Posts Tagged ‘Elena Kagan’

May 26 roundup

  • Oh dear: Elena Kagan praised as “my judicial hero” Aharon Barak, ultra-activist Israeli jurist flayed by Posner as lawless [Stuart Taylor, Jr./Newsweek] Kagan and executive power [Root, Reason]
  • More on efforts to get feds to redesign hot dogs and other choking-risk foods [NYT, earlier]
  • Amid brouhaha over Rand Paul views, Chicago firefighter-test case provides reminder of how discrimination law actually plays out in courts today [Tabarrok, MargRev]
  • So please, Ken, tell us what you really think of this Mr. Francis (“Girls Gone Wild”) and his nastygrams [Popehat]
  • More on SEIU’s tactic of sending mob to banker’s home in suburban Maryland [Volokh and more, earlier]
  • “Intensive Parenting Enforced: Parents Criminal Liability for Children Skipping School” [Gaia Bernstein, ConcurOp on a California bill]
  • Julian Ku unimpressed with United Nations officials’ claims that Arizona immigration statute violates international civil rights law [Opinio Juris] Plus, a complaint to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights [Kopel, Volokh] Ilya Shapiro analyzes statute’s constitutionality [Cato]
  • Bill moving through Congress would force states, localities to accept unionization, arbitration for public safety workforces [Fox, Jottings] And here comes the giant federal bailout of union pension funds [Megan McArdle]

May 24 roundup

Kagan nomination latest

  • Sorry, guys, but being a law dean who treated conservative scholars with cordiality and fairness doesn’t mean you’ll either 1) be anything but a predictably liberal judge yourself, or 2) show any particular unusual persuasiveness with conservative colleagues on the bench. Jim Copland invites us to consider the example of Guido Calabresi;
  • As part of their job duties, persons who hold the office of Solicitor General sometimes sign their name to arguments they’d reject out of hand if hearing the case as a judge. We’d better hope this is the case with Kagan’s defense of the federal law on depictions of animal cruelty, in which she advanced what Chief Justice Roberts rightly called the “startling and dangerous” position that the protections of the First Amendment should be subject to case-by-case cost-benefit balancing. Jacob Sullum explains.
  • Mark Moller contributes some perspective worth considering on the military-recruitment issue. More: Roger Pilon.
  • Not my view alone: “We are seeing what government by the faculty lounge looks like,” writes Michael Barone. More: David Wagner. “My experience with Prof. Kagan” accounts: Elie Mystal, Above the Law, and Sasha Volokh, Volokh Conspiracy.
  • “Libertarians respond to the nomination” [Damon Root, Reason “Hit and Run”]. Views of Miguel Estrada and Stuart Taylor, Jr. [Moller, Cato] While in the Clinton administration, she took “pro-plaintiff” stances on liability reform [Mark Hofmann, Business Insurance quoting Victor Schwartz, via Ted at Point of Law] More from Jim Copland [City Journal] She helped beef up Harvard’s Berkman Center on intellectual property; does this mean she’s sympathetic to “fair use” concerns? [Cavanaugh, Reason “Hit and Run”]

More on the Kagan nomination

I’m one of the participants in a National Review Online symposium on how Republican senators should approach Elena Kagan’s Supreme Court nomination (earlier). And I’ve got a big link roundup at Cato at Liberty this morning pulling together some highlights of what’s being said about her, including some not-especially-reassuring reports on her views of administrative/regulatory law and First Amendment law.

P.S. As for Left critics of Kagan, Ted at Point of Law thinks they’re being foolish: she’ll deliver a voting record as Justice very similar to what a more outspoken ideologue would have done, without exposing President Obama to as much flak in the confirmation process.

Elena Kagan and the Supreme Court as faculty meeting

I’ve got some thoughts up at Cato at Liberty on President Obama’s new nominee.

Other views: Ted and Carter at Point of Law, Ilya Somin, Jonathan Adler, and Jim Lindgren at Volokh. And Ilya Shapiro digs into Kagan’s record on the First Amendment with some not especially reassuring results, while Radley Balko finds cause for concern on criminal law and civil liberties.