Overlawyered » campaign regulation

Free speech roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 25 May 2012 04:34:49 +0000

Boilermaker union president resorts to litigation against satirical site [Levy; another case on demands for disclosure of anonymous commenters] More on ghastly NY bill to strip protection from anonymous online speech [David Kravets/Wired, Daily Caller, my take]
Defending people like Aaron Worthing and Patterico shouldn’t be a left-right matter [Popehat, Tapscott/Examiner, earlier] Maryland and indeed all states need stronger statutory protection against vexatious litigants [Ace of Spades] And as a longtime Charles Schwab customer I was at first distressed to find the Schwab Charitable Fund on this list, but since the fund is billed as “donor-advised” I take it some Schwab customer rather than the company itself got to choose the beneficiary;
“Indonesia Prosecution for Posting ‘God Doesn’t Exist’ on Facebook” [Volokh] Curious to see an argument for Euro-style hate speech laws appearing on the Liberty and Law site [David Conway]
“Cyberbullying and Bullying Used As Pretexts for Censorship” [Bader]
“EEOC: Wearing Confederate Flag T-Shirts May Be ‘Hostile Work Environment Harassment’” [Volokh, more, Bader]
Video on new freedom of assembly book [FedSoc]
Maybe Citizens United turned out so badly for the speech-suppressive side because a government lawyer was imprudently candid before the Court [Jacob Sullum, earlier on Toobin New Yorker piece]

Tags: bullying, campaign regulation, EEOC, hate speech, hostile environment, libel slander and defamation, Maryland, online speech, serial litigants

Free speech roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

More on the John Edwards prosecution

Walter Olson — Thu, 24 May 2012 12:38:35 +0000

Must-read Mark Steyn: “Edwards now faces 30 years in jail, for the crime of getting a couple of pals to pay for his baby’s diapers. For purposes of comparison, Anders Breivik murdered 77 people and is looking at 21 years in jail, the maximum sentence permitted under Norwegian law.” Contra: Hans von Spakovsky argues that the prosecutors’ argument is not such a stretch. And Beldar predicts the issue on which the jury’s verdict may turn. Earlier here, here, etc.

Tags: campaign regulation, John Edwards

More on the John Edwards prosecution is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Toobin on Citizens United

Walter Olson — Fri, 18 May 2012 12:57:18 +0000

Ed Whelan charges the New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin with spinning the history of the First Amendment campaign regulation case [first, second, followup] Tom Goldstein at SCOTUSBlog, while sympathetic to Toobin’s overall project, also takes issue with him at numerous points. More: Adam White, Weekly Standard; Sam Bagenstos (what is supposed to have been so devious about Roberts’ handling of the case?); Howard Wasserman (why does Citizens United get singled out for demonization from among the several Court opinions pointing the same way?).

Tags: campaign regulation, Supreme Court

Toobin on Citizens United is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

April 16 roundup

Walter Olson — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 04:07:53 +0000

Although I’m known as a foe of everything John Edwards stands for, I hope he beats this campaign finance rap [Atlantic Wire]
Michael Bloomberg launches demagogic new campaign against Stand Your Ground laws, calling to mind the recent critique of the NYC mayor’s paternalist dark side by Conor Friedersdorf in the Atlantic;
Jerry Brown frees grandmother dubiously jailed in shaken-baby death [Slate, earlier]
As Scruggs (Dickey not Earl) still pursues vindication, Alan Lange looks back on Mississippi scandals [YallPolitics]
Deservedly favorable profile of Fifth Circuit judge Jerry Smith [NOLA]
In which I tell off Bill Donohue’s Catholic League for its double insult last week to gays and to adoptive parents [IGF]
“The Ninth Circuit was, believe it or not, correct” [Ilya Shapiro and Trevor Burrus, Cato, on administrative law case arising from NLRB rules change on drug rep overtime]

Tags: adoption, campaign regulation, Dickie Scruggs, Fifth Circuit, Jerry Brown, John Edwards, Michael Bloomberg, Ninth Circuit, self-defense, wrong right

April 16 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Free speech roundup

Walter Olson — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 23:11:10 +0000

Berkeley: “Police chief sends sergeant to reporter’s home after midnight to demand article revision” [Poynter] In 1932, a New York Congressman convened a hearing to blast theater critics for harming the welfare of Broadway shows [Philip Scranton, Bloomberg]
“Blasphemy and free speech” [Paul Marshall, Hillsdale "Imprimis," PDF] “Egyptian Christian Imprisoned for 6 Years for Insulting Mohammed” [Volokh]
What is it about Montana and election free speech these days? [Volokh] Judge denies Ron Paul campaign request to unmask source of anti-Huntsman video [Paul Alan Levy, earlier] “Eliot Spitzer Bucks Liberal Orthodoxy: ‘Citizens United Was Correct’” [TheDC] If you rely on the NY Times for what you know about Citizens United, you’re probably misinformed [Wendy Kaminer, Atlantic]
“In which Ben Bagdikian, alleged scourge of media monopolies, frets at the possibility of more TV channels” [BBC via Jesse Walker]
Guernsey as a haven for libel tourism? [Annie Machon] “Someday I will commission a study of the relationship between defamation lawsuit threats and illiteracy.” [@Popehat on Gawker item]
“Key Techdirt SOPA/PIPA Post Censored By Bogus DMCA Takedown Notice” [Mike Masnick]
Overly aggressive trademark lawyers? “Their mothers love them too, in a prone-to-sudden-weeping sort of way.” [Popehat; earlier on Louis Vuitton v. Penn Law case]

