Posts Tagged ‘Idaho’

March 4 roundup

  • Educated Canadian circles have politely indulged theories about how indigenous sovereignty is purer and more legitimate than so-called settler government. Ten thousand land acknowledgments later, comes the reckoning [J.J. McCullough, Washington Post] Read and marvel: “As lawyers and legal academics living and working on this part of Turtle Island now called Canada, we write to demand…” [Toronto Star; similarly, David Moscrop, Washington Post]
  • Plaintiff’s lawyers in talc case played footsie with Reuters reporters: “Judge Sanctions Simmons Hanly for ‘Frivolous’ Disclosure of Johnson & Johnson CEO’s Deposition” [Amanda Bronstad, New York Law Journal]
  • Bernie Sanders’ disastrous rent control plan [Cato Daily Podcast with Ryan Bourne and Caleb Brown] Housing construction unwelcome unless public? Vermont senator boosts opposition to East Boston plan to build mix of 10,000 market and affordable new homes on defunct racetrack [Christian Britschgi]
  • Happy to get a request from Pennsylvania to reprint and distribute my chapter on redistricting and gerrymandering, found on pp. 293-299 of the Cato Handbook for Policymakers (2017). If you’re interested in the topic, check it out;
  • Family courts deciding the future of a child commonly don’t take testimony from foster carers. Should that change? [Naomi Schaefer Riley/Real Clear Investigations, quotes me]
  • Supreme Court will not review Ninth Circuit ruling that Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment prohibits city of Boise from enforcing law against homeless encampments when there are insufficient beds available in shelters [Federalist Society teleforum and transcript with Andy Hessick and Carissa Hessick]

Regulation and administrative law roundup

July 31 roundup

Occupational licensure roundup

  • “Arizona Could Become the First State to Recognize Occupational Licenses From Other States” [Eric Boehm, Reason] “Making It Easier for Military Spouses To Get Occupational Licenses Could Help All Workers” [same] “Barbers and cosmetologists in Texas warn that repealing mandatory licenses for their professions would be as dangerous as having unlicensed chefs preparing your meals.” Thing is, cooks and chefs aren’t licensed [same]
  • Meanwhile, in Congress: “Bipartisan Bill Would Stop States From Denying Occupational Licenses Due to Student Loan Debt” [Boehm again on Rubio-Warren measure]
  • “Judicial Sanity on Occupational Licensing and the First Amendment” [Ilya Shapiro and Patrick Moran on Fifth Circuit decision in Express Oil Change v. Mississippi Board of Licensure for Professional Engineers & Surveyors]
  • Ohio tackles licensure reform [Nick Sibilla] Idaho too: “Two Governors Kick Off 2019 With Big Occupational Licensing Reforms” [Eric Boehm]
  • “Even congressmen can’t pump their own gas in New Jersey” [Simone Pathé, Roll Call]
  • “Our results suggest that occupational licensing reduces labor supply by an average of 17–27 percent.” [Peter Q. Blair and Bobby W. Chung, Cato Research Briefs in Economic Policy]

May 29 roundup

  • Lawyer don’ts: Don’t steal your client’s book advance [Rebecca R. Ruiz, New York Times on Michael Avenatti indictment]
  • “This isn’t science, it’s witchcraft”: latest verdict against Bayer/Monsanto in Roundup weedkiller/non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma case rests on ultra-loose standards of causation [David Bernstein, related video, earlier]
  • Blazing sunset: Idaho legislature fails to reauthorize state’s code of more than 8,000 regulations, which expire. Between now and July 1, Gov. Brad Little “gets to pick and choose which ones to reinstate as emergency regs until legislature meets again.” [James Broughel, Mercatus]
  • News blackout on STEM Charter School shooting (Highlands Ranch, Colorado) has judicial origins: entire court file in murder case against older of the two shooters “is ‘suppressed’ from public inspection. This even over the express request of the prosecutor” to have the judge unseal most records [Eugene Volokh]
  • Baltimore corruption and development, red flag law, Montgomery Countyites for private toll lanes, Yuripzy Morgan show and more in my latest Maryland policy roundup;
  • A point I’ve been making for years about the Electoral College: one of its underrated benefits is in bolstering election integrity by much shortening the list of jurisdictions in which a material chance of fraud might throw overall result into doubt with consequences for legitimacy [Stephen Sachs and followup]

