The New York Times editorial page continues to dismiss criticism of the testing burdens of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 on small manufacturers and retailers as “part of a standard antiregulation litany.” But on October 30, 2009 the paper itself ran a sadly belated but otherwise decently executed article 
by reporter Leslie Wayne from which a fair-minded reader would conclude that the small makers’ complaints about the law are only too well-grounded (”Burden of Safety Law Imperils Small Toymakers.”)
If one were to take a charitable view, one might commend the Times editorialists for at last deigning to concede that the law might usefully be “tweaked,” at least within a very narrow latitude. They finally acknowledge that there “might be a way to exempt products from testing if they very clearly do not pose a lead-related hazard,” without acknowledging that the great majority of products swept under the law’s coverage fall into exactly such a category. But they continue to insist that even older kids be denied access to products that could not pass 
CPSIA’s lead testing, including whole categories of products like kids’ bicycles and ballpoint pens whose designs still cannot dispense with the (entirely harmless) use of brass and suchlike alloys. Only the repeated staying or postponed enforcement of many of the law’s requirements has spared the country a long list of similar absurdities — while the legal absurdities that the CPSC has not stayed or postponed have already wiped out makers and vendors of harmless products from coast to coast.
Even under the best of circumstances, the Times’s editorialists would find it hard to live down their cruel, ideologically blinkered track record on the CPSIA issue. But couldn’t they at least pretend to be following the coverage in their own paper? More: Handmade Toy Alliance. And Rick Woldenberg offers a critique of the the Times’s new, and anything but improved, news-side reporting.
Tagged as:
CPSIA,
New York Times
A reader of Schools for Misrule points out that the book’s endnotes (at p. 240) do not include a source for one of its statements (at p. 14 of the text) about law faculty political disparities. (”Democrats at last count outnumbered Republicans 28 to 1 on the Stanford faculty, 23 to 1 at Columbia….”) The omission was inadvertent; the numbers come from a study by David Horowitz and Joseph Light entitled “Representation of Political Perspectives in Law and Journalism Faculties” whose findings are summarized, among other places, in this Oct. 13, 2005 post at Paul Caron’s TaxProf. Sorry!
Tagged as:
law schools,
Schools for Misrule
According to Prof. Joseph Weiler’s website, a tribunal in France has not only dismissed the criminal libel complaint that Prof. Karin Calvo-Goller filed against him, but has imposed a monetary penalty on the complainant for abuse of process. The dispute arose over a negative book review in an academic journal Weiler edits (earlier here, here, etc.).
Tagged as:
France,
libel slander and defamation,
publishers
U.K.: A man jailed for four months for breaching a restraining order against a woman he had stalked “has taken legal action against her for ‘ruining his reputation’ with comments on her website.” [Telegraph]
Tagged as:
libel slander and defamation,
United Kingdom
Professor Bainbridge has just opened his copy, and in the mean time has assembled some of the favorable reviews and summaries of Schools for Misrule that other leading bloggers have already printed. You can buy your copy of the book there or here (usual Amazon commission applies).
Robert VerBruggen has written a favorable review of the book at National Review, under the title “The Gilded Guild” (paywall). A few highlights:
…An important theme here is that in law, careerism is a powerful force. As a result, the worst left-wing impulses of the legal academy tend to stumble when they come into conflict with lawyers’ self-interest, and to succeed when they advance it.
In particular, as the book relates, law students themselves have served as an effective check on some kinds of ideological adventurism by law faculties when such adventurism threatens to deprive them of a serviceable legal education. On the other hand, there’s often less of a check on bad ideas when they advance the welfare of lawyers present and future:
… And that’s where we see the true genius of legal academia, and the legal profession in general: It manages to argue, on moral grounds, that it deserves more work, more money, and more power.
Yesterday I spoke to an enthusiastic crowd at the Cato Institute auditorium in Washington, D.C. Judge Douglas Ginsburg of the D.C. circuit was generous in his comments, and there was a lively Q-and-A with the audience. Cato will post the event as a podcast at its media site.
The radio campaign for the book also proceeds apace. I was on the Mike Rosen show out of Denver on Tuesday, and in the next few days will appear on Kevin Whalen’s WRKO show in Boston (Sunday), Cam Edwards’ national show, and Steve Malzburg’s show on NYC’s WABC (both Monday).
Tagged as:
on TV and radio,
Schools for Misrule
A couple says the infant they adopted from an Indiana birthmother in 2006 displays severe neurological deficits. They’re suing their lawyers for $5 million, saying more should have been done to warn them. [Gothamist, New York Post]
Tagged as:
family law
I’m quoted in this report by Sheri Qualters in the National Law Journal:
The false-marking statute “tempts people to become roving bounty hunters filing suits which at least the targets often see as shakedowns for money,” Olson said.
Last month, in a case called Unique Product Solutions v. Hy-Grade Valve Inc., a different federal court (in the Northern District of Ohio) found the statute unconstitutional on the grounds that it violates the Constitution’s “Take Care” clause, the same argument I and the Cato Institute advance in our recent amicus brief.
Tagged as:
patent marking
- EU imposes unisex insurance rates [BBC, Wright]
- Law blog on the offense? TechnoLawyer asserts trademark claim against Lawyerist over “Small Law” [Lawyerist]
- “Pro-business Supreme Court” meme strikes out yet again as SCOTUS backs “cat’s-paw” bias suit theory by 8-0-2 margin [Josh Blackman, Schwartz, Fox; Lithwick locus classicus]
- Subprime CDO manager sues financial writer Michael Lewis over statements in his book The Big Short [AW, Salmon, Kennerly]
- Police in Surrey, England, deny advising garden shed owners not to use wire mesh against burglars [Volokh, earlier]
- Patterns of intimidation: protesters swarm Speaker Boehner’s private residence [Hollingsworth, Examiner] Unions fighting Wal-Mart in NYC plan actions at board members’ homes [Stoll] Report: GOP lawmakers in Wisconsin fear for personal safety [Nordlinger, NRO] White House pushing street protests [Welch, Nordlinger] Age of Civility short lived [Badger Blogger, Althouse, Sullivan]
- In clash with trial lawyers, Cuomo proposes pain and suffering limits in med-mal suits [NYDN, more: NYT] “Bloomberg looks to Texas for ideas on changing medical malpractice laws” [City Hall News]
- Hey, should we seize his drum set? Infuriating video on cop raids and forfeiture laws [Institute for Justice, Michigan]
Tagged as:
Dahlia Lithwick,
Europe,
forfeiture,
insurance,
labor unions,
legal blogs,
libel slander and defamation,
medical malpractice,
mortgages,
New York,
sex discrimination,
Supreme Court,
trademarks
Recent toughening of FDA regulation, particularly over the drug manufacturing process, is said to be a factor. Should this count as surprising? [LATimes]
Tagged as:
FDA,
hospitals,
pharmaceuticals
In its new March issue, Commentary runs a lengthy excerpt from my new book Schools for Misrule: Legal Academia and an Overlawyered America. It’s available for subscribers or for individual purchase 
