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legal blogs

May 10 roundup

by Walter Olson on May 10, 2013

  • Electric-car maker Tesla doesn’t get many kind words from free market types, but here’s one [Coyote] More: North Carolina auto dealer lobby strikes back [News & Observer]
  • One lawyer’s selection of the worst lawyer billboards, though they’re far from the worst we’ve seen [John M. Phillips]
  • House hearings on litigation abuse and on litigation and international competitiveness [Judiciary, more, Point of Law]
  • Ninth Circuit cites conflict of interest, throws out credit reporting class settlement [Trial Insider; Daniel Fisher]
  • Private pensions, market-based water rates and more: “Australian travel notes from a policy wonk” [Alex Tabarrok]
  • “Use elevators properly. Riding outside of cars can be dangerous and deadly” [Scouting NY, seen in Bronx apartment building]
  • “It’s long been my view that blawgs, law blogs, are the greatest peer reviewed content ever created.” [Greenfield]

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Mentioned in WSJ

by Walter Olson on December 24, 2012

Columnist Gordon Crovitz notes that when “Borking” entered the language as a synonym for ferocious, factually dubious assaults on a nominee, “there was no Internet to correct the record — no legal blogs such as today’s SCOTUSblog, Above the Law, Volokh Conspiracy and Overlawyered.”

  • “The Cash Machine: How the Philly D.A. seizes millions in alleged crime money — whether there’s been a crime or not.” [Isaiah Thompson, Philadelphia City Paper via Alkon] Jacob Sullum on the Motel Caswell forfeiture case [syndicated, earlier]
  • Online symposium on Brandon Garrett’s Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong [Co-Op]
  • Victims of Detroit police raid on art gallery nightclub get some justice [Ferndale 115]
  • John Baker on mens rea and “strict liability” crimes [Fed Soc, PDF]
  • Radley Balko has moved his Agitator blog to Huffington Post. And (via @normative) Cato’s Police Misconduct project is tweeting at @NPMRP.
  • Want to cross-examine someone on that traffic-camera ticket? Be prepared to pay travel costs for the camera company person [Scott Greenfield] “The mission creep of rape shield law” [same]
  • “Does the Criminalization of Tort Inhibit Safety Investigation?” [Beth Haas, Faculty Lounge]

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November 15 roundup

by Walter Olson on November 15, 2012

  • Ninth Circuit dissent: ruling “jeopardizes academic freedom” by making it too easy for students to sue professors [WSJ Law Blog]
  • When the bumptious and sociopathic go after our blogging friend, it’s Ken 1, b./s.-ers zero [Popehat]
  • Uh-oh: “Election Results Seen as Victory for Business of Law” [Gina Passarella, The Legal Intelligencer]
  • In the mail: “How to Feed a Lawyer: And Other Irreverent Observations from the Legal Underground” [Evan Schaeffer]
  • “Cato Files Brief in the First Federal Appeal Regarding the Contraception Mandate” [Ilya Shapiro, earlier here, here, etc.]
  • “Judicial independence” campaigners snooze through unfair attacks on D.C. Circuit [WSJ, earlier]
  • “Anyone whose blood pressure needs a boost should check out Overlawyered…” [James DeLong, American Thinker]

Blogging’s loss…

by Walter Olson on September 11, 2012

…is the FTC’s and the nation’s gain, as President Obama nominates Josh Wright of Truth on the Market and George Mason University to a Republican seat on the Federal Trade Commission. Among our many links to his work: Posner and expert witnesses, Spanish professor sued by recording industry, e-book antitrust case, forum-shopping in Philadelphia, Chicago on law and econ, Google antitrust, executive debarment, cheap calories, behavioral law and econ, unisex insurance rates, Dodd-Frank, and many, many others. More reactions: Stephen Bainbridge, Ted Frank (“Best thing Obama’s ever done”).

