- “5th Circuit Court Rejects ‘Disingenuous’ DOJ Anti-School Choice Lawsuit” [Jason Bedrick at Jay Greene’s blog]
- HHS urged to exclude biography, oral history and some other ventures in humanities research from IRB (Institutional Review Board) review of human subjects experimentation [National Coalition for History comments, earlier]
- Revere, Mass. schools punish high school cheerleader for a tweet about immigration [Eugene Volokh]
- Education Law Center, which has pursued long-running Abbott litigation demanding higher New Jersey expenditures on urban schools, describes $18,208/pupil Newark as in “extreme chronic fiscal distress” [Jim Epstein, Reason]
- “NEA’s $131 Million Influence-Buying Spree” [RiShawn Biddle, Dropout Nation]
- Yale’s gender studies program seems well pleased with the protests, and why not given likely infusion of funds/staff? [compare Robert Tracinski linked earlier] Still time to un-burn things down? Yale investigation finds “no evidence” to back frat party racism charge [Washington Post]
- Scotland: “Propaganda being used in our schools to sell Named Person scheme” [Jenny Hjul/The Courier (Dundee), earlier]
The media, and the task of covering the Supreme Court: a mismatch?
The Washington Post humors the super-silly liberal fantasy of impeaching Justice Scalia for discussing the affirmative action mismatch argument, an argument that 1) was briefed by lawyers in the case at hand, Fisher v. University of Texas; 2) has come up in the Court’s earlier racial preference jurisprudence and been endorsed by fellow Justice Clarence Thomas; 3) has been aired extensively in places like the Washington Post itself without the ceiling caving in. [Valerie Strauss, Washington Post “Answer Sheet”]
Of course the Washington Post itself would be a better newspaper if its writers on relevant beats took the time to read the paper’s own Volokh Conspiracy, which this week has been hosting a series of guest blog posts by Prof. Rick Sander, best known proponent of the mismatch theory.
Some have questioned whether Scalia was proceeding down a path irrelevant to the Court’s eventual ruling on constitutionality. Here is one possible source of relevance, per James Taranto’s discussion: “Kennedy, unlike Scalia and Thomas, endorsed [in an earlier university racial preference case] the premise that those benefits [specifically, educational benefits obtainable from greater diversity] constitute a “compelling interest” that would justify preferences if the other components of the strict-scrutiny test can be met.” Kennedy’s approach leaves open the possibility that this constitutional justification could be refuted by an empirical showing that the net benefits add up to less than a “compelling interest.”
Silicone breast implants: “sad history of a government approved scare”
25 years ago CBS and the Food and Drug Administration, with trial lawyers and their hired experts busy in the background, kicked off a national panic over silicone breast implants. After waves of needless consumer fear and considerable disruptions to the U.S. economy– and the transfer of a great deal of money to claimants and their lawyers — the panic subsided and the general safety of the devices came to be widely accepted [Jack Fisher, ACSH; our coverage here; my book The Rule of Lawyers, which devoted a chapter to the saga]
Takedown notices sent over photos of purchased toy
A firm representing Lucasfilm/Disney sent takedown notices to force removal from social media of photos of a newly issued Star Wars figurine that an unnamed fan had walked into a Wal-Mart and purchased in the usual manner. [Timothy Geigner, TechDirt]
A life of American freedom, taken
My friend Tim Sandefur, whose work will be familiar to many readers here, lost his brother in the Islamist terrorist attack in San Bernardino. He wrote this tribute and reflection. An excerpt:
Those of us who also serve by only standing and waiting must respond in just the way that our enemy most despises: by living our lives exactly as we would have done. That means cherishing our freedom; celebrating our secular, free institutions; relishing the pleasures of life as physical beings; respecting the special spark in each individual person — here, in this world, during this life. Our values triumph each time we exercise them. Danny and I watched the attacks of September 11, 2001, together on the TV in our living room. I can say with certainty that—to the extent that so kind a man was capable of understanding such evil — he believed in defying the barbarian by living just as we choose: freely, tolerantly, skeptically, joyfully, laughingly, humanly. After the (most recent) Paris attack, Danny enjoyed watching over and over again this well-known video by Andrew Neil. It expresses very well what he believed, and what our family believes.
I urge reading the whole thing.
Feds push sensitivity training at community college level
Under federal pressure, the new compulsory chapel — sorry, the trend toward requiring students to complete sensitivity and diversity sessions — is moving beyond four-year institutions to community and technical colleges whose student bodies are typically more commuter than residential [Graham Shaw, Pope Center] More on diversity and sensitivity training and the doubtful evidence of its actual effects here, etc.
Liability roundup
- “Definition of Insanity – Expecting Certification of a Personal Injury Class Action” [James Beck on oral contraceptive defective packaging litigation]
- “Noticed something strange. In jury selection, attorneys for two other defendants conferred with attorneys for the plaintiff.” [Madison County Record, more]
- Changes in federal discovery rules effective December 1 [Mathea Bulander and Jason Moore (Redgrave LLP), Washington Legal Foundation] More: Jeff Bennion, Above the Law.
- Eric Turkewitz takes issue with my reference to New York’s Scaffold Law in writing on Sheldon Silver’s downfall [New York Personal Injury Attorney Blog]
- Changes ahead for Rule 23, which governs class actions? [Andrew Trask]
- Behind the attacks on arbitration: plaintiff’s bar, key political player, is “fighting back hard” against threat to its interests [Daniel Fisher, earlier here, here, etc.]
- Not every hot-coffee-spill case is like Liebeck v. McDonald’s. Sometimes defendants actually are negligent [Nick Farr/Abnormal Use, earlier here and many others]
Maryland, which impairs foreclosures, now leads nation in foreclosure filings
Unintended consequences: “It was the second consecutive month that Maryland led the nation in [the rate of] foreclosure filings, RealtyTrac said.” While filings nationwide were down 7 percent from a year earlier, those in Maryland were up 13 percent. [Baltimore Business Journal] We’ve noted before that although liberal legislators in Annapolis imagined they were doing poorer homeowners a favor by making the state’s foreclosure process so slow, the results have included unusual delays in bounce-back from housing recessions and persistent neighborhood blight. That’s to say nothing of the entrenchment of non-paying occupants in luxury homes for years at a stretch. To quote another commentator’s words in our March item:
“Living rent-free in a $600,000 house is a ‘plight’ only in the sense that at some point you may have to stop.” [Arnold Kling on the Washington Post’s naive Prince George’s County foreclosure series; coverage of Maryland’s unusually lender-hostile foreclosure law at Overlawyered here, here, here, here, here, and here]
[cross-posted from Free State Notes]
Redistricting at the Supreme Court
Yesterday the Supreme Court (ruling only on a narrow procedural issue, not the merits) gave the go-ahead to a suit challenging Maryland’s outlandish Congressional districting map, and three other pending merits cases indicate the Court’s renewed interest in redistricting and allied topics. I’ve got a post at Cato tying together the latest developments with my own work on redistricting reform in Maryland (earlier on which). Meanwhile, my colleague Ilya Shapiro counters the editors of USA Today on the just-argued case of whether population equality among districts should be based on numbers of persons, including such groups as children and non-citizens, or on numbers of persons eligible to vote, allowing him a rare chance to work the old term “rotten boroughs” from parliamentary history. More on the Evenwel oral argument from Ilya and from Andrew Grossman.
Congress sends private collectors after tax debtors, again
We warned lawmakers about this renewed plunge into law enforcement for profit, but did they listen? “Congress Orders IRS To Use Private Debt Collection Companies” [Kelly Phillips Erb, Robert Wood, both Forbes] Earlier here, here, etc.