Do something nice for your neighbors this Christmas and refrain from taking them to court. An attorney who resides in Hayden, Idaho, has gotten into “a miserable four-year war with his neighborhood” over holiday displays at his house [Daniel Walters, Inlander]
A traveling Chinese executive is arrested
Urged by the U.S., Canada recently arrested Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou. “Meng was traveling in Canada, switching planes using a Chinese passport, when she was taken into custody.” For Tyler Cowen, the “procedural normality of the arrest is precisely what scares me. There are so many international laws, and so many are complex or poorly defined, and there are a couple hundred countries in the world. Arguably most multinational corporations are breaking some law in some manner or another, and thus their senior executives are liable to arrest. If I were a top U.S. tech company executive, I would be reluctant to travel to China right now, for fear of retaliation.” [Bloomberg] See also the FIFA (soccer) controversy, 2015, and related: our series of 2006 posts about the arrest of traveling British executives on charges of remotely violating U.S. online gambling laws.
For more on the scope of white-collar crime laws, see my chapter on white-collar prosecution in last year’s Cato Handbook for Policymakers 8th Edition.
Property law roundup
- Playlist: songs about eminent domain and takings, property law and the road [Robert H. Thomas, Inverse Condemnation]
- In-depth look into problems that develop when title to land is held as “heirs’ property,” leaving a dangerous collective tangle in place of individual right and duty [David Slade and Angie Jackson, Post and Courier (Charleston, S.C.)]
- Dispute over remains of two dinosaurs locked in combat 66 million years ago, lately unearthed in Garfield County, Mont. and extremely valuable, hinges on whether their fossils are “minerals”; Ninth Circuit says they are under Montana law [AP via Molly Brady (“property professor dream hypo”), Murray v. BEJ Minerals]
- “Government Should Compensate Property Owners for Flood Damage It Facilitated” [Ilya Shapiro and Patrick Moran on Cato amicus petition for certiorari in St. Bernard Parish v. United States] “Texas Court Rules Deliberate Flooding of Private Property by State Government in Wake of Hurricane Harvey can be a Taking” [Ilya Somin]
- Constituent-group politics continues to shape use of federal lands, to the detriment of its economic value [Gary Libecap, Regulation and related working paper]
- Caution, satire: Facebook parody of super-intrusive, restrictive, and meddlesome HOA [East Mountain West View Home Owners Association]
Judge: First Amendment protects recording cops and officials performing public duties
“A federal court judge Monday ruled a Massachusetts General Law prohibiting the secret audio recording of police or government officials is unconstitutional. …In the 44-page decision [Judge Patti] Saris declared that ‘secret audio recording of government officials, including law enforcement officials, performing their duties in public is protected by the First Amendment, subject only to reasonable time, place and manner restrictions.'” [Noah Bombard, MassLive]
Feds to back off school discipline regs
The U.S. Department of Education under Betsy DeVos plans to back off Obama-era guidance on disparate racial impact in K-12 school discipline; the regs have been a frequent target of scrutiny in this space. [Laura Meckler, Washington Post/Taunton Gazette] More: Hans Bader.
December 12 roundup
- “Scott Gottlieb’s FDA Is Moving Toward a Stealth Ban on Cigarettes and Cigars” [Jacob Grier, Reason]
- Supreme Court should take Melissa and Aaron Klein cake-refusal case from Oregon and resolve the issues of free expression it dodged in Masterpiece [Ilya Shapiro and Patrick Moran, ABA Journal, earlier on Melissa and Aaron Klein cake-refusal case including oppressive $135,000 fine levied by Oregon BOLI (Bureau of Labor and Industries)]
- “Administrative Law Is Bunk. We Need a Bundesverwaltungsgericht” [Michael Greve, responses from Mike Rappaport, Philip Wallach, and Ilan Wurman, and rejoinder from Greve]
- New York’s family court system is failing children and their families [Naomi Riley/City Journal, thanks for quote]
- “The Emmys People Are Opposing A Pet Products Company Named After A Dog Named ‘Emmy'” [Tim Geigner, TechDirt]
- Metaphor alert: “Lawmaker Injured by Flying Constitution” [Kevin Underhill, Lowering the Bar, and funny throughout]
Australian legal ethics (and police) scandal
In more than 300 cases, a defense attorney in the Australian state of Victoria acted as a police informant to undermine her clients’ interests [Chris Vedelago, Cameron Houston & Tammy Mills/Sydney Morning Herald, Houston, Mills & Vedelago/Melbourne Age followup, Rohan Smith/news.com.au on Informer 3838 affair]
California: “Lawyer, wife convicted in extortion plot against businesses”
“A California attorney and his wife were convicted of engaging in a scheme to extort minority, immigrant-owned businesses.” [Associated Press] “[Rogelio] Morales and [Mireya] Arias engaged in a scheme in 2016 to file ‘meritless gender discrimination lawsuits to pressure minority business owners into giving them thousands of dollars in alleged “settlements,”‘ a prosecution trial brief said. Prosecutors said Morales and Arias would obtain services from the small businesses they targeted — salons or dry cleaners — and if they were charged differently for the same service, they would file a lawsuit claiming a violation of a California anti-discrimination law, prosecutors said.” [Richard K. De Atley, Press-Enterprise (Riverside, Calif.)]
Free speech roundup
- Fourth Circuit rejects gag order on parties and potential witnesses in North Carolina hog farm litigation [Eugene Volokh]
- Eighth Circuit, interpreting Missouri law’s obligation to register as “lobbyist,” leaves open possibility that requirement extends to unpaid lobbyists, also known as concerned citizens [Jason Hancock, Kansas City Star; Institute for Free Speech on Calzone v. Missouri Ethics Commission]
- “9 Months in Prison for Forging Court Orders Aimed at Vanishing Online Material” [Volokh] Per one account at least 75 fake court documents have been sent to Google as part of takedown efforts, including an order purporting to come from the UK Supreme Court [same]
- The accused pipe bomber had made online death threats against Ilya Somin, libertarian lawprof and friend of this site. Lessons to draw? [Cato Daily Podcast, more]
- Entanglement of press and state leads nowhere good: Canadian government to allocate C$600 million in subsidies to newspapers and legacy media [Stuart Thomson, National Post; earlier on press subsidies here, here; some Canadian background from 1983]
- Court: First Amendment doesn’t protect Comcast from bias charge over its decision not to carry block of black-owned TV channels [Jon Brodkin, ArsTechnica]
New York: maybe gun insurance is okay after all
As our friend R.J. Lehmann observed the other day: “New York now wants to require people to hold a kind of insurance that it sanctioned the NRA and an insurance broker earlier this year for selling at all.” I explain in my new Cato post.