Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Archive for December, 2012

Penelope Trunk: “How To Hack Public School”

Take advantage of IDEA and the feds’ disapproval of test-accommodation flagging:

3. Classify your kid as having some sort of learning difference. Get your kid an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) early on so that they get unlimited time taking the SAT. The classification is not reported to colleges, so it’s just seen simply as a really high score.

You might think this is extreme, but in New York City parents get their kid classified as special needs in order to get a leg up getting into elite preschools. So doing this to get into an elite college seems fine. And look, it’s hard to get an IEP when your kid is two years from taking the SAT. Everyone wants an IEP then. It’s easy when you have a first-grader. Most first graders look like they need an IEP when they are in school because school is so uncomfortable for young kids.

[Penelope Trunk]

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Electronic communications intended “to annoy” with “no legitimate purpose”

With a new law, Vernon County, Wisconsin has put itself at the forefront of attempts to regulate disparaging email, online chat, blogs, Facebook posts (specifically cited by one advocate at a hearing), and Twitter. The law seems to be a product of the media hype over “cyberbullying.” [Popehat, Volokh]

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The Newtown blame chain

Who to blame after a freak atrocity? For many of those who’ve felt obliged to comment, the question seems rather who not to blame:

  • Lack of a national gun registry [cited by the New York Times, though the relevant weapon in Newtown was properly registered and posed no tracing difficulties to authorities; Jacob Sullum]
  • Non-prosecution of people who lie on gun applications [cited by NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg, though there’s no indication that anyone lied on a gun application in the Lanza case; Jacob Sullum again]
  • Lack of cops in schools [Eli Lehrer on one of the NRA’s bad ideas]
  • Violence in videogames [Jacob Sullum on another of the NRA’s bad ideas; more, Scott Shackford, Andrew Sullivan]
  • Advances for secular and socially liberal causes in the recent U.S. elections [Michael Potemra and Peter Wehner on the comments of James Dobson]
  • Congress, for its role in blocking an organized campaign to bankrupt gun makers through tort suits [Slate and, earlier, Erwin Chemerinsky, trying to revive this truly bad idea]
  • People who want to reform public education and the organization of teaching [Katherine Mangu-Ward, though the union advocates she cites are claiming something closer to “this proves we’re right” than to “school choice causes shootings.”]
  • In general, those terrible people who disagree with us [“Reading discussions on the web, you might come to believe that we don’t all share the goal of a society where the moral order is preserved, and where our children can be put on the bus to school without a qualm. But we do. We just disagree about how to make it happen.” — Dave Hoffman, Concur Op]

(& welcome Scott Greenfield, Jack Shafer readers)

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Best of 2012: July

December 26 roundup

  • L.A. County assessor, though in jail, will keep drawing $197K salary plus raise [LAT]
  • IRS lowers the regulatory boom on tax preparers [Institute for Justice video, auto-plays]
  • On Wal-Mart Mexico bribery, NYT has a bit of a blind eye of its own [Stoll; earlier here, here, etc.]
  • Another painful CPSIA regulation: CPSC on testing “representative samples” [Nancy Nord]
  • “Popcorn lung” couple “won a $20 million judgment. Now, they’re broke.” [ABC]
  • From Todd Zywicki: Libertarianism, Law and Economics, and the Common Law [SSRN via Bainbridge]
  • If the courts disapprove of throttling internet speeds, what do they think of throttling class action claims redemption rates? [Ted Frank]

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Overlawyered highlights of Christmas past

From the archives:

  • Christmas in legalese: “…Hosiery was meticulously suspended from the forward edge of the woodburning caloric apparatus…” [1999] And see TaxProf (“Claus thereafter immediately began to fill the stockings of the minor children… (Said items did not, however, constitute ‘gifts’ to said minor pursuant to the applicable provisions of the U.S. Tax Code.)”)
  • Yuletide in old England less jolly given health and safety adjustments [2007, 2009]
  • Santa’s extra helper might be a witness in case of litigation, and other items from the legal-Claus file [2005]
  • Gingerbread and chestnut-roasting hazards [2002]
  • “Law firm offers divorce vouchers for Christmas” [2009]
  • Does “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” promote bullying? [2011]
  • “Cease this shouting!” cried Grinch, “From all Yule din desist!” But he’d Moved To The Nuisance and so, case dismissed [Art Carden, Forbes on Whoville externalities] [2010]

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