The Federal Trade Commission “today released a 300-page report examining the effect that patent trolls – or as the FTC more tactfully dubs them, ‘patent assertion entities’ – have on competition…. The practice, said the FTC, ‘can deter innovation by raising costs and risks without making a technological contribution.’” [BLT]
Archive for 2011
Richard Epstein: “Throttled by compliance”
In fields from land-use planning to drug development to labor relations, says the NYU law professor, “[e]xcessive regulations cause private firms to displace creative officers and entrepreneurial executives with the dull masters of compliance.” [Hoover Institution “Defining Ideas”]
Update: “Milwaukee teachers drop Viagra suit”
“The Milwaukee teachers union has dropped a lawsuit seeking to get its taxpayer-funded Viagra back.” [Madison.com, earlier]
After California’s zip-code-privacy ruling
The lawsuits against store chains over inquiries in check-out lines were just the start: one lawyer has sued gas station operators on the theory that it violates state law to ask drivers at the pump to key in their zip code to verify their credit cards. [Russell Jackson, earlier]
High Court rebuffs Jets fan in “spygate” suit
“Gone Fishin’? Lawyers Say You May Qualify For a Check from BP”
Lawyers advertise for recreational, not just commercial, fisherfolk to file claims against the Gulf spill fund. [WSJ Law Blog]
“10 Questions”: I’m interviewed by The Daily Caller
Just out in the DC-based Daily Caller: Jamie Weinstein interviews me about my work and in particular my new book Schools for Misrule. I greatly enjoyed the interview, which I think turned out as one of the best I’ve done in quite a while. Some points that come up:
- George Mason University School of Law’s eccentric, in fact “almost Martian” hiring strategy (and I mean that last phrase in a nice way);
- My predictions re: the return of ROTC and military recruiting to previously resistant law school campuses (already, it seems, borne out).
- I recommend various books by Benjamin Barton, Steven Teles, Edward Banfield, Jane Jacobs and others;
- The non-monetary costs of an overlawyered society;
- The common academic (and philanthropic, too) background of sectors of litigation as diverse as school finance, Indian land claims, and environmental impact review;
- The “international community” in rights law as “a slightly globalized variant of the voice of New York Times editorials.”
The interview seems to be a hit with readers; as of a few hours ago it was listed as the most-emailed item on the site. Read the whole thing here (& FrumForum).
Scott Greenfield on Schools for Misrule
The deservedly popular criminal-defense and general law blogger weighs in on my new book. It’s a great review and these are some of my favorite passages:
…In Schools For Misrule: Legal Academia and an Overlawyered America, Walter aims both barrels and pulls the trigger. The book is classic Olson, witty, caustic and facially challenging to the Academy. The poke in the ribs is unmistakable, and early signs are that it’s going to get a rise out of some of the more intellectually honest lawprofs….
While the use of law schools as an incubator of liberal politics may not cause you to break out in hives, you may find Walter to be awfully persuasive in challenging simplistic notions of right and wrong, good and evil, that characterize political correctness. If your interest extends beyond people applauding you for agreeing with them, and actually comes anywhere near achieving a better understanding of issues and interests at stake, then Walter’s challenge may give you pause to rethink your knee-jerk reactions. He may not turn you into a full-time libertarian, but he will add enormously to your understanding of what’s at stake and why the solutions aren’t nearly as clear and easy as you thought. …
…What Walter Olson offers in Schools for Misrule is a challenge to the Academy to clean up its act, stop teaching liberalism as the only good policy and keep their mitts off the minds of our future leaders. … it’s left to the rest of us, lawyers, pundits and those few lawprofs who have the guts to challenge their brethren, even in the typical tepid tones that characterize communications between intellectuals, to hold their feet to the fire.
I could raise a quibble here or there — “environment of overwhelming leftism” is a reviewer’s wording, not mine, and I don’t remember characterizing any recent American presidents as “extremist,” least of all Bill Clinton — but that would be churlish in the face of such a nice review. I’m going to send Scott the signed copy, too.
Do NYT editorialists even read their paper’s own CPSIA coverage?
The New York Times editorial page continues to dismiss criticism of the testing burdens of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 on small manufacturers and retailers as “part of a standard antiregulation litany.” But on October 30, 2009 the paper itself ran a sadly belated but otherwise decently executed article 
by reporter Leslie Wayne from which a fair-minded reader would conclude that the small makers’ complaints about the law are only too well-grounded (“Burden of Safety Law Imperils Small Toymakers.”)
If one were to take a charitable view, one might commend the Times editorialists for at last deigning to concede that the law might usefully be “tweaked,” at least within a very narrow latitude. They finally acknowledge that there “might be a way to exempt products from testing if they very clearly do not pose a lead-related hazard,” without acknowledging that the great majority of products swept under the law’s coverage fall into exactly such a category. But they continue to insist that even older kids be denied access to products that could not pass 
CPSIA’s lead testing, including whole categories of products like kids’ bicycles and ballpoint pens whose designs still cannot dispense with the (entirely harmless) use of brass and suchlike alloys. Only the repeated staying or postponed enforcement of many of the law’s requirements has spared the country a long list of similar absurdities — while the legal absurdities that the CPSC has not stayed or postponed have already wiped out makers and vendors of harmless products from coast to coast.
Even under the best of circumstances, the Times’s editorialists would find it hard to live down their cruel, ideologically blinkered track record on the CPSIA issue. But couldn’t they at least pretend to be following the coverage in their own paper? More: Handmade Toy Alliance. And Rick Woldenberg offers a critique of the the Times’s new, and anything but improved, news-side reporting.
Law schools roundup
- 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]
- Rather disrespectful review of new Ronald Dworkin book [Simon Blackburn, Times Higher Ed]
- There’ll always be a legal academia dept.: “Multidimensional Masculinities and Law: A Colloquium” [UNLV/Suffolk via LaborProf]