Law school applications are down 18 percent and the number of applicants is down 12 percent. Paul Caron has details here. Relatedly, the LA Times reports on shrinking law school class sizes at California schools. Most schools face a stark choice between shrinking the size of incoming classes and lowering admission standards. In the coming […]
Author Archive | Jonathan H. Adler
No Injunction Against L.A. County Condom Requirement
Last fall, voters in Los Angeles County passed Measure B, the “Safer Sex In the Adult Film Industry Act.” This measure requires the use of condoms in adult films during sexual intercourse. Vivid Entertainment, Califa Productions and porn star Kayden Kross sued. Among other things, they argued that the requirement infringed upon their constitutional right […]
Is the D.C. Circuit a “Broken Circuit”?
Earlier this summer, the Environmental Law Institute’s Environmental Forum featured a cover story on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit by Doug Kendall and Simon Lazarus of the Constitutional Accountability Center entitled “Broken Circuit.” As the sub-head promised, this article made the case that “A new breed of activism on the Court […]
The “New Normal” in the Legal Profession
By Jonathan H. Adler on August 18, 2013 12:11 pm in Academia, Law School Tuition and Loans, Law Schools, Legal Profession
UNC’s Bernard Burk has an interesting new paper on changes to the legal profession and legal job market, “What’s New About the New Normal: The Evolving Market for New Lawyers in the 21st Century.” Here’s the abstract: Everyone agrees that job prospects for many new law graduates have been poor for the last several years; […]
California Law School Claims First Amendment Right Not to Report Bar Passage Rates
By Jonathan H. Adler on August 17, 2013 2:29 pm in Academia, Bar Exam, Freedom of Speech, Law Schools, Legal Profession
The WSJ Law Blog reports that the Southern California Institute of Law claims that it cannot be required to disclose the bar passage rate of its graduates as a condition of accreditation. Such a requirement, SCIL claims, runs afoul of the First Amendment. Southern California Institute of Law is suing bar association officials for requiring […]
Third Circuit Denies En Banc Petition in Contraception Mandate Case
This week, the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit voted 7-5 to deny a petition for rehearing en banc in a private for-profit employer’s challenge to the federal contraception mandate in Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. HHS. As SCOTUSBlog notes, this creates a circuit split between the Third and Tenth Circuits on […]
PPACA’s Consumer Cost Caps Delayed
Tuesday’s NYT reported on another part of the PPACA that the Obama Administration has decided to delay. It begins: In another setback for President Obama’s health care initiative, the administration has delayed until 2015 a significant consumer protection in the law that limits how much people may have to spend on their own health care. […]
The Administration of the “Least Untruthful Answer”
In an article titled “The Lies Aren’t What Makes Obama’s NSA Stance So Awful,” TNR‘s Jeffrey Rosen takes apart the legal justification for the NSA’s surveillance and data collection programs. (Orin discussed the relevant memos here.) The Obama administration’s 22-page White Paper setting out the supposed legal basis for NSA surveillance demonstrates that the Obama […]
Judge Rejects DOJ Motion to Dismiss Oklahoma Suit Against IRS Tax Credit Rule
Earlier today the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma rejected the federal government’s motion to dismiss in Oklahoma v. Sebelius, a challenge to the legality of an IRS regulation extending the availability of tax credits to federal exchanges under the PPACA. The text of the PPACA only provides for tax credits in […]
Learning How to Fish
Speaking of fish, the UCLA Journal of Environmental Law & Policy has just released my most recent paper, “Learning How to Fish: Catch Shares and the Future of Fishery Conservation,” co-authored with my former student Nathaniel Stewart. Here’s the abstract from SSRN: Fisheries the world over are poorly managed and under stress. Yet, proper fishery […]
Teaching Carnivorous Fish to Be Vegetarians
the Washington Post reports on a successful effort to convert captive cobia to a vegetarian diet. The conversion of these carnivorous fish to a completely vegetarian diet is a first, according to the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, and a key to breaking a cycle in which the ocean’s stocks of small fish […]
Benno Schmidt on Academic Freedom
Prompted by the outcry over criticism of pop-left historian Howard Zinn by then-governor Mitch Daniels, Benno Schmidt (the President of Yale University when I was an undergraduate), wrote a good op-ed on the issue of academic freedom. Here’s a taste: Academic freedom is faculty’s freedom to teach. But, more important, it is also students’ freedom […]
No Chevron Deference for Agency Interpretation of Court’s Jurisdiction
In Shweika v. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit confronted an interesting question: Should courts give Chevron deference to an agency’s interpretation of an ambiguous statutory provision that determines the scope of a federal court’s jurisdiction to review the agency’s action. In this case, Mazen Shwieka sought to challenge the U.S. […]
Goldwater Institute Tells Senator Durbin to “Pound Sand”
Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) has sent letters to corporate and non-profit donors and supporters of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) demanding to know whether these organizations continue to support ALEC and whether they support “Stand Your Ground” laws. ALEC is right-of-center non-profit organization of state legislators that, among other things, develops and promotes model […]
Can For-Profit Corporations Have Religious Purposes?
Expanding on Will’s post from Wednesday (and his prior post here), it seems to me the argument that corporations, as such, cannot press religious liberty claims (or, to put it another way, cannot “exercise” religion) is wholly unsustainable. As Will notes, a consequence of this position would be the denial of religious liberty claims made by churches. […]