Author Archive | Orin Kerr

Stuart Taylor has a very good essay on the debate over the Patriot Act. A taste:   [T]he Bush administration has engaged in grave abuses, both at home and abroad, beginning with its unduly prolonged post-9/11 detention and (in many cases) abuse of hundreds of visitors from the Muslim world. Most alarming have been the administration’s […]

Given that the Constitution in Exile movement doesn’t seem to exist, some may be wondering why the editors at the New York Times commissioned Jeff Rosen to write a long and detailed cover story about it for the Sunday Times magazine. I’ve been mulling it over, and have come up with four possible explanations for […]

Over at Class Maledictorian, Harvard law student Amber Taylor comments on claims that there is a libertarian Constitution-in-Exile movement: As someone who pretty much agrees with Richard Epstein on everything, I would be a card-carrying member of this movement if it existed. But it doesn’t. In light of Amber’s post, it seems safe to predict […]

I just finished reading the New York Times piece by my friend and colleague Jeffrey Rosen on the alleged “Constitution in Exile” movement. Having written on this topic a few months ago, see here and here, and also having discussed it a bit with Rosen during his research into the piece, I wanted to add […]

Justice Antonin Scalia recently visited NYU Law School, and if press reports are any guide the welcome was rather mixed. According to this story, Scalia visited NYU to receive an honor from the student members of the NYU Annual Survey of American Law, a law journal. While at the law school, the Justice gave a […]

In an essay at American Prospect Online, Deb Pearlstein argues that it is perfectly normal for the U.S. Supreme Court to discuss and cite to foreign law in the course of interpreting the U.S. Constitution — and that conservative opposition to the practice is groundless: Like the bogeyman critique of “judicial activism,” “foreign law” seems […]

From a concurring opinion by Justice Robert H. Jackson: This Court is forever adding new stories to the temples of constitutional law, and the temples have a way of collapsing when one story too many is added. Douglas v. Jeannette, 319 U.S. 157, 181 (1943). Of course, one person’s new story is another person’s much-needed […]

here. You really need to see the pictures to get the picture, but here’s the summary of his argument: A group of UCLA students plan a student strike tomorrow in support of a one-day strike by UCLA service workers, whose union includes custodians and groundskeepers . . . . In their zeal, the students have […]

An interesting story on results of the new SAT tests, which now have three sections and a perfect score of 2400 instead of 1600.

when they’re offended by pictures of aborted fetuses being distributed on campus? Why, call the police, of course: Protesters handing out anti-abortion pamphlets on campus caused a series of complaints to local police Wednesday. Director of Public Safety Jerry Stewart said ISU Police received 12 phone calls within one hour on Wednesday afternoon from people […]

As every right-thinking person knows, the judiciary recently has run amok. It’s high time we did something about it. I think the solution is clear: we need to impeach Justice Antonin Scalia.   If you think about it, Justice Scalia is directly or indirectly responsible for many of the problems with the modern judiciary. Not only […]

Woohoo! Just checked the amazon.com rank on my Academic Legal Writing, and it turns out to be #5,448 — not Stephen King, but still a bit under 30 per week, according to this site. We specialty book authors are easy to please. Incidentally, this is a good opportunity to remind people: If you’re planning to […]

Clayton Cramer disagrees with Eric Muller’s position on the religious book in the school library, but then goes on to say: Professor Muller’s liberalism is really shining! Here’s another book that he wants not available: Michelle Malkin’s In Defense of Internment, which is offered for sale at the Manzanar book store. Muller compares Malkin’s book […]

Mark Kleiman posts it and follows up here. Judge Kozinski and I didn’t include it in our Lawsuit, Shmawsuit — either the original Yale Law Journal version or in the version republished in the Annals of Improbable Research or on the Web, because we focus there on Yiddish in court opinions. But it’s an amusing […]

Slate‘s Human Nature — which I generally much like — contains this item: Liberals and conservatives switched sides on silicone breast implants. At an FDA hearing, supporters of traditional femininity defended a woman’s right to choose such implants, even with a health risk. Pro-choicers on abortion argued that the implants were too dangerous to legalize […]