Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Archive for February, 2016

Choke the “gig economy,” gag workplace innovation

Amazon is hiring on-demand drivers to implement its Amazon Flex same-day-delivery service. Given the confused state of federal wage-hour FLSA law as inherited from the 1930s, and the ever intensifying legal pressure from class action lawyers and various levels of government, will this arrangement eventually be upheld as legal? Who knows? “By the time courts and Congress take a decade to reshape labor law, the companies will have moved on to the next thing.” [Ira Stoll, Future of Capitalism]

Or is even this too optimistic a view? The premise is that the labor law apparatus would like to catch up with the cool new economy, but is just too klutzy and slow. But the sad truth may be that catching up isn’t the point: the public officials in charge of the system, and the unions that back them, don’t particularly mind whether they choke off innovative forms of work organization.

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Religious discrimination claim at Colorado meatpacking plant

Some advocates have been billing it as a “Muslims not allowed to pray” story, but the actual story out of a Cargill Meat Solutions plant in Fort Morgan, Colorado is predictably quite a bit more complicated than that [Ian Tuttle, National Review; Eric B. Meyer, Employer Handbook]

P.S. And now a group Muslim prayer dispute has sprung up at Ariens, a Wisconsin maker of lawn mowers and snowblowers, with the Council on American-Islamic Relations vowing to file EEOC complaints [ABC News]

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Law enforcement for profit roundup

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Do Philadelphia cops run warrant checks on hospital visitors?

In a previous round, Steve Lubet challenged Alice Goffman’s much-praised book on urban criminal justice, On the Run, on many grounds. Among them was Goffman’s portrayal of Philadelphia police as routinely arresting men with outstanding warrants who showed up at city hospitals to seek ordinary medical care or visit expectant mothers or other family members. Now, in the wake of coverage in the New York Times Magazine, Lubet is back with two more posts (so far) explaining why he sees no good evidence for the claim. Paul Campos contributes a pair of new posts skeptical toward other aspects of the book. Earlier here and, on the book more generally, here.

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“CDC Tells Fertile Women: Don’t Drink At All”

“Women of childbearing age should avoid alcohol unless they’re using contraception, federal health officials said Tuesday, in a move to reduce the number of babies born with fetal alcohol syndrome.” [Liz Szabo/USA Today (“CDC: Young women should avoid alcohol unless using birth control”), Tracy Clark-Flory/Vocativ (with headline above)]

Rebecca Kukla, professor at the Kennedy School of Ethics, had the following comment, quoted in the Vocativ piece:

We don’t tell pregnant women not to drive cars, even though we are much more certain that there’s a nonzero risk to their fetuses from each car ride than from each drink. The ideal of zero risk is both impossible to meet and completely paralyzing to try to meet. The idea that the pleasures and routines that make up women’s days are mere luxuries that are not worth any risk whatsoever is patronizing and sexist, and it would also turn their lives into complete hell if really taken to its conclusion. It also imposes a much higher risk reduction bar on pregnant women than on parents of small children, for no apparent reason.

We have had numerous occasions over the years to remark on the direction in which Obama appointee Thomas Frieden has taken the Centers for Disease Control.

More: Alexandra Petri, Washington Post (CDC’s warning “incredibly condescending”).

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New data mandate will feed pay-gap myths

Cato’s Daily Podcast features Thaya Brook Knight discussing the proposal outlined in this space the other day:

President Obama wants to compel many companies to begin reporting salary information to the federal government. Thaya Brook Knight comments.

Correction: The proposal would not require companies to provide the information as part of their own tax filings, but would require them to use the information from employees’ Forms W-2 to compile the required disclosure, which would be made to the EEOC.

Earlier on the pay-gap mythos here (Hanna Rosin, Slate: “You Know That ‘Women Make 77 Cents to Every Man’s Dollar’ Line? It’s Not True.”) as well as past links to articles such as this, this, and this.

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February 3 roundup

  • To what extent should law schools pursue missions other than that of training lawyers to practice competently? [Ken at Popehat]
  • Survivors of woman slain in terror attack seek $200 million from county of San Bernardino [Courthouse News] A pertinent 2001 Elizabeth Cabraser quote about terrorism and litigation: “If we sue each other, the terrorists win. We need to be united.”
  • Self-driving car revolution is coming quickly, but there might still be time for feds to mess it up [Randal O’Toole]
  • “NYT throws hissy-fit, sues over use of thumbnails in critical book” [Rebecca Tushnet via Mike Masnick, TechDirt]
  • New laws from Brussels could endanger thousands of historic guns in British museums [Telegraph]
  • Drawing on the organization’s entire moral authority, i.e. none at all, United Nations panel calls for U.S. to pay slavery reparations [Independent, Vice]
  • Aviary Attorney: “The hottest bird lawyering game to come out of 1840s France!” [Steampowered via Lowering the Bar]

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“I’ll pretend you’re a boat,’ the judge said dryly”

“Twenty years ago I prosecuted a tax protester who claimed — as one does — that the gold fringe on the courtroom flag made it an admiralty court. ‘I’ll pretend you’re a boat,’ the judge said dryly and proceeded with the mundane business of the case. Professionalism and protection of rights, not trading drama for drama, is the way to handle a self-styled revolutionary. It won’t entertain the media, but it will refute the assertion that the system can’t get it right.” [Ken White, Los Angeles Times, on the Oregon confrontation]

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