Most people know that China’s largest telecommunications supplier, Huawei, has been largely excluded from the US market because of official allegations that it will enable Chinese cyberespionage and wiretapping. What none of us realized, apparently, is the real reason that Huawei’s been forced out. Luckily, the company’s head of Cyber Security, John Suffolk, is happy […]
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Irish Law at Kalamazoo — Thursday 5/9 at 1:30 p.m.
The 48th International Congress on Medieval Studies begins this Thursday on the campus of Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. I’m moderating a legal history panel on Thursday at 1:30, in Bernhard 106, called Law as Culture: Secular Punishment and Divine Retribution in Medieval Ireland (Panel 90). Here are the paper titles: Beheading, Hanging, and Being […]
CONSTITUTION USA with Peter Sagal Premiers Tonight on PBS
A new 4-part miniseries, CONSTITUTION USA with Peter Sagal premiers tonight on PBS (check your local listings). Here is the preview of tonight’s episode on Federalism: Watch A More Perfect Union – Preview on PBS. See more from Constitution USA with Peter Sagal. Last summer I was flown to O’Hare, where Sagal picked me up […]
Minneci v. Pollard and the liability of federal private prisons
The Reason Foundation’s Annual Privatization Report 2013, which has been released in chunks over the last few months, is now all out. In the Criminal Justice and Corrections section, you’ll find my article on Minneci v. Pollard, a Supreme Court decision from last year on federal private prisons’ Bivens liability. Here’s an excerpt: Early in […]
PBS’s Constitution USA Series
PBS’s Constitution USA with Peter Sagal premieres tomorrow, Tuesday, May 7, and runs each Tuesday until May 28; it sounds like a very interesting project. The show will include, among many other things, interviews with Akhil Amar, Randy Barnett, Jody Freeman, Rick Garnett, P.J. O’Rourke, Jack Rakove, Judge J. Harvie Wiklinson, and me. Here are […]
Ayers Defends Weather Underground Bombings
So Bill Ayers was here in Northeast Ohio over the weekend. He was the keynote speaker at the annual commemoration of the 1970 shootings at Kent State University. The Akron Beacon Journal reports: There is no relationship at all between what Weather Underground members did and the bombings that two brothers allegedly committed on April […]
Self-Driving Vehicles – How Soon and Who Will Bear the Liability Costs?
Self-driving cars are receiving a lot of attention these days – partly as the technologies that make them possible advance and partly because, well, we the public are more aware of them and are realizing there is quite a lot to discuss regarding their regulation and use. As the technologies that appear to be making […]
More on the GOP and the Internet
Back last fall, I suggested (here, and here) that there appeared to be some movement among the Republicans to take on the mantle of “Internet freedom/innovation” as a political position, both because it is an issue on which the Democrats, with their hands deep into Hollywood’s pockets and vice versa, are very vulnerable, and because […]
State May Force-Feed Prison Inmate Who Is on a Hunger Strike
So New York’s highest court held today in Bezio v. Dorsey (N.Y. May 2, 2013); for last year’s similar Connecticut Supreme Court decision, see this post.
Above The Law’s Employment-Based Law School Rankings
An interesting new project. I haven’t looked closely at how the data is assembled, so I can’t vouch for its quality, but it seems potentially helpful. Note how close the results are to the U.S. News rankings, by the way, for the top 18 schools (a convenient top-schools group to discuss, because it almost never […]
A Reader Poll on Gender, Among Commenters and Readers Who Don’t Comment
The comment thread on Sasha’s recent post about the gender of VC bloggers — we’re all guys — raises some interesting questions to which I’d like to respond. But before I do, I’d like to ask readers to participate in a simple poll. There are two polls below, and I’d like readers to participate in […]
First Amendment Amicus Brief Clinic
This Fall, I’ll be teaching a First Amendment Amicus Brief Clinic here at UCLA School of Law. The clinic will represent nonprofits, as well as academics or groups of academics, who want to file friend-of-the-court briefs in free speech and religious freedom cases. (The clinic will not file briefs in its own name, but will […]
World Jewish Population, 2010
From World Jewish Population, 2010, a report by Prof. Sergio DellaPergola, published by the Berman Institute – North American Jewish Data Bank at the University of Connecticut: I hadn’t realized what a large fraction of the Jewish population lived in the U.S. and Israel, and how little lived in other countries (such as Russia and […]
Men
We’re famous.
Privacy surprises … that somehow aren’t
If you’re looking for laws of unintended consequences, you can’t do better than privacy. Take two examples plucked from last week’s front pages: Here’s the New York Times reporting on massive fraud in the billion-dollar settlement of claims that the Agriculture Department discriminated against black, Hispanic, and female farmers: “It was the craziest thing I […]