Tags: Bay Area, broadcasters, campaign regulation, Eliot Spitzer, free speech, libel slander and defamation, Montana, police, trademarks

Free speech roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

February 8 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 05:15:22 +0000

Popular proposal to curb Congressional insider trading (“STOCK Act”) could have disturbing unintended consequences [John Berlau, CEI "Open Market"] A contrary view: Bainbridge.
Here’s Joe’s number, he’ll do a good job of suing us: “Some Maryland hospitals recommend lawyers to patients” [Baltimore Sun, Ron Miller]
Bribing the states to spend: follies of our fiscal federalism, and other themes from Michael Greve’s new book The Upside-Down Constitution [LLL, more, yet more] “Atlas Croaks, Supreme Court Shrugs” [Greve, Charleston Law Review; related, Ted Frank]
“… Daubert Relevancy is the Sentry That Guards Against the Tyranny of Experts” [David Oliver on new First Circuit opinion or scroll to Jan. 23]
Goodbye old political tweets, Eric Turkewitz is off to trial;
State laws squelch election speech, and political class shrugs (or secretly smiles) [George Will]
Too bad Carlyle Group got scared off promising experiment to revamp corporate governance to curb role of litigation [Ted Frank, Gordon Smith] AAJ should try harder to use people’s quotes in context [Bainbridge]

Tags: arbitration, Baltimore, campaign regulation, Daubert, expert witnesses, federalism, hospitals, securities litigation, Twitter

February 8 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Citizens United, two years out

Walter Olson — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 15:24:20 +0000

In the Washington Post, Boston College lawprof Kent Greenfield clears up some misconceptions:

Citizens United did not hold corporations to be persons, and the court has never said corporations deserve all the constitutional rights of humans. The Fifth Amendment’s right to be free from self-incrimination, for example, does not extend to corporations. … Humans gather themselves in groups, for public and private ends, and sometimes it makes constitutional sense to protect the group as distinct from its constituent humans.

The question in any given case is whether protecting the association, group or, yes, corporation serves to protect the rights of actual people. Read fairly, Citizens United merely says that banning certain kinds of corporate expenditures infringes the constitutional interests of human beings. The court may have gotten the answer wrong, but it asked the right question.

Another reason to protect corporate rights is to guard against the arbitrary and deleterious exercise of government power. If, for example, the Fifth Amendment’s ban on government “takings” did not extend to corporations, the nationalization of entire industries would be constitutionally possible. The Fourth Amendment prohibits the FBI from barging into the offices of Google without a warrant and seizing the Internet history of its users. A freedom of the press that protected only “natural persons” would allow the Pentagon to, say, order the New York Times and CNN to cease reporting civilian deaths in Afghanistan.

The actual Citizens United case, as distinct from the later caricature, was over whether the government had a constitutional right to punish private actors for distributing a video critical of a prominent politician (Hillary Clinton) before an election, which helps explain why the ACLU and many other civil libertarians took the pro-free-speech side. More: Caleb Brown at Cato.

Tags: campaign regulation, constitutional law, free speech

Citizens United, two years out is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

After SOPA protest day

Walter Olson — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 17:54:57 +0000

What did the protests accomplish? [Image of one-day change in Hill opposition courtesy TechCrunch, PC World, Timothy Lee/Ars Technica]
Some of the best protests [Ad Age, earlier on Flickr's clever entry and others]
Going-dark site “strike” was a bit like Atlas Shrugged without the monologues [Greve] “So, nothing like #AS” [@nickgillespie] “…and fewer pirates” [@JohnPMcGuinness] “That’s a shame. I want to see Francisco’s money speech in binary code.” [@BenK84]
Speaking of Citizens United… [John Samples/Cato, Popehat, @joshgreenman]
Chris Dodd: we could turn off flow of Hollywood politibux if we don’t get this law [Politico] “Win/win!” [James Poulos]
Where next? [Julian Sanchez, Cato, Kotaku ("PIPA not as bad as SOPA" claims), roll call via Pro Publica]

Tags: campaign regulation, copyright, RIAA and file sharing, rogue site legislation

After SOPA protest day is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Ron Paul campaign sues John Does over anti-Huntsman video

Walter Olson — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 20:32:22 +0000

“Presidential candidate Ron Paul’s campaign committee sued the unidentified makers of a video attacking ex-Republican rival Jon Huntsman claiming it falsely implies it was made or endorsed by the Texas congressman.” [Bloomberg] Paul Alan Levy contends that Rep. Paul, a longtime civil liberties advocate, should know better than to advance arguments that would if accepted narrow the legal protections afforded to anonymous political speech.

Tags: campaign regulation, movies film and videos, online speech, Ron Paul

Ron Paul campaign sues John Does over anti-Huntsman video is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Update: ousted Congressman sues opponents for “loss of livelihood”

Walter Olson — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 06:00:34 +0000

Updating our story of last December: A federal judge has given the go-ahead to former Rep. Steve Dreihaus’s suit against the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List for allegedly falsely characterizing his stands on issues during last year’s race, thus causing him to lose. Earlier, Driehaus had filed a complaint against the Anthony List under Ohio’s remarkable False Statements Law, “which criminalizes lying about public officials” and has been assailed by the ACLU among other groups as inconsistent with the First Amendment. [Seth McKelvey, Reason; Peter Roff, U.S. News]

Tags: campaign regulation, libel slander and defamation, Ohio, U.S. House of Representatives

Update: ousted Congressman sues opponents for “loss of livelihood” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system