Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Archive for June, 2012

SCOTUS upholds ObamaCare mandate as tax

For the real reaction and analysis, you should check with my expert Cato colleagues here and here and (Ilya Shapiro) here. Here are a few additional things I had to say on Twitter, in reverse chronological order (with occasional, but not continuous, updating):

Yet more “cheer up, conservatives” readings, these from @NRO: [Garnett] [Whelan]

Roberts, Kennedy “delivered victory to the right in the one [battle] that mattered” [Scocca via Moller]

James Fallows: Constitution means whatever 19 of 21 con law profs say it means [Bernstein]

RT @davidfrum Randy Barnett’s Win

Why didn’t style-stickler Scalia clean up “majority status” scraps? Daring @David_M_Wagner theory: there wasn’t time

RT @Sam_Schulman look forward to Variorum Edition. RT @jpodhoretz: @Sam_Schulman @walterolson It’s a palimpsest! ?#dissent

Why’d the dissent need to include a big discussion of severability? Another fossil record of former majority-opinion status?

RT @PunditReview Great news, @walterolson will join us Sunday evening at 7:30 on WRKO to discuss the Obamacare ruling. #awesome #mapoli [Update: podcast here]

RT @Popehat Masterful rebuke to a comment troll MT @walterolson Bitch you in MY HOUSE NOW!

Balkinization blog entitled to victory lap for identifying path to today’s ruling;

Hee hee. “Romney website: ‘Mitt will nominate judges in the mold of CJ Roberts’” [@Jamie_Weinstein]

Commenter: Nyaah nyaah, you @overlawyered types say you’re anti-litigation but favored suit vs. ObamaCare. My response;

RT @robinmarty: It’s good that ACA is upheld, since there are some folk at CNN who will need insurance not tied to their employers soon…

“It now falls to Congress…” My colleague Roger Pilon on today’s ruling [Real Clear Politics]

What gets lost in today’s “tax but not a tax” ruling: political accountability [@mfcannon] [Bader]

Here’s a 6/20 prediction from @jtlevy calling it closer than anyone I’ve seen (via Virginia Postrel)

Stop beating on Roberts, he’s living up to “conservative minimalist” billing [Adler] [Ted Frank]

Randy Barnett: Cheer up, both federalism and enumerated powers doctrine did well today [SCOTUSblog]

Roberts avoided confrontation w/prevailing academic gestalt of feds’ Commerce Clause power [@lsolum]

More on “tax power yes, commerce power no” [Epstein] [@ishapiro] [Kerr]

Did Roberts chop down the broccoli stalk, or could it grow back as “tax”? [Somin] [@ProfBainbridge]

Evidence that Scalia’s Obamacare dissent drafted as majority opinion before a Roberts switch [Solum]

Cheer up: at least Roberts chopped down the broccoli stalk & bolstered states against feds [John Steele Gordon]

A tax, yet a non-tax: why court didn’t invoke Anti-Injunction Act to toss challenge [Tejinder Singh, @SCOTUSblog]

RT @TCBurrus Another Justice Roberts is now the new switch in time that saved nine. #SCOTUS #healthcare

RT @JasonKuznicki Americans: Pay this tax or buy a private company’s product. Corporatism at its worst, cheered on by the left. #aca

Roger Pilon: Ruling only a bump in road [@CatoInstitute] Legal battle’s just begun [Adler/Cannon]

RT @CatoInstitute Unhappy with today’s #SCOTUS decision on #ObamaCare? Watch this video on how states can refuse to go along with it

Per Goldstein at SCOTUSBlog, Roberts reasoning on Commerce Clause is super-narrow, won’t help the libertarian side much in future cases.

Exploding-cigar ad hominem argument of the day: RT @MaxKennerly Has John Roberts gone even a minute in his life without health insurance?

The clouded crystal ball: “Why Chief Justice Roberts Won’t Side with the Liberals on Obamacare” [on @NRO yesterday]

@sethmnookin I’m not convinced achievements are as big a motivator as “stop our evil opponents” outrage, which Roberts undercut (for Dems).

Can’t say I’m surprised at ACA. With rare exceptions, the Court behaves as a small-c conservative institution.

Republican outlook for November just got big boost. So maybe Jeff Toobin’s right to claim Roberts looks after GOP interests.

RT @@NYDNHammond Robertscare

RT @Hudsonette: haha RT @delrayser: CONVENE THE DEATH PANELS!

Tom Goldstein of @SCOTUSBlog predicts Court will uphold ACA

“Liberals shouldn’t defend FDR’s attacks on the Court” [Megan McArdle]

“All indications are Dems planning all out assault on the court if it overturns PPACA” Don’t, says @toddeberly

RT @macrmccoy I love Web 2.0. RT @ABAJournal: Obama Will Learn Fate of Health Care Law Through SCOTUSblog, Media

“Judicial activism!” placards all made up. Now the only question is which side to hand them to come 10 a.m. [Alt]

Randy Barnett thanks those who made the SCOTUS ObamaCare challenge possible [@VolokhC]

RT @santaclaralaw #healthcarereform? Randy Barnett interview with Politico: You can find it here. #sculaw

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Baltimore push to restrict liquor stores

