Issue number 5 of this year’s Connecticut Law Review is an excellent symposium on firearms law, policy, and culture. The lead article is from Nicholas Johnson, of Fordham: Firearms Policy and the Black Community: An Assessment of the Modern Orthodoxy. Johnson (who is my co-author on the Second Amendment textbook Firearms Law and the Second Amendment) details the long […]
Archive | Popular Culture
Ice-T, Volokh, and Kopel: Together at last in a feature film
By David Kopel on June 23, 2013 3:12 pm in Constitutional History, Constitutional Law, Guns, History, McDonald v. City of Chicago, Popular Culture, Registration, Self-Defense, Terrorism
The film is Assaulted: Civil Rights under Fire. It opened Friday in a limited theatrical release. Assaulted tells the modern and historic story of the Second Amendment, with a particular focus on civil rights. The events include Reconstruction, the Deacons for Defense, the Battle of Athens, the post-Katrina gun confiscations, and much more. The narrator is Ice-T. […]
Batman, Appropriations, and “Augmentation”
By Ryan Davidson, guest-blogging on June 6, 2013 9:48 am in Constitutional Law, Literature, Popular Culture
My co-author James has made a few posts already this week, and I’d like to thank Professor Volokh for the opportunity to participate here. I’m going to chip in with a post about Batman based on the last few issues of Detective Comics vol. 1, # 871-881. Number 881 is actually the very last issue […]
The Adventure of the Fruit of the Poisonous Tree
(I’ll be honest: this post isn’t really about the fruit of the poisonous tree so much as it’s about Sherlock’s possible status as a state actor and thus whether or not the restrictions of the Fourth Amendment apply to him. The poisonous tree bit just makes for a snappier title and is at least somewhat […]
The Adventure of the Commandeered Snow Plow
Ordinarily at Law and the Multiverse we stick to more fantastical topics (“superheroes, supervillains, and the law”), so when we were given the opportunity to write some guest posts for the Conspiracy, we realized this would be an ideal occasion to discuss something more down to earth — not to mention more well-known than some […]
The Bourne Implausibility: Movie Inspires Blog Post, Which Inspires Video, Which Inspires Blog Post
By Nick Rosenkranz on June 1, 2013 1:12 pm in Constitutional Law, Fifth Amendment, National Security, Popular Culture, Targeted Killing
Three months ago, under the heading “The Bourne Implausibility,” I offered up the following (wry?) observation: I just caught the last few minutes of The Bourne Ultimatum. At the end (spoiler alert), Bourne successfully exposes everything, and we catch a glimpse of MSNBC, reporting on a secret CIA assassination program “which in several cases may […]
The Bourne Implausibility
By Nick Rosenkranz on March 6, 2013 9:40 pm in Constitutional Law, Fifth Amendment, National Security, Popular Culture, Targeted Killing, Uncategorized
I just caught the last few minutes of The Bourne Ultimatum. At the end (spoiler alert), Bourne successfully exposes everything, and we catch a glimpse of MSNBC, reporting on a secret CIA assassination program “which in several cases may have even targeted U.S. citizens.” In the movie, it appears that MSNBC believes this to be […]
White House Says We Won’t Build the Death Star
By Kenneth Anderson on January 12, 2013 7:41 am in Popular Culture, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Space Law
The Obama White House knew, of course, that creating a web-based system for ordinary citizens to call on the government to do something, and promising a response if 25,000 people or more sign an online petition within 30 days, would inevitably produce some silliness. There’s a reason we’re not a direct democracy, no matter how […]
The Knockoff Economy: Copying and Creativity in Cuisine
By Prof. Christopher Sprigman (Virginia), guest-blogging on October 16, 2012 8:00 am in Copyright, Patent Law, Popular Culture
Yesterday we introduced some of the big themes of The Knockoff Economy, and briefly explained why the fashion industry remains so creative despite having its central product—clothing designs—freely copied by any firm that thinks it can turn it a profit by aping an original design. In the book we look at several other examples of […]
Mercedes-Benz: The car for people who admire mass-murdering racist totalitarian thugs
Mercedes-Benz’s latest marketing ploy is to associate itself with Che Guevera. Over at the Huffington Post, Michael Gonzalez (Heritage Foundation) supplies the details. It’s not surprising that a corporation which is currently pro-Che was pro-Hitler, far more so than many other German businesses during the Third Reich. As recounted in Cecil Adams’ “The Straight Dope”: […]
The Atlas Shrugged Movie
I’m sure many people have been discouraged from seeing Atlas Shrugged Part I because of its terrible reviews. I saw the movie with my wife yesterday at the Arlington Cinema & Drafthouse (where it is showing once a day through Thursday). I thought I was dragging her to a disaster I was only going to […]
A “Generation of Nincompoops”?
AP writer Beth Harpaz worries that we are raising “a generation of nincompoops” because modern technology has obviated the need for kids to learn basic mechanical skills: Are we raising a generation of nincompoops? And do we have only ourselves to blame? Or are some of these things simply the result of kids growing up […]
Do the Bad Guys Ever Use Macs?
Hooray for the Volokhs! I hesitate to move from the sublime to the ridiculous, but heck … here’s my question. Do the bad guys on TV or in the movies ever use Apple? Macs? Over the last month, watching movies on my new FIOS connection, I realized that I have yet to see the bad […]
NRA Convention report
The NRA’s annual members meeting was held last weekend, in Charlotte, North Carolina. Since I’ve been going to these events for the last two decades, I’d like to offer a report on how the Convention has changed over the years, and some thoughts about the NRA’s past and present.
To Meld – What Does “Meld” Mean?
And like me, did you “learn” the meaning from the Vulcan mind-meld? (Continuing a discussion with Michelle from comments to an earlier post.) I have to say, I did “learn” the word by hearing its repeated use on Star Trek. To meld, so far as I’ve ever been concerned, means … whatever it is that […]