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I was supremely honored to be asked by SCOTUSBlog to sit for an interview as part of its new SCOTUSblog “On Camera” interview series. Others who have been interviewed to date are Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, Burt Neuborne, Goeffrey Stone, Adam Liptak, Linda Greenhouse, Nina Totenberg, and David Porter.  The questioning was wide-ranging and very well-informed, […]

As regular readers know, I have the proverbial bee in my bonnet in regard to the necessity for retaining the initial capital “I” when writing about “the Internet.”  I think it actually matters a good deal — see here and here if you’re interested in my reasons for thinking so.  But in any event, my […]

From a 1997 obituary of law professor Louis Loss, the author of a widely-used treatise on securities law: In shaping the field of securities law, Mr. Loss was known for efforts to apply common sense to statutes that were somewhat opaque. “He was the great codifier,” Mr. Seligman said yesterday. “He could see the field […]

The Batman bin Suparman story, from Prof. Ben Zimmer (Slate‘s Lexicon Valley).

such heights of absurdity that if you came across it in an Ayn Rand novel, you would say to yourself, “Oh come on Ayn, even Socialist despots have to try to govern with a straight face” and “the public wouldn’t be dumb enough to fall for such things.” Yet, as one of my Facebook friends […]

Jonathan points to news stories and a NYT editorial about former prosecutor (and former judge and former lawyer) Kenneth Anderson serving 10 days for prosecutorial misconduct.  I wanted to point out something different, however.  A quick Google search reveals that Kenneth Andersons are a really bad group of people.  Apparently we Kenneth Andersons are prone to […]

An editorial in yesterday’s NYT begins: For what may be the first time on record, a former prosecutor in Texas is going to jail for failing to turn over exculpatory evidence in a murder trial. The 10-day jail sentence for the prosecutor, Ken Anderson, is insultingly short — the victim of his misconduct, Michael Morton, spent […]

From 52 J. Legal Ed. 619 (2003): He who seeks equity must do so with full pockets. Equity is not for the squeamish. Equity, schmequity. Equity can be grumpy before its first cup of coffee. Equity is crunchy on the outside, soft and chewy on the inside. Equity is a mean drunk. Equity, like all […]

Well, maybe it doesn’t, but it should. My colleague Sam Bray, who’s a remedies scholar, passed this along to me, and I thought it very much worth posting: As every lawyer and law student knows, the old separation between courts of law and courts of equity has been abolished almost everywhere. Some of the historical […]

The updated and expanded edition of my book Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty, published by Princeton University Press, is now for sale on Amazon.com for $18.65.  The new edition features a 60-page Afterword on “Things I have Learned Since the First Edition,” which is quite a lot.   Here are the topic […]

Todd makes an interesting suggestion in light of Peter Ferrara’s assessment (in The Anti-Cuccinelli Axis) of the Cuccinelli campaign: The Libertarian Party should emulate the Conservative Part in New York, and offer to endorse the preferable of the Republican or Democratic candidate. Make the major party candidate vie for the support of libertarians (though this […]

I have just posted a new Mercatus Center Working paper, “Commentary: CFPB Study on Overdraft Programs” co-authored with Michael Flores. You can get it here. Here’s the Abstract: Abstract The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) released its initial analysis of bank overdraft programs in a June 2013 white paper. We review the report and provide […]

By now, some readers are familiar with the peculiar news that came out close to election day that the Libertarian Party candidate Robert Sarvis in Virginia was apparently been a stalking horse for supporters Democratic Governor-elect Terry McAuliffe to try to draw votes from Ken Cuccinelli. Nevertheless, he captured about 6.5% of the vote, potentially […]

Cass Sunstein had a couple of columns on Bloomberg here and here on Whittaker Chambers and the Tea Party (sort of hard to describe, so I’ll just leave it at that). Chambers biographer Richard Reinsch comments here with some additional thoughts. As for Rand and Chambers, I have found a lot to admire in both of them […]

Newly certified from Orthodox Union (Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America), which administers the U-in-a-circle kosher certification mark: CHRISTMAS MILK Frisco, TX October 24, 2013 Brands: Christmas Milk Products: French Vanilla Eggnog, Chocolate Swirl, OU-D French Vanilla Eggnog, Original, OU-D French Vanilla Eggnog, Sea Salt Caramel Swirl, OU-D Perfectly sensible, yet still amusing. Thanks […]