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]
Please reassure us Canada’s not going to follow U.S. down abusive road of asset seizure in law enforcement [Moin Yahya and Janet Neilson, Western Standard]
What sorts of intellectual property norms prevail in the world of stand-up comedy? [ConcurOp]
“Marc Dreier’s Son Sues College Roommate for $1M” [ABA Journal]
Intersection of state divorce law with peripatetic military life can lead to harsh results [Bader, CEI]
We briefly mentioned the other day the remarkable litigation over a laptop theft which (it seemed at the time) might have led to a data breach imperiling the personal information of military veterans. The feared breach resulted in an emergency request to Congress for $160 million to provide credit counseling to veterans, and, more recently, a $20 million settlement of class-action claims brought against the Veterans Administration, based at least in part on allegations of emotional distress associated with the (unfounded, as it turned out) fear of identity theft. If you’re wondering who the biggest winner will be from all this, Bank Lawyer’s Blog is pleased to provide the answer.
“You’ve got to be alive to be inconvenienced”: some thoughts on the withdrawal of an emergency battlefield therapy [GruntDoc]
Yes, let’s all have a nice scare over “third-hand” tobacco smoke, or actually let’s not [Sullum, Siegel, Greenfield] And you knew they were coming: “smokeasies” [Tuccille, Examiner]
“We are fully cooperating with the government in its investigations” (Hey, I never said “we” included my client) [WSJ Law Blog on Madoff case]
Speech so precious it must be rationed: Yale Law Journal author proposes “Tort Liability on Websites for Cyber-Harassment” [via TortsProf]
Rick Hills on Richardson probe: federally criminalizing state-level pay-to-play is a bad idea [Prawfs]
Paul Alan Levy: Martin Luther King Jr. estate, much criticized for its aggressive trademark assertions in the past, deserves due credit for its handling of a case where free speech was implicated [CL&P]
Lawyers on Craigslist: “If you practice as well as you spell, we’re golden” [Nicole Black, Legal Antics]
Yes, I’m overhauling Overlawyered’s look and feel with the aid of Thesis, a powerful “theme” (way of changing presentation) for WordPress. Expect my tinkering to go on for a while.
“A Kosovan man shot in the jaw by a British soldier has been awarded £2.4 million compensation after suing the Ministry of Defence. The sum is more than eight times the maximum damages available to UK troops seriously injured abroad, and has been criticised by the relatives of disabled veterans.” Muhamet Bici had been “in a car with other men who were firing weapons into the air to celebrate a national holiday” in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo; a Military Police probe cleared British soldiers who shot at the car of charges of wrongdoing, saying they reasonably if erroneously believed themselves in danger. (Matthew Moore, “MoD pays out £2.4m to Kosovan shot in the jaw”, Daily Telegraph, Nov. 6).
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