“Human rights advocates claim that the depiction of torture in popular TV shows has had the effect of promoting the practice in real life, implying that the production companies may have failed to meet their responsibility to respect human rights as articulated in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.” [Faris Natour, JustMeans.com; Wired on Zero Dark Thirty] “So, ban Schindler’s List?” [@susanwake]
Meanwhile, the regime in Iran says it will sue over its depiction in the movie “Argo” [CNN; more from Wikipedia on French lawyer Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, whose attempts to marry imprisoned terrorist Carlos the Jackal "have been frustrated by legal issues"]
Tagged as:
international human rights,
movies film and videos,
terrorism
- Why did Chevron subpoena a lawprof/blogger who took opposite side in Ecuador case? [Kevin Jon Heller, Opinio Juris]
- “Paleo Diet Lawsuit Dismissed By Court in Blow to Free Expression” [Brian Doherty, Reason; earlier here, etc.]
- “[National Hispanic Media Coalition] Renews Call for Federal Government to Study Hate Speech in Media” [Volokh]
- Call for “oversight board of regional experts” to direct more YouTube takedowns [Ann Althouse]
- No more dirty looks: North Carolina students now face possible jail time for what they say about teachers online [Reason]
- Popehat sampler: “Schadenfreude Is Not A Free Speech Value; Holmes’s fire-in-theater quote the most “pervasive lazy cheat in American dialogue about free speech”; “Zampolit Angela McCaskill, Report For Reeducation.”
- EU “terror” web-muzzle schemes: “We should start to freak out, but in a sort of preliminary way” [Ars Technica]
Tagged as:
Chevron,
hate speech,
North Carolina,
subpoenas,
terrorism,
YouTube
- Prediction: Homeland Security to emerge as major regulatory agency prescribing security rules to private sector [Stewart Baker] Regulators fret: air travel’s gotten so safe it’s hard for us to justify new authority [Taranto via Instapundit] “Romney’s regulatory plan” [Penn RegBlog]
- Claim: frequent expert witness in Dallas court proceedings is “imposter” [PoliceMisconduct.net]
- “‘Temporary’ Takings That Cause Permanent Damage Still Require Just Compensation” [Ilya Shapiro, Cato]
- On the ObamaCare decision’s wild card, the ruling on “coercive” conditions on Medicaid grants under the Spending Clause [Mike McConnell, Ilya Somin] Ramesh Ponnuru argues that ruling is no victory for supporters of limited government [Bloomberg]
- D.C.’s historic Shaw neighborhood near Cato Institute narrowly escaped planners’ bulldozer [Greater Greater Washington, WaPo]
- Michelle Obama on the right track with an idea on occupational licensure but should take it farther [Mark Perry]
- Everyone’s a judicial critic: Auto-Correct proposes replacing “Posner” with “Poisoner.”
Tagged as:
aviation,
Cato Institute,
constitutional law,
Dallas,
eminent domain,
expert witnesses,
Mitt Romney,
ObamaCare,
regulation and its reform,
Richard Posner,
terrorism,
Washington D.C.
A year ago the D.C. Circuit told the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) that it needed to go through notice-and-comment rulemaking for its controversial program of full-body scanners at airports. The rulemaking process is intended to ensure that the agency lays out clearly the factual, legal and policy basis for its actions, with a chance for opponents to lodge objections and establish a basis for judicial review. As my colleague Jim Harper points out, the agency has dragged its heels about doing this — a sort of passive resistance it would probably not tolerate from the hapless citizens stuck in its lines. TSA screening is one of the most widely resented governmental intrusions on the individual citizen of our era. Shouldn’t we all demand that the federal government demonstrate adequate justification for imposing it? [Cato at Liberty and Ars Technica; Consumerist; Constitutional Law Prof, 2011] (& welcome National Review “Web Briefing” readers; John LaPlante, Detroit News “Water Cooler”)
Tagged as:
aviation,
D.C. Circuit,
regulation and its reform,
terrorism
- Keeping prosecutors busy? Georgia lawmaker files bill that would make Internet defamation a crime [Fulton County Daily Report]
- Sarkozy calls for law banning visits to pro-terror websites [Ken Paulson, First Amendment Center]
- “Ron Paul Campaign Drops Effort To Identify Anonymous Videographer” [Paul Alan Levy]
- Playboy caused how many divorces? Junk science in the service of big-government conservatism [Andrew Stuttaford, NRO] How Santorum’s plans to get porn off internet go beyond GWB’s [Josh Barro] Contra Santorum, “arrival of Internet was associated with reduction in rape incidence” [Steve Chapman]
- “Brian Deer and the British Medical Journal File An Anti-SLAPP Motion Against Andrew Wakefield” [Popehat]
- Iowa passes law penalizing animal rightsers who spy on farms [Reuters, earlier] Illinois turns thumbs down on “ag-gag” proposal [Steve Chapman]
- “What’s happened to free speech in Britain?” [Alex Massie, John O'Sullivan/NRO, earlier here and others]
Tagged as:
animal rights,
France,
free speech,
Iowa,
libel slander and defamation,
online speech,
Ron Paul,
terrorism,
United Kingdom
My new post at Cato at Liberty is on Italian labor law professors Pietro Ichino and Carlo Dell’Aringa, who live under police protection because of their support for liberalization of the job market; two other professors, Massimo D’Antona and Mario Biagi, have been killed by Red Brigades gunmen. More: Coyote.
