The case is today’s Ex parte Lo (Tex. Ct. Crim. App. Oct. 30, 2013) — from Texas’ highest criminal court — and the provisions truck down is Tex. Penal Code § 33.021(b): A person who is 17 years of age or older commits an offense if, with the intent to arouse or gratify the sexual […]
Author Archive | Eugene Volokh
Judge Behaving Badly
From In re Honorable [sic] Elizabeth E. Coker, a Voluntary Agreement to Resign from Judicial Office in Lieu of Disciplinary Action: WHEREAS in late December 2012 and early January 2013, complaints and media stories were brought to the Commission’s attention alleging that Judge Coker had engaged in improper ex parte text communications with Polk County […]
Conviction of Iranian-American Muslim Reversed Because of Prosecutor’s Reference to Sharia
From State v. Farokhrany (Ore. Ct. App. Oct. 23, 2013) (some paragraph breaks added): Defendant appeals his convictions for unlawful distribution of a controlled substance to a minor; unlawful possession of cocaine; attempted sexual abuse in the second degree; sexual abuse [of a minor] in the third degree; and driving under the influence of intoxicants…. […]
URLs in Briefs, Using Microsoft Word
URLs in Microsoft Word documents by default appear as hyperlinks, and also don’t automatically break across lines. This is sometimes fine, but I think it looks bad in briefs and similar documents. The hyperlink is underlined and set in a different color, good if you want to click on it but otherwise distracting. And the […]
Steve Chapman on Chicago’s Seized Gun Destruction Policy
From Reason.com: In the course of their duties, Chicago police come into possession of all sorts of contraband: jewelry, video games, bicycles, cars. They sell the stuff through online auctions that are open to the public. They also confiscate some 10,000 firearms each year, with an estimated value of $2 million. They sell them and […]
Ed DuMont Appointed California Solicitor General
I’m just delighted, both as a friend of Ed’s and as one of his future clients. From the state Attorney General’s press release: As the chief appellate lawyer for the Department of Justice, DuMont will lead the new Office of the Solicitor General, oversee all civil and criminal appeals, and litigate the most sensitive, complex […]
10-Year Sentence in Kuwait for Blasphemy and for Criticism of Saudi and Bahrain Rulers
From Agence France Press: Kuwait’s court of appeals on Monday upheld a 10-year jail term against a Shia tweeter for remarks [on Twitter] deemed offensive to Islam’s Prophet Mohammed, his wife and companions. Hamad al-Naqi … was found guilty of the religious insults and of criticising the leaders of neighbouring Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, according […]
Disciplinary Charges Filed Against “Messiah” Judge
By Eugene Volokh on October 27, 2013 7:37 pm in Foreign and Religious Law in American Courts, Religion and the Law
In August, Tennessee family court judge Lu Ann Ballew changed a child’s name from “Messiah,” over the parents’ objection: “The word Messiah is a title and it’s a title that has only been earned by one person and that one person is Jesus Christ,” Judge Ballew said…. According to Judge Ballew, it is the first […]
Joseph Goebbels’ Early Novel Banned by Russian Authorities as “Extremist” Material
So reports Lenta.ru; the book is a Russian translation of Michael (1929). According to RIA Novosti, Russian authorities launched an extremism investigation last month after reports that the novel was being sold in several Moscow bookstores, along with Benito Mussolini’s “The Third Way.” Both books were published and distributed to stores by the Algoritm publishing […]
“Copious Amounts of Constitutionally Protected Sodomy Are Occurring in Our Great State Already”
Not a line I expected to read in a brief, but there it is, in the state’s brief in Watson v. State (Ga. Oct. 21, 2013). (The state’s argument was that, while such behavior is constitutionally protected, the particular solicitation in that case was not; the Georgia Supreme Court disagreed.)
“No … Rule Required [Mother to Comply with Social Services Orders] with a Smile on Her Face”
From In re D.R. (Wash. Ct. App. Oct. 15, 2013) (nonprecedential) (some paragraph breaks added, some removed): B.R. gave birth to a son, D.R., on December 10, 2006. Just before D.R.’s second birthday, Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) removed him from B.R.’s care and initiated a dependency proceeding after a neighbor reported seeing […]
Marijuana Legalization Polls at 58%-39% in New National Gallup Survey
So Gallup reports; the reported margin of error is +/-4%, and the question was, “Do you think the use of marijuana should be made legal, or not?” I’m always skeptical of single data points such as this one, but this seems to be consistent with a broader trend; in 1995, there was only 25% support […]
Bluebook 20th Edition Survey
The Bluebook editors are working on their 20th edition, and have put up a user survey to get input about what ought to be done. If you use the Bluebook and have thoughts about it, this is your chance to submit them. (For those who don’t know, the Bluebook is the leading legal citation formatting […]
Customary Prepositions
Prof. Mark Liberman (Language Log) has a nice post illustrating how the prepositions one uses with particular adjectives — identical to vs. identical with, similar to vs. similar with, equivalent to vs. equivalent with — are a matter of custom, and sometimes changing custom. Prof. Geoffrey Pullum (Language Log) has more, in another recent post, […]
She Raped Him, Using Guilt and Arguing
Last week, JAMA Pediatrics published Prevalence Rates of Male and Female Sexual Violence Perpetrators in a National Sample of Adolescents, which promptly hit the news (see, e.g., this USA Today story and this National Geographic story, among many others). The results, based on a survey of 1058 youths age 14 to 21, were shocking: “Nearly […]