- Lucrative: Los Angeles writes $197 tickets for entering a crosswalk with “Don’t Walk” blinking [L.A. Times, more]
- Forfeiture reform bill in Tennessee legislature stalls after “a key committee heard from family members who are in law enforcement and who do not want to give up a source of income.” [WTVF (auto-plays ad) via Balko]
- As protagonists got deeper into trouble, they kept making bad decisions: Heather Mac Donald has a dissenting take on Alice Goffman’s much-noted book “On the Run” [City Journal, more favorable Tyler Cowen review previously linked]
- In Georgia: “Probation Firm Holds Poor For ‘Ransom,’ Suit Charges” [NBC News, Thomasville, Ga., Times-Enterprise]
- Police and fire jobs are dangerous by ordinary measure but involve less risk of fatality on job than trucker (2-3x risk), construction, taxi, groundskeeper, sanitation [New York Times]
- Police think tank finds St. Louis County ticketing culture “dysfunctional and unsustainable” [Ryan J. Reilly, HuffPo] John Oliver on snowballing effect of petty municipal fines and fees [YouTube] NYC is writing fewer summonses for teenagers these days [Brian Doherty]
- “Subtle hand movements,” whispering, being nervous, changes in breathing: list of six “invisible” signs someone is resisting an officer [Grant Stern, Photography Is Not a Crime response to Joel Shults, PoliceOne]
Archive for May, 2015
The imperfect diversity of Harvard Law School
“98% Of Harvard Law Faculty Political Donations Go To Democrats” [Paul Caron, TaxProf]
If I say so myself, my book Schools for Misrule makes a good place to start in understanding how American legal academia came by its distinctive ideological leanings. There’s a Kindle version you can download right now.
“The pocket knife found on him was closed and legal, she said…..’no crime had been committed’”
As surmised earlier, Maryland knife law has emerged as an issue in the Freddie Gray story; Gray’s death in police custody has now resulted in the filing of charges against six police officers, the most serious charge, “depraved heart murder,” being leveled against the driver of the police van from which Gray, unbelted, emerged with fatal injuries. [Washington Post] More links on “rough rides” here, here, and here. “The Baltimore police union defended the officers involved…. ‘none….are responsible'” [Baltimore Sun, The Hill, Ed Krayewski/Reason] Some obstacles for the prosecution [Associated Press]
Update, Colin Campbell, Baltimore Sun:
The separate investigations by police and prosecutors have some conflicting findings.
While Mosby said Friday that the officers had made an illegal arrest because a knife Gray was carrying was not a “switchblade,” a violation of state law, the police task force studied the knife and determined it was “spring-assisted,” which does violate a Baltimore code.
More from Twitchy link roundup (investigators have not yet released picture of knife or other information that could help identify model and resolve dispute), Andrew Branca (Baltimore code bans “spring-assisted” weapons not banned under Maryland law; also, reasonable mistake of law on illegality of weapon might still support probable cause finding).
Free speech roundup
- Yikes: Granby, Quebec, “moves to fine people insulting police on social media” [CBC]
- “Plaintiffs in foreign ‘hate speech’ lawsuit seeking to subpoena records from U.S. service providers” [Eugene Volokh] Visa for Dutch politician Geert Wilders aside, Reps. Keith Ellison and André Carson imply they’d like to limit speech for Americans too [same]
- “Why The D.C. Circuit’s Anti-SLAPP Ruling Is Important” [Popehat]
- Federal court strikes down Pennsylvania law allowing “re-victimization” suits for “renewed anguish” against convicts who speak about their crimes [Volokh, earlier]
- How different are judges? Williams-Yulee v. Florida Bar marks an exception in Court’s preference for speech over regulation in campaign cases [SCOTUSBlog symposium, Elizabeth Price Foley/Instapundit, Daniel Fisher, Ilya Shapiro, our coverage of judicial elections]
- “New Jersey’s Sensitive Victim Bias Crime Unconstitutional” [Scott Greenfield]
- Amazing: Wisconsin John Doe prosecutor suggests criminally charging Gov. Scott Walker over remarks critical of probe [Journal-Sentinel, Volokh; more at Cato, Roger Pilon and Tim Lynch; earlier from me here, etc.]
