Some recent installments in the FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) podcast series So To Speak, hosted by Nico Perrino: Bob Corn-Revere on “censorship: the bastard child of technology”; Flemming Rose of Cato, formerly with Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten; Sam Gedge of the Institute for Justice on campaign finance laws and the First Amendment; the “heckler’s veto” strikes Heather Mac Donald; Geoffrey Stone of Chicago Law on “Sex and the Constitution”.
Archive for April, 2017
Judge in Ireland rules on playground fall
A child hurt herself falling on a playground in Dublin, Ireland, and this is what Mr. Justice Raymond Groarke of the Circuit Civil Court wrote:
She was engaged in a game of chase pure and simple and, while it is most regrettable that she became unbalanced and fell, this was simply an old fashioned accident and I fail to see any liability on the part of the school for that accident.
Lenore Skenazy comments:
Score one for those of us who understand that there is NO activity, even climbing out of bed, that is always 100% safe. So if we start outlawing activities that are generally, but not 100% completely safe, we will end up outlawing any movement whatsoever.
The judge also seems to realize that something is LOST even if a modicum of safety could be gained. Are kids really safer if they do NOT run around, use their bodies, burn calories, learn to play, deal with disappointment, organize their friends, and create something out of nothing — a game?
Nope. Kids need to play.
Reports The Independent: “The school did not seek an order for costs against the girl’s mother.”
Medical liability: reviving the case for contract
“Typical medical malpractice reform efforts are aimed at lowering costs for physicians, but what if many problems associated with medical malpractice could be handled via contract?” In a new Cato Podcast with interviewer Caleb Brown, I discuss that subject and go on to talk about issues in malpractice reform, including arbitration and the “nod to federalism” in this year’s Republican medical liability proposal in Congress. Related: reasons why Cato adjunct scholar Jeffrey Singer is skeptical of federal reform.
Claim: church’s rule against breast-feeding in the pews violates Virginia law
In 2015, following the lead of many other states, Virginia passed a “law that says women have a right to breast-feed anywhere they have a legal right to be.” The law provides “no exemption for religious institutions.” Now a mother and her attorney say Summit Church in Springfield, in the D.C. suburbs, had no right to ask her to use a private room to feed her baby during a service.
Personally, I’m fine with public breast-feeding no longer being categorized, as it once was, as an automatically shocking thing. But why is government dictation of how a church may arrange its rules for worship no longer categorized as an automatically shocking thing? [Michael Alison Chandler and Laura Vozzella, Washington Post] [adapted and cross-posted at Cato at Liberty; and welcome Mosaic Magazine readers]
Oregon man fined $500 for calling himself engineer in email to state
By reader acclaim: “In September 2014, Mats Järlström, an electronics engineer living in Beaverton, Oregon, sent an email to the state’s engineering board. The email claimed that yellow traffic lights don’t last long enough, which ‘puts the public at risk.'” The board fined him $500 for “practicing engineering without a license” and for referring to himself as an engineer in correspondence with the state despite his unregistered status. The Institute for Justice is in court on his behalf. [Jason Koebler, Motherboard]
“Orleans Parish prosecutors are using fake subpoenas”
Seems incredible: the district attorney’s office in the county-equivalent that includes New Orleans sends out bogus subpoenas not actually cleared with a judge ordering witnesses to appear for investigations. A spokesman says it’s been done for decades. Following press inquiries, “the District Attorney’s Office has said the practice will end.” [The Lens (New Orleans)]
Great moments in privacy
After a Saturday evening incident in which 40 to 60 teenagers invaded an Oakland, Calif. rapid transit station, robbing and beating riders, a spokesman for BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) says surveillance videos of the flash-mob robbery will not be made public because people committing crimes appear to be minors. [Demian Bulwa and Michael Cabanatuan, San Francisco Chronicle via Ann Althouse]
Schools roundup
- “It’s like open carry, but for Coppertone”: lawmakers in Washington move to “allow students to use sunscreen at school without a doctor’s note.” [Lenore Skenazy, Free-Range Kids]
- Chicago Mayor Emanuel’s “life plan or no diploma” scheme meddles in grads’ lives [Amy Alkon]
- Sounds like must viewing: School, Inc. is a three-part documentary on state of US education system based on work of late Cato scholar Andrew Coulson;
- On both health care and K-12, U.S. tops the charts in cost but not in outcome quality. Yet people tend to draw very different lessons from the one case than the other [Arnold Kling]
- Attacking appointee Candice Jackson, civil rights orgs “defend [educational] practices that the courts have ruled illegal, and every current U.S. Supreme Court justice would find illegal.” [Hans Bader, CEI]
- Keen to “decolonize” curriculum, Boston Public Schools buy into dubious map theories [Kevin Mahnken, The 74 Million]
They fought the EPA and the EPA won
From John Ross’s Short Circuit newsletter for the Institute for Justice, Mar. 10: “Allegation: EPA agents lead armed raid of Casper, Wyo. laboratory based on false accusation from former employee, an 18 year old, that the lab falsified water-quality records. Five years later, case dismissed against former lab owners without charges. They sue the EPA. District court: It’s too late to sue; the two-year statute of limitations started running when you lost the lab. Tenth Circuit: Actually, you couldn’t have even sued then because sovereign immunity.” [Garling v. EPA]
April 26 roundup
- FDA’s costly menu labeling rules set to begin enforcement May 5. Any hope of blocking them? [Baylen Linnekin, earlier]
- “Justice Department Disability Demands Raise Serious Free Speech Issues” [Hans Bader, CEI, earlier on the Berkeley online course takedown]
- Government shouldn’t be entitled to shut down recording of its officers in public places when it doesn’t interfere with law enforcement [Ilya Shapiro and Devin Watkins on Cato Institute brief in 9th Circuit case of Jacobson v. Department of Homeland Security]
- I knew the late Leo Rosten a bit in 1990s NYC. Now Dan Klein has a fun paper on The Joys of Yiddish as an economics text [SSRN via David Henderson]
- Many libertarians diagnose “crony capitalism” as a leading source of American ills. How good are their examples? [Arnold Kling]
- Signs in India proclaiming who owns a given plot of land point to a vulnerability of legal system [Alex Tabarrok] “The Uttar Pradesh Association of Dead People” [Tabarrok on this 2009 Open Magazine piece]