Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘accolades’

More mentions on Overlawyered’s adjournment

The nicest single thing anyone says about me this week might turn out to be from Bob Ambrogi at Legal Sites: “Let’s retire jersey number one.” Thanks! Or it might be one of the kind things Scott Greenfield says here. Here’s what I wrote in response to Scott:

Thank you for those kind words. As you guessed, my choice of “adjourned” was mostly because of its legal flavor, but also signaled that I’m not retiring or going away. I like blogging! I continue to post at the group blog Cato at Liberty and at my low-frequency Maryland politics blog Free State Notes, and I might be tempted at some point to try a blog project with a limited subject and duration (several people have suggested I blog the coronavirus crisis). What I can’t go on shouldering is the commitment needed for an open-ended, daily-or-more-so, individual blog. You yourself set an outstanding example of how to go about doing that.

More coverage of my resolution to hang it up May 31: Bloomberg Law in a roundup, Eugene Volokh, Raised on Hoecakes. And: Steve Bainbridge (“one of those that inspired me to start my own blog. His site has been a must read since day one.”); Eric Turkewitz (“I’ve taken some crap over the years from other personal injury lawyers over my lauding of Olson and his site. But it was the way he did things that was important to me.”).

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Tom Sawyer’s funeral: the Twitter version

The fun in closing down an enterprise like Overlawyered before you “have to” is that you can be like Tom Sawyer watching the tributes at your own funeral. Sticking to Twitter for now, here are ten or so of my favorites so far. From former co-blogger Ted Frank quoting Scott Greenfield:

And leading legal bloggers:

And reporters and journalists:

And from others who say their careers or education took a different path:

And some who just wanted to let off steam:

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May 2 roundup

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The FDA’s war on vaping

I’ve got a new piece at Ricochet on the Food and Drug Administration’s just-announced measures against vaping (e-cigarettes), which will drastically restrict and maybe even ban a popular option for smokers seeking to quit the cigarette habit. It’s not just an assault on individual choice and commercial freedom — it could wind up killing people. Read it here.

Relatedly, Andrew Stuttaford thinks I am too kind in describing CDC director Thomas Frieden as in denial about the prospective health benefits when smokers switch to vaping. And thank you to Andrew for describing Overlawyered as “must-read”.

P.S. Faced with two options on how to regulate premium cigars, FDA chose the harsher, of course [HalfWheel, Jacob Grier (“The market for cigars is about to become a lot less diverse and a lot more boring.”)]

More: I’ve got a piece up at Cato now on winners and losers from the FDA’s move. Plus, a new Jacob Sullum column: “The FDA’s deadly e-cigarette regulations.” And a Washington Post editorial defends the agency’s action on a for-the-children rationale, yet says not a word about the precipitous plunge in youth smoking rates and only refers in passing to the issue of harm reduction.

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For no good reason…

…except that every so often it makes us smile to see people we respect say nice things about us.

More nice things: the Foundation for Economic Education calls us “indispensable.” And Eric Turkewitz recalls a non-blocking exchange.

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Charles Murray’s recommendations for books on the U.S. legal system

Honored that two of mine, The Litigation Explosion and The Rule of Lawyers, are among seven that author Charles Murray (most recently of By the People) has recommended if you’d like to understand the state of the U.S. legal system [Benjamin Weingarten, The Blaze] I can recommend all the other books on the list as well, including the four by well-known author Philip K. Howard, often mentioned in this space, and The American Illness: Essays on the Rule of Law, edited by George Mason lawprof F.H. Buckley, a recent and underappreciated gem. Its contributors include Stephen Bainbridge, Todd Zywicki, Richard Epstein, George Priest and many well-known legal academics.

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September 2 roundup

  • Police have traced the crime wave to a single micro-neighborhood in the California capital [Sacramento Bee]
  • “Adam Carolla Settles with the Patent Trolls” [Daniel Nazer/EFF, Reason, related eight days earlier and previously] eBay takes on Landmark in the E.D. of Texas [Popehat]
  • Frank Furedi on law and the decline in childrens’ freedom to roam [U.K. Independent]
  • On “ban the box” laws re: asking about job applicants’ criminal records, it’s sued if you do, sued if you don’t [Coyote]
  • Fake law firm websites in U.K. sometimes parasitize the real ones [Martha Neil, ABA Journal]
  • What C. Steven Bradford of the blog Business Law Prof reads to keep up (and thanks for including us on list);
  • As applications to renounce U.S. citizenship mount, many related to FATCA, our government hikes fee for doing so by 422% [Robert Wood, Forbes]

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