- Notwithstanding one-person-one-vote, some House districts do have unusually high or low populations. Main reasons: 1) Small states get rounded up or down; 2) demographics change in existing districts over 10-year Census cycle especially where new housing is being built [Hristina Byrnes, 24/7 Wall Street, I’m quoted]
- “‘Outrageously excessive’ requests for attorney fees can be altogether denied, 3rd Circuit says” [ABA Journal]
- Prenda copyright troll Paul Hansmeier, who also did mass ADA filings, pleads guilty to fraud and money laundering charges [Dan Browning, Minneapolis Star-Tribune via Mike Masnick, TechDirt]
- Thread: calm, factual discussion of Department of Justice brief on Title VII and gender identity [Popehat on Twitter]
- We’ve often discussed the high cost of the maritime-protectionist Jones Act, and now Cato has launched a Project on Jones Act Reform;
- “Landlord, a Fairfax, Va. mobile home park, imposes requirement that all adult tenants show proof of legal residence in the country; four Latino families (four men with legal status, four women who are illegal immigrants, and 10 U.S. citizen children) face fines, eviction. A violation of the Fair Housing Act? Could be, says the Fourth Circuit (over a dissent).” [IJ Short Circuit]
“One a Day”: the fateful brand name
The “One a Day” brand of multivitamins was introduced in 1940. As the company diversified its product offerings in the intervening years it should probably have transitioned over to some other brand name. That way a California court would not have green-lighted a suit by a man suing because the label says he should take two Vitacraves a day instead of one [William Sassani, Chamber-backed Legal NewsLine]
New York lawmakers: check people’s past social media posts before gun purchases
I write at Cato about this appalling proposal. “The only way to make this proposal better – by which I mean worse – would be to arrange for New York to quarter troops on the homes of applicants with especially bad social media postings. That way the sponsors could achieve a straight flush of Bill of Rights violations.”
Liability roundup
- “Lawsuit: Licorice Twizzlers caused man’s heart disease” [WDRB]
- Empirical study of how personal injury claims are pursued in Great Britain [Richard Lewis, SSRN]
- How attorney Marc Lanier got that $4.7 billion talc/baby powder verdict [Daniel Fisher, Forbes] “Attorney sees lawyers’ role in judge selection process as helping fuel rise in lawsuits in ‘Sue Me State'” [Devin Watkins on Missouri; Angela Underwood, St. Louis Record]
- “$12.8M suit filed by estate of man killed in WWII tank blast” [AP]
- “Stan Chesley’s law firm admits ‘unjust enrichment,’ agrees to $23 million settlement” [Kevin Grasha, Cincinnati Enquirer; earlier]
- “Sweeping new arbitration study: ‘Enterprising’ plaintiffs’ lawyers adapt” [Alison Frankel, Reuters]
From ten years ago: electing judges, pro and con
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s announcement put me in mind of one of the issues on which she spoke out following her retirement from the Court, namely the practice in many states of electing judges. In response to a business-backed campaign to promote more direct election of judges, I wrote:
I am not at all convinced that electioneering and noisy public campaigns make a good way of selecting judges. In fact, I think there’s plenty of evidence that those practices contribute to some of the most serious problems of the state courts, and specifically to some of the worst problems facing business in those courts.
I expanded on the thought here, and gathered some of the reactions here.
California’s rent control temptation
Even if California voters defeat Proposition 10 on Nov. 6, battles over rent control are likely to continue, I write in my new Cato post:
Though once favored in voter surveys, Proposition 10 has sagged lately, well behind in one poll and ahead in a second by only 41-38 with 21 percent undecided. But advocates of liberty (and all who prize the lessons of Economics 101) shouldn’t get complacent. …
It’s true that many California localities, the Bay Area especially, are experiencing skyrocketing housing costs. That has a lot to do with intense demand to live and work in places like Silicon Valley and San Francisco, and even more to do with the tight regulatory lid on new residential construction that artificially suppresses the supply of dwellings in the state generally and especially in desirable communities and near the coast. By shifting the blame for the resulting situation to owners of existing rental units, rent control would make it even less likely that Bay Area and coastal governments will take the one measure that would be effective against spiraling housing costs, namely legalizing much more new construction.
