The WSJ Law Blog points out some interesting video of Richard Posner speaking on all sorts of topics over at BigThink. It looks like the video is about a year old, but it’s still pretty interesting.
Author Archive | Orin Kerr
Fourth Amendment Bleg: Good Faith Exception For Changing Law
Back in October, I filed a pro bono petition for certiorari in McCane v. United States asking the Supreme Court to resolve the circuit split on whether the good faith exception to the Fourth Amendment applies to changing law. The government has filed its BIO, and I’m working on the reply brief. I was hoping […]
Charity Challenge for Haiti
Over at Prawfs, Dan Markel is issuing a charity challenge for Haiti: “With this post, we’re issuing a challenge. For now, our family will match contributions until they sum up to total of $1200.” I just donated $500 to the American Red Cross in response to Dan’s challenge, and I hope you will consider giving, […]
Brown Takes Solid Lead with Half Results In
CNN: ” Republican Scott Brown grabbed a solid lead with almost half the results counted in Tuesday’s special election to fill the U.S. Senate seat controlled by the Kennedy family since 1953. Brown, a Massachusetts state senator, had 53 percent of the vote to 46 percent for state Attorney General Martha Coakley, the Democratic contender, […]
What’s Wrong With the AALS?
Brian Leiter has had a series of interesting posts on the Association of American Law Schools (AALS), focusing on why the AALS charges such high fees for its academic conferences: 1. AALS Annual Meeting Registration Fee Is Not (ahem) “Popular” 2. So would reducing the high AALS Annual Meeting registration fees affect attendance? 3. More […]
Did the FBI Violate ECPA By Improperly Obtaining Call Records in Terrorism Investigations?
The Washington Post has a new story, “FBI Broke Law For Years in Phone Record Searches”, reporting that the FBI violated the Electronic Communications Privacy Act by unlawfully obtaining non-content records about telephone calls in terrorism investigations. According to the story, FBI anti-terrorism investigators had a backlog of requests for National Security Letters that they […]
Balkin on the Constitutionality of the Individual Mandate
Jack Balkin has a very different take on the constitutionality of the individual mandate than does my co-blogger Randy. Jack’s take is here, and he concludes that it is pretty clearly constitutional. My guess is that this issue won’t get to the Supreme Court, but it will be interesting to watch the lower court challenges […]
United States v. Payton Update
Two weeks ago, I wrote a post seeking updates on United States v. Payton, a Ninth Circuit computer search and seizure decision that I think was wrongly decided. Howard Bashman notes that on Friday the Ninth Circuit handed own this seven-page order explaining what happened. It seems that there was interest in rehearing the case […]
Judgment Calls in Grading Law School Exams: One Professor’s Perspective
I’ve blogged before about how law professors grade exams, and I wanted to blog some more about some of the difficult judgment calls professors have to make when grading. Exams that get everything right or do everything wrong are easy to grade. But they are also very rare. Most exams do a mix of things […]
Hypocrisy, Same-Sex Marriage, and Televising Public Interest Litigation
Over at Slate, Dahlia Lithwick suggests that gay marriage opponents who oppose broadcasting the San Francisco gay marriage trial are hypocrites. According to Lithwick, it’s inconsistent both to want the people to decide an issue and to deny them video access to a trial that might sway their opinion: Opponents of gay marriage can’t have […]
Thought on First-Year Law School Grades
[Adapted from previous years– Ed.] Grades are being released at law schools around the country, and I thought I would offer some some comments about grades for our many law student readers (especially 1Ls). I wanted to address two questions: First, how important are first-year grades, and second, are law school grades random? I’ll start […]
TechPolicy.com
Microsoft is sponsoring a new blog at TechPolicy.com, designed to feature the ideas and comments of a long list of academics who write in the area of technology policy, as well as some other related stuff. The blog is supposed to follow five general topics: * Intellectual Property, Patents & Licensing * Cloud Computing / […]
Hollingsworth v. Perry, Bush v. Gore, and Manipulating Procedural Rules in High-Profile Litigation Impacting the Political Process
Today’s 5-4 decision staying Judge Walker’s order to allow the broadcast of the California same-sex marriage case reminds me of a case that will be extremely familiar to the respondent’s lawyers, Ted Olson and David Boies. I think it reflects the same basic idea, albeit in a much more persuasive doctrinal context, that was motivating […]
John Yoo on The Daily Show
You can watch it here.
Oral Argument in United States v. Comstock
This morning I went to the oral argument at the Supreme Court for United States v. Comstock, a potentially important federalism case that we’ve blogged about here before. The issue in the case is whether Congress has the Article I power to set up a system of civil commitment for sex offenders after their federal […]