- Gorsuch hearing “unlikely to change a single vote on anything” [Ilya Shapiro] “No, there is no way to force Supreme Court nominees to give revealing answers” [Orin Kerr] Members of Supreme Court bar are keen on the nominee [letter courtesy SCOTUSblog] And many law professors, even [letter via Will Baude]
- “Nice Try! Judge Nixes Attempt To Turn $4 Million Worth Of Stickers Into $10 Million Bonus” [Daniel Fisher]
- Problems here would seem to go beyond lack of court interpreter: “Interpreter no-show stalls Chigwedere witchcraft case” [The Herald, Zimbabwe]
- “The Strange Case of Everet vs. Williams: When Two Highwaymen Took Each Other To Court” [Paul Anthony Jones, Mental Floss]
- Important Phil Hamburger op-ed: Chevron entrenches a judicial bias in favor of state, Gorsuch is right to oppose it [New York Times]
- It’s cute when legislators try to legalize dachshund racing [Lowering the Bar, Idaho, earlier]
Advocates seek tighter state reins on homeschooling
Pointing out that it sometimes turns out badly for the kids involved, an emerging group of advocates critical of homeschooling “want stronger oversight, methods to monitor the quality of the education and ways to protect children from the dangers that can unfold behind a family’s closed doors.” One lesson of the American past — which has included long periods in which most states either banned homeschooling outright or subjected it to onerous legal restrictions — is that there’s an inherent conflict of interest when the state is allowed to regulate a substitute (home-based schooling) that competes directly with the state’s own educational enterprise. [Washington Post] More: Charlotte Allen, Weekly Standard.
Making Clean Water Act legal fees two-way
The Clean Water Act, like many federal statutes, currently contains a nominally neutral attorneys’-fee award provision which is commonly read to call for an award of attorneys’ fees to plaintiffs who prevail, but not to defendants who prevail. H.R. 1179, introduced by Rep. Tom Rice (R-S.C.) with 59 co-sponsors, would move to full two-way loser-pays by prescribing that fees ordinarily be paid. One possible impact would be to help clear infrastructure legal logjams [Charmaine Little, Legal Newsline, thanks for quote]
Police roundup
- Investigation of problems with no-knock “dynamic entry” police raids [Kevin Sack, New York Times; cf. Radley Balko’s work] But her living room furniture was just sitting there! Why shouldn’t we take it? [C.J. Ciaramella on Mississippi case]
- Minnesota judge approves (which doesn’t mean Google will go along with) police demand for all search records on a certain name from any and all users in town of Edina [Mike Mullen, City Pages]
- “The L.A. County sheriff wants to release names of 300 deputies with histories of misconduct. He can’t.” [Jessica Pishko, Slate; Tim Cushing, TechDirt (list is of cops considered highly impeachable in court testimony)]
- Just catching up with this still-relevant Joshua Muravchik critique of Black Lives Matter [Commentary]
- Feds indict seven members of elite Baltimore police gun trace task force on racketeering charges; underlying predicates include robbery, swearing out false search warrants, false overtime claims (“one hour can be eight hours.”) [U.S. Department of Justice, Baltimore Sun, Washington Post]
- “New Orleans Police Chief Says He Needs to Hire and Fire Commanders at Will to Protect Reforms” [Ed Krayewski]
Rival lawyers battle over settlements for Uber drivers
Hey, who hired *these* drivers, anyway? “Another Uber Technologies Inc. lawsuit settlement is under siege, with warring lawyers for drivers again trying to tear the deal apart.” [Insurance Journal]
“The regulatory state determines too much of what and how we eat.”
Aaron Renn reviews Baylen Linnekin’s new book Biting the Hands that Feed Us [City Journal, earlier here and here]
Free speech roundup
- “Utah poised to outlaw mentioning people’s names online with intent to ‘abuse’ or ‘harass’” [Eugene Volokh]
- In win for Paul Alan Levy, Eugene Volokh & co., filer of fake R.I. lawsuits aimed at search engine takedown agrees to settle [Consumer Law & Policy, earlier]
- Activists shut down speech at Ontario university by criminal defense lawyer who helped CBC radio host beat sex-assault rap [David Millard Haskell, Toronto Star; Wilfrid Laurier University, Brampton invitation to Danielle Robitaille] More: Richard Reeves and Dimitrios Halikias, Brookings on Middlebury case and the “bad news for free speech.” Related: [walks to window, closes blinds as if somehow to keep Christopher Hitchens from seeing what has happened to Slate]
- North Carolina law prohibits released sex offenders from using Facebook, other social media. Consistent with First Amendment? [Packingham v. North Carolina at the Supreme Court: Cato amicus brief and Ilya Shapiro/Devin Watkins blog post, Federalist Society preview and oral argument podcasts, Issie Lapowsky/Wired]
- Featuring Frank Buckley, Robert Corn-Revere, and Flemming Rose, John Samples moderating: “Cato Panel Discusses Free Speech, Media, and Trump” [Campaign Freedom] And while on the topic of libel laws: “TechDirt deserves a vigorous defense.” [Eric Turkewitz, earlier]
- “Another Convicted Felon Tries To Use The DMCA Process To Erase DOJ Press Releases About His Criminal Acts” [Tim Cushing, TechDirt]
A last laugh on ADA vs. Berkeley online courses?
Those free online course materials may be gone from the University of California, Berkeley, courtesy of a U.S. Deparment of Justice interpretation of the Americans with Disabilities Act and related statutes, but they’re not gone from the Internet: “20,000 Worldclass University Lectures Made Illegal, So We Irrevocably Mirrored Them” [LBRY] Won’t that infringe on a lot of copyrights? The site claims not: “The vast majority of the lectures are licensed under a Creative Commons license that allows attributed, non-commercial redistribution.” Earlier coverage here, here, here, and here.
As someone put it, it looks as if the internet recognizes ADA litigation as damage and routes around it.
The Oxford comma case
Sorry to be a grump about the Oxford comma case (O’Connor v. Oakhurst Dairy, First Circuit), but the ambiguity was contrived and “resolve ambiguities in favor of liability” is not a good rule. [Casey Sullivan/FindLaw, Lowering the Bar]
Too good to check dept.: “Outrage on Wheels”
The new White House budget “would kill a program that feeds 2.4 million senior citizens,” claimed Time. Nope. It “eliminates funds for Meals on Wheels,” declared The Hill. Not so. I’ve got a new piece up at National Review on Thursday’s press freakout about supposed plans to zero out the Meals on Wheels program. On the question of how to interpret what OMB Director Mick Mulvaney said at a press conference when reporters asked about the program, my take comes out similar to those of Glenn Kessler at the Washington Post and Kevin Drum at Mother Jones (press endeavored to make budget director sound callous by “smushing together three quotes delivered at three different points.”) More: Gregory Korte, USA Today.