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April 30 roundup

Walter Olson — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 04:10:12 +0000

Because Washington knows best: “U.S. ban sought on cell phone use while driving” [Reuters, earlier here, here, here, etc.] More here; and LaHood spokesman says Reuters overstated his boss’s position.
Janice Brown’s Hettinga opinion: Lithwick can’t abide “starkly ideological” judging of this sort, except of course when she favors it [Root, earlier] At Yale law conclave, legal establishment works itself into hysterical froth over individual mandate case [Michael Greve] And David Bernstein again corrects some Left commentators regarding the standing of child labor under the pre-New Deal Constitution;
Latest antiquities battle: Feds, Sotheby’s fight over 1,000-year-old Khmer statue probably removed from Cambodia circa 1960s [VOA, Kent Davis]
Sebelius surprised by firestorm over religious (non-) exemption, hadn’t sought written opinions as to whether it was constitutional [Becket, Maguire] Obamanauts misread the views of many Catholics on health care mandate [Potemra, NRO]
“20 Years for Standing Her Ground Against a Violent Husband” [Jacob Sullum] How Trayvon Martin story moved through the press [Poynter] And Reuters’ profile of George Zimmerman is full of details one wishes reporters had brought out weeks ago;
Coaching accident fraud is bad enough, making off with client funds lends that extra squalid touch [NYLJ]
Kip Viscusi, “Does Product Liability Make Us Safer?” [Cato's Regulation magazine, PDF]

Tags: antiquities, Catholic Church, cellphones, claims fraud, constitutional law, Dahlia Lithwick, Martin-Zimmerman case, product liability, self-defense

April 30 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Scope of existing state employer-contraceptive mandates

Walter Olson — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 12:28:34 +0000

It has been asserted in various outlets that many states already mandate contraceptive coverage, that the Catholic church has been content to live with those mandates, and so that the current firestorm over the ObamaCare provision must just be something cooked up by Republican consultants. Here is a response from the National Council of Catholic Bishops via NR’s Kathryn Lopez:

6. The federal mandate is much stricter than existing state mandates. HHS chose the narrowest state-level religious exemption as the model for its own. That exemption was drafted by the ACLU and exists in only 3 states (New York, California, Oregon). Even without a religious exemption, religious employers can already avoid the contraceptive mandates in 28 states by self-insuring their prescription drug coverage, dropping that coverage altogether, or opting for regulation under a federal law (ERISA) that pre-empts state law. The HHS mandate closes off all these avenues of relief.

More on the controversy from my Cato colleague Roger Pilon and from Jonathan Rauch. And: John Cochrane on the wider folly of letting the feds mandate contraceptive coverage in the first place: “Sure, churches should be exempt. We should all be exempt.”

Tags: Catholic Church, medical

Scope of existing state employer-contraceptive mandates is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“Their government’s communitarianism leaves no room for their church’s communitarianism”

Walter Olson — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 11:02:23 +0000

Ross Douthat on how the ObamaCare Pill edict points up some “trade-offs… which liberal communitarians don’t always like to acknowledge. When government expands, it’s often at the expense of alternative expressions of community, alternative groups that seek to serve the common good.” More: Steve Chapman.

Tags: Catholic Church

“Their government’s communitarianism leaves no room for their church’s communitarianism” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“Religious employers must cover pill, Feds say”

Walter Olson — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:06:52 +0000

HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius said giving church-related sponsors of health plans an additional year to comply with the contraceptive mandate “strikes the appropriate balance between respecting religious freedom and increasing access to important preventive services.” Really? If religious freedom is in fact at stake, what kind of “balance” is attained if it gets a one-year reprieve but then expires? A balance between current freedom of institutional conscience and future lack of same? [AP] On the Obama administration’s remarkably unfriendly stance toward self-governance by church institutions, see my coverage of this term’s Hosanna-Tabor Supreme Court case. More: Michael Greve has a must-read analysis predicting the directive’s downfall in court, and pointing out the procedural dodginess of this and much other regulation implementing the ACA. And Thom Lambert asks: “What if the Government Ordered the Human Rights Campaign to Cover Conversion Therapy for Gays?”

Tags: Catholic Church, churches, Kathleen Sebelius

“Religious employers must cover pill, Feds say” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

December 6 roundup

Walter Olson — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 13:23:12 +0000

TSA: design of gun on purse is “replica gun” [Radley Balko]
“Note: Before Attaching Ankle Monitor, Make Sure Leg Is Real” [Lowering the Bar]
“Harm to others” rationale seems to fall by wayside as Boston bans workplace use of e-cigarettes [Jacob Sullum]
“Should legislation protect the obese?” [NYT "Room for Debate"]
German town drops charges against Pope Benedict XVI for failure to wear seat belt in Popemobile [WaPo, Lowering the Bar, Irish Times]
Ninth Circuit agrees to review litigation seeking court takeover of vets’ mental care [SFChron, WSJ Law Blog, earlier]
The shaky science of “shaken baby syndrome” [Pfaff, Prawfs, ABA Journal, earlier here, here] Jerry Brown should pardon dubiously convicted grandmother [Emily Bazelon, Slate]

