John Steele takes a look at this interestingly pejorative phrase, which President Obama used in criticizing BP over its spill response. [Legal Ethics Forum]
Posts Tagged ‘Barack Obama’
Whatever happened to Cass Sunstein?
Some were expecting the prominent law professor to make more of a public splash as the Obama administration’s regulatory czar. Tim Mak at FrumForum looks into why that hasn’t happened, and one of the observers whose opinions he quotes is me.
“Birther-In-Chief Orly Taitz Loses Again”
“Among other things, Taitz has had trouble proving that she has standing to pursue these cases, mainly because she doesn’t.” [Lowering the Bar]
The fabulous diversity of Obama’s SCOTUS shortlist
Orin Kerr explains.
Schools for Misrule — and a bleg on law school clinics
If blogging has been lighter than usual, one reason is that I’ve been racing forward on my new book on law schools and their influence, tentatively entitled Schools for Misrule: Legal Academia and an Overlawyered America, which is in the catalogue for Winter/Spring (a year hence) from Encounter Books. I reached first draft in December and am rapidly whipping that rough copy into something closer to final shape.
My original nickname for the book was Ten Bad Ideas from the Law Schools — and How They Changed The World. We decided to go with something a little more dignified, but the book still tries to answer the underlying question of why so many bad ideas — and certain kinds of bad ideas, especially — keep emerging from the law schools. Along the way it looks at some sociological and political angles, such as why modern liberal-left leadership so often is formed in the elite law school milieu (Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, etc.) Then it takes up a series of issues — from institutional reform litigation and school finance to slavery reparations and international law — in which legal academia has led campaigns to challenge and redefine the nature of government sovereignty, with consequences that have been usually unforeseen and sometimes calamitous.
I’ll be blogging more on all those points over the coming year, but in the mean time I’ve got a request (“bleg” = blog request, or begging post) for this site’s well-informed readers. One of my chapters takes up the now-ubiquitous phenomenon of law school clinics in which students represent outside clients, sometimes in “cause” litigation and sometimes not. I trace the origins of this movement (a big philanthropic push from the Ford Foundation made the difference), the resistance it met from law-school traditionalists and its eventual triumph, as well as some of its present-day manifestations, which are not always those foreseen by the circa-1970 visionaries who started the programs. The chapter is pretty good as is, I think, but I’d like to add a little more illustrative detail about the clinics, especially vignettes from the early years shedding light on what it was expected they would accomplish in changing society (a subject that isn’t as well documented on the web as I’d like). Responses can be made in comments or by email to editor – at – overlawyered – dot – com. (And, yes, I’ve already read Heather Mac Donald’s interesting City Journal critique and some of the responses it provoked.) (& welcome Instapundit readers. Numerous good emails from readers already).
“We need a Commander in Chief, not a professor of law standing at the lectern.”
Law professor Ann Althouse reacts to a Sarah Palin-ism.
February 3 roundup
- Many of our readers liked the ruling, but someone didn’t: “Judge censured for ordering class-action lawyer to take pay in $125,000 worth of gift-cards” [BoingBoing, ABA Journal, Leonard/L.A. Times, Lowering the Bar]
- “NFL Concedes In Who Dat Battle” [Lowering the Bar, more, earlier; here’s a protest t-shirt, and more on those]
- Some plaintiff’s lawyers give their side of the story, disputing fraud allegations in Dole banana-worker pesticide cases [Bronstad, NLJ, earlier]
- “Google Blog Bundle — 42 criminal defense blogs” [Mark Bennett] And while you’re at it, why not take a moment right now to put Overlawyered in your RSS blog reader?
- Massachusetts hardball: state lawmaker says private law schools might be breaking antitrust laws in working to oppose state school proposed in his district [ABA Journal via Above the Law; public law school plan OK’d]
- Making the rounds: why medieval trial by ordeal may not have been so crazy after all [Peter Leeson, Boston Globe and full paper (PDF) via Volokh]
- “Rothstein E-Mails Reveal Role of Former Plaintiffs’ Lawyer” [Brian Baxter, AmLaw Litigation Daily]
- Obama: I tried to reach across aisle on medical liability reform but GOP wasn’t nibbling. Fact check please [Wood, PoL]
Our growing government
Notwithstanding Barack Obama’s claim of a spending freeze on discretionary spending, Roger Clegg finds that the Obama Justice Department’s proposed budget calls for 22 new attorneys to bring “disparate-impact” cases—presumably the ones too weak to find a trial lawyer willing to take it on. And we can be quite confident that there won’t be any disparate impact against Federalist Society members when they do that hiring, right?
State of the Union: Lip-reading Justice Alito
In his State of the Union message, President Obama claimed the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Citizens United would “open the floodgates” for foreign companies to “spend without limit in our elections.” Justice Samuel Alito could be seen mouthing words and in particular, per Gerard Magliocca, the phrase “That’s not true”. For why he might have reacted that way, see Politifact “Truth-o-Meter”.
More from Randy Barnett at Politico:
In the history of the State of the Union has any President ever called out the Supreme Court by name, and egged on the Congress to jeer a Supreme Court decision, while the Justices were seated politely before him surrounded by hundreds Congressmen? To call upon the Congress to countermand (somehow) by statute a constitutional decision, indeed a decision applying the First Amendment? What can this possibly accomplish besides alienating Justice Kennedy who wrote the opinion being attacked. Contrary to what we heard during the last administration, the Court may certainly be the object of presidential criticism without posing any threat to its independence. But this was a truly shocking lack of decorum and disrespect towards the Supreme Court for which an apology is in order. A new tone indeed.
The President also made an erroneous reference to “reversing a century of law”, which Linda Greenhouse corrects at the New York Times “Opinionator” blog.
And: Tony Mauro/NLJ, Ann Althouse. Althouse also notes that there’s a lesson for Citizen United critics in the ways Alito’s few seconds of silent protest upstaged the President: “It’s not how much or how loud you speak that counts, is it?” And Howard Wasserman at Prawfsblawg rounds up reactions on both sides from the perspective of a “somewhat-rare Democrat and Obama supporter who believes Citizens United was correctly decided.” And did the speech as delivered tone down rhetoric about Citizens United that had been distributed in printed versions?
Anti-reform incentives in House health bill
Jennifer Rubin at Commentary has the scoop on how the bill’s language will reward states financially if they do not “limit attorneys’ fees or impose caps on damages”. P.S. And see Ted’s fuller treatment above.