Chronicling the high cost of our legal system
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The Corzine Times, a website of the Republican Governors Association publicizing negative news stories about the politically vulnerable New Jersey governor, received a cease and desist letter from The New York Times, which so far doesn’t seem to have seen fit to include that fact for its readers, though other papers have at least blogged about it. [WaPo; USA Today]
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I’ve been added to the contributors at NRO’s Bench Memos discussing the Sotomayor nomination, and my first post skeptically looks at the talking point that she “saved baseball” in 1995.
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I was given the opportunity to be on a public-affairs-in-America program on Press TV, the English-language Iranian television network, yesterday. The majority of discussion was on economic issues, but I do get to comment on a number of counterproductive laws Congress seems intent on passing this term. The program is available on line.
If you’re not reading my other legal site, Point of Law, here’s some of what you’re missing:
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A buddy of mine who holds elected office has the “hat” theory. As soon as elected officials put on the “hat” of office, it squeezes their heads so tight that they can no longer think. They forget all they knew before, of the wrongs and the remedies, of why somebody decided to vote for them in the first place, and assume the position dictated by the hat. He says they can’t help themselves because it’s the hat.
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In 2007, the Texas Supreme Court unanimously decided Borg-Warner v. Flores, holding that a defendant in an asbestos case was not liable unless its product was a “substantial factor” in causing injury.
But there are now bills in the Texas House and Senate, SB 1123 (recently reported out of Senate committee) and HB 1811, that seek to undo this by defining “substantial factor” to merely mean that a product “contributed to the [plaintiff’s] cumulative exposure”—whether or not other defendants’ products were far more responsible for a plaintiff’s injury. The effect of this rollback would be to return Texas to the role of asbestos magnet, since it could conceivably create indiscriminate liability for hundreds of innocent businesses in any given case. The effect will be very similar to the infamous Lipke rule in Madison County, Illinois that extracted billions of dollars from the innocent this decade.
Texans for Lawsuit Reform has a fact-sheet, as does the Texas Civil Justice League.
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At the indispensable American.com, I find some similarities between Patrick Leahy’s proposal and a fiasco of a publicity stunt 75 years ago.
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I’m not in the business of political forecasts, and I don’t think I’ve ever made 
any claims for my skill in that department. Even so, I’m pleased to report that I was among the winners in National Journal’s “prediction poll of top political bloggers” for the 2008 elections. Mine were the most accurate predictions among participating bloggers in the “right” category; the winners for “left” and “center” respectively were Chris Bowers of OpenLeft and Joe Gandelman of The Moderate Voice. Earlier coverage here.
Various well-known bloggers talk about how the blogs did this year in stimulating discussion, challenging errors and omissions in the general press, and so forth. I contribute a quote about how “when you sit out an election without backing a candidate, you become painfully aware of how easy it is for blogs turn themselves into an echo chamber for their side’s talking points. Not attractive.” Some blogs I turned to this fall for politics coverage in part because I couldn’t always guess ahead of time what line they’d take: Steve Chapman, Megan McArdle, Marginal Revolution, Culture11’s Confabulum, Ann Althouse, Virginia Postrel, Mickey Kaus (not an exhaustive list by any means).
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Coyote’s recommendations.
On the campaign contributions front. (Dr. Wes, Oct. 29).
Point of Law Volokh