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Convictions: Slate's blog on legal issues
April 2008 - Posts
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As we segue to May , the month set aside to mark Better Sleep, Good Car Care, Photography, Salad, Eggs, and Barbecue—I kid you not—let's end April's Convictions Poetry Slam with one last post on law and poetry. Turns out it's the subject of Law and Poetry Read More...
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Doug, since you brought up Jeremiah Wright ... I think the biggest insult to the Obama campaign was that Wright didn't go hide under a rock somewhere. The Wright issue had just about died until Wright started jawboning on national television—he had to Read More...
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I just can’t muster up a lot of outrage about Indiana’s Voter ID law. Tim is right that we have a de facto national ID now. The Indiana law is nothing like a poll tax: This law may or may not be attacking a nonexistent problem of voter fraud, but either Read More...
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Jeremiah Wright is one interesting fella, but having gone way over the top, he is no longer Obama's problem. Read More...
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A colleague forwarded this memo from Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England directing the promotion of the Army, Navy, and Air Force's top uniformed lawyers — giving them an additional star and promotion to lieutenant general or vice admiral, respectively. Read More...
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Ooof—well, Dawn , I certainly didn't intend to leave the impression there are no differences between Indiana Dems and Republicans. And perhaps I may be granted some dispensation for having lived in the district that elected Dan Burton , R-Ind., to Congress. Read More...
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Oh, Deborah ! Writing that there are negligible differences between Hoosier Ds and Rs, just days before our election! Last night I co-hosted a fundraiser here in Bloomington, Ind., aimed at electing a Democrat to replace Republican Mitch Daniels as governor Read More...
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Earlier this month, I wrote about a lawsuit against the government brought by the family members of Francisco Castaneda, who was refused a biopsy for a lesion on his penis while in immigration custody, and then died after having his penis amputated. The Read More...
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The Roberts Court is successfully pursuing consensus across ideological lines using the distinction between facial and as applied constitutional challenges. For a Court that is made up of both conservatives and liberals, it allows both to be both at the same time. Read More...
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Twenty-five years ago today, Chicago made history when Harold Washington was sworn in as mayor . The 42 nd person to lead America's Second City, Washington, who was serving in Congress at the time of his election, became the first African-American to Read More...
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I hate showing ID just as much as the next guy. (Well maybe not as much as John Gilmore, one EFF's founders, who sued the federal government when he was denied boarding because he refused to show any ID.) But as everyone knows sometimes it is background Read More...
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All the justices agree that states must "balance" the benefits and costs of voter ID requirements. The benefit is reduction in voter fraud; the cost is disenfranchisement of those who cannot obtain the ID. No one explains what an appropriate balance is, Read More...
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A few modest additions to the early word on voter ID. First, for all those who would prefer to insist that Justice Stevens is easily pegged as a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, the Stevens-Roberts-Kennedy opinion in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board Read More...
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David and I agree that we would like constitutional rules that would facilitate political bargains between people with different political interests; as David puts it: "if you ensure voters are who they say they are, we'll let you register more of them." Read More...
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JUSTICE STEVENS announced the judgment of the Court and delivered an opinion in which THE CHIEF JUSTICE and Justice KENNEDY join. That's from Crawford v. Marion County . It reveals yet again just how influential Justice Kennedy is: He's such a swinging Read More...
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Marty nicely describes the paucity of evidence supporting Indiana's claim in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board that voter fraud is rampant in Hoosier land. After all, the Court long ago held in Croson that Richmond could not rely on experiences Read More...
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Forgive me for interrupting the conversation about the Supreme Court's decision today upholding Indiana's baleful voter ID law, which I hope will continue. But another topic for a moment: Depressing findings from the Chronicle of Higher Education . Even Read More...
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In Crawford v. Marion County Election Board , the Supreme Court continues a trend of using technical doctrines of facial challenges to swat away constitutional litigation and drive questions back to the political process. Whether you think that is a good Read More...
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I'm just beginning to read through the opinions in today's decision upholding the facial validity of Indiana's voter-ID law. Along with many others, I have argued that the law is unconstitutional because it imposes burdens on voting without advancing Read More...
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Adam Liptak's article in The New York Times described America's extraordinary incarceration rate, a rate clearly outstripping that of any industrialized country. But Liptak overstates the case when he talks about the relationship between incarceration Read More...
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Statutes of limitations reflect a reasonable concern that as time passes, evidence becomes stale and memories fade, so that at some point potentially valid legal claims should be barred. Barring valid claims just because they are old seems harsh, but Read More...
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Earlier this week, National Review's excellent "Bench Memos" blog featured Gerard Bradley's thoughts on Justice William Brennan's "curious rise to the Supreme Court." I dare say that Bradley omits the most "curious" aspect of Brennan's appointment—namely, Read More...
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But since they're not, Ben is of course right that pirates should be detained if they've done bad things. That said, I'm not sure it's fair take the U.K.'s apparent move not to detain some pirates to be the human rights law failure Ben does. For one thing, Read More...
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Diane’s post highlights an excellent example of the often perverse consequences of human-rights policies for, well, human rights. There is no doubt that modern pirates commit horrible crimes against civilians; that's their chosen profession. Yet because Read More...
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Since the time of Grotius , a pirate has been considered to be hostis humanis generis , an enemy of mankind. So write Ilias Bantekas and Susan Nash in their book International Criminal Law (2003). As a global enemy, the pirate was subject to prosecution Read More...
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Jack argues that one of the government's legal approaches to terror threats-bring early cases against people who pose remote threats, rather than waiting for them to act, so as to disrupt terror plots even at the risk of failing to secure convictions-is Read More...
