Author Archive | Jonathan H. Adler

Harvard law professor and “regulatory czar” nominee Cass Sunstein appeared before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Sunstein’s nomination to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs — a post for which he would seem ideally suited — is one of the few Obama nominations to have drawn significant fire from […]

This morning the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit denied death row inmate Billy Irick’s habeas appeal in Irick v. Bell. Judge Batchelder delivered the opinion of the court, joined by Judge Siler. Judge Gilman issued a separate opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part. The two issues on appeal were whether […]

Bill McGurn’s column today suggests that the Obama Administration has done more to repudiate the legacy of President Clinton than that of President Bush. He writes: there’s a persuasive case that the legacy most threatened by the Obama presidency belongs to the last Democrat who sat in the Oval Office: Bill Clinton. Think about it. […]

From today’s WSJ: Senate leaders are considering new federal taxes on soda and other sugary drinks to help pay for an overhaul of the nation’s health-care system. The taxes would pay for only a fraction of the cost to expand health-insurance coverage to all Americans and would face strong opposition from the beverage industry. They […]

McClatchy’s Michael Doyle consults the attorney evaluations of Supreme Court short-listers, Judges Sonia Sotomayor, Diane Wood, and Ann Williams. From his “quick read” he concludes: “Rosen may have been on to something with his piece, discomforting as it may have been . . . “ UPDATE: On the other hand, Rob Kar notes Sotomayor’s evaluations […]

Professor Bainbridge ponders the apparent economic ignorance of the unnamed Obama Administration official who told the WSJ “You don’t need banks and bondholders to make cars.” If the quote is accurate, it is astounding. Yet another reason to buy a Ford.

Professor Henry T. King passed away this weekend just a few weeks shy of his 90th birthday. After serving as a prosecutor at Nuremberg, where he helped with the prosecution of Albert Speer, Henry had a long and distinguished career as a private attorney and corporate counsel before joining the faculty of the Case Western […]

Jeff Rosen responds to some of the criticisms of his profile of Judge Sonia Sotomayor. Word is, his profile of Elena Kagan is up next.

Jan Crawford Greenburg reports that the White House has a short list of candidates to replace Justice Souter on the Supreme Court. According to Greenburg, the White House has asked six individuals to submit information for vetting, “which is being run outside the White House,” but only three — Diane Wood, Elena Kagan, and Sonia […]

Michael Dorf has an interesting post on the “inexplicable error” in Jeff Rosen’s article about potential Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor. Dorf concludes: “either Rosen didn’t read or didn’t understand the Juncal footnote, or he did read and understand it but chose to mischaracterize it as a means of putting his own substantive point […]

Must a union make a reasonable accommodation for a union member who has a religious objection to paying union dues? And what sort of accommodation would suffice? These issues are addressed in an interesting opinion from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit this morning, Reed v. International Union. Judge Batchelder delivered the […]

Senior district court judge Ann Aldrich and her law clerks call for an important type of diversity on the Supreme Court: TO succeed Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court, President Obama should select a nominee with experience that no other sitting justice has — service as a trial judge on a federal district court. […]

Thomas Cooley, dean of NYU’s Stern School of Business, writes: We are entering a precarious phase of the economic and financial crisis. On the one hand, there are encouraging, if weak, signs of an economic recovery. There is evidence of a revival in lending. Consumer confidence is improving quite a bit both in the U.S. […]

An interesting report from Jan Crawford Greenburg: News reports yesterday made much out of the fact that a draft report about the so-called “torture memos” doesn’t recommend criminal prosecution for DOJ officials John Yoo and Jay Bybee, but instead would only refer them to their state bars for disciplinary proceedings. Setting aside that my friend […]

Apparently Oprah Winfrey is giving a platform to Playboy-bunny-turned-MTV-starlet-turned-anti-vaccine-activist Jenny McCarthy, and plans to help her have her own talk show. This is the height of irresponsibility. As Arthur Allen explains: Celebrities take on all kinds of causes. They campaign for presidents, and they rally to save the women of Darfur and the hungry masses […]