Free speech roundup

  • Political bloggers prevail in cases where Maryland, Massachusetts judges sought to enjoin them from blogging [Hans Bader, Popehat on Maryland and Massachusetts cases, Bader and Popehat updating Berkshire case] Who might have “SWATted” Aaron Walker? [Patterico] No point asking Salon’s Alex Pareene [same]
  • Supreme Court’s fractured First Amendment theories in U.S. v. Alvarez, the Stolen Valor case [Eugene Volokh] Ruling could benefit commercial speakers in cases like Nike [Richard Samp, WLF] Court got it wrong, says Richard Epstein [Hoover]
  • Controversial cartoonist sends many takedown demands to critics who reproduce her work in the course of criticizing it [Rob Beschizza, BoingBoing, Popehat]
  • Interview with Charles Brownstein, who directs the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund [Nick Farr, Abnormal Use]
  • “Even pointing people toward that blog could constitute further defamation.” [Popehat on case of Ranaan Katz (Miami Heat), more, PoL]
  • “Malaysian Arrest of Borders Clerk for Selling Allegedly Blasphemous Book” [Volokh] “Debunk a ‘Miracle’ – Go to Jail for Blasphemy In India” [Ronald Bailey]
  • Careful about pouncing on The Oatmeal, you might suffer a quicksand-like fate [Greenfield, Paul Alan Levy,Popehat]

“The quiet scandal of the HIV home test kit”

“Did the FDA’s former ban on home testing kits result in thousands of avoidable infections?” Persons who learn of their HIV-positive status are less likely to pass the infection on to others. “The scandal is that the approval of a rapid home test for HIV did not occur until last week — about 24 years after the FDA received its first application seeking permission to market one.” [Roger Parloff, Fortune](& welcome Hans Bader/CEI readers)

More reactions to “Abolish the Law Reviews!”

My Atlantic piece touched off a lot of discussion, much of it quite constructive, of where law reviews fall short and how best to fix or replace them. Unless you’ve caught up with it already, you’ll want to check out Friday’s post rounding up more than a dozen reactions (and updated a couple of times over the weekend to include more content). On Monday, along with new reactions at legal blogs, the piece took off on Twitter as well.

Joe Hodnicki, Law Librarian Blog:

… eventually, reader expectations will push the long-form law article into the 21st century of e-publishing.

In the process one can only hope that law journals and enhanced regularly updated serial law eBooks will also eliminate the print era version of date-stamping by ceasing publication of “issues” for journals and, for serial eBooks, scheduled “supplements” or “editions.” As soon as the text has completed the editorial process, just e-publish the damn thing immediately.

Old publishing habits die hard, but it is time to create new ones by eliminating print era legacies.

Mark Giangrande, also of Law Librarian Blog, by email, following up on our previous excerpt:

One thing not in my Law Librarian Blog post was a quick check on Westlaw to see what quantity of law review cites appeared in Supreme Court opinions in the last term. A quick count showed at least 56. What surprised me was some of the citations went back to the 1960s. I’ve often criticized law reviews for publishing philosophical pieces that tend to show faculty writing to impress their friends and win promotions, little of which contribute to the bench and bar (per CJ Roberts’ point). The Court still uses them, but generally those which actually discuss the law as the law.

The full list of 56 last-term SCOTUS law review cites, of which the most satisfying is probably “Note, Regulation of Comic Books, 68 Harv. L. Rev. 489, 490 (1955),” is too long to be included here, but those interested can drop him a line.

Adam Kusovitsky and colleagues, Pace International Law Review:

Havighurst is correct to point out that law reviews are published in order that they may be written, but that fact should not rouse a sneer or scoff. …Law reviews provide thousands of students an apparatus to develop unrivaled editing, writing and researching skills, which ultimately makes them better attorneys and more effective writers in general.

Meanwhile, Vitruvian Design spies similar signs of sclerosis in humanities and classics journals. There’s even a Reddit thread (hipsterparalegal). And the article has gotten no end of pick-up on Twitter, including Lawyerist, Corby Kummer, Boston Bar (“must reading”), Cleveland-Marshall Dean Craig Boise, and Bryan Cave Library, to name a few. And:

And this rather cruel exchange:

Law schools roundup

  • The Chart of Death: “Law School Tuition Over the Last 40 Years” [Orin Kerr summarizing Paul Campos, PDF] Staggering debt projections (often $200K+) for law students, broken down by school (in more than one sense) [Law School Transparency]
  • Schools For Misrule dept.: “Some things that are big in the legal academy are considered irrelevant or crackpot by judges” [Yale’s Fred Shapiro via Ann Althouse] But as we’ve noted, the influence in legal academia of Critical Theory and suchlike coteries has waned [Tony Mauro, NLJ] In defense of the faculty lounge [Stephen Carter, Bloomberg]
  • “I don’t know why law professors get such large advances for their mystery novels, just like I don’t know why Americans like to name motel chains after numbers.” [Kyle Graham]
  • Jim Chen and others review Brian Tamanaha’s new book Failing Law Schools [Paul Caron, TaxProf; earlier including my Liberty and Law symposium entry with Chen and Tamanaha] “After law school deregulation” [Dave Hoffman, ConcurOp] “Five Ways To Mitigate the Crisis In Legal Education” [bring in more practitioner/adjuncts, dump the library requirements; Andrew Trask, Class Strategist]
  • Since Prof. Leiter’s views will never prevail in the United States, Rep. Paul Ryan is free to go on speaking all he pleases [SSRN; more on Jeremy Waldron]
  • George Will on Elizabeth Warren race-box furor [WaPo, earlier]
  • Obsession with law schools’ prestige levels: is there any way out? [William Henderson and Rachel Zahorsky, ABA Journal; Henderson, Legal Whiteboard]

Welcome New York Post readers

I’ve got a piece in today’s New York Post on why doctors and medical providers should be interested in New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation “early offers” experiment in malpractice reform. Earlier here, etc. Note also that Christopher Robinette at TortsProf has added to his illuminating series of posts on the idea with new contributions here and here (& Allen McDuffee, Washington Post “Think Tank”.)

Miami-area cop jailed three times, fired six

Accusations against the Opa-locka officer include

cracking the head of a handcuffed suspect, beating juveniles, hiding drugs in his police car, stealing from suspects, defying direct orders and lying and falsifying police reports. He once called in sick to take a vacation to Cancún and has engaged in a rash of unauthorized police chases, including one in which four people were killed.

Although he’s “joked about his record of misconduct,” the “Miami-Dade Police Benevolent Association has successfully fought Bosque’s dismissals.” [Miami Herald via Tim Lynch, Cato Police Misconduct Project] However, we know from Canadian Auto Workers economist Jim Stanford’s recent column in the Globe and Mail that in right-to-work states, which include Florida, unions are “effectively prohibited.” So it seems there’s no need to worry about a Florida police union’s having too much power.

T-shirt message: “I picked out my beverage all by myself”

Business fights back in the arena of public opinion against Mayor Bloomberg’s soda ban. [Michael Grynbaum, NY Times “City Room”]

More: Regarding Monday evening’s “Million Big Gulp March,” “It is not about the number of ounces in the cup,” said organizer Zach Huff. “It is about the number of liberties we have left.” [Caroline May, Daily Caller]