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No hint of litigation about this yet, but it makes for an interesting hypothetical question (assuming Slate didn’t get a copyright clearance) — check out this Slate “Juicy Bits: We read the book so you don’t have to” column, and compare it to the situation in Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises (1985). Not an […]

A reader writes:I am writing to offer some thoughts in response to your post that you find it remarkable that the academic elite would nonchalantly advertise an illegal program. I would actually find it remarkable if they didn’t. For example, here in Georgia we have a state law that provides for an extra income tax […]

Wow. this sounds awful– truly, epically awful. A Tim-Robbins-scripted play about the war in “Gomorrah” in which characters named”Woof” and “Pearly WHite” walk around saying “Heil Leo Strauss!”– with a projection of Strauss’ face on the screen, no less. Robbins is a brilliant actor and a first-rate director. Even when he’s scratched his propaganda itch […]

I was singing a Russian song to little Benjamin, and I accidentally misspoke — instead of the preposition “k” (“to”), I used the preposition “s” (“with”). And then I realized: The phrase “k nim,” which I should have used, means “to them,” while “s nim,” which I accidentally said, means “with him.” The same word […]

I would never have imagined it, but some don’t believe Rush’s “The Trees” is an anti-egalitarian anthem. Daniel Glick, for example, thinks I’ve misread the parable and is “pissed” that I am “trying to co-opt” a song he loves for a political view he “abhor[s].” Well, if Glick is going to be annoyed at anyone, […]

Reader John McGuinness (not the lawprof John McGinnis) writes: One more note on waiting to pass FMA until a court uses the 14th Amendment or full faith and credit clause to force states to recognize same sex marriages — it would place FMA supporters in the position of having to invalidate existing same sex marriages, […]

I enjoyed this film very much. Don’t worry if you are not a Louis Kahn fan. Kahn’s son made a chronicle of his attempts to know his deceased dad by tracking down his buildings and the people who knew him. It turns out that Kahn cultivated multiple families in secret and trusted only his work, […]

Our Blogger RSS feed is no longer feeding. We’re planning to move away from Blogger soon — this latest problem was the straw that broke the camel’s back — but if anyone has any tips on how to temporarily fix the feed in the meantime, please let me know (volokh at law.ucla.edu).

That’s the theme of an article by Prof. Stephen Cox in the most recent issue of Liberty Magazine (not available online, hey, get with it guys!), tracking points I made here, and in the followup posts linked to there.

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court, overturning a 24 year old precedent, held in Crawford v. Washington that the Confrontation Clause means what it says and says what it means: the accused in a criminal trial has the right to be confronted by witnesses against him. This holding replaced the Roberts precedent, which reduced the […]

From the Laissez Fair Books website. Laissez Faire Books is pleased to announce the creation of the Lysander Spooner Awards for Advancing the Literature of Liberty. The honor will be awarded monthly to the most important contributions to the literature of liberty, followed by an annual award to the author of the top book on […]

A while back, I wrote that between the demise of the Supreme Court’s liberty of contract jurisprudence during the New Deal period and publication of Bernard Siegan’s Economic Liberties and the Constitution in 1980, I could find only one article, chapter, or book that had anything good to say about the Court’s most famous liberty […]

In light of the outcome of Gratz v. Bollinger last term, invalidating University of Michigan’s automatic award of twenty admissions “points” to minority students, it seems clear that educational programs that are limited to minority students are illegal, and, when funded by the government, unconstitutional (the standard, according to Supreme Court precedent, being the same). […]

Yale professor Lea Brilmayer writes, in today’s Wall Street Journal: [N]obody [has] bothered to check whether the Full Faith and Credit Clause had actually ever been read to require one state to recognize another state’s marriages. It hasn’t. Longstanding precedent from around the country holds that a state need not recognize a marriage entered into […]

The more I think about it, the more I dislike the first sentence of the Hatch FMA draft, even while I generally support the second. The draft reads: Civil marriage shall be defined in each state by the legislature or the citizens thereof. Nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to require that marriage or […]