Author Archive | Todd Zywicki

Sean Sirrine has a very thorough roundup of the various legislative proposals related to a Ninth Circuit split.

Students say yes, some faculty say no, Arabic language department says get out of here. The story here.

Reading the tea leaves, it seems clear that there will be a brutal confirmation battle regardless of who is nominated. At this point, a confirmation battle will be supply-side driven–the interest groups have the money already, and they are going to spend it one way or the other. And then try to raise some more. […]

On the Comments Board to my “Economics of Kelo” post (and let me echo David and others on how much I have learned from reading those comments), one participant raised an excellent question, that I think is worthy of a longer response (sorry to write so long, which I have been doing a lot lately […]

Even Congress’s “lone self-described socialist, Rep. Bernard Sanders of Vermont” doesn’t like Kelo: I disagree with the Supreme Court’s decision in Kelo v. New London,” Mr. Sanders said. “I believe that the result of this decision will be that working families and poor people will see their property turned over to corporate interests and wealthy […]

Orin says it is generally thought to be good. I’m not so sure (I honestly haven’t made up my mind). In general, I think it is probably a good thing, but I think there may be substantial unrecognized costs. It is true that articles are much shorter in other disciplines. I suspect the main reason […]

The basic economic problem of eminent domain is the trade-off between strategic holdouts on one hand and sincere subjective value on the other. The nature of a “property” right is that it gives a holdout power to anyone who holds it–I don’t have to sell you my car or my autographed picture of Franco Harris’s […]

Recipient of the William J. Brennan Award from the DC Bar. The honor is presented biannually to a DC Bar member in recognition of “outstanding work toward furthering the public interest and equal justice.”

Jonathan Adler has more.

Are any law reviews planning symposia on the Bankruptcy Reform Legislation?

My new colleague on the Dartmouth Board of Trustees comments: “I think Social Security is a real scam,” said Rodgers, the CEO of Cypress Semiconductor. “I think everybody knows now there is no Social Security fund, that you have no retirement account–that’s all a scam. If I ran this company the way the government runs […]

From Hear the Issues (a site I’m not familiar with, so I don’t know if it has any angle): A Gallup poll released on June 21st, 2005 shows that Americans’ confidence in the Supreme Court has been declining. Gallup asked Americans to rate their level of confidence in 15 institutions in American society, including the […]

Last week David Bernstein noted the ringing dismissal of the judicial ethics complaint that had been lodged against Judge Danny Boggs for attending judicial education seminars. Monday, the Washington Times ran this column by Robert Huberty of Capital Research on the same issue, “Why Press Gets ‘Bad Press.’” Huberty writes: The Capital Research Center is […]

Interesting article on the work at the White House surrounding a possible Supreme Court nominee (I’m told by a reader that access to the article requires registration). (HT: SCOTUS who also links to an interesting Novak column on the other day on the same topic).

The 10 Commandments cases also nicely illustrate the fundamental problem with the Supreme Court’s “now you see it, now you don’t” approach to looking to international sources for guidance on interpreting the U.S. Constitution. If the Court is going to engage in a free-range analysis of policy, history, psychology, etc., about the accommodation of religion […]