Law professor Lawrence Lessig has famously challenged recent extensions of intellectual property law and defended the importance of a public-domain "cultural commons" through his books such as Free Culture. Some libertarian theorists and economists have gone even further and proposed that we should abolish intellectual property, particularly copyrights and patents, entirely. I've summarized some of [...]
I’ve written at great length about the constitutional issues involved in the Civil War, mostly in response to the increasingly popular argument that secession actually was constitutional and that the Lincoln Administration had no legal authority to use force against the Confederacy—but also in response to various other criticisms of Lincoln and the Union cause. [...]
I guess I’m swinging for the fences at my first at-bat. Look, I respect Eugene Volokh; he’s really smart, well-practiced as a scholar, and (at least) bilingual – all things I can’t fairly say about myself. But it’s really obnoxious when he announces that his preferred rule of law just happens to [...]
To say that the recent Supreme Court case of Connick v. Thompson has racial undertones is akin to observing that the Pacific Ocean is wet. Yet a majority of the Court (in an opinion written by Justice Thomas) resolutely and steadfastly averts its eyes from race throughout the entire opinion. It is [...]
I have been away from blogging for a week, but wanted to highlight a few noteworthy pieces from the legal blogosphere. I ran across this ATL article about a D.C. Superior Court judge that declared a mistrial in a murder case because the defense lawyer was horribly incompetent. The attorney was a recent [...]
The forthcoming decision in Turner v. Rogers, No. 10-10, will represent one of those rare cases in which there is the very real chance that no one will win, at least long-term. The case pits the liberty of a man unable to pay his child support payments versus the cost that states would [...]
David Kopel put up a very nice post about the many philosophers who have written on the distinction between a true government and a gang of armed robbers. According to these philosophers, there are real differences between a gang and a government—that is, the latter operates according to certain fundamental principles of [...]
Justice Alito’s dissent in Snyder v. Phelps, 09-751, has received more press than any of his previous Supreme Court opinions. I covered this topic last week on the CockleBur, as did Dahlia Lithwick, Jeffrey Rosen at the Washington Post, Michael Dorf, Josh Blackman, and the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties. Yesterday, John Paul Rollert at the Huffington [...]
I was just reminded of this panel discussion on “conservative and libertarian alternatives to originalism” that I attended back in January. I found it ironic because there was only one libertarian on the panel, and nobody offered any alternatives to originalism. And yes, that’s me talking at 1:04:30. […]