A little while back, Mayor Bloomberg’s crew in New York City floated a trial balloon about restricting liquor sales, pursuant to the now-familiar “public health” rationale. After meeting with instant public outrage in that entertainment-intensive city, the idea was quickly scrapped. Perhaps it is sheer coincidence that scholars at the mayorally endowed Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University are now helping to promote proposed measures in Baltimore cracking down on liquor stores, which Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has now endorsed. One initiative would close approximately 100 of the city’s liquor stores; another would ban stores with a substantial liquor business (20 percent or more of sales) from selling any item to minors, such as milk or batteries. Among stores targeted by the city for uncompensated closure is one that was voted “Best Wine Store” by City Paper readers a few years ago: “Health and planning officials are targeting stores that they say are in mostly poor neighborhoods and are a public health nuisance because they have been linked to violent crimes. … But at least four of the five stores in north Baltimore are longtime businesses, whose owners say they are in relatively crime-free communities and get along with their residential neighbors,” notes the Sun. More advocacy for the bans here (columnist Dan Rodricks suggests owners transform some of the shuttered stores into “bakeries or small restaurants”) and here (“Park Heights Renaissance” group).

Maryland blogger Tom Coale (HoCoRising) responds:

As I’ve said many times before, these laws that appear facially valid and high-minded almost always end up with unintended consequences. In this case, I can certainly foresee a 15 year old being prohibited from buying his family food while his two parents are at work, and having no where else to make this small part of their family unit work. There are some exemptions to address this, but I can’t see this Council considering every circumstance across Baltimore. If you don’t want kids at liquor stores, work on building the business community and rehabilitating neighborhoods.

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Eric Goldman on the Netflix decision

Following up on our Monday posts: in an Ars Technica column, prominent Internet-law expert blogger and lawprof Eric Goldman considers the Massachusetts’ federal judge’s ruling “a bad ruling. Really terrible.” And it’s at odds, he says, with a long series of earlier decisions that had rejected the idea of websites as a “public accommodation” for purposes of the ADA.

In response, lawprof and prominent ADA advocate Sam Bagenstos says precedent in the First Circuit (which covers Massachusetts) is relatively favorable to the public-accommodation theory. And, he says, the federal government’s lawyers have long been committed to the position that the Web is a public accommodation subject to the ADA — which falls into the ever-popular category of “reassurances that leave me less reassured than ever.”

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June 28 roundup

  • Cato Institute settles lawsuit over its governance [Adler]
  • As regulators crack down on payday lending, Indian tribes fill the gap [Business Week] Tribal leaders say they are at war with the CFPB, and no, there is no Elizabeth Warren angle [Kevin Funnell]
  • “SEA LAWYER. A shark.” [1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue via Nancy Friedman]
  • Trial lawyers in Oklahoma, as in Texas and Florida, endow slate of favored GOP candidates [Tulsa World]
  • Simple reforms could ease path to more interstate adoptions of foster kids [Jeff Katz, Washington Post]
  • “Can you say ‘overzealous service mark claimant’?” [@internetcases]
  • “Today, anyone can sue anyone else, regardless of how ridiculous the claim may be. But it wasn’t always like this.” [Don Elliott, The Atlantic]

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Great moments in government dietary advice

Learn to eat lionfish, advised officials with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in a recent publicity campaign: not only is it tasty, but you’ll be combating an exotic-species invasion that is endangering reefs. Oops! “Of 194 fish tested, 42 percent showed detectable levels of ciguatoxin and 26 percent were above the FDA’s illness threshold of 0.1 parts per billion.” [MSNBC] Ciguatoxin, common in reef predators, is a naturally occurring toxin that can cause neurological disorientation and a variety of other nasty effects.

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Say what?

Pay up, EEOC tells a cafe owner, for not taking on a hearing- and speech-impaired applicant for a cashier’s position [EEOC press release (Albuquerque’s Savory Fare Bakery and Cafe agrees to pay $20,000 and offer other relief), h/t Roger Clegg; related on cases where concern about cross-intelligibility between employee and customers leads to charges of “accent discrimination”] (& Bader, CEI; Scott Greenfield)

More: Alexander Cohen at Atlas has the complaint and answer, along with further analysis.

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Constitutional law roundup

As everyone waits for the ObamaCare ruling…

  • Justice Kennedy often votes with right half of Court on economic issues, left on social — if only there were a word for that [David Boaz]
  • SCOTUS decisions on evidence, Indian law remind us of inadequacies of “red-blue” stereotype of Court divisions [Hans Bader]
  • “Can the Government Destroy Property Values ‘Temporarily’ Without Compensation?” [Ilya Shapiro, Cato]
  • New book on how a 1987 Supreme Court decision opened up Indian gaming [James Huffman reviews Ralph Rossum, LLL]
  • “That’s Not Kosher: How Four Jewish Butchers Brought Down the First New Deal” [Steven Horwitz, The Freeman]
  • Except for, like, not demanding damages or trial or things like that? Declaration of Independence described as “founding lawsuit.” [John Goldberg via TortsProf]
  • New book reviews in Federalist Society “Engage”: Richard Epstein on John Inazu, Liberty’s Refuge: The Forgotten Freedom of Assembly, and Robert Gasaway on Michael Greve, The Upside-Down Constitution]

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