- Why you should discount many “minor offender faces eleventy-billion-year sentence” stories [Popehat] One day of smurfing made her a “career offender” [Sullivan]
- “In Dog We Trust”: Scott Greenfield and Radley Balko dissent from unanimous SCOTUS verdict on police canines [Simple Justice, Huffington Post]
- Arizona lawmaker would make it felony to impersonate someone on social media [Citizen Media Law]
- “Can juries tame prosecutors gone wild?” [Leon Neyfakh, Boston Globe “Ideas”]
- “Cop exposes D.C. speed camera racket” [Radley Balko] How Rockville, Md. squeezes drivers who stop in front of the white line or do rolling right turns [WTOP]
- After scandal: “Pennsylvania Senate Passes Legislation to Eliminate Philadelphia Traffic Court” [Legal Intelligencer, earlier]
- Bloomberg precursor? When Mayor LaGuardia got NYC to ban pinball [Sullivan]
Archive for February, 2013
Pending Hawaii law “could punish anyone who takes a photo of a celebrity in public”
“Hawaii needs to rethink the ‘Steven Tyler Act.’ States can promote the right of privacy while ensuring freedom of speech.” [Josh Blackman/Ilya Shapiro, USA Today]
Remembering the anti-flirting campaign
There’s nothing new about the impulse to call in the cops against wolves, mashers, and fresh guys on street corners and public conveyances [Alexis Coe, The Atlantic]:
As early as 1897, Missouri representative Prichard B. Hoot introduced a bill that sought to regulate flirting on trains, but the endeavor ultimately proved unsuccessful. That same year, Senator James G. McCune recommended Virginia make flirting a misdemeanor; like his earlier proposal to outlaw football, this bill did not come to fruition.
Constitutional law roundup
- Colorado solon’s lawsuit claims direct voter initiatives are unconstitutional. Nice try but no go [Ilya Shapiro]
- Gail Heriot and Alison Somin on creative interpretations of the Thirteenth Amendment [Fed Soc]
- Ted Olson’s work on punitive damages provides clue to his approach on originalism [Mike Rappaport]
- Yes, Prof. Seidman, there is an Origination Clause [Shapiro, my related take]
- Justice Roberts and legislative deference [PoL]
- Easterbrook, Barnett and others: video of panel on federalism and federal power [Fed Soc] Constitutional law treatise available free online through Library of Congress [Volokh] New Podcast: Who violates the constitution–statutes or individuals? [Nick Rosenkranz, PoL]
- National Endowment for the Arts uses creative misreading to conjure up a constitutional charter for its existence [Roger Pilon/Cato]
Update: “Albino Rhino” beer brand withdrawn following human rights complaint
“Earls Restaurants will take beer sold under the 25-year-old brand off the menu after a Vancouver woman with albinism filed a BC Human Rights Tribunal complaint against the chain in 2012. The same craft beer will still be sold, but just as ‘Rhino.'” [Emily Jackson, MetroNews, Canada; earlier]
P.S. Frances Zacher at Abnormal Use on other beer-naming controversies.
Want your annual meeting to go off with no trouble? Pay up
The Economist on an unplanned (at least one hopes it was unplanned) effect of Dodd-Frank:
THE Dodd-Frank law of 2010 requires a “say-on-pay” vote for shareholders of American companies. Clever lawyers scent a payday for themselves.
One law firm in particular, Faruqi & Faruqi, has filed a series of class-action suits demanding more information about how companies decide what to pay their senior executives. It seeks to prevent its targets from holding their annual meetings until the extra information turns up. One such suit, against Brocade Communications, a Californian company, forced the suspension of the annual meeting last February. Brocade quickly settled. Faruqi’s fees were $625,000. Several other companies, not wanting to delay their meetings, have settled similar suits.
Prof. Bainbridge is reminded of the specialized group of non-lawyers in Japan known as sokaiya, who extract money from target companies by threatening (among other things) to disrupt annual meetings.
At Duke on Friday
On Friday at Duke Law School, the Duke Forum for Law and Social Change is giving its annual symposium, this year’s subject being legal approaches to obesity prevention. The organizers have kindly invited me to participate in a late morning panel, where my views are likely to differ from those of the other participants; details here.
If you’d like to book me to speak at your own event or campus, contact me directly at editor – at – overlawyered – dot – com, through the Cato Institute’s Events staff, or, if you’re associated with a Federalist Society chapter, through the Society’s national office.
Land use roundup
- CEQA: “Even California Democrats See Need for Regulatory Reform” [Steven Greenhut]
- Subject of a blog: “One man’s struggle to get a building permit for his house in San Luis Obispo County” [SLO Leaks Blog]
- Can New Urbanism be rescued from elitism? [Aaron Renn, Urbanophile]
- SCOTUS set to review land-use exactions in Koontz v. St. John’s River Water Management District case [Ilya Shapiro and Tim Sandefur, Washington Times; Adler, more; Gideon Kanner, more; Richard Epstein, Hoover]
- “Local regulations make new housing more costly” [Lisa Sturtevant and Agnès Artemel, Greater Greater Washington]
- “The First Circuit Engrafts ‘Lenses’ Onto Penn Central‘s ‘Three Factors'” [Kanner]
- Should property buffs cheer at Supreme Court’s reinstatement of owner’s claims in Arkansas Game & Fish case? [Richard Samp/WLF, Richard Epstein/PoL]
Mayor Bloomberg as paladin of civil liberties?
Yes, on the First Amendment he’s been pretty decent, but as to the rest, surely you jest, Ms. Kaminer [Jacob Sullum]
EEOC sues law firm over 75-lb. lifting requirement
“The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has sued Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice on behalf of a former office assistant who claims disability discrimination over a lifting requirement.” The job’s requirements, at the firm’s North Carolina headquarters, allegedly included moving heavy boxes of documents; according to the complaint, the law firm did not adequately consider accommodations such as letting her divide up the contents of the boxes and use push carts. Womble Carlyle declined to comment. [Debra Cassens Weiss, ABA Journal]