- Long before the U.S. News rankings: “Enduring Hierarchies in American Legal Education” [Olufunmilayo Arewa, Andrew Morriss, William Henderson, Indiana Law Journal/SSRN]
- So law schools tilt way left. What if anything can be done about it? [George Dent (Case Western), SSRN]
- Judge tosses defamation suit filed by Thomas Cooley Law School against critics [Lansing State Journal, Caron/TaxProf]
- And playing the race card to do it: “Law Profs Oppose Elimination of Tenure as an Accreditation Requirement” [Caron]
- Law schools as pork barrel: gubernatorial candidate promises to launch a new one in defiance of economic logic [Elie Mystal at Above the Law; Bowie State U., Maryland]
- Heather Mac Donald: Academic Advisory Council installed by Judge Scheindlin in NYPD case inspires little confidence [NY Post]
- Judge Easterbrook: “The one-size-fits-all approach has been the bane of legal education” [Indiana Lawyer re: opening of new Indiana Tech law school]
- Herculean flow-chart condensation of Paul Campos book Don’t Go to Law School (Unless) [Connecticut attorney Samuel Browning, Law School Tuition Bubble]
Posts Tagged ‘Maryland’
Maryland roundup
- You might as well live: estate and inheritance tax make it highly inadvisable to die as a Maryland resident [TaxProf]
- “Foreclosures: The Chickens Come Home to Roost” [Calvert Institute, earlier]
- Courts task force created earlier this year will study costly and open-ended Civil Gideon proposals [courts]
- For your own good: state’s commissioner of financial regulation goes after banks that service payday lenders [Funnell]
- Governor candidates angle for union support, bids include “greater use of collective bargaining agreements on state construction projects” [WaPo]
- Really, it won’t kill you to respect people’s consciences on Frederick County boards and commissions [Bethany Rodgers, Frederick News Post on Pledge of Allegiance controversy, update, Ken at Popehat (“Freedom of conscience is like the good couch in the living room; it’s there to be had, not to be used.”), Gene Healy background] About time: city may ease restrictions on bed and breakfasts [Jen Bondeson, Frederick News Post]
- Only a handful of states join Maryland in policy of unionizing home child carers [Go Local Providence, more]
Facebook to let school officials flag “questionable” posts for takedown
That’s the gist of an announcement this morning from the office of Maryland attorney general Doug Gansler, following on the passing into effect of the state’s groundbreaking “cyberbullying” law, which I criticized earlier this year. The National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) is involved too in the Educator Escalation Channel, which will start with a pilot Maryland program. Gansler says those targeted for post takedowns will include Facebook users who are “not committing a crime… We’re not going to go after you, but we are going to take down the language off of Facebook, because there’s no redeeming societal value and it’s clearly hurting somebody.” Although the rationale is to protect Maryland juveniles from unwelcome and hurtful online communications, the initial press reports offer no indication that the Facebook users whose speech is targeted for takedown will necessarily be other Maryland juveniles.
What could possibly go wrong? I’ve got some thoughts on the question at Cato at Liberty. More: Scott Greenfield (“Facebook becomes the agent of the state. … Welcome to the start of something big.”)
Speaking in Baltimore Thursday
I’m speaking in downtown Baltimore this Thursday at 12 noon about my most recent book, Schools for Misrule. I’ve given versions of this talk many times around the country but I think this marks the first time I’ve done so in my own state of Maryland. It’s free and lunch is served, but you’ll need to RSVP to the Federalist Society Baltimore Lawyers’ Chapter. Details here.
Foreclosures and housing recovery
A natural experiment: Virginia law allows foreclosures to happen rapidly, Maryland law delays them. Which state has bounced back more smartly from the housing crash? [Michael Schearer, earlier, related (couple spends five years in million-dollar Maryland home without making mortgage payment), update (more links in roundup: Maryland “hobbled by nation’s slowest foreclosure process”]
Maryland roundup
- Error-plagued speed camera program even more error-plagued than had been realized [Fox Baltimore]
- Del. Joseph Vallario, Jr. [D-Prince George’s] chairs House Judiciary panel while practicing criminal defense law, but as conflicts of interest go we’ve heard worse [Washington Post]
- Theme of recent dramshop, contributory-negligence rulings by Maryland Court of Appeals is restraint [Michael Schearer, more; my WaPo letter on the alcohol-serving case; for a view different from mine, Donald Gifford]
- Pleading guilty in massive Baltimore jail scandal, Tavon White says “many other” guards involved in misconduct, 13 have been indicted [City Paper, Baltimore Sun/CorrectionsOne, AP/HuffPo]
- One view from the other side on unpopular “rain tax” on impervious surfaces [Tom Coale, HoCo Rising]
- “Alas, The Maryland Court of Appeals Has Reversed Ford v. Dixon” [on “every fiber, every breath” asbestos theory; David Oliver]
- What is it with Maryland and surveillance, anyway? State police zealously collect license plate-cam data [J.D. Tuccille]
“Can restaurants take your keys if you are intoxicated?”