May 15 roundup

  • “Banana Costume Copyright Assailed at Third Circuit” [Emilee Larkin, Courthouse News, earlier]
  • In a new piece for The Bulwark, I sort through some comments by presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg critical of identity politics;
  • Supreme Court’s decision in Apple v. Pepper, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh joining four liberals, takes a little nick out of Illinois Brick doctrine limiting antitrust suits [my new Cato post]
  • Ninth Circuit will soon hear case in which judge ordered Idaho prison system to provide inmate with transgender surgery; I’m quoted saying lower court decision amounted to battle of the experts [Amanda Peacher, NPR/KBSX, plus followup piece (“medical necessity” not a fixed standard, definitions of cruel and unusual punishment hitched in some ways to public opinion) and NPR “Morning Edition”; audio clip]
  • “The Moral Panic Behind Internet Regulation” [Matthew Lesh, Quillette] “A Single Global Standard for Internet Content Regulation Is a Recipe for Censorship” [Jacob Mchangama, Quillette] And Jonah Goldberg on right-wing rage at social media platform moderation;
  • Some politicos in Britain engage in “‘karaoke Thatcherism’, preaching low-tax, low-regulation mantras divorced from new challenges or detail,” then falling for truly bad ideas like laws to assure real estate tenants indefinite tenure against owners’ wishes [Ryan Bourne]

Free speech roundup

  • Senators have big plans for government regulation of social media but U.S. Constitution keeps getting in way [John Samples, Cato; David McCabe, Axios, earlier] “Censorship breeds censorship envy, and that’s true of private suppression by massively influential platforms such as Facebook as well as of governmental censorship.” [John Samples, Eugene Volokh]
  • Is it lawful for a state lawmaker to block someone on Twitter who’s publicly discussed ways of murdering him? [Dorit Reiss, PrawfsBlawg, earlier]
  • European Parliament delays adopting online copyright directive that critics said would result in Internet content filtering and royalties for linking [Thomas McMullan/Alphr, BBC earlier]
  • Is the ACLU OK with French catcalling law? [Robby Soave] With using government to keep the wrong sorts of people from owning radio outlets? [Scott Shackford, related]
  • Federalist Society telecast on Ninth Circuit decision on Idaho “ag-gag” law with UCLA lawprof Eugene Volokh and Andrew Varcoe of Boyden Gray & Associates;
  • “Arrests for offensive Facebook and Twitter posts soar in London” [Sadie Levy Gale, Independent] Downhill in Denmark: “How the Right Abandoned Free Speech in Europe” [Cato podcast and Reason interview with Jacob Mchangama]

Advancing toward a loser-pays rule in Idaho

The so-called English Rule on legal fees, better termed the rest-of-the-world rule, requires the losing party in a lawsuit to compensate the prevailing party for some of the costs it has laid out having to prove that it was in the legal right. Over centuries around the globe the rule has shown itself consistent with the interests of justice (since it helps to make whole parties whose actions and legal claims were vindicated) and has generally improved incentives in litigation by discouraging speculative claims and defenses, narrowing issues, and promoting settlement.

The organized lawyers of one nation, however, have remained stubbornly resistant to loser-pays: those in the United States. There are, to be sure, some notable exceptions: Alaska has practiced a form of the rule since its days as a territory, and “offer of settlement” variants, invoked after litigants turn down an offer and then do less well at trial, have made some headway lately. Since legislators in several states, especially out West, have shown an interest in promoting the loser-pays principle, you’d think there would be faster progress. Yet such legislative declarations are often foiled when court systems interpret guidance language narrowly or unsympathetically so as to restrict fee shifts to a relatively few outrageous or abusive cases.

That was the situation in Idaho until this fall. Since 1979 the Idaho Supreme Court had followed a rule directing courts to deny fee awards except in cases that were “brought, pursued or defended frivolously, unreasonably or without foundation.” Eight years later, in a 1987 enactment, the state’s legislature declared its intent that “winners in civil cases have ‘the right to be made whole for attorney’s fees and costs when justice so requires,” on the face of it a broader standard. A lot of good that did: for nearly 30 years, the high court in Boise refused to take the hint and stuck with its old standard.

Until now. On September 28, in the case of Hoffer v. Shappard, the Idaho Supreme Court announced that it would at last yield to “the clear intention of the legislature” and adopt, for cases pending as of next March 1, a more generous fee standard. It will recognize that “prevailing parties in civil litigation have the right to be made whole for attorney fees they have incurred ‘when justice so requires’?” and will accord “broad authority to judges overseeing civil actions to award reasonable attorney fees.”

Critics, as well as dissenters in the 3-2 ruling, are predicting the worst. Their concerns are summed up in Betsy Russell’s report in the Spokane Spokesman-Review (which also generously quotes me). As I note, there are genuine risks ahead: experience suggests that courts in a fee-shift system must be on guard to check lawyers’ temptation to gold-plate fee requests, and the high court or legislature should step in to cabin discretion if lower court judges head off in such different directions that fee outcomes start to vary arbitrarily from one courtroom to the next. Loser-pays systems typically develop mechanisms to handle cases of split or partial victories, and Idaho should be prepared to do so as well.

Those important points aside, I’m rooting for the Court’s new approach to succeed, and hoping that Idaho legislators, trial judges, and lawyers will cooperate in coming months to help make that happen.

[cross-posted from Cato at Liberty]