Author Archive | Jonathan H. Adler

The New York Times reports that Chicago city council may consider a ban on the use of “trans-fats” in local restaurants. Edward M. Burke, who has served on the Chicago City Council since 1969, when cooking oil was just cooking oil, is pressing his colleagues to make it illegal for restaurants to use oils that […]

A VC reader wonders why I wrote below that Sedley Alley “allegedly” raped and murdered Suzanne Collins when Alley was long-ago convicted of the crime and his conviction withstood numerous appeals and petitions for post-conviction relief. At what point does one stop saying allegedly? He’s been convicted, right? Plus he confessed (although he later recanted). […]

The Cato Institute has published a paper by Agitator blogger Radley Balko on the increased use of paramilitary tactics by local polices forces, Overkill: The Rise of Paramiltary Police Raids in America. Here is the executive summary: Americans have long maintained that a man’s home is his castle and that he has the right to […]

Dahlia Lithwick warns that the Bush Administration wants to prosecute “thought crimes,” VC contributor Orin Kerr is unimpressed.

The state of Tennessee executed Sedley Alley in the early morning of June 28 after a series of last-ditch appeals, an unusual 11th hour stay of execution, and a strongly worded order vacating the stay from a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Given the Sixth Circuit’s public dissension in […]

Whatever caused this terrible tragedy — something I and others find inexplicable — I will fondly remember Bill’s engaging and entertaining class lectures, his personal enthusiasm and generosity, and his friendship. UPDATE: I’ve closed and deleted the comments on this post. As one commenter observed, given the circumstances, it was a mistake to open comments […]

In today’s Chicago Tribune, noted University of Chicago law professor Richard Epstein has an op-ed highly critical of President Bush’s use of signing statements. While acknowledging there is “nothing new” about the use of such statements, Epstein raises concern about the “extraordinary freqency” and “unorthodox way” these statements are used by the Bush Administration. Here’s […]

The Vietnam War and civil rights movement inspired some tremendous music (for an example of the latter, see here while there is substantial and sincere opposition to the current war in Iraq, it seems to me that the conflict has not generated protest music of an equivalent caliber as that produced in the 1960s and […]

University of Minnesota law preofessor Jim Chen has launched a new blog, Jurisdynamics. In his first post, he explains the blog’s title: Jurisdynamics describes the interplay between legal responses to exogenous change and the law’s own endogenous capacity for adaptation. The world that law tries to govern has has become “so vast that fully to […]

George Gilder of the Discovery Institute has an extended defense of “intelligent design” in the new print issue of National Review. John Derbyshire, writing on National Review Online, is wholly unconvinced. I often disagree with Derbyshire, and I found Gilder’s early writings on capitalism and economic growth quite compelling when I was in college, but […]

The military is touting the latest Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile test as “phenomenal” and claims a THAAD system could be ready for emergency deployment within a year. According to this report, “military officials said the test went better than they could have hoped.” [Yet in the next paragraph, the story quotes an […]

Today’s New York Times has an interesting story about a common problem with elementary and high school textbooks: a lack of originality. The problem is not texts in given fields recount the same historical events — one would hope there is substantial overlap in this regard — but that, in at least one prominent case, […]

Oxford University Press has just published A Well-Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America by Ohio State professor Saul Cornell. The book challenges both the “individual right” and “collective right” interpretations of the Second Amendment, and puts forth a third “citizen-oriented” interpretation of the right to bear arms. To […]

This morning’s Robert Novak column begins: Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has informed my attorneys that, after 2-1/2 years, his investigation of the CIA leak case concerning matters directly relating to me has been concluded. That frees me to reveal my role in the federal inquiry that, at the request of Fitzgerald, I have kept secret. […]

Over at Balkinization, Marty Lederman and Cass Sunstein have been mulling the Hamdan decision’s implications for the legality of the NSA conter-terrorism surveillance program. While they don’t agree across the board, they concur (as do others) that Hamdan undermines the most plausible arguments in support of the NSA’s activities. Here are the links: Lederman’s initial […]