The Maryland high court recently declined an invitation to discard the common-law rule against server liability in a case where a patron of a Gaithersburg craft brewery got on the road and caused a fatal accident. Washington Post columnist Robert McCartney wrote in favor of the wider liability rule, and I responded in a letter to the editor just posted at the newspaper.
Maryland court won’t toss contributory negligence
Some had urged the state’s highest court to abandon the old common-law standard in favor of a comparative negligence standard, but the court said any such move will need to come from the Maryland legislature. [Daily Record, earlier; Coleman v. Soccer Association of Columbia]
Maryland roundup
- “Montgomery County firefighters can earn overtime pay while on vacation, or while taking sick days.” [Washington Post via @radleybalko]
- Will Maryland Court of Appeals overturn contributory negligence in favor of comparative negligence? [Michael Schearer page on pending case of Coleman v. Soccer Association of Columbia]
- “City Council postpones vote on Styrofoam container ban” [Baltimore Sun]
- Extensive political ties of Maryland speed camera vendor [Mark Newgent, WatchdogWire]
- Scheme to extend “Maintenance of Effort” regulations, which forbid counties from cutting budgets, from education to other service areas [Brian Griffiths, WatchdogWire]
- Fiscal sink: “Failed ‘Green’ Boutique Hotel Received Millions in State Loans” [Mark Newgent, WatchdogWire]
- Maryland ranks among states with most onerous occupational licensing burdens [Institute for Justice, “License To Work,” scroll to p. 78]
- Nice Chamber you got here in this state, be a shame if you didn’t sign this letter backing our guy Perez [Sean Higgins, Washington Examiner]
- Old but good: property tax cuts have revitalized other cities, and Baltimore needs one too [Steve Walters]
Maryland v. King: Scalia and the genetic panopticon
Yesterday the Supreme Court decided it was okay to require arrested persons to submit to DNA testing meant to match them to unsolved crimes. [Maryland v. King; Robert Kaiser, Washington Post; Nina Totenberg, NPR] In an impassioned dissent joined by liberals Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, Justice Antonin Scalia warned that an important civil liberties line is being crossed as the Court now approves suspicion-less searches of persons at a stage at which the law presumes them innocent, without any primary motivation except to gather evidence of unrelated crime.
I’ve got an article in The Daily Beast this morning on the Scalia dissent and its warnings that lawmakers may soon embrace a genetic surveillance state in the name of security. Excerpt:
In his dissent, Scalia warns of such a “genetic panopticon.” (The reference is to Jeremy Bentham’s idea of a prison laid out so that inmates could be watched at every moment.) And it’s closer than you may think. Already fingerprint requirements have multiplied, as the dissent points out, “from convicted criminals, to arrestees, to civil servants, to immigrants, to everyone with a driver’s license” in some states. DNA sample requirements are now following a similar path, starting reasonably enough with convicts before expanding, under laws passed by more than half the states as well as Maryland, to arrestees. (“Nearly one-third of Americans will be arrested for some offense by age 23.”) Soon will come wider circles. How long before you’ll be asked to give a DNA swab before you can board a plane, work as a lawn contractor, join the football team at your high school, or drive?
With the confidence that once characterized liberals of the Earl Warren–William Brennan school, Scalia says we can’t make catching more bad guys the be-all and end-all of criminal process:
“Solving unsolved crimes is a noble objective, but it occupies a lower place in the American pantheon of noble objectives than the protection of our people from suspicionless law-enforcement searches. The Fourth Amendment must prevail. … I doubt that the proud men who wrote the charter of our liberties would have been so eager to open their mouths for royal inspection.”
More: I’ve got this related piece in Newsweek on the Justices’ shifting Fourth Amendment alignments. Thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the Instalanche. And other commentaries from Daniel Fisher, Lowering the Bar (on the Jeremy Bentham angle; Scalia’s dissent mentions Bentham twice; Scott Greenfield; Julian Sanchez; Jacob Sullum). And Mississippi has just announced plans to match offspring of underage mothers to responsible fathers through DNA database checks based on umbilical cord blood. [NPR]