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Thanks Emily for pointing out the wrongheadedness of McCain’s opposition to the Equal Pay Bill. This very mild piece of legislation would have undone an incredibly bad Supreme Court decision in Ledbetter which held that the filing period to bring a Title Read More...
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Thanks to Marty and Phil for highlighting the recent NYT report that the U.S. incarcerates more of its people-and for longer periods-than any other nation, bar none. I was disappointed, though, that the story did not discuss the devastatingly disproportionate Read More...
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Last night, Senate Republicans killed the Equal Pay Bill, which would have undone the Supreme Court's bad deed in a case last term called Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co . Lily Ledbetter sued Goodyear for sex discrimination because she earned Read More...
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A new poll that shows that 16 percent of Pennsylvania white voters who were asked whether “the race of candidate was important” said yes—80 percent saidno. Of those who answered “yes” 54 percent said they’d support Obama in the general election—27 percent Read More...
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Phil says "And, the fact that America still leads the world in violent crime raises fundamental questions about whether we're getting it right." The premise is not correct. According to the United Nations world survey (the latest I could find was 2002, Read More...
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Marty, I agree with your suggestion that yesterday's story by Adam Liptak in the New York Times may be the biggest legal story of the last several years -- notwithstanding all the ink and electrons we've spilled about torture, executive power, and so Read More...
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The accounts in recent days of the Vice President and several agency heads and other high government officials (Ashcroft, Rice, Powell, Tenet, Gonzales, Rumsfeld, et al.), convening meeting after meeting at which they carefully and dispassionately reached Read More...
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. . . would almost certainly have to be this one . And the problem is so gargantuan, so intractable, that despair seems to be the only possible response -- particularly if, like me, you've recently finished watching the gut-wrenching Season Three of The Read More...
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Anyone happen to catch ABC’s Boston Legal last night? I’ve never watched the show, but somehow found myself gaping through an episode in which James Spader argues what turned out to be last week’s Louisiana capital rape case before an astoundingly good Read More...
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John McCain has some well-heeled friends -- and donors, and they have some strange ideas about what they're entitled to in the way of congressional attention. Well come to think of it, the idea of helping large campaign donors profit from public programs is neither strange, and apart from bribery and the like, nor illegal -- and that's what is really strange and disheartening. Read More...
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Jack is right to point out that the privileges or immunities clause of the 14th amendment was indeed, as Senator Howard at the time explained, intended to incorporate Corfield's partial listing of natural rights as well as the Bill of Rights, including Read More...
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I wanted to follow up Doug's post about originalism and the Second Amendment with a question: What effect does he think the Fourteenth Amendment had on this issue? The Fourteenth Amendment, while directed primarily at states, nevertheless also speaks Read More...
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What might the Supreme Court be writing regarding the DC handgun ban? If the oral argument is any guide, and hopefully it will not be, the Court is invalidating the DC handgun ban, when an originalist understanding would reach the exact opposite result. Read More...
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To the "more pie" metaphor advanced today by Adam and years ago by Orin , let me add the "more homework" spin on same. It's a favorite aphorism of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer ; I've heard him use it 2, maybe 3 times, so it's not surprising Read More...
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Today I encountered two insights simply too good not to reprint here. First, from Jack W Burtch, Jr.'s essay [pdf] in the new issue of the Virginia Lawyer : "Becoming a partner is a decision, not a reward. . . . Becoming a partner in a law firm is like Read More...
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As Jack mulls over a response to Orin on computers in the "national surveillance state," I'd like to raise a different set of beefs with the Jack-type response to today's Washington Post's story about the government's recent failures in terrorism trials. Read More...
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Jack suggests that I have misunderstood his argument about a "National Surveillance State," but I'm not so sure -- and I'm pretty confident he has misunderstood my criticism. To be clear, my point is not specifically about responding to threats, or security Read More...
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Eric , nothing that the pope said Friday favored one set of rights over another. Indeed, as my post stated, his speech to the U.N. General Assembly included "a tacit reprimand to those who would privilege civil and political rights over economic, social, Read More...
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Convictions blogger Eric Posner debates National Security Network executive director Heather Hurlbert over at bloggingheads.tv on a range of subjects from Bush's climate change speech to executive power to what President Obama might do if a country like Read More...
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Orin has not read all of my work on the National Surveillance State, so perhaps he may be forgiven for not recognizing that I emphasize the very points he mistakenly believes to be a critique of my argument: I argue that as times change, increasingly Read More...
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As a matter of rhetoric, maybe. In substance, skepticism is called for. One searches in vain for concrete plans advanced by the candidates for improving America's international law compliance. They do all say that they will respect the Geneva Conventions, Read More...
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Jack has written before about what he sees as a growing "National Surveillance State," and I thought I would explain why I think Jack is wrong. What Jack perceives as a "National Surveillance State" is actually a shift from physical world activity to Read More...
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Since the 9/11 terror attacks the FBI has adopted a strategy of attempting to nip potential terrorist plots in the bud by bringing prosecutions against suspected terrorists based on relatively sparse evidence of criminal conspiracy. This strategy, the Read More...
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The D.C. Circuit's Judge Douglas Ginsburg recently returned to his old stomping grounds, Harvard Law School, to speak on the subject of Law & Economics . He reflected on the history of the study of Law & Economics -- a course of events in which Read More...
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If Diane and the pope are right that we shouldn't privilege civil and political rights over social, economic, and cultural rights, and maybe they are right, then we should give credit where credit is due, and crown China the human rights champion of the Read More...
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