Reuters reports: Tighter gun ownership laws [under which the police turn down 80% of gun license requests after an 18-month application process] are pushing South Africans to buy crossbows, spears, swords, knives and pepper sprays to protect themselves from violent crime. . . . Despite official figures showing the murder rate falling 10 percent in […]
Author Archive | Orin Kerr
ABC Poll on Schiavo Case:
How Appealing links to this ABC poll on public attitudes concerning Congress’s action giving federal courts jurisdiction over the Schiavo case: Americans broadly and strongly disapprove of federal intervention in the Terri Schiavo case, with sizable majorities saying Congress is overstepping its bounds for political gain. The public, by 63 percent-28 percent, supports the removal of […]
Geof Stone and I are Debating Private Speech Restrictions,
in the Legal Affairs debate club. Geof’s first post is up; my response (based in large part in what I’ve said in my forthcoming California Law Review article will be up later today. Geof, a lawprof and former provost at the University of Chicago, is one of the top First Amendment scholars in the country. […]
DePaul Adjunct Professor Suspended for Speech That Causes “Loss of Intellectual Empowerment”:
I’ve looked at the items to which David points, and I share his concern. I haven’t seen any real allegations of threatening behavior by the professor (for instance, express or implied threats that he’d somehow retaliate against students for their pro-Palestinian views). The only retaliation for viewpoints that I see is the retaliation against Professor […]
Rehnquist to Return to the Bench:
Excellent news from the AP. Link via Howard.
The Constitutional Merits of the Schiavo Case:
It looks like Congress has taken what I think is the unprecedented and rather bizarre step of expanding the jurisdiction of the federal courts to allow a particular District Court to take jurisdiction over a single case, that of Terri Schiavo. Missing from the press coverage I have read is any sense of the merits […]
The Lawyer Who Accidentally Sued Himself:
Story here. Link via Legal Ethics Forum.
Employer Monitoring of Employee E-Mail:
Frank Langfitt has an interesting story on National Public Radio about employer monitoring of employee e-mail — and why employees should assume that employers have access to and can read e-mail sent and received using their employer’s computers. I make a brief appearance around the 5:30 mark to discuss the increasing role of e-mail in […]
Mark Kleiman’s Extremely Sensible Post Has Persuaded Me
that much as some monsters — recall that we began with a man who raped and murdered 20 children, and progressed to include Eichmann and various other Nazis — deserve a deliberately painful death, our society’s legal system (no matter what constitutional amendments there may be) can’t provide it. What I found most persuasive about […]
Professor Ashcroft:
Former Attorney General John Ashcroft will be an adjunct (part time) professor at Pat Robertson’s Regent University this spring. (Link: TalkLeft)
“You Don’t Need to Be a Weatherman to Know How Long the Month Is”:
OpinionJournal’s Best of the Web reports: The Associated Press reports that “the snowy weather has taken a bit of a toll” on Connecticut’s two casinos: Officials with Foxwoods Resort Casino said that the casino cleared $67 million from its slot machine customers in February while Mohegan Sun cleared $68 million. The slot revenues at both […]
For Some Catholic Responses to My Posts,
see the Mirror of Justice; start with the “Volokh on Pain, Punishment, and Vengeance” post and scroll down. I can’t really speak to the theological issues much, but I thought I’d pass the posts along.
And Then There Are These Arguments
(as opposed to the thoughtful arguments I tried to respond to below): So you think the Bill of Rights is not “Holy Writ?” Nice to see a law professor that doesn’t believe in the law. I would have thought it unnecessary to respond to this argument, but my rule of thumb is that if one […]
George F. Kennan, Dead at 101:
George F. Kennan, the great American diplomat who helped shaped the Cold War strategy of containment, has passed away at the age of 101. The New York Times obituary is available here. Kennan’s classic article The Sources of Soviet Conduct is available here. OxBlog has some interesting comments, too.
Congressional Subpoenas And State Court Orders:
In a last-ditch effort to block a state court order mandating the withdrawal of a feeding tube from Terri Schiavo at 1 p.m. today, the United States House of Representatives is issuing a Congressional subpoena “requir[ing] hospice administrators and attending physicians to preserve nutrition and hydration for Terri Schiavo to allow Congress to fully understand […]