- “An Innovative Way to Title Property in Poor Countries” [Ian Vasquez on Peter Schaefer and Clay Schaefer Cato study]
- Berman v. Parker, “1954 U.S. Supreme Court case that approved large-scale modern urban renewal”, facilitated a bulldozer redevelopment of Washington, D.C.’s SW now viewed as “crushing failure” [Gideon Kanner]
- Time for a radical step: strip local government of its project-blocking powers [Edward Glaeser, Cato]
- When reporting on European anti-fracking movements, try not to think of a Bear [Jonathan Adler]
- “The EPA wants to redefine ‘the waters of the United States’ to mean virtually any wet spot in the country.” [M. Reed Hopper and Todd Gaziano, WSJ] Overcriminalization, EPA, and wetlands: the Jack Barron case [Right on Crime video]
- Exhaustion of state remedies on takings: “Supreme Court Should Remove Kafka-esque Burden to Vindicating Property Rights” [Ilya Shapiro and Trevor Burrus]
- “Proposition 65 can spell bankruptcy for many California small business owners” [Mark Snyder, Sacramento Bee]
Archive for December, 2014
Florida’s frequent FOIA flyers, and their law firm connection
Florida Center for Investigative Reporting via Columbia Journalism Review:
The nonprofit Citizens Awareness Foundation was founded to “empower citizens to exercise their right to know,” according to its mission statement. The South Florida millionaire backing the foundation hired one of the state’s most prominent public records activists to run it, rented office space, and pledged to pay the legal fees to make sure people had access to government records.
But a review of court records and internal communications obtained by the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting shows that the foundation is less interested in obtaining records and educating the public than in working with a partner law firm to collect cash settlements from every lawsuit filed….
The O’Boyle law firm has filed more than 140 requests on behalf of the foundation and a related group this year, including barrages of requests against engineers and road builders. The general counsel of the Florida Engineering Federation wrote in May that it was “debatable whether they are truly seeking records or just attempting to obtain legal fees for a violation,” a concern shared elsewhere:
“It’s a sad game of ‘gotcha,’ the only purpose of which is to generate an attorney fee claim rather than obtain any actual public records,” said Bob Burleson, president of the Florida Transportation Builders’ Association.
A former executive director of the foundation has resigned, citing ethical concerns. Among numerous small government contractors targeted by the demands are charities and social service providers; an environmental remediation firm says the law firm included a nondisclosure demand that would prevent it from comparing notes with others to receive the fee demands. Ten years ago we reported on a practice in California in which bounty-hunting requesters aimed public records requests at school districts in early summer, then followed with legal fee requests based on the districts’ having missed the short deadline for responding.
More: Ray Downs, Broward/Palm Beach New Times (& John Steele, Legal Ethics Forum).
Columbia: law students traumatized by grand jury news can delay finals
Yes, that’s really what interim dean Robert Scott announced [Paul Mirengoff, Power Line]:
In recognition of the traumatic effects these events [the non-indictments of officers in the Brown and Garner cases] have had on some of the members of our community, Dean Greenberg-Kobrin and Yadira Ramos-Herbert, Director, Academic Counseling, have arranged to have Dr. Shirley Matthews, a trauma specialist, hold sessions next Monday and Wednesday for anyone interested in participating to discuss the trauma that recent events may have caused….
The law school has a policy and set of procedures for students who experience trauma during exam period. In accordance with these procedures and policy, students who feel that their performance on examinations will be sufficiently impaired due to the effects of these recent events may petition Dean Alice Rigas to have an examination rescheduled.
Lawyers who can’t function after seeing injustice would seem a bit like surgeons who can’t stand the sight of blood.
Schools roundup
- National Education Association has spent estimated $35 million on politics this year [Jason Hart, Watchdog]
- Not everyone in academia admires the federal law entitling tenured professors to stay on “until they’re carried out of the classroom on a gurney” [Laurie Fendrich, Chronicle of Higher Ed; my earlier]
- Montgomery County, Md.: “The School Religious Holidays Problem is Really a Public Schooling Problem” [Neal McCluskey]
- “Concussion Lawsuits Hit High School Level” [AP; Cook County, Ill.]
