- More views on California prisoner release: Steve Chapman (California can incarcerate less and be safer), John Eastman/City Journal (state’s pols share blame for conditions), Sarah Hart, FedSoc SCOTUScast (sharing dissenters’ foreboding). Earlier here and here;
- Stephen Carter, “Economic Stagnation Explained, at 30,000 Feet” [Bloomberg/RCP]
- Long-running legal campaign aimed at blocking new coal-fired power plants [Conn Carroll, Examiner]
- Unconsciously? “We hope it sends a message that if you … unconsciously ignore the law, you could go to jail.” [WSJ Law Blog on prosecution of executive following pool drain entrapment death]
- Following outcry: “Disney withdraws application to trademark ‘SEAL Team 6′” [AP, earlier]
- More fact-checking of Scott Horton Guantanamo Harper’s article mysteriously awarded prize by ASME [Alex Koppelman/AdWeek, Joe Carter/First Things, Jack Shafer/Slate (citing “slipperiness and many flights of illogic”), FishBowlNY, Politico, Noah Davis/Business Insider, Cutline, earlier] Horton is a lecturer at Columbia Law and his piece drew on work done at Seton Hall Law. More: defense of Horton at leftist TruthOut site;
- Germans hesitate to join nanny-state parade [four years ago on Overlawyered]
Filed under: business climates, California, environment, law schools, prisoners, prosecution, trademarks
2 Comments
I’ve followed the “Pool Drain Law” for a while
For instance, in 2002, seven-year-old Virginia Baker drowned when suction from a drain held her at the bottom of a backyard spa. It took two adults pulling on her body to remove her from the drain. She was pronounced dead on arrival at a local hospital.
What the article doesn’t mention is this girl, who the law was named for was the daughter of Nancy and James Baker IV, the son of former Secretary of State James Baker.
This poor girl, just 7 years old, died in a spa.
This WSJ doesn’t say how old Zachary Cohen was.
But the bigger point is: why was a 7 year old girl (in the Baker case) left ALONE in the spa? Why did everyone have to install a pool drain cover because she had tragically irresponsible parents? I personally have stubbed my toes on those covers, enduring pain and suffering because some parents are irresponsible.
Swimming is one of those activities that, whatever your age, you shouldn’t do alone!
We seem to have this implied legal principle called “haven’t they suffered enough already” that makes parents immune from being criminally charged for tragic but preventable accidental deaths of their children. So, to compensate, we go after others.
The argument that children shouldn’t be swimming alone doesn’t address most of the actual accidents, which took place in swimming pools in which the children were not alone. The problem is that if a child swims or dives to the bottom of the pool and gets stuck, he or she is often not visible to a parent outside the pool or even at some distance within the pool and it may take some time to realize that he or she is missing. In such situations, the alternative to the requirement of drain covers is the requirement that children be much more closely monitored than they are now, probably that an adult would have to swim with the child and follow him or her around, even when they are good swimmers.