Whole thing here. Related: “What does economic evidence tell us about the effects of rent control?” [Rebecca Diamond, Brookings]
Schools roundup
- Social justice education: on the march and coming to a school system near you [Frederick M. Hess and Grant Addison, National Review]
- New wave of institutional reform litigation aims to replace democratic oversight of public schools with governance by courts, lawyers, and NGOs [Dana Goldstein, New York Times]
- Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, trying to force a student to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, ignores 75 years of Supreme Court precedent [Scott Shackford] “My Daughter’s Middle School Plans to Teach Her Meek Compliance With Indiscriminate Invasions of Privacy” [Jacob Sullum]
- “The Regressive Effects of Child-Care Regulations: More strenuous requirements raise child-care prices but have little apparent effect on quality” [Ryan Bourne, Regulation and Governing]
- “Denver Schools Stopped ‘Lunch-Shaming’ Kids Whose Parents Didn’t Pay. The Results Were Predictable.” [Hess and Addison]
- Wisconsin public union reform: “A school district’s implementation of Act 10 is associated with an increase in math proficiency on average. The positive impact … is consistent across small town, rural, and suburban school districts.” [Will Flanders and Collin Roth, Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty]
- “Look to the Dutch for true educational pluralism” [Charles Glenn, Acton Institute]
Copyright music takedowns
“Sony Music Entertainment has been forced to abandon its claim that it owned 47 seconds of video of musician James Rhodes using his own piano to play music written by Johann Sebastian Bach.” After Rhodes posted the video to Facebook, Sony sent a takedown notice saying that the performance “matches 47 seconds of audio” owned by Sony. Match-detecting algorithms have become commonplace in the copyright takedown field; in this case, Sony backed down after Rhodes’s tweet about the situation got considerable attention. [Timothy Lee, ArsTechnica]
Sony does own the rights to the performances of important Bach interpreters such as Glenn Gould, so it is possible that a performance influenced by Gould’s would be especially likely to trip a similarity algorithm. But it gets worse. Last year an Australian music teacher named Sebastian Tomczak “posted on YouTube a 10-hour recording of white noise as an experiment” (in sound perception, not copyright practice) and “within days, the upload had five different copyright claims filed against it. All five would allow continued use of the material, the notices explained, if Tomczak allowed the upload to be “monetized,” meaning accompanied by advertisements from which the claimants would get a share.” [Joseph Bottum, Free Beacon]
And finally, from my own recent experience: a comment from a local performance group’s Facebook page about how a recording of a sing-through of Gilbert & Sullivan Utopia, Ltd. triggered a takedown based on supposed copying of an entirely different work, Rossini’s William Tell. The passage that showed too much similarity? The audience applause!
Ted Frank argues at SCOTUS
“Mr. Frank [former Overlawyered blogger Ted Frank] argued his own case on Wednesday, a rarity in the Supreme Court, and he exhibited comprehensive knowledge of the law and an only occasionally halting style.” [Adam Liptak, New York Times] The transcript of oral argument, in which several Justices expressed doubt that the lower court had adequately pinned down standing issues, is here. More on Frank v. Gaos and the cy pres issues it raises: Richard Wolf/USA Today, Daniel Fisher, Jim Copland, SCOTUSBlog, Federalist Society SCOTUSBrief video; earlier here, etc.
October 31 roundup
- Attempts to ban digital contraband are often fated to be both intrusive and futile [J.D. Tuccille]
- “The Gender Pay Gap: Why We Fight The Narrative” [Ryan Bourne, Cato]
- “He’s Back! Steven Wise’s Nonhuman Rights Project Seeks Habeas Corpus For An Elephant” [Ted Folkman, Letters Blogatory, Wise’s previous go and generally]
- Regulatory battles between hotel industry and AirBnB spread across U.S. [Robert McCartney, Washington Post]
- Concept of international human rights “has been swept into a broad river of campaigns for social justice, global economic development, environmental protection, multiculturalism, tolerance, access to water and sanitation, and more” and diluted in the process [James Kirchick, Commentary on new Aaron Rhodes book The Debasement of Human Rights: How Politics Sabotage the Ideal of Freedom; Cato forum from May with Rhodes, Kirchick, Roger Pilon, and Ian Vasquez; Rhodes interview with John Couretas and Caroline Roberts, Acton Institute]
- “Pro-tip from the Third Circuit for attorneys requesting fees: Don’t have a single-spaced, 6- to 8-point font, 44-page fee petition including ‘hundreds of inappropriate, unethical entries that would likely be illegal if billed to a client.’ You might find yourself facing no fees, a sanction, and a referral to the attorney disciplinary board.” [John K. Ross, IJ Short Circuit, on Young v. Smith]