Massachusetts: “Robert C. Cirba, a member of the Spencer-East Brookfield Regional School Committee and former candidate for state representative, has resigned from the committee after the state Department of Labor Relations found that comments he made on his blog interfered with teacher negotiations.” Cirba had written disrespectfully on his blog about the Spencer-East Brookfield Teachers Association and says the teacher’s union had threatened to sue him personally as well as pursue a legal complaint against the board over the writings. [Worcester Telegram]
Archive for May, 2011
California prison crowding injunction, cont’d
More reactions to the Supreme Court’s 5-4 Brown v. Plata decision (earlier) from Scott Greenfield, Heather Mac Donald, and Eli Lehrer. Steven Greenhut explains how compensation for California prison guards came to take priority over facilities improvement; unionized prison employees’ role in lobbying for more draconian incarceration laws has also occasioned much outrage, from, among others, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote this week’s opinion. And (h/t Tyler Cowen) here is a 1995 paper by economist Steven Levitt finding (using numbers from that era) that “For each one-prisoner reduction induced by prison overcrowding litigation, the total number of crimes committed increases by approximately 15 per year. The social benefit from eliminating those 15 crimes is approximately $45,000; the annual per prisoner costs of incarceration are roughly $30,000.”
Overlitigation as sci-fi theme
“Nanolaw with Daughter” is a short science fiction story by Paul Ford about birth, “speculative law firms” and bulk litigation [Ftrain via BoingBoing]
Law schools roundup
- Refuting a law review’s vaccine-autism claims [Orac, Respectful Insolence, more, Fair Warning]
- Should sue-the-cops fliers have used Suffolk U. law school logo? [Boston Herald via Wood, Chronicle]
- “There’s a saying that ‘the law you learned in law school is the law'” [Bill Araiza, Prawfs]
- Annals of legal scholarship: law review article on “planetarian identity formation” [SSRN] Larry Ribstein on the trouble with law reviews [TotM, earlier]
- Enough with the “balance” talk, says organizer of Hastings Law conference on Palestine rights [SFGate]
- “The entire law school industry … a significant profit center for universities — is a giant bubble” [The New Republic] “Mind-boggling” tuition increases hard to explain other than as product of market distortions [Hans Bader]
- Liberty Law exam question on notorious kidnapping case raises eyebrows [Sarah Posner, Religion Dispatches; background]
- “It’s Deja Vu for Louisiana Economy as Law School Clinic, Activists Challenge Air Permit” [WLF]
Behind a Yale fraternity’s suspension
Federal regulators and private complainants step up pressure for tougher university disciplinary action against offensive males — and speech-related offenses will be very much under scrutiny. [Greg Lukianoff/Daily Caller, Harvey Silverglate and Kyle Smeallie/Minding the Campus, Caroline May/Daily Caller]
More: The Yale Alumni Magazine notes that DKE (Delta Kappa Epsilon) brought the University “bad publicity.” And Dave Zincavage has been blogging critically about the affair. Further: Scott Greenfield.
Want to open a store? We choose your locations
“D.C. Mayor Vincent D. Gray delivered an ultimatum in a face-to-face meeting with Wal-Mart officials at a real estate convention Monday: If the chain wants to enter the District at all, it had better commit to opening at Skyland Shopping Center, the long-delayed redevelopment project in Gray’s home ward…. Gray indicated he would be willing to go so far as to nix the company’s requests for building permits on privately owned sites, even for neighborhoods where residents favored Wal-Mart’s opening.” [Washington Post, earlier]
Sanctimonious posse pursuing Ronald McDonald
Columnist Steve Chapman has their number:
People don’t like cheap, tasty, high-calorie fare because McDonald’s offers it. McDonald’s offers it because people like it. … We live in an age of inexpensive, abundant food carefully designed to please the mass palate. Most of us, recalling the scarcity, dietary monotony and starvation that afflicted our ancestors for hundreds of millennia, count that as progress. But those determined to save human beings from their own alleged folly see it as catastrophic.
[Examiner]
San Francisco proposed ban on infant circumcision
Eugene Volokh has a legal analysis of the ballot proposal, which includes no religious-belief exemption. More: Dave Hoffman.
Top 50 law blogs list
The methodology for estimating traffic is unclear, but it’s still nice to see Overlawyered in the top 10. [Cision]
The Economist on NLRB Boeing complaint
The newsmagazine reports on the “stunned” reaction of the business community to the complaint, and editorially calls on President Obama to condemn the “loony-left complaint against America’s biggest exporter.” Earlier here and here.