taxi market: People can run into two problems when they need to find a taxi. The first is that they don’t know whether […]
A Modest But Potentially Significant Supreme Court Victory for Property Rights
By Ilya Somin on June 10, 2013 7:50 pm in Just Compensation Clause, Property Rights, Regulatory Takings
To the disappointment of court-watchers, the Supreme Court did not announce any high-profile decisions today. But it did issue a unanimous opinion in Horne v. Department of Agriculture, a notable Takings Clause property rights case. The Hornes are California raisin farmers seeking to challenge the constitutionality of a provision of the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act […]
George Will on Reducing Mandatory Minimum Sentences
George Will recently published an interesting column on a bill that would give judges greater discretion to reduce mandatory minimum sentences for federal crimes, co-sponsored by Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy and Republican Rand Paul: Seven-term Democrat Pat Leahy’s 38 Senate years have made him Judiciary Committee chairman. Republican Rand Paul is in his third Senate […]
Political Ignorance and Partisan Bias Go Down When Survey Respondents Are Rewarded for Correct Answers
By Ilya Somin on June 5, 2013 6:24 pm in Democracy and Political Ignorance, Political Ignorance, Public Opinion, Voting With Your Feet
Many studies show that there is widespread political ignorance, with large percentages of the public ignorant of fairly basic facts. In addition, voters’ perception of the facts is often heavily influenced by partisan bias. For example, Republicans overestimate the rates of inflation and unemployment when there is a Democratic president, while Democrats have the opposite […]
Training Drug-Sniffing Dogs Not to Detect Pot
Since the state of Washington legalized marijuana in a referendum last November, some Washington police departments have been trying to teach their drug-sniffing dogs not to detect pot: When Dusty, a 19-month-old black Labrador, walked past a pipe full of marijuana during a recent police search of a house, he was doing exactly what his […]
Public Ignorance About How Government Policy Works
By Ilya Somin on June 4, 2013 7:02 pm in Democracy and Political Ignorance, Growth of Government, Political Ignorance, Voting With Your Feet
NPR reports on an interesting recent article by psychologist Phil Fernbach and his coauthors, which finds that public ignorance about the details of policy has an important impact on voters’ political views: Should the United States impose unilateral sanctions on Iran for its nuclear program? Should we raise the retirement age for Social Security? Should […]
Reflections on the Red Wedding
This is a post about the Red Wedding, portrayed in the most recent episode of the HBO show Game of Thrones, and first described in George R.R. Martin’s book A Storm of Swords. If you want to avoid plot spoilers, don’t read below the fold. If you ignore this warning, don’t complain about spoilers.