Author Archive | Mike Rappaport

Like Maimon, I too want to thank Eugene and the rest of the Conspiracy for being excellent hosts. And my thanks as well to the many readers who e-mailed with comments. I hope that those of you who are so inclined will come visit us at The Right Coast.

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about the movie Troy. At the time, I noted some of the discrepancies between the movie and the Iliad, and urged people to use the movie as an opportunity to go back to the poem. For those who don’t have the time or the inclination, I can now […]

Some bloggers, such as Brad Delong, have attacked the Reagan economic record. For a strong defense of that record, including answers to the charges that Reagan assumed that the tax cuts would pay for themselves, that the tax cuts were primarily responsible for the Reagan deficits, that the Reagan boom was a Keynesian recovery, and […]

The eulogies for Ronald Reagan are already abundant, but I cannot resist offering my own. I believe that Ronald Reagan was the greatest President of the 20th century. The only competitor is Franklin Roosevelt, who gets credit for leading the country during World War II and for helping the US persevere through the Great Depression. […]

Brian Leiter quotes Noam Chomsky: “Among Western intellectuals, it is a virtual axiom that the US goal — sometimes Bush’s ‘messianic mission,’ as the elite press puts it — is to bring democracy to Iraq, the Middle East, and the world. [In Iraq, however, the great majority believe] the obvious answer, dismissed with some hysteria […]

Recently, the Supreme Court decided an important federalism case, Tennessee v. Lane. I previously blogged on the Right Coast about the minimalist conception of federalism that appeared to animate Justice O’Connor’s vote in that case. Here I want to discuss Justice Scalia’s interesting dissent. Tennessee v. Lane involved the question whether Title II of the […]

Eugene notes that LA County has decided to remove the cross in response to the ACLU lawsuit, even though he believes LA could have successfully defended the case. Some people are wondering why LA would have agreed to remove the cross in these circumstances. While the costs of defending the lawsuit is one possible explanation, […]

Hi. My name is Mike Rappaport, and I normally write for the Right Coast. My day job is being a Law Professor at the University of San Diego, where I write about and teach public law, especially structural issues concerning the Constitution. Over the years, though, I have taught and written on a variety of […]