Eugene Volokh, often quoted in this space, isn’t enthusiastic about the idea of finishing law school in two years (earlier), but wonders about shortening the undergrad component. Some other views: Paul Caron/TaxProf reaction roundup, Orin Kerr, Hans Bader, Andrew Sullivan readers, Mystal (Kaplan survey). Yale’s Bruce Ackerman defends the three-year curriculum (more) leading to responses rounded up at TaxProf. What would happen to clinics? [Althouse, Schrag]
Archive for September, 2013
Speaking in Baltimore Thursday
I’m speaking in downtown Baltimore this Thursday at 12 noon about my most recent book, Schools for Misrule. I’ve given versions of this talk many times around the country but I think this marks the first time I’ve done so in my own state of Maryland. It’s free and lunch is served, but you’ll need to RSVP to the Federalist Society Baltimore Lawyers’ Chapter. Details here.
Guns roundup
- On Tuesday, Sen. Dick Durbin convenes hearing intended to bash “Stand Your Ground,” ALEC, and anyone associated with either; keep an eye on the testimony of my Cato colleague Ilya Shapiro who may prove more than a match [Sun-Times, Tuccille, Keating; background; hearing now postponed] Accuracy problems dog Coalition to Stop Gun Violence on SYG [John Hinderaker, PowerLine] Demagoguing Lane, Belton slayings is no way to “balance” media skew on Martin/Zimmerman [Ann Althouse]
- Following “finger-gun” episode at another Maryland school: “Gun gesture leads to suspension for Calvert sixth-grader” [WaPo, earlier] Why a mom changed her mind on letting kid play with toy guns [C. Gross-Loh, The Atlantic]
- Advocacy play-by-play: “A how-to book on inciting a moral panic” [James Taranto]
- If you think gun liberties are shrinking overall in America, check out this map [Volokh] “Illinois Supreme Court: Second Amendment Protects Carrying Outside the Home” [Volokh] “Chicago abolishes gun registry in place since 1968” [Reuters]
- Forthcoming Nicholas Johnson book “Negroes and the Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms” [Law and Liberty]
- Database cross-checks put California on slippery slope confiscation-wise [Steven Greenhut]
- Cato amicus brief: Supreme Court should clarify that the Second Amendment “protects more than the right to keep a gun in one’s home.” [Shapiro, Cato; Woollard v. Gallagher, Maryland]
Time to rethink special education
One school attorney’s plea:
Teachers may tell you (privately) that inclusion [of special education kids in regular classroom, as mandated by federal law] often leads them to slow down and simplify classroom teaching. Yet the system is entrenched and politically correct. Many parents remain silent. Some quietly remove their kids from public schools.
Can this be anything but very bad for America?
On an attempted resuscitation of Karl Polanyi
Sociological historian Karl Polanyi, who argued in The Great Transformation that the market economy was a novel and alien mode of human interaction imposed by strong central government and due for obsolescence, has long been a spent force even among most thinkers on the left. So it might have counted as mildly surprising that a writer at the left-leaning think tank Demos picks Polanyi as a champion to send into battle against libertarians (for what it’s worth, Demos now has a whole project, the “Gordon Gamm Initiative,” aimed at finding fault with libertarians; more here from Trevor Burrus). Assigning my Cato colleague Alex Nowrasteh to refute the Polanyi thesis, as Cato’s Libertarianism.org does here, is like sending in a skilled shipbreaker with power tools to remove the stuffing from a scarecrow.
Update: In response to Matt Bruenig, Alex bounces the rubble.
September 15 roundup
- Falling tree limb injures woman, jury orders city of Savannah to pay $12 million [Insurance Journal]
- Dept. of Interior mulls lowering threshold for federal recognition of Indian tribes [AP]
- Section 230: “The Law that Gave Us the Modern Internet, and the Campaign to Kill It” [Derek Khanna, The Atlantic]
- Interview with false-memory expert Elizabeth Loftus [Slate]
- “No meaningful costs or downsides” to the Microsoft antitrust case? Really? [Tom Bowden]
- NSA covertly intervened in standards making process to weaken encryption standards [Mike Masnick, TechDirt] After being rebuffed by public opinion in quest for dragnet surveillance programs, NSA quietly put programs in place through other channels [Jack Shafer; related, Ken at Popehat]
- Given the limitations of litigation, better not to lament the shortcomings of the NFL concussion settlement [Howard Wasserman]
Des Moines taxpayer suit: the fee sequel
Many — most? — Des Moines taxpayers probably don’t care all that deeply whether the city extracts taxes via one broad-based method or another. But due to class-action procedure and the barriers it erects to opting out, they all get to be plaintiffs in the resulting suit, and the lawyers (self-) appointed to bring the case are expecting to pocket 37 percent, or $15 million, of the $40 million changing hands, a sum that could amount to $1,400 an hour. [Ryan Koopmans (On Brief blog), Des Moines Register, earlier]
“‘Better Call Saul’ is new ‘Breaking Bad’ spinoff”
Shady lawyer character Saul Goodman, played by actor Bob Odenkirk, was so popular with viewers that he’s getting his own prequel [Deadline.com, Guardian, L.A. Times, BuzzFeed] AMC’s joke website is worth a click, but be warned that it auto-plays an audio (which touts, among other things, a two-for-one misdemeanor shoplifting defense).
In mental health care, a legacy of litigation
Starting in the 1960s a wave of foundation-backed lawsuits (Wyatt v. Stickney, etc.) resulted in the closure or drastic shrinkage of most larger state mental health facilities, with the hope that patients would benefit instead from more humane and decentralized “community-based care.” I have decidedly mixed feelings about the results of that episode: the old system inflicted abuses and deprivation of freedom that cried out for oversight and reform, but the new system has handed a great deal of power to unaccountable litigators managing consent decrees in pursuit of their own, sometimes quite debatable, view of clients’ and society’s best interest. Among the roads not taken: strengthening the inspectorate concept, which places oversight authority in a class of appointees intended to be independent of the care institutions but answerable to judges, elected officials, or both. I’m quoted at length on these issues in Neil Maghami’s new Capital Research Center profile of the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, a key funder of the suits.
N.J.: “Is jailed former portfolio manager a poster child for alimony reform?”
Modern-day debtors’ prison, or a problem of his own making? “Those behind the state’s alimony reform movement say it should be easier for individuals to show that they can’t afford to pay court-ordered alimony and harder to jail a former spouse for failing to do so.” [ABA Journal]