- Claw back money spent on unhelpful college tuition after bankruptcy? Not if Connecticut has anything to say about it [The American Interest]
- Incoming civil rights/Title IX enforcement officials tell university lawyers they plan to take less adversarial stance toward colleges than did previous administration [Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed]
- “Maryland becomes first state to outlaw scholarship displacement by public colleges” [Tim Prudente, Baltimore Sun] Note that practice undercuts gratitude-inducing efficacy of state’s custom of “legislative scholarships” [sample explanation]
- Clinton, Obama education bureaucracy couched Title IX dictates as “guidance,” which should make them easier to revisit [Hans Bader, CEI]
- California, other states’ embargo on state-paid travel to “bad” conservative states is putting stress on academic conferences [Nick Roll/Inside Higher Ed, Teresa Watanabe and Rosanna Xia, L.A. Times]
- The ABA is stifling innovation in legal education [Allen
Mendenhall, Law and Liberty]
Archive for July, 2017
Barton and Bibas, Rebooting Justice
In the mail, and on sale soon from Encounter Books: Rebooting Justice: More Technology, Fewer Lawyers, and the Future of Law by Benjamin Barton (University of Tennessee) and Stephanos Bibas (Penn). Publisher’s summary:
America is a nation founded on justice and the rule of law. But our laws are too complex, and legal advice too expensive, for poor and even middle-class Americans to get help and vindicate their rights. Criminal defendants facing jail time may receive an appointed lawyer who is juggling hundreds of cases and immediately urges them to plead guilty. Civil litigants are even worse off; usually, they get no help at all navigating the maze of technical procedures and rules. The same is true of those seeking legal advice, like planning a will or negotiating an employment contract.
Rebooting Justice presents a novel response to longstanding problems. The answer is to use technology and procedural innovation to simplify and change the process itself. In the civil and criminal courts where ordinary Americans appear the most, we should streamline complex procedures and assume that parties will not have a lawyer, rather than the other way around. We need a cheaper, simpler, faster justice system to control costs. We cannot untie the Gordian knot by adding more strands of rope; we need to cut it, to simplify it.
And the blurb I was happy to contribute to the book’s back jacket:
“America’s legal establishment is right that our legal system is suffering an access-to-justice crisis, but dead wrong about how to fix things. In clear, energetic, skillful prose, Bibas and Barton first give the misguided crusade for Civil Gideon a decent burial. Then they go on to propose ideas that are much better ? better in moving with the times on technology, better at lowering rather than heightening the problems of cost and delay, and better at focusing the scarce talents of skilled courtroom counsel where they can make the most difference, specifically on felony charges.”
— Walter Olson, senior fellow at the Cato Institute and author of The Litigation Explosion
Other blurbs are by Deborah Rhode, Philip K. Howard, and Glenn Reynolds.
Supreme Court could revisit forced advocacy dues for public workers
A 1977 Supreme Court decision, Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, upheld the constitutionality of forcing public employees to fund (through union dues) advocacy they might not like. More recently the Court has questioned the reasoning of Abood in Knox v. SEIU (2012) and Harris v. Quinn (2014), although the trend stalled in last year’s 4-4 split in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association. Now the Court could revisit the issue by agreeing to review a Seventh Circuit case from Illinois, Janus v. AFSCME [Ilya Shapiro and Frank Garrison, Cato]
Sessions to expand civil asset forfeiture
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has announced an expansion of the scope of civil asset forfeiture, under which government can seize and keep assets on suspicion without a criminal conviction or even the filing of a criminal charge. Reforms in the previous administration, which Sessions intends to roll back, limited some of the applications of the practice. [Chris Ingraham, Washington Post, Jonathan Blanks/Democracy Journal, C.J. Ciaramella/Reason, Steven Nelson/U.S. News, Dominic Holden and Zoe Tillman, BuzzFeed] There had been warning something like this might be in the works.
Oregon seizes kids because parents have low IQ
The parents have not been accused of abuse or neglect. “Both have standard high school diplomas.” But the state of Oregon considers their IQs to be too low and has seized their two sons in what has turned into a nearly four-year battle [Samantha Swindler, The Oregonian]
“Obvious attempt at insurance fraud caught on camera”
July 19 roundup
- “Biometric Privacy Laws: How a Little-Known Illinois Law Made Facebook Illegal” [Jane Bambauer]
- Organized dentists work to block legal recognition of independent dental therapist practices [Mary Jordan, Washington Post]
- Some yearn to bring back Warren Court (or even more interventionist) antitrust doctrine. Just don’t [John McGinnis]
- “O’Neil is the Wang of Ireland” says apparel trademark disputant [Timothy Geigner, Techdirt]
- “Religious people should live under the same laws as everyone else” was a nice slogan while it lasted [Julie Zauzmer, Washington Post on nuns’ construction of chapel in field so as to block pipeline, plus resulting Twitter thread]
- “Therapy animals are everywhere, but proof that they help is not” [Karin Brulliard, Chicago Tribune]
Great moments in police-union arguments
Court: smashing store surveillance cameras did not give Orange County, Calif. cops a “reasonable expectation of privacy” allowing them to exclude filmed evidence of their misconduct in the store afterward. [Lowering the Bar, earlier]
Constitutional law roundup
- In name of suicide prevention, Oregon plans to use emergency one-sided hearsay proceedings to take away gun rights [Christian Britschgi, Reason]
- Past Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) readings of Emoluments Clause fall between extreme positions of CREW on the one hand and Trump White House on the other [Jane Chong/Lawfare, earlier]
- “Yes, Justice Thomas, the doctrine of regulatory takings is originalist” [James Burling, PLF] On the Court’s decision in Murr v. Wisconsin (earlier), see also Robert Thomas at his Inverse Condemnation blog here, here, and here;
- Notwithstanding SCOTUS decision in Pavan v. Brown just four days before, Texas Supreme Court intends to take its time spelling out to litigants the implications of Obergefell for municipal employee benefits [Josh Blackman (plus more), Dale Carpenter on Pidgeon v. Turner] Why the Supreme Court is not going to snatch back Obergefell at this point [David Lat]
- Tariff-like barrier: California commercial fishing license fees are stacked against out-of-staters [Ilya Shapiro and David McDonald, Cato]
- H.L. Mencken writes a constitution, 1937 [Sam Bray, Volokh]
Monkey-selfie photographer sued by PETA says he’s broke
PETA has appealed to the Ninth Circuit the dismissal of its suit, ostensibly on behalf of a wild monkey, against “monkey-selfie” photographer David Slater. Slater, reduced by years of litigation against the fanatical animal rights group and other parties, is in financial straits and thinking of walking dogs to earn money. “Nor can he afford to replace his broken camera equipment, or pay the attorney who has been defending him since the crested black macaque sued him in 2015, and is exploring other ways to earn an income.” Abusive litigation is evil and don’t even ask what I think of PETA. [The Guardian]