Author Archive | Orin Kerr

The New York Times reports:   After years of false starts, state lawmakers voted Tuesday evening to reduce the steep mandatory prison sentences given to people convicted of drug crimes in New York State, sanctions considered among the most severe in the nation.  The push to soften the so-called Rockefeller drug laws came after a nearly decade-long […]

Columbia lawprof Michael Dorf, a very highly regarded con law professor, offers his take on the Third Circuit’s Solomon Amendment decision over at Findlaw: The statute found unconstitutional by the court of appeals is truly odious, threatening both equal opportunity in the military and the institutional autonomy of universities. Yet, as I shall explain, the […]

The Associated Press reports:   A linguist from the University of Pittsburgh has published a scholarly paper deconstructing and deciphering the word “dude,” contending it is much more than a catchall for lazy, inarticulate surfers, skaters, slackers and teenagers.  An admitted dude-user during his college years, Scott Kiesling said the four-letter word has many uses: in greetings […]

but if so, it’s a pretty good legend. (Link: CrimLaw)

Commenting on the new blog Left2Right (see below), Prestopundit has an assignment for progressive intellectuals trying to understand the conservative mind: read some Hayek. If leftist and independent academics want to engage non-leftists, they might consider engaging the ideas that non-leftists take seriously. It’s hard to find a conservative who isn’t massively influenced by the […]

Are you happy with the Volokh Conspiracy? Annoyed with it? Is there something you want to see more of? Less of? Tell us all about it. Although the VC doesn’t normally allow comments, I tend to like them. So I am opening up comments for this post to give you a chance to give us […]

A large and very distinguished group of professors have started a new group blog, Left2Right, with the goal of trying to understand Red America. Hint: It’s not all like this. I assume Left2Right will be followed shortly by Right2Left, in which bloggers from Red America try to understand very distinguished professors? Seriously, though, it looks […]

Jd2b.com mentions a new anonymous law prof blog, or rather, a fictional anonymous law prof blog, titled, appropriately, Anonymous Law Professor. The genre of anonymous blogs purporting to be by law profs is fairly new; as best I can recall, the only other attempt was the glorious but short-lived Proculian Meditations.

Richard Posner’s first post on his new blog is now up, and everybody seems to be linking to it, so I guess I will, too. It’s not exactly earth-shattering stuff this week. Posner points out that from a state’s perspective, the cost-benefit analysis of a preemptive war may justify a preventive war even when the […]

The New York Sun contains an interesting article on the role of blogs in arguments about whether courts should recognize a reporter’s privilege. Among other things, it presents an interesting example of how the practical implications of legal rules shape whether judges will adopt them. The lawyers for the media groups want to define a […]

up right now at CrimProf Blog.

I was listening to NPR this morning, enjoying Nina Totenberg’s preview of today’s argument in Miller-El v. Dretke, when I was rather startled to hear the voice of Justice Kennedy explaining his own 2003 opinion from an earlier round of the case, Miller-El v. Cockrell. Supreme Court Justices don’t go on NPR to explain their […]

A very interesting report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Today’s New York Times contains a troubling article about Judge George Daniels of the Southern District of New York, who the Times reports is the “unchallenged king of delayed decisions.” (Link: Howard) Acccording to the Times, Judge Daniels “had 289 motions in civil cases pending for more than six months, by far the highest total […]

When you tell someone that a photograph of them is particularly great, aren’t you really saying that actually they don’t look that good?