Ross Douthat, “Did The Americans With Disabilities Act Work?”

Continuing the discussion from my Cato piece earlier this week [New York Times, citing Jonathan Cohn/New Republic; Foster’s Daily Democrat (New Hampshire), Mark Perry]. Other links and reactions on the more recent Chipotle decision: Ann Coulter (right links column), George Leef/John Locke, Above the Law, Zincavage, Perry, Fisher/Atlantic Wire. Pat Cleary points out that the top source of ADA charges before the EEOC remains back injuries, followed by pain, stiffness or loss of movement in bones or joints, and depression. And at Richard Epstein’s piece at Ricochet, commenter Duane Oyen tells the story of ADA’s arguably perverse effects on a shuttle bus service in Minneapolis-St. Paul.

July 30 roundup

  • Hilton Head dispute over pet turkeys leads to $4.25 million verdict [Island Packet via Lowering the Bar]
  • “Lucasfilm lightsaber legal threat letter sells for $3,850” [BoingBoing, earlier]
  • Raw milk: “If The Government Says That It’s Not About Freedom, Then It’s Just NOT” [Ken at Popehat vs. L.A. Times]
  • Dell “failed to stress” accounting disclosure. SEC: that will be $100 million [TJIC]
  • Dodd-Frank dubbed “Lawyers’ and Consultants’ Full Employment Act of 2010″ [Mark Perry, WSJ Law Blog]
  • “Did liberal judges invent the standing doctrine? An Empirical Study of the Evolution of Standing, 1921-2006” [Ho/Ross, Stanford Law Review]
  • Office of Connecticut AG Blumenthal doesn’t emerge with glory from fertility doctor case [Pesci]
  • Massachusetts high court tosses 125-year-old rule: owners now face wider liability for snow/ice hazards [Globe]

“Good Lord, people are complaining because they can’t see a taco, get a life”

Much reaction in the comments at the San Francisco Chronicle to the Ninth Circuit’s “Chipotle Experience discriminates against the disabled” ruling. Earlier here. And Ted at PoL notes this significant passage rejected by the appeals court:

The [district] court found that Antoninetti had failed to show irreparable injury because he had not revisited either restaurant after Chipotle adopted its written policy and because his “purported desire to return to the [r]estaurants is neither concrete nor sincere or supported by the facts.” It also stated that Antoninetti’s “history as a plaintiff in accessibility litigation supports this Court’s finding that his purported desire to return to the [r]estaurants is not sincere. Since immigrating to the United States in 1991, Plaintiff has sued over twenty business entities for alleged accessibility violations, and, in all (but one) of those cases, he never returned to the establishment he sued after settling the case and obtaining a cash payment.”

More on ADA filing mills here. And I’ve now got a longer post up at Cato at Liberty comparing the policy problem of serial ADA complaints to that of patent trollery, mass filing of “citizen suits”, and the business model of recently formed copyright-holder RightHaven. More: Carl Horowitz, NLPC.

Schools for Misrule cover art

Just out from Encounter Books, the cover art for my forthcoming book:
CoverArtSFM0710

Apropos of which, one theme the book treats at length — the consequences and possible origins of today’s overwhelming liberal/Left ideological dominance in academic law — is the subject of Above the Law’s latest odd-trio matchup of Richard Epstein (at Ricochet), John Yoo (in comments there) and Elizabeth Wurtzel (on Twitter). Epstein:

…on average I would say that there are more left-wing democrats than center-left democrats [in legal academia]. I define the difference as follows. The former are those who have sympathy for programs of redistribution on such key areas as education and health care, but are by and large supportive of market institutions on the production side of the line. There is an effort to make good on the earlier social democratic tradition. The left democrats are in favor of a larger public sector and are deeply suspicious of markets more or less across the board. To put the point most vividly, the center left group is uncomfortable that Obama is too far to the left. The left liberal group is uncomfortable that he is too far to the right. There is a lot of difference there.

Yoo:

…conservatives, for good reason, tend to hide their political beliefs when they are on the job market and when they are untenured. They suspect, perhaps reasonably in light of this study, that there is a bias against them. I know conservatives at other schools who try to avoid writing on anything remotely controversial — this is bad for scholarship and teaching, because it discourages our best minds and fullest debates on the most important subjects.

Wurtzel:

Re liberal bias in academia: Shouldn’t the fact that intellectuals tend to be drawn to liberal ideas tell us that liberal ideas are smarter?

Well, no, as Hayek and many others have noted, it might just be that liberal/Left ideas unlike conservative ideas flatter intellectuals with the assurance that they deserve to run the world. Certainly — as I argue at more length in the new book — many of the liberal/Left ideas in circulation today promise to make legal academics a much more powerful and influential bunch.