Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

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The U.N. vs. freedom of religion

While the campaign to ban “defamation of religion” appears to have lost some steam at the world body recently, continued efforts to curtail “religious hate speech” could restrict free expression in some of the same ways. [Nina Shea, NRO “Corner”; Ilya Somin, Volokh] Warns Nina Shea:

In 2009, the Obama administration had the U.S. co-sponsor with Egypt, which represented the OIC [Organization of the Islamic Conference], a non-binding hate-speech resolution in the Human Rights Council. In contrast to U.S. constitutional law, that resolution urges states to take and to effectively implement “all necessary measures” to combat any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility, or violence. It thus encourages the worldwide criminalization of religious hate speech.

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“Has the ADA swallowed the FMLA for employee medical leaves?”

Under the banner of combating discrimination against the disabled, Congress and the EEOC may together have quietly instituted a fairly momentous extension of the regime of federally mandated workplace benefits — in particular, imposing on even very small employers a new obligation to hold the jobs of employees taking some kinds of leave. [Hyman]

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Bigger — and more entrenched — hedge funds

That could be the result of the new institution of elaborate compliance system mandates that could prove to be beyond the capacity of fledgling start-ups, per Marc Hodak:

So, the government decided it had to increase regulations [on] the one part of the financial services sector -– hedge funds –- that had nothing to do with the financial crisis. And because the government felt compelled to spend gobs of taxpayer cash to bail out financial institution[s] that were too big to fail, Congress created a raft of regulations whose main effect will be to crush entrepreneurship and compel waves of consolidation. And the people who pushed for this regulation, who inadvertently insisted that the fixed costs of doing business in America are not yet high enough, will be shocked to find that only the big survive.

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April 19 roundup

  • Environmental milestone? “Bolivia is set to pass the world’s first laws granting all nature equal rights to humans.” [JoNova via Coyote]
  • Add another to the list of judges who file suits over critical discussion of their rulings, in this case by the losing party, a newspaper [ABA Journal]
  • “Obama on presidential signing statements then … and now” [Bainbridge, Outside the Beltway]
  • “The never-ending stream of futile petitions suggests that habeas corpus is a wasteful nuisance.” [Joseph Hoffmann and Nancy King, NYT, via Lat, Frank] A different view: Scott Greenfield, The Briefcase.
  • Global warming suits “a misuse of the judiciary branch” [Laurence Tribe, Boston Globe via WLF]
  • Competing for the HuffPo reader? On link between chemical exposures and cancer, Salon.com perpetrates “utter nonsense” [Orac, Respectful Insolence]
  • Iqbal/Twombly: “Reports of pleading’s demise may have been exaggerated” [Wasserman, Prawfs]

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San Francisco panel: places of public assembly should have to photograph patrons

“The Electronic Frontier Foundation joined civil liberties and privacy groups in criticizing a proposal from the San Francisco Entertainment Commission that would require all venues with an occupancy of over 100 people to record the faces of all patrons and employees and scan their ID’s for storage in a database which they must hand over to law enforcement on request. … Events with strong cultural, ideological, and political components are frequently held at venues that would be affected by these rules.” [EFF]

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