More CPSIA overkill: lowering lead limits

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By a 3-2 party line vote, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has voted to lower already infinitesimal thresholds of lead permitted in children’s products to 100 parts per million. The main impact will not be on surface paints or other flakable/chewable hazards to the youngest users, but on “substrate” elements such as metal alloys employed in such objects as bicycle parts, school binders, and ballpoint pens, an even wider swath of which will be hard to sell or resell without breaking the law. [Bloomberg; commissioners Nord, Northup; Woldenberg, more and yet more]

PUBLIC DOMAIN IMAGE from Walter Crane, The Baby’s Opera (1876), courtesy BabylonBaroque.

Filed under: CPSIA

“Law School Sues Law Firm and Bloggers for Criticizing its Placement Data”

Watch what you say about lawyers — and now it seems about law schools as well, specifically Michigan’s Thomas M. Cooley Law School. [TaxProf, Above the Law]

Filed under: law schools, Michigan, watch what you say about lawyers

“Bang bang” not actionable behavior

Per a Connecticut appeals court, looking at an employee and saying “Bang bang” does not, even when added to some other impolite conduct, rise to the level of “extreme and outrageous” behavior required to trigger a claim of intentional infliction of emotional distress [Daniel Schwartz]

Filed under: Connecticut, emotional distress, workplace

July 15 roundup

Dreadful “Caylee’s Law” proposals continue unabated [Balko and more, Lowering the Bar, Skenazy, Frank, Somin] Confirmed non-members of Nancy Grace fan club include Stephen Bainbridge and Scott Greenfield;
Swedish heavy metal fan has musical preferences officially classed as disability [Cowen]
In welcome Goodyear and Nicastro rulings, SCOTUS reins in “stream of commerce” jurisdiction [Yeary, Beck, Wasserman and more, Lahav, Fisher]
Federal lawsuit alleges polka song infringement [Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel]
EPA winning showdown with Texas, power plants may shutter at cost to Lone Star economy [Chron] Don’t dismiss the Texas job creation story — or the role of lawsuit reform [Rick Wartzman, L.A. Times]
Breyer backs Thomas on recusal ethics [Adler]
“Clashing Visions of a ‘Living’ Constitution” [William Van Alstyne on SSRN, his Cato lecture last fall]

Filed under: constitutional law, disabled rights, Environmental Protection Agency, music and musicians, Nancy Grace, recusals, Supreme Court, Sweden, Texas

“Cal Court of Appeal to US Supremes: ‘Oh yeah, says who?'”

On upholding consumer and employee agreements to arbitrate, as in the days before the telegraph, it can take a while for the word to get from D.C. to the West Coast. [Cal Biz Lit]

Filed under: arbitration, California, Supreme Court

Great moments in airline law

From Canada’s National Post:

The Federal Court of Canada on Wednesday ordered Air Canada to pay $12,000 to Ottawa French-language rights crusader Michel Thibodeau in part because when he asked an English-speaking flight attendant for 7Up in May 12 of 2009, he got Sprite.

“The applicants’ language rights are clearly very important to them and the violation of their rights caused them a moral prejudice, pain and suffering and loss of enjoyment of their vacation,” Justice Marie-Josee Bedard wrote in her judgment.

The bulk of the lawsuit, filed by a frequent language-law litigant, contended that the airline failed to assign French-speaking flight attendants to several flights and failed to make a baggage announcement in French despite a federal law requiring alternative-language use “where there is significant demand for those services in the minority language and where it is warranted by the nature of the office or facility.”

Filed under: airlines, Canada

An asylum-fraud “industry”

A front-page story in the New York Times details how some immigration middlemen engage in systematic coaching of false persecution stories. “West Africans claim genital mutilation or harm from the latest political violence. Albanians and immigrants from other Balkan countries claim they fear ethnic cleansing. Chinese invoke the one-child policy or persecution of Christians, Venezuelans cite their opposition to the ruling party, and Russians describe attacks against gay people. Iraqis and Afghans can cite fear of retaliation by Islamic extremists.”

Filed under: asylum law, immigration law

Get ready to surprise yourself with a drug test

In my new post at Cato at Liberty, I quote a few highlights from Philip Greenspun’s account of his encounter with Federal Aviation Administration regulators intent on applying to the smallest aviation businesses the same rules that govern the largest. Per George Wallace, “All regulation aspires to the condition of a Monty Python sketch.”

Filed under: FAA, illegal drugs, small business, WO writings

Drunk-driving teen sues school district

Teacher gave me booze, pills and car keys, says Dylan Ferguson, and so it’s the school district’s fault that I hurt myself [Orlando Sentinel]

Filed under: Florida, personal responsibility, schools

Push for “national human rights institution” in U.S.

James P. Kelly III offers some reasons for skepticism [Federalist Society Engage; note especially discussion of “economic rights” on pp. 64 et seq.] And from the “when we say it, it’s alarmism” file: “The Regulatory Turn in International Law” [Jacob Katz Cogan, HILJ/Opinio Juris]

Filed under: international human rights, international law