Legal Commentary

Punishing Family Status: Application of the Family Ties Burden Framework

Posted on March 12, 2008
In today's installment of Punishing Family Status, we discuss, among other things, why incest laws should be abolished... In this Part, we undertake some analysis of the various family ties burdens we identified here and here. Recall that our framework asks the following questions...

Is This a "Free" Agent?

Posted on March 12, 2008
Orly wrote a typically interesting and provocative post about the Spitzer saga yesterday, arguing (as I understand it) that at least some forms of prostitution, namely those involving the possibility of "rational choice" and the relative unlikelihood of "abusive gender exploitation," should be legal...

Awesome Crimes

Posted on March 12, 2008
Penny Arcade is a webcomic about videogames. Today?s installment was inspired by the news that a Texas district attorney used state funds to buy himeslf a ?backup server? that was actually a high-end gamimg machine. The strip is good, but the blog entry that accompanies it unleashes a new and beautiful phrase: This machine in question sports ?two hard drives, seven fans, high-end video and audio cards, a wireless Internet connection and cables that glow under ultraviolet light...

Could Spitzer's downfall break the Democratic deadlock?

Posted on March 11, 2008
While newspapers and pundits are still sorting out the details and possible New York consequences of the Spitzer scandal, I cannot help but wonder if this remarkable turn of events may doom the chances of Senator Hillary Clinton becoming the Democratic presidential nominee...

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Where Were the Feminists When Elizabeth Vargas was Mommy-Tracked?

Posted on March 11, 2008
Feminists are speaking out in droves regarding Hillary Clinton?s presidential bid. Her treatment by the media, opponents, and pundits is getting careful scrutiny from women?s advocates. That?s great. But the attention has caused me to re-focus on a question I had two years ago, which still bother me...

The Purpose of Shareholder Voting

Posted on March 11, 2008
David Zaring raises some interesting questions about a paper that Grant Hayden and I have written, ?The False Promise of One Share, One Vote.? The paper builds on recent work by Partnoy and Martin, as well as Hu and Black, discussing use of derivatives to manipulate one?s stake in a company...

Legalizing Prostitution

Posted on March 11, 2008
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah: Spitzer did a stupid, illegal thing. BUT, let's pause for a second. Here are things he did NOT do: he was not ?involved in? or ?engaged in a prostitution ring," as the misleading reports labeled his acts, implying he was involved in the operations of the company...

The Subjective Experience of Punishment

Posted on March 11, 2008
I recently posted a draft of "The Subjective Experience of Punishment" (forthcoming, Columbia Law Review) on SSRN. Here is the first paragraph: Suppose two people commit the same crime and are sentenced to equal terms in the same prison facility. I argue that they have identical punishments in name only...

Sex, Corruption, Federalism, & the Mann Act

Posted on March 11, 2008
Our governor's downfall will provoke ample commentary from bloggers everywhere: I see no need to add to the flood. But the event does provide an opportunity to ponder the Mann Act, a statute that seems to flaunt our ordinary conventions about the proper role of the federal government...

Analyzing Family Ties Burdens: A Framework

Posted on March 11, 2008
In two previous posts, Ethan, Jennifer Collins and I identified some practices that we characterize as family ties burdens. Here, we present a normative framework for analyzing whether such penalties or burdens can be justified. First, we quickly explain why we adopt a defendant-centered perspective in this project...

Coach a Moot Court Team!

Posted on March 11, 2008
I just returned from the Wagner Labor & Employment Moot Court Competition hosted by New York Law School. While our team did not win, I honestly could not be prouder of our student competitors ? Paul Lewandowski, Lacey Dzemyan, and Lynn Taylor ? and of our student coaches, Rebecca Dupuis and Don Williams...

"Mirror of Justice" blog hijacked by robots

Posted on March 11, 2008
At least, that's what they tell me. For those Prawfs readers who also check in, from time to time, at the "Mirror of Justice" blog, its usual domain-home has been seized by web-scouring robots. So, until MOJ can reclaim its usual home (at www-dot-mirrorofjustice-dot-com), it is at www-dot-mirrorofjustice-dot-blogs-dot-com...

The Shame of Eliot Spitzer

Posted on March 10, 2008
New York Governor Eliot Spitzer has implicitly admitted to engaging in an illegal prostitution ring. Even though the news is just a few hours old, there is already an outpouring of posts about the scandal. I would recommend Daniel Gross's excellent piece about how Spitzer was caught with tactics similar to those he employed on others...

Proof of media (math) bias!!!

Posted on March 10, 2008
Though I assume CNN will soon fix this example of new math, I find funny and telling the fuzzy math right now in this new CNN report about the Obama-Clinton battle: Obama was campaigning in Mississippi a day before the state holds its primary on Tuesday, while Clinton keeps her eye on the next big prize on the Democratic calendar, Pennsylvania...

Spitzer Linked to Prostitution Ring

Posted on March 10, 2008
Breaking news. Updated: Excerpt from the NYT: The man described as Client 9 in court papers arranged to meet with a prostitute who was part of the ring, Emperors Club VIP, on the night of Feb. 13. Mr. Spitzer traveled to Washington that evening, according to a person told of his travel arrangements...

Punishing Family Status: More Examples

Posted on March 10, 2008
During the previous two weeks, I alluded to an article by Ethan, Jennifer Collins, and myself, entitled Punishing Family Status. Here's the abstract, the introduction, and the first half of Part I, where we talked about vicarious and omissions liability and incest...

