Last term, in Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, a unanimous Supreme Court rejected the EPA’s effort to deny private landowners an opportunity to challenge the agency’s assertion of jurisdiction over their land. The Sacketts wanted to build a home in a subdivision, but the EPA concluded the Sacketts’ land to contain jurisdictional wetlands under the […]
Author Archive | Jonathan H. Adler
Upcoming Talks
Tomorrow I’ll be moderating a panel on “The President’s Power to Implement International Law after Medellin v. Texas” at a conference on Presidential Power, Foreign Affairs and the 2012 Election at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law. The conference will be webcast and speakers include Jack Goldsmith, Amos Guiora, Leila Sadat, Gregory Noone, […]
Two Takes on Fact-Checking
Clive Crook offers two commentaries on the current rage of “fact checking” political arguments: One with a heavy dose of satire, and one without.
Is Organic Food Healthier or Safer?
A new study fails to find scientific support for claims organic food is healthier or safer than conventional alternatives and everyone acts as if this is a surprise. It shouldn’t be. Scientific research has fairly consistently failed to validate the claimed superiority of organic food, as I’ve noted in prior posts over the past ten […]
District Court Orders Restoration of Weekend Early Voting in Ohio
Have there been enough big election law decisions this week? Apparently not, as earlier today a federal district court in Ohio has held that a change in the Ohio Revised Code that ends in-person early voting the Friday before election day (for all voters other than overseas military personnel) is unconstitutional and issued an injunction […]
How Not to Label Biotech Foods
By Jonathan H. Adler on August 31, 2012 8:15 am in Food and Drink, Freedom of Speech, Junk Science and Quackspertise, Politicizing Science
In November, Californians will vote on Proposition 37, a ballot initiative to impose a mandatory labeling requirement on all foods produced with or from genetically modified organisms (GMOs). For reasons I discuss in this New Atlantis article, this requirement is unnecessary, unwise and potentially unconstitutional. The effort has been endorsed by numerous progressive organizations and […]
Harvard Cheating Scandal
The Associated Press reports on a massive cheating scandal at Harvard: Harvard University is investigating whether dozens of undergraduate students cheated on a take-home exam last spring. School officials said they discovered students may have shared answers or plagiarized on a final exam. They declined to release the name of the class, the students’ names […]
D.C. Court Rules Against Texas Voter ID Law
Earlier today a special three-judge panel held that the Texas voter ID law violates Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. This is the second time this week courts have ruled against a Texas election law. (The first was noted here.) Here are the opinion and early analysis from Rick Hasen.
D.C. Court Throws Out Texas Congressional Map
Today a special three-judge panel in Washington, D.C. threw out Texas’ new congressional map for violating the Voting Rights Act. Here’s the decision and some early analysis from Rick Hasen.
En Banc Petitions in D.C. Circuit Greenhouse Gas Litigation
By Jonathan H. Adler on August 28, 2012 3:48 pm in Administrative Law, Climate Change, Environment, Standing
Earlier this month, several of the parties challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act filed petitions for panel rehearing or rehearing en banc in Coalition for Responsible Regulation v. EPA, in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit turned away all of the state […]
NYT v. NYT
Arthur Brisbane, the NYT‘s public editor for the past two years, wrote his final column this weekend. In that column, he commented: I had taken up the public editor duties believing “there is no conspiracy” and that The Times’s output was too vast and complex to be dictated by any Wizard of Oz-like individual or […]
Two Big Decisions from D.C. Circuit
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued two significant decisions today. In the first, Sherley v. Sebelius, a unanimous panel affirmed the district court’s grant of summary judgment to the federal government rejecting a challenge to federal funding of emryonic stem cell research. Chief Judge Sentelle wrote for the court. Judges Henderson […]
Mann v. Steyn
Penn State climatologist Michael Mann, he of the infamous “Hockey stick” graph, is threatening to sue Mark Steyn and National Review for a blog post on NRO in which Steyn (quoting Rand Simberg) compared Penn State’s investigation of scientific misconduct allegations against Mann with the same university’s initial investigation of Jerry Sandusky and the Penn […]
Keeping Wolverines Out of Oklahoma City Schools
USA Today reports that a boy in an Oklahoma City kindergarten was required to turn his t-shirt inside-out because it violated state policy concerning appropriate school attire. Cooper Barton, 5, comes from a family of Michigan fans. He went to school wearing a maize and blue shirt with “The Big House,” the nickname for Michigan’s […]
Why Gasoline Prices Are Volatile
Andrew Morriss and Donald Boudreaux have an op-ed in today’s WSJ explaining why gasoline prices have become more volatile. The short version: Boutique fuel requirements have balkanized the gasoline market, magnifying the effects of local supply disruptions. For most of the 20th century, the United States was a single market for gasoline. Today we have […]