Tagged as:
employment at will,
Italy,
law schools,
terrorism
- 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]
- “Fort Hood victims’ families seek $750M from feds” [Kenneth Timmerman, Daily Caller]
- “Chicago Lawyer Sues Southwest, Says Airline Breached Free-Drink Coupon Contract” [ABA Journal]
- “Lawyer Solicitation: Penn State Sex Abuse Edition” [Turkewitz] Slate slags Merck CEO [Ted Frank]
- Akaka Hawaii-racialization bill, smuggled in through the back door? [Ilya Shapiro, background]
- Suits over Hurricane Irene electrical outages expected to spread [Connecticut Law Tribune, Chris Powell]
- Fiasco envy? “RIAA Thinking Of Backing Righthaven” [Masnick, TechDirt] “Righthaven ordered to pay nearly $120,000 in attorney fees, court costs” [VegasInc., Ars Technica, American Power Blog]
Tagged as:
airlines,
contracts,
Hawaii,
military,
RightHaven,
Senate,
terrorism,
U.S. House of Representatives,
Vioxx
- Pre-terror-attack antibiotic availability? HHS doesn’t think you’re sophisticated enough to handle that freedom [Stewart Baker]
- Uh-oh: some New York lawmakers want “a more refined First Amendment” [Slashdot, Lucy Steigerwald]
- Wal-Mart v. Dukes decision could curb certification of some wage and hour class actions [Fox]
- “Miss. Supreme Court Removes Judge from $322M Asbestos Case Because of Dad’s Lawsuits” [ABA Journal]
- Mass. town wants to seize family motel under forfeiture law, IJ objects [Jacob Sullum, Mark Perry]
- Will FDA use its new tobacco-regulatory power to stub out cigars? [DC]
- “Dole settles pesticide litigation” [WSJ Law Blog, background]
Tagged as:
banana pesticide litigation fraud,
FDA,
First Amendment,
forfeiture,
recusals,
terrorism,
tobacco,
Wal-Mart v. Dukes
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.
Tagged as:
international human rights,
military,
terrorism
- Reason TV interviews Richard Epstein;
- On the SEC’s big new “insider trading” sweep [Ribstein, Bainbridge, Lambert, Salmon, more Ribstein]
- Losing = winning? Ambitious claim for fees in environmental case [California Civil Justice, scroll]
- “Unintended consequences department: canceled flights” [Ted at PoL] And check out Ted’s new TSA Abuse Blog, on one of the hottest issues of the moment. More on that from Popehat and Simple Justice;
- H.R. 1408, the Inclusive Home Design Act, would compel handicap accessibility in private home design, yet another dreadful idea from Rep. Jan Schakowsky of CPSIA fame [AmendTheCPSIA]
- “This place would be a shoplifter’s paradise (and a liability insurance abuser’s motherlode) in the United States, but we were in Japan, where they don’t seem to worry as much about that kind of thing.” [Mark Frauenfelder, BoingBoing, on the Showa Kan museum of everyday midcentury life in Takayama]
- UK: “I moved out for decorators and squatters took over my house” [Evening Standard]
- From the ruins of Pompeii, a reflection on government and disaster relief [Dum Spiro Spero]
Tagged as:
airlines,
attorneys' fees,
disabled rights,
emergency services,
Jan Schakowsky,
real estate,
Richard Epstein,
Securities and Exchange Commission,
terrorism
“The widow of a July 7 suicide bomber yesterday launched a High Court bid to be represented at the victims’ inquest – saying she had also suffered the loss of a loved one in the atrocity. Hasina Patel, whose husband was terrorist mastermind Mohammad Sidique Khan, is seeking legal aid to challenge the coroner’s decision to exclude Khan’s death from the hearing for the 52 victims of the 2005 London bombings.” [Daily Mail via Amy Alkon]
Tagged as:
terrorism,
United Kingdom
After a storm of criticism, Ingrid Betancourt withdrew her request for money from the government of Colombia, which launched a commando operation that rescued her from FARC guerrillas in 2008 after a six-year captivity. [Guardian, Moynihan/Hit and Run]
Tagged as:
terrorism
- More outcry over report of big new Treasury tax break for injury lawyers [Chris Moody, Daily Caller, Wood/ShopFloor]
- Geologists’ annoyance over bill to oust asbestos-containing serpentine as California state rock makes NYT front page [yesterday; Dan Walters, Facebook group, Calif. Civil Justice, Bailey via Adler, earlier]
- Great moments in international human rights: “Known al-Qaeda Operative Could Not Be Deported [from UK]” [Foster, NRO]
- “Is the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act a Government Cash Cow?” [Koehler, FCPA Professor]
- Franklin Mint case cont’d: “Manatt Tries to Beat Back Malicious Prosecution Lawsuit” [Baxter/American Lawyer, earlier]
- “Washington’s parasites take aim at Apple” [David Boaz, Philadelphia Inquirer]
- Gubernatorial bid by Rhode Island attorney general Patrick Lynch seems to have fizzled [Jessica Taylor, Politico via Law and More]
- Go explicit or go home: Georgia abolishes implied private rights of action [PoL, my Reason take years ago]
Tagged as:
AAJ,
Apple,
asbestos,
attorneys general,
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act,
international human rights,
Rhode Island,
sanctions,
taxes,
terrorism
