Get ready for the cognitive dissonance among many on both left and right: Second Circuit chief judge Dennis Jacobs, long a favorite of the Federalist Society (and of mine), has written the opinion striking down section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in Windsor v. U.S. I have more at my Maryland for All Families blog.
Latest twist in ongoing speech-chilling saga worthy of attention from PEN: attorney Aaron Walker is charged in Rockville, Md. after a court interprets his blogging about an adversary as a violation of a peace order [Hans Bader and more, Eugene Volokh, Scott Greenfield with comments from Maryland lawyer Bruce Godfrey, Patterico, Popehat, and many others; earlier here, here, and here.] And Ken at Popehat, in a perhaps not unrelated development, puts out a call for a pro bono criminal lawyer to protect a blogger in M.D. Fla. and M.D. Tenn.
California lament: Facebook must pay hefty bribe to be allowed to hire more employees [Coyote]
Furor continues over insider trading by Congress [Roger Parloff/Fortune, Bainbridge ("unimpressed" with reform proposal entitled STOCK Act), earlier] Rep. Bachus disputes claims in Peter Schweizer book [AW, Perry]
A staffer at Suffolk Law School in Boston solicited “much needed supplies to put in care packages to be sent to deployed troops” in Afghanistan, including a Suffolk student serving there. That didn’t sit well with Prof. Michael Avery, whose letter deploring the request, as well as the display of a large American flag at Suffolk, has been stirring discussion among Michael Graham listeners and Above the Law readers ever since.
Charles Moore, writing in the U.K. Telegraph, is dubious about Conservative proposals to turn a British “Military Covenant” of fair treatment for troops into enforceable law.
Kenneth Anderson at Instapundit notes the latest outbreak of “lawfare,” the use of litigation against diplomatic and military actors. “As with most of these advocacy campaigns, the point is not to win cases, but to create a public narrative that says the practice is unsavory and illegitimate, and leverage that into personal legal uncertainty for officials, whether in office or once they leave government.” I’ve got much more on the phenomenon — and its large base of support in present-day legal academia — in Schools for Misrule.
Separately, Gabriel Schoenfeld at National Affairs argues that “when it comes to the American government’s efforts to provide for the common defense, a far-reaching legalism has taken hold,” and Anderson has more on the legalities of last week’s Bin Laden raid.
“Collective Bargaining for States But Not for Uncle Sam” [Adler] Examples of how Wisconsin public-sector unionism has worked in practice [Perry] Wisconsin cop union: nice business you got there, shame if anything were to happen to it [Sykes, WTMJ] “Union ‘rights’ that aren’t” [Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe]
“Minnesota House Considering Significant Consumer Class Action Reform Measures” [Karlsgodt]
10,000 lawyers at DoD? Rumsfeld complains military overlawyered [Althouse via Instapundit]
“Are Meritless Claims More Prevalent in Copyright?” [Boyden, Prawfs]
Claim: availability of punitive damages reduces rate of truck accidents. Really? [Curt Cutting]
Now with improved federalism: “The Return of the Lawsuit Abuse Reduction Act” [Carter Wood, more, earlier here].
Looks as if ROTC will return to Yale and Harvard despite some misgivings at the latter institution over the military’s treatment of transgendered persons [Atlantic Wire, Weekly Standard; also see my Daily Caller interview]
California state bar urges U.S. News to factor racial diversity into law school rankings [Althouse]
Right-of-center commentators clash on Ninth Circuit nomination of Berkeley lawprof Goodwin Liu [Damon Root, Reason]
Odds of this resulting purely from chance distribution would seem pretty low: of 32 members of Congress who have Harvard degrees, 29 are Democrats [Stoll, Future of Capitalism]
The video above is of the Society’s 10th annual Barbara Olson Memorial Lecture, in which Second Circuit Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs provocatively criticizes legal academia and other precincts of influential legal thinking for misunderstanding the role of the military and its relation to the law.
“A Marine recruit is suing his recruiters and the U.S. Marine Corps after he suffered a heat stroke during what he claims was vigorous physical activity in extreme heat conditions.” [SE Texas Record via (language) Popehat]
P.S. Note readers’ comments on the differences between the “pre-entry” training at issue here and the boot camp that would follow actual enlistment.
“A single mother soldier is expecting to win a large payout from the Army after a tribunal ruled that it had failed to take enough notice of her childcare needs. … a tribunal ruled [Tilern DeBique] was within her rights to miss training [in Britain's 10th Signal Regiment] when she could not find anyone to look after her daughter.” [Telegraph]
Why is there no iPod or iPhone equivalent for automobiles? Regulation might have something to do with it [Ryan Avent and more via Sullivan; McArdle and more (commenter: "Motorcycles would never, EVER be approved by NHTSA if they were invented today.")]
The Pentagon is putting out word, though, that soldiers would not be expected to go cold turkey in actual war zones. [Gregg Zoroya, "Ban on tobacco urged in military", USA Today, Jul. 9; "U.S. will not ban war zone smoking", AP/USA Today, Jul. 15]
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