- It works if your court is in Maine: “Motion to Continue Because of Moose Attack” [Lowering the Bar]
- “John Bolton is Right About the International Criminal Court” [Jeremy Rabkin, Weekly Standard, earlier]
- No kidding. “Unintended Impact: Detroit Crackdown on Landlords Could Boost Rents” [Deadline Detroit; Violet Ikonomova, Metro Times]
- Advocacy groups “were focused on food deserts ‘because access was a social justice issue. It wasn’t based on evidence because there wasn’t any evidence.'” [Tamar Haspel, Washington Post]
- “Good moral character” prerequisites for holding licenses are vague and subjective even in ordinary times, and should not be pressed into surrogate use against political foes [Jonathan Haggerty and C. Jarrett Dieterle, R Street Institute]
- California fisheries and Chevron deference: “An Otter Travesty by the Administrative State” [Ilya Shapiro on Cato cert amicus petition in California Sea Urchin Commission v. Combs]
“Senate passes copyright bill to end 140-year protection for old songs”
The Senate has now unanimously passed its own version of the Music Modernization Act, a bill intended to enable clearinghouse payment by those streaming, performing, or otherwise using older musical works. Under a House-passed bill more favorable toward owners of very old material, “a song recorded in 1927 would effectively get 140 years of protection, vastly longer than the 95 years current law gives to books, movies, and other works published around the same time.” [Timothy Lee, ArsTechnica]
“The pros and cons of ‘mandated reporting.'”
Advocates are pushing for laws much expanding the ranks of private actors required by law to inform to authorities on suspicions about child abuse (“mandatory reporters”). Naomi S. Riley quotes some of my misgivings: “As Walter Olson of the Cato Institute notes, increasing the number of mandated reporters could ‘incentivize’ people ‘to resolve uncertain, gray areas in favor of reporting.’ It will multiply “investigations based on hunches or ambiguous evidence which can harm the innocent, traumatize families, result in CPS [child protective services] raids, and stimulate false allegations,’ he says.” [Weekly Standard]
Police roundup
- Among other barriers it erects against police accountability, California keeps prosecutors from knowing when and which cops have been shown dishonest. Time for reform [Jonathan Blanks, Cato]
- “NYC has shelled out $384M in 5 years to settle NYPD suits” [Yoav Gonen, Julia Marsh and Bruce Golding, New York Post]
- “Federal Judge Breaks Up Albuquerque’s Car Theft Ring” [Jacob Sullum, Reason on forfeiture ruling; Tim Cushing, TechDirt; Ilya Somin on legal implications] Class-action suit challenges civil forfeitures [George Hunter, Detroit News; C.J. Ciaramella, Reason]
- Update on police union scandal in Orange County, Calif.: union’s law firm will pay $600K to a former mayor of Costa Mesa it targeted for harassment and intimidation [Steven Greenhut, earlier]
- “Thrown Chairs, Resignations, And An Envelope Full Of Cash Follow Exposure Of 2-Man PD’s Acquisition Of $1 Million In Military Equipment” [Tim Cushing, TechDirt]
- Denver cops, before handcuffing a journalist for photographing their actions on a public street, advise her she’s violating HIPAA. No, that’s not how it works [Alex Burness, Colorado Independent]
Environment roundup
- Auto fuel economy standards: “The indirect CAFE program costs the economy at least six times as much as a carbon tax that reduces emissions equivalently.” [Peter Van Doren and Randal O’Toole, Cato]
- Whether grounded in official discretion or legislation, cash exactions levied on land development should still need to meet constitutional standards [Ilya Shapiro and Reilly Stephens on Cato Institute certiorari amicus brief in Dabbs v. Anne Arundel County]
- A stumbling block for Boulder: “With Two High-Profile Losses, When Do Climate Plaintiffs Start Worrying About Sanctions?” [Daniel Fisher; John O’Brien (views of former Colorado AG Gale Norton and current Colorado AG Cynthia Coffman); Adam Morey, New York Post] Issue isn’t whether climate change should be addressed, but what the Constitution and prudence tell us about whose job that is [Donald Kochan, L.A. Times] And a Federalist Society podcast with Kochan on municipal climate lawsuits;
- “Contract Dispute Cracks the ‘Thin Green Line’ Activists Are Drawing to Stop U.S. Fossil Fuel Exports” [Greg Herbers, Washington Legal Foundation, earlier]
- Neigh-ligence: latest effort to get courts to create standing for non-human plaintiffs is suit on behalf of neglected horse [Karin Brulliard, Washington Post/SFGate, earlier on animal rights]
- EPA announces intention to make regulatory science more transparent by making scientific work on which it relies open to public. Pressure groups erupt with outrage [Adam J. White, City Journal]
Elena Kagan on “taking big questions and making them small”
On Sept. 12 Justice Elena Kagan spoke at Hannah Senesh Community Day School in Brooklyn, interviewed by journalist Dahlia Lithwick. Steven Mazie, Supreme Court correspondent for The Economist, covered the speech on Twitter and a print account by Rob Abruzzese at the Brooklyn Daily Eagle confirms the same general points. From Mazie’s account, slightly edited for readability:
KAGAN: People viewing the judiciary as legitimate is part of the “marvel” of the third branch of government.
But that’s fragile. People can lose that faith in “unelected, pretty old” justices. If we lose that, we’re losing something incredibly important to American constitutional democracy.
This is a dangerous time for the court, because people see us as an extension of the political process. “It’s dangerous if in big cases, divisions follow ineluctably from political decisions.”