The Fed Soc Symposium and "voting with your feet"

Posted on March 10, 2008
Like Rick Hills, I participated in this weekend's annual Federalist Society Student Symposium, at the University of Michigan. (Congratulations to the U of M students who clearly worked very hard to make the event a success, and thanks to Dean Evan Caminker for hosting the event...

A question for Rick Garnett on Conservatives & Federalism

Posted on March 10, 2008
As long as I am on the topic of the Federalists, I might as well repeat a question to Rick Garnett that I asked him on our panel at the Federalist Society ? to whit, why don?t good Federalist Society members support the Court?s decisions in Grutter, Kelo, and Locke v Davey? All of these are Rehnquist Court decisions in which the Court refused to enforce controversial theories of rights out of deference to state institutions (public universities, urban redevelopment authorities, state constitutions, respectively)...

Why does the Federalist Society differ from the Federalist Party?

Posted on March 10, 2008
Having just returned from a Federalist Society student conference, I was once more struck between the vast gulf that separates the Federalist Society from their apparent namesake, the Federalist Party. True, the Society displays a silhouette of a periwigged guy who might be Publius...

Farewell to "The Wire"

Posted on March 10, 2008
David Zurawik, of The Baltimore Sun, is not happy with the final season, or the final episode, of The Wire. I love the show, and thought this season had some amazing moments. Still, many of Zurawik's criticisms are, I think, on target. I'm sure there are lots of fans of the show among the readers of this blog...

Horowitz on Deference, Hills on Pragmatism

Posted on March 10, 2008
My apologies for being MIA lately, despite having agreed to be a guest blogger. I have been in Ann Arbor, MI, attending the Federalist Society student conference and checking up on a farmhouse that, sadly, I (a hapless victim of the real estate downturn) still own in Michigan...

Grape Vodka, Anyone?

Posted on March 10, 2008
When my family moved from Virginia to Indiana and I began teaching at Notre Dame, we knew that living in the Midwest would present a cultural change from the D.C. area. We learned of one unanticipated adjustment on a Sunday afternoon when my family was grocery shopping...

North Carolina-Duke and Cheering Speech

Posted on March 09, 2008
During my prior stint here, I wrote a bit about my past, present, and future interest in fan expression at sporting events, what I call "cheering speech." There has been a great deal of attention paid to fan behavior this college basketball season. Two things happened with respect to last night's North Carolina-Duke men's basketball game that illustrate key principles of this category of expression...

Shouldn't Obama just offer to pay for re-votes in Florida and Michigan?

Posted on March 09, 2008
Barack Obama generated so much excitement in January and February because he seemed like a completely different breed of politician. But the Obama "movement" has slowed because, starting with the NAFTA nonsense in Ohio, he has recently seemed like (a lesser form of) just another modern pol...

Citizenship, Organizational Citizenship, and the Laws Of Overlapping Obligations

Posted on March 08, 2008
Following Ethan and Dan, I thought I would also share an article not yet on ssrn, which has just found a home. I will upload it soon, but here is the abstract of my article entitled, Citizenship, Organizational Citizenship, and the Laws of Overlapping Obligations forthcoming in the California Law Review: Ranging from strict disclosure prohibitions to generous monetary incentives for informants, the legal approaches to conflicts between organizational loyalty and legal compliance reveal a deep ambivalence about the role of individual dissent in group settings...

U.S. versus Canada: Part 1 - The Classroom

Posted on March 08, 2008
Many esteemed bloggers on this site have had interesting cross-border experiences between law schools in the United States and law schools in Canada. I'm very curious to explore this difference on a variety of axes - teaching, classroom culture, scholarship, the job market...

Shaming a child and the wisdom(?) of parental punishment

Posted on March 08, 2008
As detailed in this local Florida story, headlined "Teen Forced To Carry 'I Am Stupid' Sign After Speeding Ticket," a mother recently made headlines by imposing a shaming punishment on her reckless son. Here are the basic details: Adam Clark was pulled over going 107 mph in a 55-mph zone; neither the police nor his mother were pleased...

No idea is really new

Posted on March 07, 2008
The fanciful and unworkable suggestion that the Democrats resolve the election by brokering an Obama/Clinton or Clinton/Obama ticket (John Dean talks about it here) is old school in at least one sense--it brings back the original idea that the Vice President would be the presidential candidate who comes in second...

Velut Arbor Ita Ramus

Posted on March 07, 2008
I'm a proud graduate of the University of Toronto Schools. Founded in 1910 as a laboratory school for the University of Toronto's Faculty of Education, and with a consistently small enrollment every year, UTS has nevertheless spawned 2 Nobel laureates, 20+ Rhodes scholars, bank chairmen and university presidents, great law and economics/law and development scholars, and, of course, a fearsome horde of lawyers, doctors, academics, middle-managers, midlife-crisis-sufferers, artists manque, and handsome Jeopardy! champions...

Student Note Title Hall of Shame: YouTube Edition

Posted on March 06, 2008
Overtly cutesy article titles annoy me. It?s a particularly severe problem with student notes. Yes, it may have been Bluebooked top-to-bottom and back-to-front. But why didn?t anyone ever pull the author aside and say, ?Kid, about that title ? ?? I keep a file of terrible article titles, a file full of bad puns, out-of-context song lyrics, and failed jokes...

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