My Cato colleagues discuss President Obama’s remarks on judicial nominations, the auto bailout, Dodd-Frank and the Cordray appointment, federal control of education and more.
P.S. “America’s best think tank” [Glenn Reynolds]
Author Archive
Obama proposes up or down vote on judges
Ted Frank: “It is ironic that Obama is calling for a 90-day ‘simple up or down’ vote on judicial nominees when he is the only sitting president in American history who has voted to filibuster a judicial nomination — and that was for someone well within the mainstream like Justice Alito.”
Obama proposal: no leaving school until age 18 or graduation
Aside from the wisdom of obliging every single young person to serve out such a sentence — conveniently, until draft age, when the State may have other plans for their time — there’s an interest-group angle. Ira Stoll traces it to the National Education Association, which stands to gain from the idea a measurable boost to its dues-paying ranks, and which has in fact proposed mandatory schooling for nongraduates up to age 21. More: Hans Bader, CEI (quoting Overlawyered commenter Kurt); Nick Gillespie, Reason.
P.S. Watch out for the truancy cops, too [Free-Range Kids; Loudoun County, Va. mother says she was handcuffed and arrested after fifth instance of school tardiness]
Perfume restrictions in the news
Under a bill introduced by a New Hampshire legislator, “state employees who interact with the public would not be allowed to wear perfume. Rep. Michele Peckham, R-North Hampton, is the prime sponsor of the perfume bill, which she said she put forward after a constituent asked her to do so. She said there are people allergic to fragrances. ‘It may seem silly, but it’s a health issue,’ Peckham said. ‘Many people have violent reactions to strong scents.'” [Union-Leader via Radley Balko, who calls it reductio creep] Similar proposals have surfaced in places like Portland, Ore., and “perfume sensitivity” lawsuits have been reported from Detroit and New Jersey (& welcome WSJ Law Blog readers; day’s “Five Must-Read Stories”).
Law schools roundup
- Second Circuit Judge Jose Cabranes, at AALS meeting, gives legal academics frank appraisal of where law school needs fixing, to the delight of many of us who’ve advanced a broadly similar critique [Caron, Above the Law, Sloan/NLJ]
- “Let’s Regulate Harder. That’ll Provide More Jobs For Young Law Grads!” [my new Cato post, citing an official from the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT)]
- ABA accreditation rules discourage reliance on less expensive (and often more practice-oriented) adjunct faculty [latest in David Segal series on law schools in New York Times; Catherine Dunn, Corporate Counsel] Plus: video of law school accreditation panel at Federalist Society national convention;
- Law school without undergrad degree first? Many other advanced countries do it that way [McGinnis and Mangas, Northwestern dean Dan Rodriguez response, M&M rejoinder; ABA Journal on views of NYLS’s Rick Matasar] Yet more on law school reform [Jim Chen via Caron, Caron, Mark Yzaguirre, Frum Forum]
- Complete point-counterpoint at ELF last summer on Tulane law clinic fracas (I’m counterpoint) [ELF]
- Why not rob the rich? Ask Prof. Leiter [Sullivan]
- Does law and economics amount to “studies in social engineering”? [Kenneth Anderson]
When companies’ hot products are stolen
Toronto lawyer Michael Deverett thinks a bad guy must have followed him home from the Apple Store; at least someone smashed his hatchback car window when he stepped away for a couple of minutes and made off with what he said was a well concealed bag of new electronics purchases worth C$2,200. The company — which gave him a store credit plus a small extra for legal fees — is also facing criticism from theft victims who say it should do more to help owners retrieve stolen cellphones. [Toronto Star](& welcome Elie Mystal, Above the Law readers)
Nutella class action settlements
Some things about the nationwide settlement — including a prospective $3.75-million attorneys’ fee for prosecuting a “truly BS claim” against the maker of the chocolate-nut spread over nutritional disclosures — stick in Russell Jackson’s craw. He doesn’t care for the separate, California-specific scoopful either (earlier here, etc.)
“Bystander Claims ‘Swoon and Fall’ Injuries at Church”
East St. Louis: “In yet another ‘swoon and fall’ case against a church, an Illinois woman claims she was injured during a church service when a parishioner who was receiving the ‘spirit’ fell backward, knocking several other worshippers into her.” Most “slain in the Spirit” suits are filed either by the worshiper who loses consciousness and falls or by a designated “catcher”; this one is on behalf of an injured bystander [Matthew Heller, On Point News; earlier here, here, here] “New tort: Gottvertrunkenism” [@Sam_Schulman]
Photos of high-design furniture
The French courts have ruled that it is a violation of intellectual property rights to disseminate photographs of armchairs and sofas designed by famed modernist Le Corbusier (Charles-Edouart Jeanneret). Per Getty Images in an email to creative contributors, “while you may hold a copyright in a particular image or clip, if it contains even a fraction of a Le Corbusier piece then you may not have all the necessary rights under French law to provide that content and therefore may be liable for copyright infringement under French law in respect of the furniture featured.” Getty has told its contributors that they may not feature in licensed content objects by some other designers as well, including the furniture of Mies van der Rohe. What about images of his buildings? [British Journal of Photography]
Citizens United, two years out
In the Washington Post, Boston College lawprof Kent Greenfield clears up some misconceptions:
Citizens United did not hold corporations to be persons, and the court has never said corporations deserve all the constitutional rights of humans. The Fifth Amendment’s right to be free from self-incrimination, for example, does not extend to corporations. … Humans gather themselves in groups, for public and private ends, and sometimes it makes constitutional sense to protect the group as distinct from its constituent humans.
The question in any given case is whether protecting the association, group or, yes, corporation serves to protect the rights of actual people. Read fairly, Citizens United merely says that banning certain kinds of corporate expenditures infringes the constitutional interests of human beings. The court may have gotten the answer wrong, but it asked the right question.
Another reason to protect corporate rights is to guard against the arbitrary and deleterious exercise of government power. If, for example, the Fifth Amendment’s ban on government “takings” did not extend to corporations, the nationalization of entire industries would be constitutionally possible. The Fourth Amendment prohibits the FBI from barging into the offices of Google without a warrant and seizing the Internet history of its users. A freedom of the press that protected only “natural persons” would allow the Pentagon to, say, order the New York Times and CNN to cease reporting civilian deaths in Afghanistan.
The actual Citizens United case, as distinct from the later caricature, was over whether the government had a constitutional right to punish private actors for distributing a video critical of a prominent politician (Hillary Clinton) before an election, which helps explain why the ACLU and many other civil libertarians took the pro-free-speech side. More: Caleb Brown at Cato.