You have to try as hard as you can to find ways to avoid 5-4 decisions “by taking big questions and making them small.” Recently, we’ve had good practice in that. During 8-member court, we had to try hard to avoid 4-4s and find consensus. Sometimes it had a ridiculous air to it, “since we left the big thing that had to be decided out there.”
We kept on talking until we achieved consensus, and CJ Roberts gets huge credit for that.
I cited this passage Monday at Cato’s Constitution Day as going far to explain several cases this past term in which Kagan took an important role, including Masterpiece Cakeshop (where she and Justice Stephen Breyer joined conservatives in deciding the case on different grounds than those most strenuously contested), Lucia v. SEC (in which she wrote for the court to decide a structural question on administrative law judges narrowly while sidestepping contentious issues of separation of powers and presidential authority) and above all in the partisan gerrymandering cases (decided unanimously without addressing the principal merits, and with a Kagan-authored concurrence on behalf of the four liberals).
Exoneration on the links
“What a wild story: a prisoner serving 39 years to life started making drawings of golf courses. The drawings made their way to Golf Digest, which wrote about him, then realized his conviction was sketchy, then investigated, and now he’s free.” [Tom Gara on Max Adler, Golf Digest]
The article quotes one of Valentino Dixon’s pro bono lawyers: “It’s embarrassing for the legal system that for a long time the best presentation of the investigation was from a golf magazine.”
Labor and employment roundup
- Are public subsidies to low-earning employees a subsidy to their employers, as Sen. Bernie Sanders claims? [Cato Daily Podcast with Ryan Bourne and Caleb Brown; Bourne in USA Today and National Review]
- “To Speak or Not to Speak, That Is Your Right: Janus v. AFSCME” [David F. Forte, Cato Supreme Court Review] From two critics of decision: “What Janus Got Right — and Wrong” [Will Baude and Eugene Volokh] “More on Suits against Unions for Janus Violations” [Will Baude] Earlier here, here, etc.
- On sexual harassment, social mores have changed; biology hasn’t [Suzanne Lucas, Law and Liberty]
- California’s criminal code is honeycombed with special exemptions for conduct carried on as part of labor activity [Edmund Pine, California Policy Center last year] Or at least make sure federal law does not provide it an artificial shield: “Congress Should Ban Union Violence” [Emily Top, Economics21; David Kendrick, Cato 1998]
- “Verizon employee leaves work early, prompting months long investigation, during which employees offered conflicting accounts of whether the employee’s departure was authorized. NLRB: All of which was a pretext to fire a union-supporting employee. D.C. Circuit: Nope. Companies can fire employees for being dishonest, and that’s all that happened here.” [John Kenneth Ross, IJ “Short Circuit” on Cellco Partnership v. NLRB]
- “Workers affect worker safety too” [David Henderson]
About that “no level of alcohol drinking is safe” study
How much risk did that recent “no level of alcohol drinking is safe” study find? For the one-drink-per-day group, “a total of 400,000 bottles of gin [was] associated with one extra health problem.” [David Spiegelhalter via Flowing Data] If one of those bottles should happen to fall, 399,999 bottles of gin on the wall…
New: Cato Supreme Court Review (including me on gerrymandering and the Constitution)
On Monday the Cato Institute published its annual Cato Supreme Court Review for the 2017-18 Supreme Court term. Included is my 7,000-word article on the Supreme Court’s cases last term on partisan gerrymandering, Gill v. Whitford (Wisconsin) and Benisek v. Lamone (Maryland). Several people have told me that I managed to make a dry and complicated subject understandable and even entertaining, which I take as the highest compliment.
The entire CSCR is online, and here are its contents. I assisted in the editing of the pieces by Joseph Bishop-Henchman on the Internet sales tax case South Dakota v. Wayfair, and by Jennifer Mascott on the government-structure case Lucia v. SEC.
FOREWORD AND INTRODUCTION
The Battle for the Court: Politics vs. Principles by Roger Pilon
Introduction By Ilya Shapiro
ANNUAL KENNETH B. SIMON LECTURE
The Administrative Threat to Civil Liberties by Philip Hamburger
IMMIGRATION AND NATIONAL SECURITY
The Travel Bans by Josh Blackman
POLITICAL GERRYMANDERING
The Ghost Ship of Gerrymandering Law by Walter Olson
THE CRIMINAL LAW
Katz Nipped and Katz Cradled: Carpenter and the Evolving Fourth Amendment by Trevor Burrus and James Knight
Class v. United States: Bargained Justice and a System of Efficiencies by Lucian E. Dervan
THE FIRST AMENDMENT AND THE CULTURE WARS
Masterpiece Cakeshop: A Romer for Religious Objectors? by Thomas C. Berg
To Speak or Not to Speak, That Is Your Right: Janus v. AFSCME by David Forte
NIFLA v. Becerra: A Seismic Decision Protecting Occupational Speech by Robert McNamara and Paul Sherman
Regulation of Political Apparel in Polling Places: Why the Supreme Court’s Mansky Opinion Did Not Go Far Enough by Rodney A. Smolla
FEDERALISM AND GOVERNMENT STRUCTURE
Betting on Federalism: Murphy v. NCAA and the Future of Sports Gambling by Mark Brnovich
Internet Sales Taxes from 1789 to the Present Day: South Dakota v. Wayfair by Joseph Bishop-Henchman
“Officers” in the Supreme Court: Lucia v. SEC by Jennifer Mascott
NEXT YEAR
Looking Ahead: October Term 2018 by Erin E. Murphy