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“Legal commentator Walter Olson sounded the battle cry in his recent post: ‘Abolish the Law Reviews!,’ arguing that most exist so students can edit them, rather than to be read by lawyers and judges.” (more)

More reactions: Scott Pryor, Faculty Lounge; Kevin O’Keefe, Real Lawyers Have Blogs (“Blogs and social media to replace law reviews? Seems likely”); more, Deborah Hackerson, Legal Skills Prof Blog; “Something tells me this would not make Walter Olson reconsider his belief in irrelevance of law reviews.” [Jacob Laksin] Earlier here, here, here, etc. Related: Dave Hoffman on what would happen if we freed up 2 million law student hours a year [ConcurOp]; Ross Davies/Journal of Law, PDF, via Bainbridge on when legal scholarship helps judges. (& Mitchell Rubinstein, Adjunct Law Prof)

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July 25 roundup

by Walter Olson on July 25, 2012

  • Town of Gold Bar, Wash. (pop. 2,100) brought to brink of bankruptcy by multiple lawsuits following political feuds; “We are going broke winning lawsuits,” says mayor [Monroe Monitor via ABA Journal]
  • “No one in Youngstown Ohio has a Swiss bank account…except maybe that big new Swiss employer in town?” [Matt Welch, earlier] William McGurn: FATCA and the IRS’s reach abroad [WSJ via TaxProf, earlier here, here] Politicians and lawyers demand “improvements” to IRS bounty-paid-informant program, but what if anything they improve may depend on your point of view [TaxProf, earlier]
  • A human rights professor endorses a new model of residential facility that comes with names like “Freedom Place.” But what’s that on the door — could it be a lock to prevent escape? [Maggie McNeill] Romney spokesman says he’ll smite smut, Gov. Gary Johnson takes a more libertarian view [Daily Caller]
  • New Mark Herrmann book on in-house lawyering [Victoria Pynchon, Scott Greenfield, Paul Karlsgodt]
  • Mortgage eminent-domain seizure plan raises serious constitutional concerns [Andrew Grossman, earlier here, here]
  • Central casting? Send over one “business basher,” please: Sidney Wolfe says $3 billion Glaxo settlement too lenient [CL&P, earlier]
  • Ted Frank pre-vets the possibilities for Romney VP [PoL] Romney’s law and legal policy team [Brian Baxter, AmLaw Daily]

I’ve got a new essay up at The Atlantic, part of the “America the Fixable” series edited by Philip K. Howard. I have a bit of fun at the expense of the Harvard Law Review, raising the question of whether it should be held to lower standards than the Long Island tabloid Newsday, and cite such figures as Richard Posner, Elizabeth Warren, Ross Davies of George Mason, and the bloggers at Volokh Conspiracy and Balkinization.

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May 3 roundup

by Walter Olson on May 3, 2012

April 6 roundup

by Walter Olson on April 6, 2012

  • “Help, I left my kids to wait in the car for less than five minutes, now I’m on trial for child endangerment” [Skenazy] “N.Y. State Senate Passes Bill Outlawing Kids Under 8 Waiting in Cars” [same]
  • “Greek court dismisses charges against German magazine for denigrating national symbol” [AP]
  • Pre-clearance for financial innovation, as with drugs and the FDA? Bad idea [Mark Calabria/Cato, The Economist, Thom Lambert]
  • NYT, Reuters misreport effect of Stand Your Ground laws [Jacob Sullum, Robert VerBruggen/NRO, earlier here, etc.]
  • “Attorney advises against talking to Baltimore Sun in email mistakenly sent to Baltimore Sun” [Andrew Beaujon, Poynter]
  • Ken at Popehat knows how to pick his enemies [first, second, third posts, Philly Law Blog]
  • “Now Can We Start Talking About the Real Foxconn?” [Tim Culpan, Bloomberg]

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The Times devotes a front page profile to the Georgetown law professor (and Cato colleague),who is more closely identified than any other thinker with the legal case against ObamaCare’s individual mandate. (More: ABA Journal, Bernstein/Volokh, Chicago Reader.) I’ve known Prof. Barnett and admired his work for longer than I can remember and this gives me the chance to point out self-servingly that he also wrote one of the very nicest blurbs for my book Schools for Misrule:

“While the public loves to bash lawyers, judges, and politicians, law professors have escaped all blame. Olson provides the inside story of how progressive political ideology became the reigning orthodoxy of elite legal education, providing the legal theories responsible for an overweening government committed to mandating, prohibiting, or regulating every aspect of American life in the ‘public interest.’ I wish I could say he exaggerates but, sadly, the legal foundation of the road to serfdom was devised by law professors.”

