In which the “self-appointed busybody vigilante” familiar from so much press coverage smoothly turns into “designated security agent of the homeowners’ association.” [Associated Press]
April 11 roundup
- “Public pool owners struggle to meet chair-lift deadline” [Springfield, Ill. Journal-Register, earlier]
- Punitive damages aren’t vested entitlement/property, so why the surprise they’d be cut off in an administered Chrysler bankruptcy? [Adler]
- More on how Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) reauthorization would chip away rights of accused [Bader, Heritage, earlier]
- Defending sale of raw milk on libertarian principle shouldn’t mean overlooking its real risks [Greg Conko/CEI; Mark Perry on one of many heavy-handed enforcement actions against milk vendors]
- More tributes to longtime Cato Institute chairman Bill Niskanen [Regulation magazine (PDF), earlier]
- Asbestos lawyers wrangle about alleged swiping of client files [Above the Law]
- “Nathan Chapman & Michael McConnell: Due Process as Separation of Powers” [SSRN via Rappaport, Liberty & Law]
At Vanderbilt tomorrow
Tomorrow, Wednesday, I’ll be giving a lunchtime talk on Schools for Misrule in Nashville at Vanderbilt Law School, hosted by the student Federalist Society chapter there. It’s open to the public, so drop by and say hello.
Spokane: we won’t pay off cop over DUI hit-run
“The Spokane City Council voted [unanimously Feb. 27] against a settlement in which a Spokane police officer fired in 2009 after a DUI and hit and run, would have been rehired and received $275,000. … Councilmember Mike Fagan said during the City Council meeting, ‘I not only say no, but I say hell no.'” [KREM] Attorney Bob Dunn, representing former officer Brad Thoma, said “his client was fired after the city refused to accommodate Thoma following a doctor’s diagnosis of alcoholism. ‘Disability law clearly identifies that alcoholism is just that a disability. Washington follows the ADA.’ The case started in 2009 when Thoma hit another vehicle while driving drunk then fled the scene.” Dunn said he would file a $4 million suit on behalf of Thoma. [same]
A further note on justifiable-homicide stats
I observed yesterday that the numbers on rising “justifiable homicide” rates
represent not a rise in the rate at which some group is getting killed — as mentioned, homicide rates per capita in Florida are down from 2005, not up, and violent crime rates in the state are sharply down — but rather successful assertions of self-defense, in other words, a shift from one category of homicide to another.
From Clayton Cramer’s Blog, this clarification of the point:
As I pointed out in my book Firing Back, the UCR justifiable homicide numbers are based on initial police reports, and are not corrected as subsequent police investigation, district attorney investigation, grand jury deliberations, or trial cause revision of criminal charges to justifiable or excusable homicide.
If so, then both the “before” and the “after” numbers may be capturing only cases of justification successfully asserted at the initial police stage, and missing some cases in which defendants have successfully asserted justifiability at a later stage. Cramer also speculates further:
What we may be seeing here is not that justifiable homicides are actually increasing (although they may be), but that many killings that were initially considered crimes, but were later corrected to justifiable or excusable homicide, are now being declared justifiable much earlier in the process.
More at Shall Not Be Questioned, which takes the view that “CD [Castle Doctrine] and SYG don’t honestly change much, and in most states, is just adjusting the statutes to match what juries will routinely decide in most of these cases.”
International law roundup
- NAACP takes complaint against American election laws to U.N. Human Rights Council [PowerLine, Steyn, von Spakovsky, Ku]
- Also at Opinio Juris: David Landau, Mark Tushnet on judicial/constitutional enforcement of “social rights”; getting international law enforced in U.S. courts is hot topic in legal academia [Oona Hathaway, Sabria McElroy and Sara Aronchick Solow and Steve Vladeck]
- Too many strings in Toronto: “York University Faculty Torpedo $60 Million International Law Donation” [Ku/OJ]
- What UNESCO is up to: “Empowering the Poor Through Human Rights Litigation” [long PDF]
- “Taming Globalization,” new Yoo-and-Ku book on international law [Liberty and Law: about, interview, more]
- Baby thrown out with bathwater: courts now coping with grossly overbroad state enactments barring reception of foreign law [WSJ Law Blog, earlier here, etc.]
Washington Post keeps missing point on Stand Your Ground
I’ve got a new opinion piece up at the Daily Caller correcting some of the Washington Post’s persistent misconceptions about self-defense law, on both its editorial and reporting sides. Sample:
… how [Post reporters] Fisher and Eggen do stack their lead anecdote. Their opening paragraphs tell of a youth who innocently “knocked at the wrong door” and was greeted by an irate homeowner who, seemingly without reason or provocation, blasted him in the chest, only to be set free by the police, since in Florida, the victim’s father sorrowfully avers, it seems “the shooter’s word is the law.”
Pretty horrifying, right? It takes 17 paragraphs of unrelated matter before the first scraps of the other side of the story emerge: it was 4 a.m. and the youth, bipolar and “blitzed” on alcohol that night, was ignoring repeated pleas to leave a property with a young mother and baby inside; the husband/shooter (whom the Post never managed to reach for his side of the story) told police that he had asked his wife to call 911, which hadn’t shown up; that he had warned the intruder many times, and fired only after being “lurched” at; he was then arrested, “but Assistant State Attorney Manny Garcia concluded that his actions were ‘justified.’”
You can read the whole thing here.
Also, correspondent Lee Pacchia interviewed me at Bloomberg Law about the law’s application to the Trayvon Martin case in a 9 minute+ segment posted today. More commentary from my Cato Institute colleague Tim Lynch at Jurist. Earlier here.
Legal woes of “invisible” man
He had previously faced charges of, yes, failure to appear [Lowering the Bar]
“James Bovard: The Wrong Way to Help the Disabled”
“A 7 percent hiring quota for government contractors is unfair and unwise.” [WSJ] My contribution on the subject is here (more).
More: David Harsanyi at Human Events (quoting my February piece).
April 9 roundup
- Forfeiture-happy customs agents bedevil family flying to Ethiopia [Volokh]
- Lawmakers, ABA ex-bigs back campaign to grant law license to illegal alien [Miami Herald]
- “NYT reports the FDA is stunned democracy requires they answer to elected political leaders as part of enacting laws” [@CraigBruney]
- When did doghouses become a crime? [Alex Ballingall/Maclean’s via @amyalkon]
- Why Tennessee, famous for distilleries, used to have so few of them [Nashville City Paper via @radleybalko]
- ESPN tells only one side of Title IX story [Eric McErlain, Daily Caller; Saving Sports]
- Greece: “At the health department they were told that all the shareholders of the company would have to provide chest X-rays” [Mark Perry]