Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Archive for July, 2012

The costs of the FDA, compounded

As exclusivity is granted based on the staggering costs of clearing the FDA steeplechase, low-cost consumer options have a way of disappearing: “KV priced Makena like so many other branded drugs at $1,500 per injection. Had there been no compounding market at about $15 per injection, virtually no one’s sense of propriety would have been ruffled and perhaps no one would have even noticed.” [Charles Hooper, Medical Progress Today]

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Judges roundup

The good, the bad, and the beyond belief:

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EEOC settles complaint over heavy equipment operator with epilepsy

“The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has reached a $49,500 settlement with a construction company and utility company for withdrawing a job offer to a heavy equipment operator with epilepsy.” [Judy Greenwald, Business Insurance, earlier] In other news: “Just under two weeks after suffering a seizure that led to two car accidents within minutes of each other, Commerce Secretary John Bryson has submitted his resignation.” [NPR]

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Lawyer: woman will stop suing School for the Deaf over frequent flyer miles

The Texas School for the Deaf flies its non-local students to their family’s homes each weekend for free, and saves the frequent flier miles for purposes such as buying air tickets for chaperones. A woman identified as D.G. sued, saying the benefit of the miles should go to her daughter, but her lawyer says she’s dropping the suit in view of the big public outcry against it. [Claire Osborn, Austin American-Statesman; followup, Ken Herman]

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Free speech roundup

  • Political bloggers prevail in cases where Maryland, Massachusetts judges sought to enjoin them from blogging [Hans Bader, Popehat on Maryland and Massachusetts cases, Bader and Popehat updating Berkshire case] Who might have “SWATted” Aaron Walker? [Patterico] No point asking Salon’s Alex Pareene [same]
  • Supreme Court’s fractured First Amendment theories in U.S. v. Alvarez, the Stolen Valor case [Eugene Volokh] Ruling could benefit commercial speakers in cases like Nike [Richard Samp, WLF] Court got it wrong, says Richard Epstein [Hoover]
  • Controversial cartoonist sends many takedown demands to critics who reproduce her work in the course of criticizing it [Rob Beschizza, BoingBoing, Popehat]
  • Interview with Charles Brownstein, who directs the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund [Nick Farr, Abnormal Use]
  • “Even pointing people toward that blog could constitute further defamation.” [Popehat on case of Ranaan Katz (Miami Heat), more, PoL]
  • “Malaysian Arrest of Borders Clerk for Selling Allegedly Blasphemous Book” [Volokh] “Debunk a ‘Miracle’ – Go to Jail for Blasphemy In India” [Ronald Bailey]
  • Careful about pouncing on The Oatmeal, you might suffer a quicksand-like fate [Greenfield, Paul Alan Levy,Popehat]

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“The quiet scandal of the HIV home test kit”

“Did the FDA’s former ban on home testing kits result in thousands of avoidable infections?” Persons who learn of their HIV-positive status are less likely to pass the infection on to others. “The scandal is that the approval of a rapid home test for HIV did not occur until last week — about 24 years after the FDA received its first application seeking permission to market one.” [Roger Parloff, Fortune](& welcome Hans Bader/CEI readers)

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More reactions to “Abolish the Law Reviews!”

My Atlantic piece touched off a lot of discussion, much of it quite constructive, of where law reviews fall short and how best to fix or replace them. Unless you’ve caught up with it already, you’ll want to check out Friday’s post rounding up more than a dozen reactions (and updated a couple of times over the weekend to include more content). On Monday, along with new reactions at legal blogs, the piece took off on Twitter as well.

Joe Hodnicki, Law Librarian Blog:

… eventually, reader expectations will push the long-form law article into the 21st century of e-publishing.

In the process one can only hope that law journals and enhanced regularly updated serial law eBooks will also eliminate the print era version of date-stamping by ceasing publication of “issues” for journals and, for serial eBooks, scheduled “supplements” or “editions.” As soon as the text has completed the editorial process, just e-publish the damn thing immediately.

Old publishing habits die hard, but it is time to create new ones by eliminating print era legacies.

Mark Giangrande, also of Law Librarian Blog, by email, following up on our previous excerpt:

One thing not in my Law Librarian Blog post was a quick check on Westlaw to see what quantity of law review cites appeared in Supreme Court opinions in the last term. A quick count showed at least 56. What surprised me was some of the citations went back to the 1960s. I’ve often criticized law reviews for publishing philosophical pieces that tend to show faculty writing to impress their friends and win promotions, little of which contribute to the bench and bar (per CJ Roberts’ point). The Court still uses them, but generally those which actually discuss the law as the law.

The full list of 56 last-term SCOTUS law review cites, of which the most satisfying is probably “Note, Regulation of Comic Books, 68 Harv. L. Rev. 489, 490 (1955),” is too long to be included here, but those interested can drop him a line.

Adam Kusovitsky and colleagues, Pace International Law Review:

Havighurst is correct to point out that law reviews are published in order that they may be written, but that fact should not rouse a sneer or scoff. …Law reviews provide thousands of students an apparatus to develop unrivaled editing, writing and researching skills, which ultimately makes them better attorneys and more effective writers in general.

Meanwhile, Vitruvian Design spies similar signs of sclerosis in humanities and classics journals. There’s even a Reddit thread (hipsterparalegal). And the article has gotten no end of pick-up on Twitter, including Lawyerist, Corby Kummer, Boston Bar (“must reading”), Cleveland-Marshall Dean Craig Boise, and Bryan Cave Library, to name a few. And:

And this rather cruel exchange:

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