The Cincinnati Enquirer reports on the string of cases in which the Supreme Court has reversed the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. As the Enquirer story notes, the Sixth Circuit has batted 0-15 over the past three Supreme Court terms. This is quite remarkable. No other Circuit has been reversed so consistently […]
Author Archive | Jonathan H. Adler
Presidential Involvement in State Politics
The Washington Post reports that President Obama has inserted himself into the Wisconsin state budget battle. He criticized the provisions that would hamper state public employee unions and, according to the Post, “the president’s political machine worked in close coordination Thursday with state and national union officials to get thousands of protesters to gather in […]
Hamburger on Waivers, Part II
Columbia Law’s Philip Hamburger has a second NRO essay exploring the constitutional implications of granting the executive branch the discretionary authority to issue waviers under the federal health care reform law. Undoubtedly, waivers or dispensations can be used for good purposes — primarily, for relief from bad laws. Yet the need for relief from a […]
Bainbridge on Public Sector Unions
Professor Bainbridge makes the case against public sector unions. Of note, unlike many conservatives, the good Professor supports private sector unions on principle. As he points out, the arguments justifying private sector unions don’t translate very well to the public sector context: public sector unionism lacks the economic justifications for private sector unionism. It results […]
Questioning Justice Thomas’ Lack of Questions
This past weekend, the NYT‘s Adam Liptak reported that it has been five years since Justice Clarence Thomas has asked a question at oral argument. Justice Thomas has given various and shifting reasons for declining to participate in oral arguments, the court’s most public ceremony. He has said, for instance, that he is self-conscious about the […]
Upcoming Talks
I’ll be doing a few more Federalist Society events in the coming weeks. Here are the details.\ February 22 at noon, I’ll speaking on the proposed REINS Act before the Indianapolis Lawyer’s Chapter. February 26, I’ll be on a panel discussing federalism at the 30th Annual Federalist Society Student Symposium on “Capitalism, Markets, and the Constitution,” […]
Should FCC Act to Promote “Real Journalism”?
The Hill reports on a comments by FCC Commissioner Michael Copps suggesting that the federal government needs to act to encourage “real journalism.” “The commission can act now. It should have acted on the media before now. I am disappointed that it has not,” he said. The decline of “real journalism” justifies federal involvement, according […]
What Bias Looks Like
Megan McArdle explores the causes and consequences of academia’s liberal skew. In her concluding section, she notes that one problem with excluding conservatives from academia is that it “makes scholarship worse.” Unless we assume what to many liberals is “proven” by their predominance in academia–that conservative ideas have no merit–leaving conservatives out means that important […]
Lessons in Total Loss Valuation
As VC readers know, I was in a car accident a few weeks ago. As a consequence, I received a wealth of solicitations from lawyers and chiropractors. I also learned how total loss valuation works in practice when an insurance company decides that your vehicle is not worth repairing and should be scrapped — and […]
Goldsmith: Don’t Try to Try Assange
Jack Goldsmith argues that it would be a mistake for the United States to try and prosecute Wikileaks’ Julian Assange. The government should fully investigate how this major breach of national security occurred. But prosecuting Assange would be a mistake. The first problem with going after Assange is that the effort is likely to fail. […]
Are Health Care Waivers Unconstitutional?
Columbia Law School’s Philip Hamburger had an interesting essay on NRO this week questioning the constitutionality of federal authority to grant waivers under the federal health care law. A taste: The Department of Health and Human Services has granted 733 waivers from one of the statute’s key requirements. The recipients of the waivers include insurers […]
Climate Libel in Canada
The NYT Green Blog reports on libel suits a Canadian climate scientist has filed against a skeptic and the National Post, a Canadian paper.
Still Reckoning with Rapanos:
Yesterday Greenwire published a story, the first of a three-part series, discussing how lower courts have sought to deal with the Supreme Court’s decision in Rapanos v. United States, in which a divided Court held (for the second time) that federal regulations promulgated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (and EPA) under the Clean […]
Tribe’s Take on the Individual Mandate
Harvard Law School’s Laurence Tribe, author of the once-great constitutional law treatise, rises to defend the constitutionality of the individual mandate in today’s NYT. Or rather I should say he explains in the NYT why his defense is unnecessary, because there is no reason to believe that a majority of the Supreme Court would embrace […]
Will Democratic Lawmakers Abandon the Individual Mandate?
Politico reports that some Democratic Senators up for reelection in 2012 are looking at alternatives to the individual mandate. Does this help or hurt the court challenges?