Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Occupational licensure pays off for the licensed

No wonder incumbent members of the occupation or profession are willing to lobby so hard for it [Morris Kleiner, Cato via Arnold Kling]:

Our empirical analysis finds that after controlling for observable heterogeneity, including occupational status, those with a license earn higher pay, are more likely to be employed, and have a higher probability of receiving retirement and pension plan offers. According to our estimates, where governmental licensing is required for the job it raises hourly wages by about 8.4 percent.

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Just not in frosting

“Printing business has First Amendment and RFRA right to refuse to print gay pride festival T-shirts” [Eugene Volokh] The Lexington Human Rights Commission had ordered employee training for a t-shirt printer that had objected to printing messages it disagreed with, but a Kentucky trial court judge threw out the order citing both the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and Kentucky’s version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, here applicable to a corporation as defendant since it was an incorporated business that had been the target of the discrimination complaint. Compare the bake-my-cake cases, which have generally come out the other way. And see in the U.K., “Patrick Stewart backs bakery after ‘gay cake’ court battle”: Independent, Telegraph, Katherine Mangu-Ward/Reason.

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California moves to raise smoking age to 21

Which won’t, of course, be the last step as prohibitionists work out the implications of what they call a “tobacco-free” America. But it does at least raise a slogan-atic question: Old enough to fight, old enough to vote, why not old enough to drink and smoke too? [Debra Saunders, San Francisco Chronicle, who also reminds us that for all the nostalgic talk of Reagan and individual liberty, Reagan was the one who signed the bill (passed by a GOP Senate) arm-twisting states into putting the drinking age up to 21]

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Labor and employment roundup

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Advocacy infographics, international labor division

The Washington Post published, and many well-intentioned people circulated, an infographic asserting that more than 1,000 migrant workers have already lost their lives in Qatar from the building of the World Cup and that more than 4,000 are on track to perish by the time the project ends. How dodgy are those numbers, generated by the International Trade Union Confederation and amplified into an influential graphic by WonkBlog’s Christopher Ingraham? “More than 500,000 Indians live in the country. …. ITUC seems to have presumed that any Indian who dies in Qatar has lost his or her life because of the World Cup.” The problems with the numbers go on from there. “Qatar has a terrible human rights record and often treats workers like slaves. But imprecise arguments and exaggerated numbers do not help.” [Rohan Venkataramakrishnan, Scroll.in]

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Medical roundup

  • Med mal something of a regional problem: nearly half of payouts are in Northeast, with New York alone paying out more than the entire Midwest [New Jersey Civil Justice Institute on Diederich Healthcare analysis] “Neurosurgeons were 50% more likely to practice defensive medicine in high-risk states compared with low-risk states” [Smith et al., Neurosurgery via NJCJI]
  • New Paul Nolette book on state attorneys general Federalism On Trial includes history of suits led by New York’s Eliot Spitzer to redefine as “fraud” widely known drug-pricing practices that Congress had declined to ban or otherwise address. The resulting lucrative settlements also earmarked money to fund private critics of the pharmaceutical industry;
  • City of Chicago signs on to one of the trial bar’s big current recruitment campaigns, suits seeking recoupment of costs of dealing with prescription opioid abuse [Drug & Device Law; earlier here, here, here]
  • We here in Washington, D.C. take very seriously any violations of HIPAA, the health privacy law. Just kidding! If a union supporter pulls information from an employee medical database to help in an organizing drive, that might be overlooked [Jon Hyman on National Labor Relations Board administrative law judge decision in Rocky Mountain Eye Center]
  • “Preferred Care defendants respond to New Mexico Attorney General’s lawsuit, argue it was filed at urging of Cohen Milstein law firm” [Legal NewsLine]
  • Philadelphia police run warrant checks of hospital visitor lists, and as a result many persons with outstanding warrants avoid going to hospitals. So asserts sociologist Alice Goffman in her book On the Run, but the evidence is disputed [Sara Mayeux last August, Steven Lubet in review challenging the book more broadly on ethical and factual grounds, Goffman’s response]
  • Making contraceptive pill available over the counter without prescription should please supporters of birth control access, right? Funny you should ask [Elizabeth Nolan Brown, Reason, earlier]

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