Posts Tagged ‘Wisconsin’

April 28 roundup

  • “The makers of smokeless tobacco products like to claim that their products are safer than cigarettes.” Hey, New York Times, that’s ’cause it’s true! [Jacob Sullum]
  • New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman pursues high-profile case against Standard & Poor’s, accepts $50K contribution from CEO of another credit rating firm [Richard Pollock/Daily Caller, some background]
  • Megan McArdle on child support and the difficulty of replacing social norms with law [Bloomberg View, my recent Cato post and podcast]
  • “Wisconsin Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson should drop her lawsuit” [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial, earlier; AP (federal judge declines to block law’s implementation while suit is pending)]
  • CVS opposes certification of securities class action, saying government pension managers filing it were influenced by political donations from plaintiff’s law firm [Law360, reg]
  • “Has Conley v. Gibson really been overruled? (And did the Fourth Circuit just tee up the next big SCOTUS case on pleading?)” [Adam Steinman, Civil Procedure Blog, arguing from premises different from mine, on Fourth Circuit’s decision in McCleary-Evans v. Maryland Department of Transportation]
  • The Maryland knife law angle in the Freddie Gray story [Patrik Jonsson, Christian Science Monitor; my post at Free State Notes]

April 22 roundup

Free speech roundup

  • UK wrongful-speech laws sold to public “with mawkish appeals to the protection of the weak” but typically used by strong, rich and well connected [Charles C.W. Cooke on Galloway episode]
  • “Danish terrorist attack survivor: ‘It’s a fight that we can’t ignore'” [Lena Masri, Poynter]
  • “It gives me no comfort to have my constitutional rights trampled in a bipartisan fashion.” [Eric O’Keefe, quoted in M.D. Kittle, Wisconsin Watchdog profile of John Doe target Kelly Rindfleisch via @andrewmgrossman]
  • “I speak here of the rule of law, not the rule of feels.” [Ken at Popehat on BlockBot listings as non-defamation]
  • Rolling back SCOTUS’s First Amendment-based jurisprudence: “Hillary Clinton says she would support a constitutional amendment on campaign finance reform” [Washington Post]
  • “Court Rules San Diego’s Law Prof’s Blog Post Was Not Defamatory” [TaxProf]
  • “Another Day, Another Dumb New York Times Story on Corporations and Free Speech” [Damon Root, Reason, vs. Times columnist Timothy Egan]
  • Sounds promising: Robert Corn-Revere has a book in the works on free speech [Ronald K.L. Collins, Concurring Opinions]

Wisconsin: “This is what democracy looks like”

“After Wisconsinites vote to amend the state constitution to change how the state supreme court’s chief justice is selected, Shirley Abrahamson sues in federal court to keep her position under the old provision.” Abrahamson’s ten-year term as judge will continue in either case, but under the change just approved by Wisconsin voters, the position of chief judge will no longer be assigned by seniority. [Ann Althouse, whence also the “what democracy looks like” line; & welcome Instapundit readers] More: Rick Esenberg.

Supreme Court roundup

Very Cato-centric this time:

  • Perez v. Mortgage Bankers: yes, agencies can dodge notice and comment requirements of Administrative Procedures Act by couching action as other than making new rule [SCOTUSBlog and more links, earlier; Michael Greve and followup; Daniel Fisher on concurrence by Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito and related on Thomas, Alito concurrences in Amtrak case]
  • New Jersey high court is unreasonably hostile to arbitration clauses, which raises issues worthy of review [Shapiro on Cato cert petition]
  • “When Wisconsin Officials Badger Their Political Opponents, It’s a Federal Case” [Ilya Shapiro, earlier here, here, etc.]
  • Richard Epstein on King v. Burwell oral argument [Hoover, earlier]
  • With Profs. Bill Eskridge and Steve Calabresi, Cato files probably its last same-sex marriage brief before SCOTUS [Shapiro; Timothy Kincaid, Box Turtle Bulletin]
  • On Abercrombie (religious headscarf) case, Jon Hyman sees an edge for plaintiff at supposedly pro-business Court [Ohio Employer Law Blog, earlier]
  • A different view on Fourth Amendment challenge to cops’ warrantless access to hotel guest registries [James Copland on Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz brief; earlier Cato amicus]
  • “Why the Court Should Strike Down the Armed Career Criminal Act as Unconstitutionally Vague” [Trevor Burrus]

In trouble, can’t drive

Nowadays driver’s license suspensions are passed out almost as freely as tickets themselves once were, yet they can often be economically and personally devastating to their targets [NPR via Brian Doherty]:

If you get caught drinking and driving in Wisconsin, and it’s your first offense, you lose your license for nine months. For a hit-and-run, the punishment is suspension for one year.

But if you don’t pay a ticket for a minor driving offense, such as driving with a broken tail light, you can lose your license for two years. …

The most common way that people lose their driver’s license in Wisconsin is not for drunken driving or other unsafe driving. It’s for failure to pay the fine on a ticket for a nonmoving traffic offense. Those make up 56 percent of all license suspensions in the state, according to statistics from the Wisconsin Department of Transportation.

Many of the jobs that enable indigent persons to climb out of poverty call for use of a car, as with cleaning jobs, which typically require driving to the homes or offices being cleaned. Many other jobs are not near bus or mass transit lines, while in other cases the job seeker does not live near such a line. Absent an income from work, there is less hope of paying off the debt to the state. So even if one adopts the cynical view that Wisconsin makes the penalty higher for missing a ticket payment than for a hit-and-run because it is obsessed with maximizing its revenues, it’s not necessarily doing that efficiently either.

More on petty fines and fees here.

Schools roundup

  • National Education Association has spent estimated $35 million on politics this year [Jason Hart, Watchdog]
  • Not everyone in academia admires the federal law entitling tenured professors to stay on “until they’re carried out of the classroom on a gurney” [Laurie Fendrich, Chronicle of Higher Ed; my earlier]
  • Montgomery County, Md.: “The School Religious Holidays Problem is Really a Public Schooling Problem” [Neal McCluskey]
  • “Concussion Lawsuits Hit High School Level” [AP; Cook County, Ill.]
  • Reminder: much-quoted “one in five college women is raped” statistic is not real [Christina Sommers, Time; the Washington Post’s contribution (not to forget this); and a very important new piece by Emily Yoffe in Slate]
  • Ousting bad cops, ousting bad teachers: parallel obstacles [RiShawn Biddle, Dropout Nation]
  • George Leef on federal pressures behind Minneapolis school-discipline initiative [Forbes, earlier here and here]
  • DoJ “feigning concern about access for disabled children” in suit challenging Wisconsin school choice [George Will]

Politics roundup