- Do lawyers find ways to litigate over the effects of the leap day, Feb. 29, that is inserted into the calendar every four years? Glad you asked [Kyle White, Abnormal Use]
- Weren’t regulations supposed to have fixed this, or is it that accommodation rules for air transport are legally separate from those for ordinary commerce? “More flights seeing odd animals as emotional support companions” [WHIO]
- Tiny desk and art magnets: Zen Magnets wins partial but important legal victory against Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) [Zen Magnets, Nancy Nord, earlier]
- Federal government, which has passed no law on private-sector LGBT bias, considers withholding funds to punish North Carolina for declining to have one [New York Times; earlier on Obama EEOC’s wishful effort to generate such coverage through reinterpretation of other law]
- Spirit of trade barriers: Nevada workers walk off job to protest use of workers from other U.S. states [Alex Tabarrok] Expansion of foreign trade “has revealed, not created, problems in the American economy” [Scott Lincicome] More: “Limiting trade with low-wage countries as severely as Sanders wants to would hurt the very poorest people on Earth. A lot.” [Zack Beauchamp, Vox; related Jordan Weissmann, Slate (what Sanders told NYDN “should be absolutely chilling to the developing world… inhumane”)]
- Latest ICWA (Indian Child Welfare Act) cause célèbre is over 6-year-old Lexi, whose world is getting upended because of her 1.5% Choctaw descent (a great-great-great-great grandparent on her father’s side) [Christina Sandefur/Federalist Society blog, Naomi Schaefer Riley, New York Post earlier generally on ICWA and in my writing at Reason and Cato on the Adoptive Couple case]
Search Results for ‘sandefur’
A life of American freedom, taken
My friend Tim Sandefur, whose work will be familiar to many readers here, lost his brother in the Islamist terrorist attack in San Bernardino. He wrote this tribute and reflection. An excerpt:
Those of us who also serve by only standing and waiting must respond in just the way that our enemy most despises: by living our lives exactly as we would have done. That means cherishing our freedom; celebrating our secular, free institutions; relishing the pleasures of life as physical beings; respecting the special spark in each individual person — here, in this world, during this life. Our values triumph each time we exercise them. Danny and I watched the attacks of September 11, 2001, together on the TV in our living room. I can say with certainty that—to the extent that so kind a man was capable of understanding such evil — he believed in defying the barbarian by living just as we choose: freely, tolerantly, skeptically, joyfully, laughingly, humanly. After the (most recent) Paris attack, Danny enjoyed watching over and over again this well-known video by Andrew Neil. It expresses very well what he believed, and what our family believes.
I urge reading the whole thing.
Supreme Court and constitutional law roundup
- Supreme Court has blocked for now “an election with racial qualifications that could eventually establish a new government for so-called ‘native Hawaiians.'” [Ilya Shapiro/Cato, earlier on Hawaiian tribalization here, here, etc.]
- Some scholars seem a bit evasive about historic British use of gun control to disarm minority religionists [David Kopel]
- Occupational licensure and Connecticut teeth-whitening case: does mere protection of incumbents against competition count as “rational basis” for government action? [Timothy Sandefur, Cato]
- Class actions: some predict Court not likely to do much more than tinker [Alison Frankel, Paul Karlsgodt]
- Update: “California woman who bought Eurail pass in US can’t sue here for Austrian accident, SCOTUS says” [ABA Journal, earlier]
- Supreme Court should defend interstate commerce against extraterritorial Colorado law providing that electric power entering state must have been generated in certain ways [Ilya Shapiro and Randal John Meyer]
- “Old, cryptic, or vague” 14th Amendment: Judge Posner can’t have his Constitution and eat it too, thinks Josh Blackman.
Cato’s Constitution Day Sept. 17
Sasha Volokh reminds us to mark our calendars:
Cato’s 14th Annual Constitution Day event will be two weeks from now: Thursday, September 17, at Cato’s offices in Washington, D.C. Here’s a link to the site, so you can register. I’ll be on the 2:15-3:30 panel on “Bizarre State Action”, talking about the Amtrak case that I’ve been involved with — see here for links to my previous blogging on the subject. Tim Sandefur and Adam White will be on that panel with me.
Co-bloggers Jonathan Adler and John Elwood will also be on different panels, as will Walter Olson, Bill Eskridge, and others. Steven Calabresi will give the evening lecture on “Liberty and Originalism in Constitutional Law”.
Too much occupational licensure
[New Jersey’s] licensed sector now covers about 20 percent of the workforce. Jobs as diverse — and sometimes as seemingly mundane — as barbers, movers and warehousemen, librarians, and career counselors can’t be done legally without getting state approval in New Jersey, usually by paying a fee, submitting personal information, and taking training or educational courses.
