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Richard Reinsch has announced that John McGinnis will be joining the Law and Liberty Blog, making it even more of a must-read blog than it is already.  

Steven Harper sent me an interesting response to my post yesterday on his essay in The Chronicle Review.  Here it is in full (I apologize for not having first noticed it in March–I just came across it the other day when a friend emailed it to me and I had assumed it had been more […]

As 2013 ended and 2014 began, privacy professionals took a moment to look back and choose the year’s most dubious achievements in privacy law. The dubious achievement awards, also known as the Privies, were dominated by officials of the Obama Administration. The awards are a light-hearted way of expressing skepticism about the effort to write […]

Today’s Abidor v. Napolitano (E.D.N.Y. Dec. 31, 2013), which deals with border searches of electronic equipment, includes the following passage: Plaintiffs try to bolster their claim for standing in several ways. The NACDL [National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers] alleges that its members routinely travel abroad to “collaborate with foreign colleagues and/or as part of […]

I’m shocked to discover that the august Ninth Circuit has been tampering with the balloting for the Privies, perhaps hoping to save its own Judge Bybee from winning the award for “Dumbest Privacy Case” of 2014. The nomination was for a decision that exposed Google to liabilty for gathering wi-fi signals while driving by on […]

Voting for the 2014 Privy Awards for Dubious Achievement in Privacy Law will close at noon EST tomorrow, January 1, 2014.  You can read the nominations here, and cast your vote here. There are still some tight races, whether in voting by the public or by privacy professionals.  But there are differences between the two […]

Steven J. Harper has an essay on the popping of the law school bubble. The lawyer bubble began to form when vital institutions—law schools and the American Bar Association—abdicated their responsibilities in favor of misguided metrics and insularity. Law-school deans are supposed to be the profession’s gatekeepers, but far too many have ceded independent judgment in […]

Former VC blogger Eric Posner has started a new blog, at EricPosner.com. Eric’s writing is always provocative and sharp, so be sure to visit.

Quick reactions to a couple of books I had a chance to read over the Christmas break. I can  recommend Company Man by John Rizzo.  Rizzo was one of the first lawyers at the CIA, and he recounts a thirty year career there with grace and a remarkable absence of rancor, even though he was denied […]

Voting for the 2014 Dubious Achievements in Privacy Law is almost done, and the race is heating up.  Who used privacy law most egregiously to serve power and privilege?  There are plenty of candidates, but the leaders this year are two:  On the one hand, the Chinese government, which adopted a privacy law and promptly […]

One question that has come up in the Duck Dynasty dispute is how typical is Phil Roberston’s view that homosexual behavior is a sin. In recent years, the public has been moving from a majority believing that sexual relations between people of the same gender is always wrong to roughly equal numbers believing that it’s […]

Developments on same-sex marriage defy the Yuletide blogger’s ability to keep up. Last Thursday the New Mexico Supreme Court recognized a right of same-sex couples to marry under the state constitution.  The next day, the federal district court in Utah issued a decision declaring that the state may not keep gay couples from marrying there.  See a […]

Usually it takes a couple of stories.  First foreign officials condemn reports that NSA has gathered intelligence on their government.  Then, later, they have to admit that, well, yes, they do sometimes spy on the United States. But Israel has taken chutzpah to new heights — simultaneously demanding that the United States stop spying on […]