Author Archive | Orin Kerr

You know that a university is doing pretty well when the lead article in the latest issue of the school paper begins with following paragraph:   The Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority will receive “harsh penalties” for allowing two unrecognized fraternities to participate in their kickball tournament, Panhellenic Association officials said earlier this week.

I received lots of mail from former Ninth Circuit clerks in response to my Friday post on the role that bench memos play in the Ninth Circuit. Some agreed with my pet theory that shared bench memos contribute to some of the Ninth Circuit’s quirky decisions; others weren’t convinced. I thought VC readers might be […]

in front of the White House a few days ago turns out to be an important informant who had led U.S. investigators to lots of information in a number of terrorism cases. The New York Times offers this investigative report.

Today’s Washington Post offers this very good story on e-mail phishing scams.

University of Michigan law student Heidi Bond live-blogged Justice Scalia’s Q and A session this afternoon at the law school; you can read her post here. (Link: Crescat.) Heidi also has a post up on a lecture Justice Scalia delivered yesterday. An excerpt: About ten minutes into the class, people protesting Scalia’s sexual preference jurisprudence […]

Available here, hosted by James Tierney of the Columbia Law School program on state Attorneys General. Thanks to Susan Crawford for the link.

This editorial offers an interesting take. I don’t know much about the site or its author, but it sounds plausible. (Link: Jalopnik.)

VC readers who have been following the ongoing First Circuit litigation in the important Internet wiretapping case of United States v. Councilman might be interested to know that the briefs for the en banc rehearing have now been filed. I am delighted to say that the coalition of privacy groups I am serving as lead […]

Howard links to this week’s debate over at Legal Affairs, which promises to be a good one: Judge Richard Posner and law clerk Randy Kozel debate, “Are Law Reviews Really Rubbish?” Kozel is Eugene’s former student, and (in case Article III Groupie is reading) a future member of The Elect. Posner is Posner. Check it […]

The Yale Law School chapter of the American Constitution Society is hosting a symposium in April on what a progressive constitution should look like in the year 2020. (To fill in those outside of academia, “progressive” is more or less a synonym for liberal or politically left.) The symposium will feature many of the top […]

The annual Department of Justice report on capital punishment was released Sunday. The key findings: * In 2003, 65 inmates were executed, 6 fewer than in 2002.* 11 states had executions in 2003. 24 inmates were executed in Texas; 14 in Oklahoma, 7 in North Carolina; 3 each in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Ohio; 2 […]

Pardon me for blogging what amounts to a classified advertisement, but I’m wondering if there are any VC readers who are computer forensics experts and might be willing to spend a bit of time explaining the forensics process to me. I am writing a law review article on how the Fourth Amendment should apply to […]

on the Chief. Thanks to Howard for the link.

The faculty at my law school voted to recommend me for tenure this afternoon. It will take a few months for the recommendation to work its way through the university administration, but this was the major hurdle. Off to celebrate.

Legal Affairs has hosted a debate this week about the pros and cons of splitting up the Ninth Circuit. The debate raises an interesting question: why is it that an unusually high number of Ninth Circuit decisions can be characterized as outliers? I am interested less in the occasional high-profile opinions than in the run-of-the-mill […]