I came across this recent piece by Jonathan Adler at The Volokh Conspiracy. He critiques recent promises by GOP presidential hopefuls that they will abolish the Environmental Protection Agency when elected. I like the post because Adler counters with an approach to environmental protection that is conservative in ideology, but constructive in application. Importantly, he [...]
Dahlia Lithwick’s recent article in Slate covers developments in a couple of federal lawsuits brought by American citizens claiming they were unlawfully tortured and detained by our military while working in Iraq. (Both the trial court in one case, and the 7th Circuit in the other, held that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is not [...]
I came across this recent piece at Thomson Reuters--Oracle Judge Okays Damning E-mail Despite Google Privilege Claim--and I got to marvel, from a refreshingly safe distance, all the ways that things can go wrong in a courtroom. In its patent infringement case against Google, the Oracle team prepared an exhibit binder for a July 21st [...]
Here’s a dilemma: you live in a great community, where you and your neighbors all know how great it is, and you also know that part of what makes it great is that not too many outsiders know how great it is. So what do you do when yet another media source--Kiplinger in this case--tells [...]
I’ve been reading a series of posts titled “Let ‘em Play” by guest-blogger Mitch Berman at The Volokh Conspiracy. Professor Berman starts with a general proposal that we can examine the rules-regimes within sports to enhance our discussion and understanding of society’s legal frameworks. In this series he specifically considers the practice of calling fouls [...]
Like other lawyers I know, I don’t usually follow high-profile crime stories. Applying the law to the messy non sequiturs of life can be dissatisfying in the most dignified setting; media hyperbole makes it simply agonizing. Just ask the jurors, lawyers and insiders of the Casey Anthony case. So, reluctantly, I clicked the link from [...]
You are an American. You are today the most powerful national citizen who has ever existed. But you live in a world mostly populated by non-Americans, many of whom believe you enjoy privileges they do not, and many of those people would like to make some changes. Some of those non-American change-seekers would love to [...]
This week the Supreme Court handed down a decision that struck California’s ban on the distribution of violent video games to minors, in part because the majority found that children have a constitutionally protected right to free expression. Justice Clarence Thomas, one of two dissenters, filed an opinion rooted in his originalist [...]
Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Assn., 08-1448 California passed a law regulating the sale and rental of violent video games to minors. The 9th Circuit declined to use the standard applied to laws restricting sexual obscenity, and instead struck down the law after a strict scrutiny examination. Writing for a diverse majority, Justice [...]
Stern v. Marshall, 10-179 This highly anticipated ruling, covered by E! Online and Access Hollywood, has finally established that bankruptcy court judges are not federal judges in the Article III sense, and therefore may not hear certain claims (C.J. Roberts wrote the opinion; J. Scalia filed a concurring opinion; J. Breyer filed [...]