Do As We Say chronicles
Socialist Seattle councilor “allegedly structured her employees …to avoid payroll taxes, overtime, and insurance.” [Jason Rantz, MyNorthwest]
What to do with police body camera footage?
If you’re Seattle, you put it on YouTube [Tyler Cowen]
“There is no longer any valid basis for the current salt guidelines”
The federal government officially recommends salt intake drastically lower than what most Americans consume — 2,300 milligrams a day compared with 3,500. Yet a vocal body of scientific critics say not only are such drastic reductions unneeded for those without specific risk factors such as high blood pressure, but cutting salt intake below 3,000 milligrams can pose its own health risks. [Washington Post]
“Apple’s Antitrust Lord – The outside legal monitor who bills for reading our editorials.”
This Wall Street Journal editorial may be under a paywall or registration for some readers, but its highlight comes in its headline: settlement monitor Richard Bromwich, appointed by a federal judge in 2013 to oversee Apple, “bills for reading our editorials.” More on settlement monitors at our tag; more on Apple and antitrust.
More riot notes
From Twitter, some further thoughts on the Baltimore riots and their implications:
Why – paradoxically – the poor need property rights even more than the rich. http://t.co/iTsoz2Atip
— Jason Kuznicki (@JasonKuznicki) April 30, 2015
In response, Twitter user @hamilt0n cites this NBER paper by William J. Collins and Robert A. Margo on the (very harmful) labor market effects of the 1960s riots, adds: “Riots=more spending, higher taxation, rich are mobile and flee, poor get stuck with the bill”
Sweetness and light in a New York Times “Crips and Bloods gangs come together to save Baltimore” story:
uh hold up a sec guys http://t.co/zQfYc6Ndrq pic.twitter.com/OaEtsVSfiK
— Matt Bors (@MattBors) April 28, 2015
More from Liz Mair on how the rights just go to show what you already believed; Cathy Young (arguing, inter alia, that any system is going to accord police suspected of wrongdoing some advantages over other citizens in those circumstances and we might just as well accept this). Meanwhile, the seven-day 10 p.m. curfew threatens the livelihoods of thousands of Baltimoreans and small businesses [New York Times, Baltimore Sun]
Supreme Court and constitutional law roundup
- Polls, not chancy politics of Justice-watching, represent surest hope for gay-marriage supporters [me in New York Daily News]
- “A reasonably good week for the Fourth Amendment” [Jonathan Blanks, Cato on Rodriguez v. U.S. on prolonged traffic stops, 6-3 SCOTUS, and from the D.C. Circuit, Janice Rogers Brown’s concurrence in Gross v. U.S., on rationale for D.C.’s gun sweeps]
- David Bernstein, who has done so much to enrich our understanding of Lochner v. New York, hears from Mr. Lochner’s great-granddaughter [Volokh Conspiracy]
- Armstrong v. Exceptional Child Center: Supremacy Clause doesn’t provide implied private right of action [William Baude, SCOTUSBlog; James Beck (implication for product liability); from the losing side, Steve Vladeck/Prawfs]
- Please, SCOTUS, kill off for good the awful Calder v. Jones “effects” test for personal jurisdiction [David Post] “We’re Not in Kansas: No General Jurisdiction After Bauman” [Steven Boranian, Drug and Device Law]
- Noah Feldman, for one, isn’t buying Toobin’s latest sanctimonious swipe at Scalia [Bloomberg View]
- Usage of commas in famous first line of Pride and Prejudice can shed light on how to read Constitutional guarantee of right to keep and bear arms [Eugene Volokh]