In three significant cases before the Supreme Court this term — Hosanna-Tabor Church v. EEOC on religious liberty, U.S. v. Jones on warrantless GPS search, and Sackett v. EPA on rights to challenge regulatory agency actions — the justices have been unanimous in rejecting the Obama Administration’s position. This Department of Justice, it seems, keeps asserting a vision of virtually unfettered executive-branch power that even its own appointees on the Court find unpersuasive. “If the government loses in the health-care or immigration cases,” writes my Cato Institute colleague Ilya Shapiro, “it won’t be because its lawyers had a bad day in court or because the justices ruled based on their political preferences. It will be because the Obama administration continues to make legal arguments that don’t pass the smell test.” [WSJ]
Posts Tagged ‘Barack Obama’
Good news for farm families
As I relate in a post at Cato at Liberty, the Obama Labor Department has withdrawn a far-reaching proposal that would have banned much or most work done by kids on farms, even work for their own family members (a narrow exemption would have remained in cases where parents were the sole owners of a farmstead). The proposals drew a huge outcry from rural America (earlier here and here).
According to the American Farm Bureau Federation (PDF),
For approximately a decade, activists have attempted to pass legislation amending the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) to restrict the ability of youth under the age of 16 to work in agriculture. The legislation has never been scheduled for a vote or even a hearing, and the DOL-proposed rule change is [was] apparently an effort to restrict youth employment in agriculture through regulation.
If it seems impossibly extreme to forbid 15-year-olds from feeding chickens at a neighboring farm owned by their aunt, be aware that many groups organized around the fine-sounding mission of ending “child labor” would like to institute bans that go even further. For example, an NGO by the name of Global March Against Child Labor (represented in Washington, D.C. here) supported the DoL rules and declares itself “of the view that child labour in agriculture should not be allowed in any part of the world and in any form- whether as family labour or as hired labour.”
P.S. For more pro-ban sentiment, see this piece by AP labor correspondent Sam Hananel stenographizing the views of groups like Human Rights Watch.
Judicial activism for me, but not for thee
From Glenn Reynolds’s readers:
“Rather hilariously, David Dow, the author of the Newsweek piece calling for the impeachment of the Supreme Court if they overturn the health care law, is the author of America’s Prophets: How Judicial Activism Makes America Great.” Only the right sort of judicial activism. Impeach the rest!
More on the “MarburyGate” presidential gaffe from Thom Lambert and David Bernstein.
“Never let law profs near the Oval Office”
My Cato colleague Gene Healy points out that President Obama is the fourth chief executive who also taught constitutional law, joining William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson and Bill Clinton. “Taft did comparatively little damage, but the rest hardly inspire confidence that familiarity with constitutional scholarship encourages fidelity to the national charter.” [Washington Examiner] He lets me have a parting shot:
My Cato Institute colleague Walter Olson, author of “Schools for Misrule: Legal Academia and an Overlawyered America”, explains that “legal academia rewards cleverness in coming up with strained arguments for ideologically favored (or just expedient) positions; marginalizes as eccentric thinkers who favor original understanding as a guide” to the Constitution and often reduces law to “politics by other means.”
Unfortunately, that training has served Obama well.
January 31 roundup
- Latest of periodic Towers Watson (formerly Towers Perrin/Tillinghast) surveys: tort costs fell in 2010 excluding oil spill liability [Towers Watson]
- “Will Newt Neuter the Courts?” [James Huffman, Defining Ideas] Obama’s high court appointees are fortunately friendlier toward civil liberties than he is [Steve Chapman]
- Unanimous Cal Supremes: companies not legally responsible for other companies’ asbestos products used as replacement for theirs [Cal Biz Lit, Jackson, Beck, Mass Tort Prof]
- Claim: jurors considered policy implications of verdict and you can’t have that [On Point; defense verdict in Baltimore, Maryland school-bullying case]
- Airfare display mandate: “‘Protecting’ Consumers from the Truth About the Cost of Government” [Thom Lambert, TotM]
- Critical assessment of AP-backed new copyright aggregator “NewsRight” [Mike Masnick] Promises not to be “Righthaven 2.0” [Cit Media Law]
- Restatement (Third) of Torts drafters vs. Enlightenment scientific views of causation [David Oliver in June]
Cato commentary on State of the Union
My Cato colleagues discuss President Obama’s remarks on judicial nominations, the auto bailout, Dodd-Frank and the Cordray appointment, federal control of education and more.
P.S. “America’s best think tank” [Glenn Reynolds]
Obama proposes up or down vote on judges
Ted Frank: “It is ironic that Obama is calling for a 90-day ‘simple up or down’ vote on judicial nominees when he is the only sitting president in American history who has voted to filibuster a judicial nomination — and that was for someone well within the mainstream like Justice Alito.”
Obama proposal: no leaving school until age 18 or graduation
Aside from the wisdom of obliging every single young person to serve out such a sentence — conveniently, until draft age, when the State may have other plans for their time — there’s an interest-group angle. Ira Stoll traces it to the National Education Association, which stands to gain from the idea a measurable boost to its dues-paying ranks, and which has in fact proposed mandatory schooling for nongraduates up to age 21. More: Hans Bader, CEI (quoting Overlawyered commenter Kurt); Nick Gillespie, Reason.
P.S. Watch out for the truancy cops, too [Free-Range Kids; Loudoun County, Va. mother says she was handcuffed and arrested after fifth instance of school tardiness]
January 6 roundup
- Senate takes a bathroom break for five minutes, and Obama uses recess appointments to install unconfirmable nominees. Legal? [Roger Pilon via National Right To Work, Richard Epstein, Mark Calabria, Adler link roundup]. What the New York Times thought back then about recess appointments; what it thinks now.
- Pepsi defense: our bottling would have dissolved that dead mouse into something jelly-like [Althouse, MC Record via AW]
- Federal panel proposes slashing definitional thresholds so as to enable diagnosing of hundreds of thousands of new child lead poisoning cases [AP]
- “Appeals Court Rules Husband Can Be Charged Criminally For Reading Wife’s Email” [Doug Mataconis, Outside the Beltway]
- Its original goals accomplished, Voting Rights Act “preclearance” lurches on. SCOTUS should review [Cato amicus brief by Ilya Shapiro and Anna Mackin, further]
- “‘Karma’ Facebook post leads to criminal charges” [Fox Tampa via Balko]
- As senator, Santorum sought extensive new federal powers to regulate pet dealing, scaring many animal rescue groups [NCRAOA, PDF]
December 19 roundup
- Too much of a stretch: US nixes copyright in yoga exercises [Bloomberg, earlier]
- “Know your rights dealing with cops” material construed as probative of criminality [Popehat] Is Justice Scalia really an “unlikely” champion of defendants’ Constitutional rights? [LATimes, Adler] “Overcriminalization: The Legislative Side of the Problem” [Larkin/Heritage, related Meese] When feds spring false-statements trap, it won’t matter whether you committed underlying offense being investigated [Popehat] “‘Clean Up Government Act’ sparks overcriminalization concerns” [PoL]
- Former Attorney General Mukasey on ObamaCare recusal flap [Adler]
- American Antitrust Institute proposals might be discounted given group’s longstanding pro-plaintiff bias [Thom Lambert]
- NYC: “The tour guide said that the way to get rich is to be a zoning lawyer.” [Arnold Kling]
- “Obama’s Top Ten Constitutional Violations” [Ilya Shapiro, Daily Caller] In at least two major areas, “Obama has broken with precedent to curtail religious freedom” [Steve Chapman]
- Ted Frank-Shirley Svorny med mal debate wraps up [PoL, Bader]