- Georgia: “Twiggs County Landgrabber Loses, Must Pay $100K in Fees” [Lowering the Bar]
- “Major California Rule Change For Depositions Takes Place In 2013” [Cal Biz Lit] Discovery cost control explored at IAALS conference [Prawfs]
- Gift idea! “Lego version of the Eighth Circle of Hell (where false counselors and perjurers suffered)” [John Steele, Legal Ethics Forum; Flavorwire]
- “Don’t Worry About the Voting Rights Act: If the Supreme Court strikes down part of it, black and Hispanic voters will be just fine.” [Eric Posner and Nicholas Stephanopoulos, Slate, via @andrewmgrossman]
- “Why did Congress hold hearings this week promoting crackpot [anti-vaccination] views? [Phil Plait, Slate]
- “Debunking a Progressive Constitutional Myth; or, How Corporations Became People, Too” [John Fabian Witt, Balkinization]
- “Federal ‘protection’ of American poker players turning into confiscation” [Point of Law]
Author Archive
Preliminary injunction orders takedown of Yelp posts
So is that prior restraint? [Washington Post on Virginia case, background; Brian Wolfman and Paul Alan Levy, Public Citizen] More: Ken at Popehat.
Taking the heat off?
A vaguely worded injunction could chill criticism of the owner of the Miami Heat [Popehat]
Baltimore considers banning Formstone
“Formstone is to Baltimore what Communism was to Czechoslovakia.” Although virtually no one installs the simulated-stone exterior cladding any more, and it doesn’t seem to raise any safety concern, Charm City authorities are still proposing to ban it, which has touched off a wave of protests and a Baltimore Sun editorial objecting to the ban. [Sun reporting, editorial]
Labor and employment roundup
- Labor/employment law: the last four years, and the next [Daniel Schwartz series: first, second, interview] “Some Thoughts on the Meaning of a Second Obama Term for Labor and Employment Law” [Paul Secunda]
- “Alcoholic Tested Without Cause Can Proceed With Bias Claim” [Mary Pat Gallagher, NJLJ]
- “The ‘I’s have it: NLRB says don’t shred those at-will disclaimers just yet” [Jon Hyman]
- “Knox Supreme Court Decision Strengthens Worker Rights” [Mark Mix, Bench Memos]
- “City Councils, EEOC Grapple with Employment Protections for Ex-Convicts” [Shannon Green, Corp Counsel]
- Leftward efforts to constitutionalize labor and employment law [Workplace Prof]
- Should this bother privacy advocates? “NLRB looks to give workers’ private contact info to unions” [Washington Examiner]
- Drama unfolds as backers push right-to-work law in Michigan [Shikha Dalmia]
Welcome NPR “Talk of the Nation” listeners
I joined “Talk of the Nation” host Neil Conan and “political junkie” Ken Rudin today live in NPR’s Washington studio to discuss my findings on the large number of suburban Romney voters who voted in favor of ballot measures to recognize same-sex marriage (in Maryland and Maine) or opposed a measure to ban it (in Minnesota). Update: now that NPR has posted the show online, you can listen or read a transcript here (earlier)
A win for property rights at SCOTUS
My Cato colleague Roger Pilon explains the significance of the Supreme Court’s ruling yesterday in Arkansas Game & Fish Commission v. United States, in which the federal government flooded a property owner’s land but resisted demands for compensation on the grounds that the “taking” of property was temporary, since the flooding would subside. Earlier here.
Aux armes, old Citroëns!
Safety roundup
- Patrick Basham on proposal to license smokers [Philadelphia Inquirer/Cato, earlier] New study confirms that rather than externalizing costs to the public treasury, smokers tend to cost social insurance programs less than nonsmokers do [Daniel Fisher, Forbes]
- Public health busybodies call on UK government to set minimum price for alcoholic drinks [Telegraph] Carrie Nation never thought of this: anti-booze campaigners target its calorie count [Baylen Linnekin] New York state plans anti-alcohol campaign [NY Post]
- “Will Litigation over Playground Injuries Create a Generation of Neurotics?” [WSJ via ABA Journal]
- Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick reassigns his exceedingly accident-prone state highway director [Boston Globe, Ilya Somin]
- “Magnet spheres may soon be harder to acquire than ammunition in the U.S.” as Buckyballs gives up [Anthony Fisher/Reason, earlier] And from Twitter: “Those 0.0 deaths per year were not in vain.” [@TPCarney modifying @bigtimcavanaugh]
- “Mary Cain wants $3000 damages from the street car company for a ‘sudden jerk.’ MO1917” [@tweetsofold]
- “No Liquid Soap Allowed in Pre-School Bathroom: Children Might Drink It” [Free-Range Kids]
And finally, the catchy, unsettling safety promotion video that’s been everywhere the last week or two, from the Melbourne transit authority:
U.N. disabled-rights treaty fails in Senate
By a vote of 61 to 38 with two-thirds needed, the U.S. Senate today failed to ratify the far-reaching Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, criticized in this space before. This morning I published an article in the Daily Caller laying out some of the many bad provisions of this treaty, which the United States is very fortunate to be clear of (at least for the moment; proponents may come back next year and try to ratify it again in a slightly more favorable Senate). After the Senate vote, I added a followup at Cato at Liberty correcting persistent misinformation about the treaty that’s appeared everywhere from a New York Times editorial to a Media Matters blog post (assuming that’s really such a wide range any more).
A footnote: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which really should know better, backed the treaty, which it erroneously asserted “would not require any changes to existing law in order for the U.S. to comply with its provisions.” The Chamber’s most remarkable argument?
…ratification will help to level the playing field for U.S. businesses, which currently compete with foreign counterparts who do not have to adhere to our high standards when it comes to accommodation and accessibility for individuals with disabilities.
So it’s a misery-loves-company argument: if America is going to burden business with costly mandates, we’d better make sure competitors’ countries do so too. Not the Chamber’s finest hour. And as I explain in my Daily Caller piece, the Convention does indeed prescribe mandates that go beyond anything in the current ADA, including employment coverage for the smallest employers (now exempted from the ADA’s equivalent), requirements for “guides, readers and professional sign language interpreters, to facilitate accessibility to buildings and other facilities open to the public,” a new right of disabled persons not to be discriminated against in the provision of life insurance, and much, much more. If U.S. companies find those sorts of new mandates unwelcome, I hope they’ll let the Chamber know.
More: Supercilious Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank doesn’t bother to engage Sen. Mike Lee’s arguments; Washington Post editorial is less supercilious but no more substantive.