Some will lose their jobs for lack of transportation, while others will gain a first-time criminal record after taking chances on a no-longer-legal ride. Are you sure you’ve thought this through, Texas? [Houston Chronicle] Related earlier on tying driver’s licenses to issues of legal compliance unrelated to road safety here, here, here, etc.
Archive for 2016
Crime and punishment roundup
- Quebec waiter arrested after seafood puts allergic customer in coma [CBC]
- Two Black Lives Matter groupings have issued agendas, one zany leftism, the other directed at nuts-and-bolts criminal justice system reform. Media: “Door 1, please.” [Ed Krayewski]
- Conservative lawprof Mike Rappaport on DEA’s “absurd,” “ridiculous” refusal to take marijuana off Schedule I [Law and Liberty] Recommended: Scott Greenfield and David Meyer-Lindenberg interview Julie Stewart of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, Cato Institute alum [Fault Lines]
- “Criminal defense bar sides with business lobby in False Claims Act case” [Alison Frankel, Reuters on State Farm case before Supreme Court]
- 6th Circuit: amendments to Michigan sex offender registry law impose retroactive, hence unconstitutional, punishment [Jonathan Adler, Scott Greenfield]
- “Criminalizing Entrepreneurs: The regulatory state is also a prison state” [F.H. Buckley, American Conservative]
J.D. Vance on payday lending
J.D. Vance’s bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy, which I read last week and recommend (reviews: Aaron Renn, City Journal; Robert Pondiscio, U.S. News) is not as political a book as the early reviewers made it sound, and Vance takes an unsentimental view of the unlikeliness of political solutions to cure the cultural ills of families and communities he knows from his youth. Here and there he does have a few words to say about laws, though. From Helen Dale’s review in the London Spectator:
He points out – with his poor credit history – that he has had recourse to payday lenders. On one occasion, he avoided a large overdraft fee. Without a payday lender, he’d have been forced to go to a loan shark – which, given the drug culture among poor whites, could have been injurious to his health.
‘The legislators debating the merits of payday lending didn’t mention situations like that,’ he notes. ‘The lesson? Powerful people sometimes do things to help people like me without really understanding people like me’.
Arizona AG, citing “systemic abuse”, asks for dismissal of batch ADA cases
The “Arizona attorney general’s office on Wednesday filed a motion to dismiss more than 1,000 cases focused on business parking lots, brought by a Phoenix lawyer … The lawyer, Peter Strojnik, has filed more than 2,000 disability access cases in less than a year on behalf of Advocates for American Disabled Individuals. The plaintiff reportedly had a standard settlement offer of $7,500” and settled most of its cases for an average of $3,900 a pop, less than the cost of legal defense. The executive director of an organization that “is the federally designated disability protection and advocacy group for Arizona” criticized the AG’s action. [ABA Journal] Meanwhile, the executive director of a disabilities nonprofit represented by attorney Strojnik has resigned. The attorney “is currently under active investigation with the Arizona State Bar Association. Strojnik has been disciplined by the Arizona State Bar Association three times, according to ABC 15 KNXV-TV.” [Phoenix Business Journal, earlier]
Banking and finance roundup
- Wells Fargo declines to serve firm that sells knives online, which might relate to a “mass de-risking” trend that followed Operation Choke Point [Kelsey Harkness/Daily Signal, H. Clay Aalders/The Truth About Knives]
- “Time For Securities Lawyers To Stand Behind Their `Confidential Witnesses'” [Lyle Roberts via Daniel Fisher]
- Attractions of English law may help London retain luster as financial center post-Brexit [Jon Sindreu, WSJ]
- “Hillary Clinton’s ‘Exit Tax’ Is an Unseemly Example of Banana Republic Economics” [Daniel Mitchell, related earlier] Three good ideas from Clinton’s small business tax plan [Scott Greenberg, Tax Foundation]
- Lawyers file class actions against Yale, Harvard, MIT, many other universities, objecting to excessive fees on retirement fund investments [Ira Stoll, Future of Capitalism; Benjamin Edwards, PrawfsBlawg]
- “White House climate disclosure plan is major executive overreach.” [Ray Lehmann, R Street Institute]
Cato panel on the Games That Must Not Be Named
On Wednesday I took part in a panel discussion on the intellectual property issues associated with media commentary on the Olympics, which enjoy a distinctively favorable IP regime: a 1978 federal law gives the U.S. Olympic Committee stronger rights over the word “Olympics” than it would get under ordinary trademark law, including wider scope to go after parody and other situations that will sometimes arguably be fair use. Other panelists include Cato’s Julian Sanchez and Jim Harper, and the moderator was Cato’s Kat Murti. The audience Q&A included a question from noted media law attorney Paul Alan Levy. You can watch here:
Randy Barnett podcast on Libertarianism.org
Self-recommending: Prof. Randy Barnett discusses his new book Our Republican Constitution with Trevor Burrus and Aaron Ross Powell for Cato’s Libertarianism.org (53:40).
Remember to mark your calendar for Cato’s 15th annual Constitution Day, Sept. 15, which coincides each year with the release of the Cato Supreme Court Review. Details here.
Appeals court quashes search warrant aimed at gadfly Louisiana blogger
Terrebonne Parish Sheriff Jerry Larpenter had obtained a search warrant under Louisiana’s moribund-under-the-circumstances criminal libel law to search the home and computer of a man he suspected of being an anonymous critical blogger, but an appeals court wasn’t having it. Bonus: Larpenter lets loose with rant against Loyola law professor Dane Ciolino, whose work on issues of legal ethics we have had occasion to salute in the past, and who had questioned the legal adequacy of the warrant. [WWL, earlier]
Paralyzing BigLaw: bug, or feature?
New ABA rules barring lawyers from displaying bias in selecting partners, experts, and even participants in practice-related social activities based on “socio-economic status” — such as the difference between high- and low-prestige schools? — could bring many of the operations of BigLaw to a grinding halt [Volokh]
“Believe the victim,” or not
“Lochte’s story shows one good reason why we should not uncritically believe people who claim to be crime survivors.” [Andrew Fleishman, Fault Lines]