Tags: Boston, Catholic Church, Germany, guns, obesity, seatbelts, tobacco

December 6 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

November 23 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 13:02:02 +0000

Big win for Ted Frank against cy pres slush funds [CCAF, Fisher, Zywicki, CL&P, @tedfrank ("Ninth Circuit rules in my favor ... but I still think I'm right".)]
“Can the Vatican Be Subject to ICC Prosecution?” [Ku/OJ]
“Tennessee: ATS Sues City Over Right Turn Ticket Money” [The Newspaper]
“Law firms dominating campaign contributions to Obama” [WaPo]
Does that mean it’s an entitlement? Punitive damage limits face constitutional challenges in Arkansas, Missouri [Cal Punitives]
Businessman sues to silence critical blogger, case is dismissed, now files suit #2 [Scott Greenfield]
Going Hollywood? “The Supreme Court should move to Los Angeles” [Conor Friedersdorf]

Tags: Arkansas, Barack Obama, bloggers and the law, Catholic Church, cy pres, Missouri, punitive damages, red light cameras, Supreme Court, Ted Frank

November 23 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

June 25 roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 11:00:23 +0000

Supreme Court limits scope of “honest services fraud” law [Mauro/NLJ, Ilya Shapiro and Tim Lynch, Cato, Bainbridge and more]
No, defensive medicine isn’t a myth, ask your emergency room doc [AP/Columbus Dispatch] Eagerness to share horror stories [Sharon Begley, Newsweek] “Unusual for a Democrat, Obama readily acknowledges that defensive medicine is a problem.” [AP/WaPo] “VBAC rates are low, but are obstetricians to blame?” [Lin and Tuteur at KevinMD, Replogle/Fair Warning]
Social life of a blawger, cont’d: I sat at David Lat’s table at CEI’s evening with Judge Kozinski [Above the Law] Judge Learned Hand, writing in an antitrust case, “was very knowledgeable about everything except how the world works.” [among the many funny things Judge K. said]
For those keeping count, at least seven Roman Catholic dioceses in this country have filed for bankruptcy in abuse scandal [Hartley]
Business Roundtable enumerates rapidly expanding roster of federal regulatory burdens [Ted at PoL, Amend the CPSIA, Tad DeHaven and Daniel Mitchell, Cato]
Colleges fiddle numbers to comply with Title IX, but don’t you dare call it a quota law [LegalBlogWatch, Greenfield] New report on law’s ill effects on soccer [College Sports Council, Charlotte Allen/MtC] More: Allison Kasic, IWF. And back when, I wrote on Princeton wrestling and Title IX; CSC tells how that turned out.
Former student of Prof. Robin West defends homeschooling [Sub Specie]
Not too long ago: “My environmental advocacy organization would only fill the company cars at BP” [Stoll]

Tags: Alex Kozinski, BP Transocean oil spill, Catholic Church, defensive medicine, fraud, obstetrics, Title IX

June 25 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

New at Point of Law

Walter Olson — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 11:22:17 +0000

Things you’re missing if you’re not keeping up with my other site:

Despite New Yorkers’ outrage over railroad retirement disability abuses, Cuomo probe accomplishes little;
Founded by America’s Most Irresponsible Public Figure® RFK Jr., the Waterkeeper Alliance is with reason a highly controversial group. Should the University of Maryland be enlisting students regularly in its litigation campaigns?
NYT relies on plaintiff lawyer source in accusatory story about Pope, then has to walk the story back;
Louisiana judge: “gradual”, “environmental” insurance exclusions don’t apply to bad-drywall claims;
New CPSC product complaint database could invite erroneous or even malicious submissions, critics say;
CBS “60 Minutes” stonewalls Columbia Journalism Review critique of its Chevron-Ecuador segment.

Tags: Catholic Church, CPSC, CPSIA, insurance, Maryland, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

New at Point of Law is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“Universal jurisdiction”, Judge Garzon, and the Pope

Walter Olson — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 17:33:53 +0000

I’ve got a few thoughts at Point of Law on the continuing uproar over prosecutions of international human rights violations against the will of the home countries of the alleged perpetrators.

Tags: Catholic Church, international human rights, Spain

“Universal jurisdiction”, Judge Garzon, and the Pope is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“The persecution of Belmont Abbey”

Walter Olson — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:36:04 +0000

Charlotte Allen of the Manhattan Institute on the EEOC’s crackdown on a traditionalist Catholic college for not including contraceptives in its health plan. [Weekly Standard]

Tags: Catholic Church, colleges and universities, discrimination law, insurance

“The persecution of Belmont Abbey” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system