Nationwide, the share of jobs requiring licenses is even higher: 25 percent, up from around 5 percent in the 1950s. With economist Milton Friedman in the lead, libertarians have long criticized occupational licensure for restricting competition, limiting consumer choice, raising prices, and curtailing the opportunities of excluded workers, including many poorer persons and new workforce entrants. But more recently discontent with occupational licensure has spread broadly across the ideological spectrum, as with a Brookings study we linked in February. And now the Obama administration — citing Cato! — lends its weight with a new critique. [David Boaz/Cato, Tim Sandefur/Pacific Legal, Glenn Reynolds/USA Today, Stephen Slivinski/No Water Economists]
More: the city of Austin’s new ban on unlicensed household hauling will hurt informal laborers without helping homeowners [Chuck DeVore]
Save the date, Sept. 17: Cato’s Constitution Day
Mark your calendar for Sept. 17 when Cato will be holding its 14th annual Constitution Day reviewing the past Supreme Court term and looking forward to the next. I’ll be on a 1 p.m. panel on civil rights with William Eskridge (Yale) and Roger Clegg (Center for Equal Opportunity), moderated by Roger Pilon, where I’ll be talking about religious accommodation in the workplace; other sessions will include such well-known figures as Ilya Shapiro, Trevor Burrus, and Michael Cannon of Cato, Jonathan Adler of Case Western, Timothy Sandefur of PLF, and Damon Root of Reason. The annual B. Kenneth Simon Lecture will be given by Prof. Steven Calabresi of Northwestern.
Register at the link to attend in Washington, D.C., or plan to watch online.
The marriage decision
In this half-hour Cato podcast, Caleb Brown interviews Roger Pilon and me on yesterday’s decision in Obergefell finding that states are constitutionally obliged to extend marriage to same-sex couples. I touch on some topics of wider interest (no, I don’t think polygamy is next; the Justices write and behave differently when it’s a really big case; the law’s treatment of churches mustn’t depend on whether their theology suits the government’s taste or not). And lots of more specialized points, such as Roberts’ weird demonization of the famed Lochner case in his dissent (“gay marriage and laissez-faire capitalism, peas in a pod!”), what I call Kennedy’s “gin and tonic” method of mixing Due Process with Equal Protection, and a remarkable story by Roger of getting Scalia to admit he doesn’t think the Court was correct when it recognized a constitutional right to send one’s kids to private and religious schools.
P.S. And here’s a video version of the same conversation:
The Jason Kuznicki paper I mention — on how legal practicalities undercut the idea of the government “getting out of marriage” in the sense of not attempting to certify who is married and who not — is here.
More links: Ilya Shapiro reacts at Cato (which had filed an amicus brief on the winning side urging an Equal Protection rationale, written by William Eskridge Jr. of Yale Law, Roger Pilon, Ilya Shapiro, and Trevor Burrus). David Bernstein has a lot to say about the continuity between Obergefell and the pro-individual-rights tradition of jurisprudence overthrown by the New Deal. Among those who approve of the outcome but would send the whole thing back for editing are Timothy Sandefur and Ilya Somin. Evan Bernick (writing before the decision) on the need for strong religious liberty protection. And David Boaz on how libertarians were there long, long before most others caught up. “The Libertarian Party endorsed gay rights with its first platform in 1972.” That’s not a misprint: 1972.
If they choose our dues, low pay’s OK
“Labor leaders, who were among the strongest supporters of the citywide [$15 and indexing] minimum wage increase approved last week by the Los Angeles City Council, are advocating last-minute changes to the law that could create an exemption for companies with unionized workforces.” [Los Angeles Times] What’s more, these union “escape” clauses keep coming up in minimum wage statutes, as the U.S. Chamber has documented in a lengthy report. It’s almost as if these campaigns are run for unions’ benefit rather than that of their ostensible beneficiaries!
Related: Tim Sandefur, 2011, on a Los Angeles ordinance
that forces businesses that buy grocery stores to retain certain employees on their payroll for three months, even though they don’t want to. There’s an exception in the law for companies that have a collective bargaining agreement with a union. Thus the ordinance is little more than a tax on non-union employers — a restriction that exists for no other reason than to make it more expensive to operate a non-union grocery store.
May 6 roundup
- Investigate the federal judge’s wife? Pretty much the sort of stunt you’d expect from Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio [Arizona Republic, Phoenix New Times, ABA Journal, Coyote, our coverage of Arpaio over the years]
- “State ‘Competitor Veto’ Laws and the Right to Earn a Living” [Tim Sandefur, Mercatus]
- Mississippi lawyer Dickie Scruggs gives first post-prison interview [Jackson Clarion-Ledger]
- New book by Judge and former Senator James Buckley makes case for eliminating federal grants to states [George Leef, Jonathan Adler; podcast interview, Liberty and Law]
- Neo-prohibitionists having conniptions over prospect of beer/Ben-&-Jerry’s combo [Baylen Linnekin]
- Priceless comment thread on value-of-law-school debate with Orin Kerr trying to talk patient off ledge [PrawfsBlawg]
- Big D.C. plaintiff’s injury firm can’t collect on insurance after not disclosing potential claim [Judy Greenwald, Business Insurance]
Impeaching opposing counsel by citing blog posts
It didn’t work in the case recounted here, but it’s something lawyer-bloggers must worry about [Jim Dedman, Abnormal Use] (& Timothy Sandefur with stories from his own practice)