Today the motions panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit followed up on its order expediting the appeal in Perry v. Schwarzenegger with an order expediting the appeal filed by officials of Imperial County, California. Imperial County officials, including the Deputy County Clerk, has sought to intervene in defense of Proposition […]
Author Archive | Jonathan H. Adler
Solon v. Freud
Today the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued an interesting opinion in an interesting tort case, Sigmund v. Starwood Urban Retail VI, LLC. In this case, Donald Sigmund sued seeking tort damages from the owner, managers, and operators of a garage in which a car was parked that exploded due to a […]
Forgetting Justice Marshall
During the recent Supreme Court confirmation hearings, several Republican Senators asked Elena Kagan about her views of Justice Thurgood Marshall. Kagan clerked for Justice Marshall and had expressed admiration for his approach to the law. Senate Republicans acknowledged Marshall’s pioneering and inspirational work as a civil rights attorney, but challenged Kagan’s apparent embrace of Marshall’s […]
More on Standing to Defend Prop. 8
There are quite a few interesting posts on the standing issues in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, including pieces by the following: Lyle Denniston (SCOTUSBlog) Vikram Amar (Writ) Howard Wasserman (Prawfsblawg) Michael Dorf (Dorf on Law) Emily Bazelon (Slate) Having thought about the question a little bit more, I think that the defenders of Proposition 8 do […]
Standing to Defend Prop. 8
On Thursday, Judge Vaughn Walker denied gay marraige opponents’ motion for a stay of his ruling in Perry v. Schwarzenegger declaring Proposition 8 to be unconstitutional. One of the reasons offered by Judge Walker was that he doubts whether Prop. 8’s defenders have standing to appeal his ruling. Although Judge Walker allowed them to intervene […]
Sunday Song Lyric
I’ve never thought of Sam Cooke’s “Wonderful World” as a political song, but given some of my recent posts I may need to reconsider. Co-written with Lou Adler and Herb Alpert, the song has been covered by acts from Herman’s Hermits and Art Garfunkel to Bryan Ferry and Rod Stewart, the song made Rolling Stone‘s […]
Historical Ignorance on the Right
Right Wing News asked several dozen conservative bloggers to list the “worst figures in American history.” The resulting list is quite ahistorical. Say what you want about President Obama, but it’s difficult to credit a list that would identify him as the second worst figure in American history, behind only Jimmy Carter. Professor Bainbridge rightly […]
Relativity Is a Liberal Plot
The Theory of Relativity is actually a liberal plot to encourage moral relativism and distort how people view the world. (See FN1) Who knew? Does this mean gravity is a conspiracy to keep us down?
“Creating a New Job Carries a Punishing Price”
Michael P. Fleischer, President of Bogen Communications, offers a business owner’s perspective on the costs of hiring new employees in the current economic environment. He walks through the costs of hiring a hypothetical employee (Sally), explaining why it costs his business $74,000 to pay someone a $59,000 salary, of which they will only keep $44,000, […]
Do Our Students Still Study?
Professors often lament that today’s students do not work as hard or are not as well prepared as in the past. Others claim the good old days really weren’t that good, that professors idealize the past have a distorted view of how much work the average student put in when we were in school. Then again, […]
A Coasean Approach to Wind Farms
Wind farms sound like a great idea, until you have to live next to one — wind turbines can make a fair amount of noise. For this reason, some residents of eastern Oregon were not too happy when a wind developer came knocking. In some places, this would lead to a pitched political battle. But […]
The Coming War Over Public Pensions
The NYT‘s “Your Money” columnist, Ron Lieber, had a sobering column this week on the looming conflict over public pension obligations. There’s a class war coming to the world of government pensions. The haves are retirees who were once state or municipal workers. Their seemingly guaranteed and ever-escalating monthly pension benefits are breaking budgets nationwide. […]
Sunday Song Lyric
Ellen has pretty good music tastes for a nine-year-old girl. That’s another way of saying her tastes extend beyond Miley Cyrus, Ke$ha, and the Jonas Brothers. One of her current favorites is Paramore, a band she learned to like even before the “Twilight” soundtrack made them cool. One of their recent singles is “The Only […]
Is Judge Walker’s Opinion Really that Compelling?
By now I’ve read dozens of blog posts and commentaries attesting to the power and persuasiveness of Judge Walker’s opinion striking down California’s Proposition 8 barring gay marriage. But as far as I can tell, everyone I’ve seen take this position was predisposed to accept Judge Walker’s conclusion. Lots of supporters of gay marriage and […]
D.C. Circuit Strikes Down Limits on Expressive Activity in National Parks
This morning, in Boardley v. U.S. Department of the Interior, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit struck down the National Park Service’s permitting regulations for expressive activities in national parks on First Amendment grounds. The panel opinion, by Judge Janice Rogers Brown, begins as follows: It is unlawful to engage in expressive […]