C-SPAN2’s popular “BookTV” has had my Schools for Misrule presentation in rotation in recent weeks and will be airing it again Saturday night/Sunday morning, specifically 1:30 a.m. Sunday Eastern Time. (Although their blurb erroneously identifies me as being with the Manhattan Institute, I’ve been with Cato for more than a year now.) You can buy the book here.
Author Archive
Turning down the school lunch
My new post at Cato at Liberty explains how raw green onion came to be served as the “snack” in a Washington, D.C. public school, and why one smart suburban district decided to pull out of the federal school lunch program entirely.
May 27 roundup
- Prospects dicey at best for CPSIA reform as Waxman, Dems toe consumer-group line [Woldenberg, more, Nord, Northup] If AAP is going to posit 49,000 poisonings from lead in recalled jewelry, shouldn’t it try to document a couple of them? [Woldenberg] Credit at least to House Commerce Committee majority for trying to tackle mess with this law [Mangu-Ward, ShopFloor, AtC]
- “Lawsuit claims Jay-Z’s ‘Big Pimpin’ violates Egyptian ‘moral rights'” [DBR]
- My Cato Institute colleague Gene Healy reviews new Eric Posner/Adrian Vermeule book on executive power [AmCon]
- Subpoena filed by class-action lawyer Stephen Tillery demands contributor list of Chicago-based think tank critical of litigation [Madison County Record] Judge quashes subpoena as chilling of First Amendment liberties [same]
- Suits filed by its own officers, often those accused of misconduct, have cost LAPD $18 million since 2005 [L.A. Times via Dave Krueger, Agitator]
- “Do Menthol Cigarettes Taste Too Good to Be Legal?” [Sullum, earlier]
- “Motion Claims Buxom Woman with Opposing Counsel Is Intended as Jury Distraction” [ABA Journal] More: Ken at Popehat, Lowering The Bar, Above the Law.
“Three Cups of Tea” furor
It might eventuate in another deeply flawed book-reader class action, predicts Andrew Trask (earlier on James Frey “Million Little Pieces” suits).
Feds seek $90,000 fine for illegal bunny-selling
They say John Dollarhite of Nixa, Missouri “sold rabbits and guinea pigs without a license from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.” Dollarhite says he can’t afford the fine and says the business was started by his son, then a child; it “made about $200 in profit from April 2008 to December 2009 from selling rabbits for $10 or $12 apiece.” [Springfield News-Leader]
Blogger forced off school committee after teacher’s union threatens suit
Massachusetts: “Robert C. Cirba, a member of the Spencer-East Brookfield Regional School Committee and former candidate for state representative, has resigned from the committee after the state Department of Labor Relations found that comments he made on his blog interfered with teacher negotiations.” Cirba had written disrespectfully on his blog about the Spencer-East Brookfield Teachers Association and says the teacher’s union had threatened to sue him personally as well as pursue a legal complaint against the board over the writings. [Worcester Telegram]
California prison crowding injunction, cont’d
More reactions to the Supreme Court’s 5-4 Brown v. Plata decision (earlier) from Scott Greenfield, Heather Mac Donald, and Eli Lehrer. Steven Greenhut explains how compensation for California prison guards came to take priority over facilities improvement; unionized prison employees’ role in lobbying for more draconian incarceration laws has also occasioned much outrage, from, among others, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote this week’s opinion. And (h/t Tyler Cowen) here is a 1995 paper by economist Steven Levitt finding (using numbers from that era) that “For each one-prisoner reduction induced by prison overcrowding litigation, the total number of crimes committed increases by approximately 15 per year. The social benefit from eliminating those 15 crimes is approximately $45,000; the annual per prisoner costs of incarceration are roughly $30,000.”
Overlitigation as sci-fi theme
“Nanolaw with Daughter” is a short science fiction story by Paul Ford about birth, “speculative law firms” and bulk litigation [Ftrain via BoingBoing]
Law schools roundup
- Refuting a law review’s vaccine-autism claims [Orac, Respectful Insolence, more, Fair Warning]
- Should sue-the-cops fliers have used Suffolk U. law school logo? [Boston Herald via Wood, Chronicle]
- “There’s a saying that ‘the law you learned in law school is the law'” [Bill Araiza, Prawfs]
- Annals of legal scholarship: law review article on “planetarian identity formation” [SSRN] Larry Ribstein on the trouble with law reviews [TotM, earlier]
- Enough with the “balance” talk, says organizer of Hastings Law conference on Palestine rights [SFGate]
- “The entire law school industry … a significant profit center for universities — is a giant bubble” [The New Republic] “Mind-boggling” tuition increases hard to explain other than as product of market distortions [Hans Bader]
- Liberty Law exam question on notorious kidnapping case raises eyebrows [Sarah Posner, Religion Dispatches; background]
- “It’s Deja Vu for Louisiana Economy as Law School Clinic, Activists Challenge Air Permit” [WLF]
Behind a Yale fraternity’s suspension
Federal regulators and private complainants step up pressure for tougher university disciplinary action against offensive males — and speech-related offenses will be very much under scrutiny. [Greg Lukianoff/Daily Caller, Harvey Silverglate and Kyle Smeallie/Minding the Campus, Caroline May/Daily Caller]
More: The Yale Alumni Magazine notes that DKE (Delta Kappa Epsilon) brought the University “bad publicity.” And Dave Zincavage has been blogging critically about the affair. Further: Scott Greenfield.