Lawmakers in at least three states have proposed new laws criminalizing the taking of photos on farms without permission of the owner — and sometimes going much further than that, too. The idea is to stop animal-welfare activists from compiling unauthorized footage of allegedly inhumane conditions. I comment on that — and on some related photography and farm issues — at Cato at Liberty.
Archive for 2011
May 12 roundup
- Alabama state senate bans knowingly giving illegal immigrant ride in your car [Katherine Mangu-Ward]
- Cato U., dynamite summer seminar from my institute, being held this year in Annapolis Jul. 24-29;
- Calif.: “64% of Prop 65 settlements go to attorneys’ fees” [CJAC, earlier]
- Mississippi jury votes $322 million to individual asbestos claimant [Fair Warning, Mass Tort Prof]
- “Emails: Attorney nixed S.C. train injury fund” [AP/The State]
- Trump files $100 million counterclaim against customer who sued his “Trump University” [Atlantic Wire, earlier] More: Lowering the Bar.
- Two, three, a trend? Another trial-lawyer movie, this time starring Mark Lanier [WSJ Law Blog]
“Why we won’t link…”
It has to do with RightHaven: “Why We Won’t Link To Denver Post, Las Vegas Review-Journal, Salt Lake Tribune, and Several Others” [Box Turtle Bulletin]
Update: Foreclosing his options
“UK advocacy group proposes to sue predator drone operators”
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.
Labor Department releases iPhone app for wage/hour litigation
Keen to sic the feds on your boss? There’s an app for that, courtesy of the Department of Labor. [Michael Fox]
Digging for ADA gold
Well-known serial ADA litigant George Louie has hit the California Gold Rush country [CJAC] Not that far away: “Serial ADA filer targets popular Davis burger joint” [same, Scott Johnson]
Ceci n’est pas une whistle
Imagine how puzzling it must be to be an employee of the city of Montreal: the city “has set up a whistleblower hotline to encourage you to expose wrongdoings by colleagues but has also created an explicit policy forbidding you to blow the whistle and is threatening severe penalties if you do.” [Montreal Gazette]
Farm animal treatment: letting states and markets sort it out
The New York Times’s “Room for Debate” feature has a round table up on the movement for more humane treatment of farm animals and invited me to participate. I argue that local variation in laws and the emergence of distinct markets for humanely raised meat are preferable to calls for federal government intervention. More: Tom Laskawy, Grist; and see my Cato follow-on post referenced here.
“Revisiting The Unreasonably Dangerous Undergarment”
More developments in “the case of the dangerously defective bra.” [Kevin Couch, Abnormal Use]