– RANDY E. BARNETT, Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory, Georgetown Law Center; author of Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty

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Marc Randazza

by Walter Olson on March 16, 2012

Marc Randazza is a prominent First Amendment lawyer who has been a friend to this site and many others. Popehat, Eric Turkewitz, Amy Alkon and back-in-commission Scott Greenfield are all posting well-merited appreciations.

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March 6 roundup

by Walter Olson on March 6, 2012

  • D.C. Circuit’s Janice Rogers Brown: three-decade-long case over Iran dairy expropriation raises “harshest caricature of the American litigation system” [BLT]
  • Legal blogger Mark Bennett runs for Texas Court of Criminal Appeals as Libertarian [Defending People, Scott Greenfield] And Prof. Bill Childs, often linked in this space, is departing TortsProf (and legal academia) to join a private law practice in Texas;
  • Ambitious damage claims, more modest settlements abound in Louisiana oil-rig cleanup suits [ATLA's Judicial Hellholes, more, more, earlier]
  • Better no family at all: Lawprof Banzhaf jubilant over courts’ denial of adoption to smokers [his press release]
  • “The worst discovery request I’ve ever gotten” [Patrick at Popehat] And yours?
  • Concession to reality? Class action against theater over high cost of movie snacks seen as dud [Detroit Free Press]
  • FCPA is for pikers, K Street shows how real corruption gets done [Bill Frezza, Forbes] Dems threatening tax-bill retribution against clients whose lobbyists who back GOP candidates [Politico]

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February 27 roundup

by Walter Olson on February 27, 2012

  • Department of Transportation cracks down on distraction from cars’ onboard information and entertainment systems; Mike Masnick suspects the measure won’t work as intended, as appears to have been the case with early texting bans [Techdirt; earlier here, etc.] “Feds Push New York Toward Full Ban On Electronic Devices In Cars” [Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit; Truth About Cars]
  • Oh no: Scott Greenfield says he’s ceasing to post at his exemplary criminal defense blog after five years [Simple Justice, Dave Hoffman]
  • California not entitled to pursue its own foreign policy, at least when in conflict with rest of nation’s: unanimous “blockbuster” decision by en banc 9th Circuit strikes down law enabling insurance suits by Armenian victims [AP, Alford/OJ, Recorder, related, Frank/PoL]
  • Playboy model’s $1.2M award against Gotham cops is a great day for the tabloids [NYDN]
  • To hear a pitch for fracking-royalty suits, visit the American Association for Justice convention, or just read the New York Times [Wood, PoL]
  • What the mortgage settlement did [John Cochrane, earlier]
  • Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) of 1978 blows up an adoption: “She’s a 2-year-old girl who got shoved in a truck and driven to Oklahoma with strangers.” [Reuters, SaveVeronica.org]

…Overlawyered was getting a mention.

The great people at Liberty Fund have just launched a new website called Library of Law and Liberty that promises to be of much interest. Among its debut features: a substantial audio interview in which Richard Reinsch, editor of the site, asks me about my book Schools for Misrule and law schools’ role in reform movements since the Progressive Era. Outstanding legal scholars Michael Greve (AEI) and Mike Rappoport (University of San Diego) will be blogging for the site. Other front-page attractions include Michael Greve discussing his new book The Upside Down Constitution, my Cato colleague John Samples reviewing Eric Posner and Adrian Vermeule’s new book on executive power, Ilya Somin on federalism and individual freedom, and Philip Hamburger and commenters on judicial review.

You can listen to my audio interview on Schools for Misrule at this link.

January 9 roundup

by Walter Olson on January 9, 2012

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I’m pleased to announce that Overlawyered has been named by the American Bar Association as one of its “Blawg 100″ noteworthy legal blogs. It’s not our first appearance on the list, but it’s always gratifying when it happens.

And here’s the good part: you can vote for us. In particular, you can go to this page:

http://www.abajournal.com/blawg100

You’ll need to register (which only takes a few moments) and then vote for your favorite in each of a list of categories. (They put Overlawyered in the “Torts” category.)
ABABlawg100FiveVoteFor
The nominations include many of our favorite and most-linked blogs, including Lowering the Bar, Prof. Bainbridge, Volokh, Jon Hyman, Daniel Schwartz, Abnormal Use, Eric Turkewitz, and Russell Jackson, to name a few. A number of these are also in the “Torts” category which means you’ll need to resist the urge to vote for them and select Overlawyered instead. Please take a moment to vote now. Thanks in advance for your support!