Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

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If you’re planning an event for your speaker series or a panel discussion, I speak on a wide range of topics including not only subjects found in my books (litigation and its excesses, popular views of the legal profession, legal zaniness in the workplace, law schools) but also on topics that include regulation and the nanny state; food and drink policy; and how law can try to calm rather than exacerbate the culture wars.

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May 23 roundup

  • Worst article of the week? Cheering on tort lawsuits as a way to trip up legalized pot [John Walters and Tom Riley, Weekly Standard]
  • Remember not long ago when they used to tout VA health care as a success story and model to be imposed on other health providers? [James Taranto, recalling Paul Krugman, Ezra Klein and many others; more thoughts from Coyote and Roger Pilon]
  • Muscle and intimidation: union + allies surge onto Oak Brook, Ill. McDonald’s headquarters property, closing key management building [Bloomberg; related earlier here, here, here, etc.] Yesterday I got into a Twitter conversation with Tim Noah (defending the protesters’ action) and William Freeland (siding with my own view), culminating in this rather startling comment from a Center for American Progress/ThinkProgress reporter: “This entire convo backs up the point the private property law itself functions as gov’t cronyism for the wealthy.” Wow!
  • Long, impassioned Ta-Nehisi Coates case for reparations [Atlantic, sidebar, Jonathan Blanks, my 2008 thoughts which eventually grew into a chapter in Schools for Misrule]
  • “Insurers Demand $2 Million for Negligent Squirrel-Torching” [Holland Twp., Mich.; Lowering the Bar]
  • R.I.P. left-wing historian Gabriel Kolko, whose project of de-mythologizing the Progressive Era won him a large libertarian fan base; initially contemptuous of that fan base, he came eventually to mellow with age and discern elements of common ground [Jesse Walker]
  • Hard lesson for Congress to learn: “Hawaiians simply aren’t American Indians in the constitutional sense” [Ilya Shapiro, Cato, background]

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The arbitrariness of campaign finance law

George Will on why you may be out of luck if you’re the thirteenth donor in Minnesota. [syndicated/Owatonna, Minn., People’s Press] In a different sense, however, campaign finance law can be seen as quite calculated as opposed to arbitrary:

Eugene McCarthy, a Democrat who represented Minnesota in the U.S. Senate from 1959 to 1971, said that in Washington anything said three times is deemed a fact. It is constantly said that today’s campaign regulations are “post-Watergate” reforms. Many were indeed written after the Nixon-era scandals. But the push for more government regulation of political speech began because Democrats were dismayed by what McCarthy accomplished [in challenging incumbent President Lyndon Johnson] in 1968.

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Law schools roundup

  • Under DoJ gun, LSAT agrees to end flagging of test scores taken with disabled accommodation, cough up more than $7 million [Justice press release, Caron/TaxProf roundup coverage]
  • “Things law school trustees probably should not do: subpoena their own school’s students for criticizing them” [@petersterne; Danielle Tcholakian, DNAInfo]
  • Should law students graduate without studying the First Amendment? And other thoughts from Justice Scalia’s William & Mary commencement speech [text via Will Baude]
  • “Rank ordering the likelihood of law school reforms” [Prof. Bainbridge] ABA moves forward with law school accreditation changes; tenure, among other institutions, likely to remain sacrosanct [Caron/TaxProf, Fortune]
  • Paul Horwitz reviews James R. Hackney Jr. book on contemporary legal academy [Journal of Legal Education via Prawfs]
  • Alex Acosta dean case: should conservative legal academics steer clear of Florida? [Bainbridge]
  • Orin Kerr vs. Erwin Chemerinsky and Carrie Menkel-Meadow on curricular reform [Volokh Conspiracy]

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ABA online program Friday: “Legislative Prayer, Tradition, and the Establishment Clause”

I’ll be one of the panelists on a webinar this Friday at 1 p.m. Eastern (fee-based, CLE credit available) presented by the ABA’s State and Local Government Law Section on Town of Greece v. Galloway, the Supreme Court’s recent case on invocational prayer at town councils and similar legislative bodies (earlier here and here). Other panelists include Eric Rassbach of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and Mark Burkland of Holland & Knight, while Patricia Salkin, Dean and Professor of Law at Touro Law Center, will serve as moderator. More at Inverse Condemnation.

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“Exxon Not Liable for Alligators in Mississippi Dump, Court Rules”

“Exxon Mobil Corp. isn’t responsible for alligators overrunning a rural dump site it owns in Mississippi, the state supreme court ruled, because the global oil explorer can’t control wild animals. … Even if Exxon had wanted to cull the congregation, it would have been prevented by state law that designates alligators as a protected species, making it illegal to hunt or disturb them, according to the ruling.” [Bloomberg/Insurance Journal]

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Bay Area mom thrown off bus seat awarded $15 million

Maria Francisco fell off her bus seat and was injured when an Alameda-Contra Costa transit bus driver, according to Francisco’s lawyer, took a speed bump at 30 mph. Francisco can walk, but has been awarded $15 million for her injuries, and her daughter, then 4, a further $1 million for witnessing her mom’s fall. I’m quoted in Britain’s Daily Mail expressing misgivings about the level of damages (“spin to win”).

One reaction via @LauraKMcNally on Twitter: “Compare re: soldier injury comp.”

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Environmental roundup

  • Julie Gunlock, from her new book, on killer garden hoses [Free-Range Kids]
  • “EPA and the Army Corps’ ‘Waters of the U.S.’ Proposal: Will it Initiate Regulatory Overflow?” [Samuel Boxerman with Lisa Jones, WLF]
  • Federal rules governing land ownership on Indian reservations ensure waste and neglect [Chris Edwards, Cato]
  • “Zoning’s Racist Roots Still Bear Fruit” [A. Barton Hinkle]
  • Victor Fleischer: Pigouvian taxes on externalities beloved of economists, not so great as actionable policy [TaxProf]
  • So economically and so environmentally destructive, it’s got to be federal ethanol policy [Hinkle]
  • “Regulation Through Sham Litigation: The Sue and Settle Phenomenon” [Andrew Grossman for Heritage on a consent-decree pattern found in environmental regulation and far beyond; Josiah Neeley, The Federalist]

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