Author Archive | Todd Zywicki

This morning I posted on a Pfizer’s role in the Kelo takings, as reported in the New London Day newspaper using documents obtained under Connecticut’s Freedom of Information Act. Pfizer responded to the article in a Letter to the Editor (registration required). Here is Pfizer’s response to the article (reproduced in full): Featured in Letters […]

David Frum has more on Americans for Better Justice, which I mentioned this morning. Frum says that they have raised money for television and radio ads urgint Miers’s withdrawal. He also mentions withdrawmiers.org, which he describes as “consortium of social conservative groups that will encourage members to write directly to their representatives in Congress.” That […]

Orin asks whether bloggers are influencing the Miers debate. Last week we were honored to have Attorney General Gonzales speak at George Mason Law School, where he addressed the subject of judicial confirmations. The full text of his remarks is available here. Here’s what the AG had to say on the specifc subject of blogs […]

Another hard-hitting column today by John Fund on the Miers nomination. A friend of mine made the interesting observation that perhaps the best evidence of the continuing problems with the Miers nomination has been the willingness of so many inside and close to the White House to leak so much negative information to John Fund, […]

Several people have noted that they believe that my reference to “what’s good for Pfizer is good for New London” in a recent post was a red herring. As I have noted previously, Justice Stevens begins his opinion by contending that the New London redevelopment plan came about only after painstaking consultation with all relevant […]

To date, the conservative opposition to the Miers nomination has been somewhat unorganized and spontaneous. It now appears that the opposition has been raised a level with the new organization “Americans for Better Justice.” It describes its mission as: Americans for Better Justice, Inc. (ABJ) is a 501(c)(4) political non-profit organization made up of grassroots […]

Claire and I are getting ready for the Bengals this weekend.

According to Dean Barnett, it turns out the Federalist Society isn’t so bad after all.

Contrary to the poll cited yesterday, this poll (it is my understanding that this is a Gallup Poll) finds much weaker support for Miers than Roberts, both among self-described conservatives and self-described moderates. Liberals generally dislike both, but if anything they slightly prefer Miers. Significantly fewer respondents express an initial positive impression of Miers than […]

Amusing article in the LA Times this week on the art of flattery. I was often told by the lawyers in my shop at the FTC that I was the “best ever” head of the Office of Policy Planning at the FTC, and my students frequently tell me I’m one of the “coolest” law professors […]

Orin has posted several interesting Miers pieces this week–I think the Novak column he mentioned is especially insightful. Here’s a few things that I didn’t notice my colleagues mention this week, especially on the politics of the Miers confirmation, that I found informative and stimulating. Steven Teles has an interesting post on Mark Kleiman from […]

The video and transcript of my discussion with Gwen Iffel and Travis Plunkett of the Consumer Federation of America is now available on the PBS website here. The segment is about nine minutes long.

From John Miller’s column in this week’s National Review (p. 44): “Several universities have managed to poach talent by accepting conservatives rejected by more prestigious institutions. The law school at George Mason University, for example, has built an excellent faculty by spotting brainpower that others have overlooked.” More generally, the point here is that Moneyball […]

Sorry to keep coming back to the Kelo story, but the whole thing continues to get more and more strange. AP is now reporting that the City of New London has voted to sever ties with the New London Development Corporation and to order the NLDC to turn over the affected properties to the City: […]

One of the common refrains I hear is that Kelo really wasn’t that big of a deal, because citizens can simply act through their state legislatures or amend their state constitutions to regulate takings and just compensation. This assumes, of course, that citizens and legislatures can actually make their views known and enact them into […]