Author Archive | Jonathan H. Adler

The one-hundredth edition of Blawg Review is up here.

It’s Saint Patrick’s Day weekend, and if had been in Boston I would have tried to catch one of the Dropkick Murphy’s celebrated St. Patty’s shows. Given I was home in Hudson, Ohio, making corned beef and cabbage for my wife’s family, I figured I’d share some Dropkick Murphy joy with the VC readership. I […]

I’ve been mulling over Brian Tamanaha’s post “Losing My Stomach for Honest Academic Exchange,” in which he reflects on the tension between personal relationships and academic integrity. The post was prompted by his discomfort at the prospect of writing a negative review of work by a fellow academic, and his “remorse” over making critical comments […]

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson wants to be President, but that will not stop him from signing a bill legalizing medical marijuana in limited circumstances. “So what if it’s risky? It’s the right thing to do,” Richardson told the press. Then again, New Mexico will be the twelfth state to approve medical marijuana, so maybe […]

I have long taken it for granted that there are some things worse than death. Certainly torture, if severe enough, can be worse. Apparently this is not a universal view, however. At Balkinization, Marty Lederman points to this interview with John Yoo in which he says “death is worse than torture,” and therefore torture must […]

Yesterday a new Ohio state law went into effect barring localities from adopting more stringent gun control ordinances than explicitly permitted by state law. The city of Cleveland maintains that this law violates the city’s home rule rights, and filed suit to challenge the uniform state rule. The Plain Dealer reports here. Given how Ohio […]

Via Marty Lederman at SCOTUSBlog comes word that the appellee in FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life will ask the Supreme Court to “reconsider” the holding in McConnell v. FEC upholding the constitutionality of a requirement that corporations to use separate, segregated PAC funds to pay for election-related advertising. If this is on the table, […]

Advocates of splitting the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit often point to the court’s high reversal rate by the Supreme Court. An editorial in Monday’s W$J, for instance, noted that the Ninth is 0-8 so far this Supreme Court term. Tallying the Justices’ votes in cases reviewing Ninth Circuit decisions, the justices […]

Today’s New York Times has an article about a planned carbon sequestration demonstration by American Electric Power. The aim is to demonstrate a technology that can be used to remove carbon dioxide from coal emissions so that the CO2 can be buried in the ground. According to the story, the project “will use a new […]

Redheadlaw7 and I are with Jack: It’s a very funny joke. The New York Times doesn’t get it. I blame liberal media bias.

Jonathan Last reports in the WSJ. UPDATE: USC’s Mary Dudziak has more on the Legal History Blog.

Legal academics have lots of complaints about the nature and quality of law review editing. At Concurring Opinions, Daniel Solove shares his two biggest pet peeves — unnecessary parentheticals and excessive footnoting — and suggests that “many law review editors have no idea just how widely professors view some of their editing practices as silly […]

Yesterday the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California overturned the USDA’s 2005 decision to deregulate “Roundup Ready” alfalfa, barred new sales of seed, and barred any additional planting of already-bought seeds effective March 30. According to the court, the Agriculture Department had failed to conduct an environmental impact statement (EIS) as required […]

Ohio State historian Saul Cornell, director of the Second Amendment Research Center, offers a very negative assessment of Judge Silberman’s majority opinion in Parker v. District of Columbia on Balkinization. According to Professor Cornell, the opinion “rests on a combination of bad law and even worse history.” This may all be true, but Cornell’s post […]

SUNY Cortland political science professor Robert J. Spitzer thinks the Judge Silberman’s opinion got the history of the Second Amendment and relevant precedents hopelessly wrong in Parker v. District of Columbia. In its 58 page ruling, the two-member Parker majority contradicts nearly fifty other federal court rulings spanning seven decades, as well as four Supreme […]