- Reminder: much-quoted “one in five college women is raped” statistic is not real [Christina Sommers, Time; the Washington Post’s contribution (not to forget this); and a very important new piece by Emily Yoffe in Slate]
- Ousting bad cops, ousting bad teachers: parallel obstacles [RiShawn Biddle, Dropout Nation]
- George Leef on federal pressures behind Minneapolis school-discipline initiative [Forbes, earlier here and here]
- DoJ “feigning concern about access for disabled children” in suit challenging Wisconsin school choice [George Will]
“Shall guarantee to every State …a Republican Form of Government”
No, the Constitution’s Article 4, Section 4 “Republican form of government” clause doesn’t forbid the voters of Colorado from enacting a ballot measure (the “Taxpayer Bill of Rights,” or TABOR) that bars representatives from raising taxes without permission of a popular plebiscite [Ilya Shapiro and Julio Colomba, Cato, SCOTUSBlog, earlier]
Bootleg cigarettes, Prohibition and the death of Eric Garner
Eric Garner, asphyxiated during his arrest on Staten Island, had been repeatedly picked up by the NYPD for the crime of selling loose cigarettes. Washington Examiner:
The crime of selling “loosies” was not considered a serious one in the past. Many corner stores in New York City once sold them quietly upon request. But former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s cartoonish anti-tobacco crusade changed that and everything else. Smoking in public places was banned. Punitive taxes and a legal minimum price of $10.50 were imposed in an effort to push prices ever-upward, so that a brand-name pack of 20 cigarettes now costs as much as $14 in New York City.
As a result, the illicit sale of loose and untaxed cigarettes became more commonplace.
I noted at yesterday’s Repeal Day panel at Cato that according to figures last year, New York’s unusually high cigarette taxes had brought it an unusual distinction: an estimated 60 percent of consumption there is of smuggled or illegal cigarettes, much higher than any other state. Another way to think of it is that New York has moved closer to prohibition than to a legal market in tobacco. [earlier 2003 Cato study]
In his history of Prohibition, Last Call, Daniel Okrent cites (among many other law enforcement misadventures) the fatal shooting of Jacob Hanson, secretary of an Elks lodge in Niagara Falls, New York, in a confrontation with alcohol agents — though Hanson had a clean record and was not carrying alcohol. At the time, many saw Hanson’s death as reflecting poorly on the Prohibition regime generally. For some reason, though, Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has drawn fire from some quarters for making a parallel observation about Garner’s death. [BBC; note however that while Garner’s frictions with the local NYPD seem to owe much to his repeated cigarette arrests, the proximate event leading to his arrest seems to have been his attempt to break up a fight]
Yale’s Stephen Carter: “On the opening day of law school, I always counsel my first-year students never to support a law they are not willing to kill to enforce.” [Bloomberg View via Ilya Somin]
“Operation Choke Point Hits Ammunition Company in Maryland”
“Fox Business Network’s John Stossel interviews US Consumer Coalition’s Brian Wise and Kat O’Connor, owner of TomKat Ammunition LLC, on the Justice Department’s Operation Choke Point.” The Gaithersburg-based ammo seller was cut off from credit card processing services and suspects that the federal Choke Point program was the reason. [cross-posted from Free State Notes; earlier on Operation Choke Point].
P.S. There are signs that House Republicans may move to rein in Operation Check Point. Let’s hope so. [USA Today/Fond du Lac Reporter; HalfWheel (cigar news and reviews)]
Update: court rules chimp not endowed with human rights
“A chimpanzee is not entitled to the same rights as people and does not have be freed from captivity by its owner, a US court has ruled. The appeals court in New York state said caged chimpanzee Tommy could not be recognized as a ‘legal person’ as it ‘cannot bear any legal duties'”. [BBC, earlier]
More: Adam Kolber, PrawfsBlawg, and comments (“speciesism”).
Expand pregnancy-bias law to include accommodation rights?
Young v. United Parcel Service, in the Supreme Court, which has been built up as a cause celebre, turns on whether the courts should feel free to re-interpret a 1978 federal law, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, so as to include evolving ideas of a right to accommodation akin to the ADA. The alternative position is that if such a right to accommodation is now thought to be a good idea, advocates should get Congress to enact it into law explicitly. [Lyle Denniston and related SCOTUSBlog, USA Today, Bloomberg/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette with auto-play, The Economist]
Great moments in warnings
From the United Kingdom:
Big thanks to @BekoUK for the useful advice pic.twitter.com/skGeNiiqt5
— Katie Martin (@KMartUK) December 3, 2014