“The opioid litigation will have the same dire effects on the rule of law as the tobacco deal.” It will also have cruel consequences for pain sufferers and other legitimate participants in the market. And the other problems: “a well-orchestrated media frenzy that advance the trial lawyer’s narrative over solid science,” and a cozy network of highly lucrative contracts between law firms and city/state governments that, to judge from the parallel tobacco episode, is likely to exert a corrupting influence on both public service and law. An article not to miss from a longtime friend of this blog [Law and Liberty]
Archive for March, 2020
Minnesota bill would prescribe child-removal standards that differ by race
“Should the law require state child-welfare authorities to treat black children differently from white children? Lawmakers in Minnesota may soon vote on a bill to do just that. ” I have an op-ed in the weekend Wall Street Journal’s “Cross Country” column (paywalled) on a bill that has passed a Minnesota senate committee and would introduce explicit racial classifications into the state’s child welfare system, the idea being to institute markedly stronger protections for black families against child removal. I argue that if the provisions are a good idea, they should apply to all families, an argument with implications for the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), on which the Minnesota bill was modeled. More on the proposed Minnesota African American Family Preservation Act: Sara Tiano/Chronicle of Social Change, Brainerd Dispatch, Insight News.