Saturday, July 04, 2009
Happy Fourth of July!
I have a British son-in-law, Simon, whom we all love very much, but it makes for a fun Independence Day.
The call went like this:
Jeff: "We were thinking of you, Simon, on this day on which we celebrate throwing off the yoke of tyranny."
Simon: "Shut up and pay your taxes."
Jeff: "I will throw a teabag in the sink in your honor."
Posted by Jeff Lipshaw on July 4, 2009 at 12:17 PM in Odd World | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Friday, July 03, 2009
Constitutional Borrowing
Many thanks to Dan and the rest of the Prawfs community for inviting me to join the conversation once more. Lately, I’ve been thinking about constitutional borrowing, which is the practice of lifting legal frameworks, standards, mechanisms, and the like from one area of constitutional law for use in another, seemingly irrelevant constitutional domain. Robert Tsai and I have written a piece on the topic, which is forthcoming in the Michigan Law Review and available on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Borrowing from one domain to promote ideas in another domain is a staple of constitutional decisionmaking. Precedents, arguments, concepts, tropes, and heuristics all can be carried across doctrinal boundaries for purposes of persuasion. Yet the practice itself remains surprisingly underanalyzed. This Article seeks to bring greater theoretical attention to the matter. It defines what constitutional borrowing is and what it is not, presents a typology that describes its common forms, undertakes a principled defense of cross-pollination, and identifies some of the risks involved. We invite readers to think of borrowing as something that happens not only during the drafting of a constitution, but also in its implementation. Our examples draw particular attention to places where legal mechanisms and ideas migrate between fields of law associated with liberty, on the one hand, and equality, on the other. We finish by discussing how confronting the practice of borrowing may illuminate or improve prominent theories of constitutional lawmaking.
Once sensitized to the phenomenon, you start seeing it everywhere.
Continue reading "Constitutional Borrowing"
Posted by Nelson Tebbe on July 3, 2009 at 02:40 PM in Constitutional thoughts | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
Haberman et al on Madoff
Clyde Haberman, who writes the NYC column for the NYTimes, has a reaction piece in today's Times about the 150 year sentence for Madoff. He surveys views from a bunch of prawfs, including me. Needless to say, most of my reactions were unprintable and not consistent with family-friendly content, so they were left on the editing room floor... :-)
Continue reading "Haberman et al on Madoff"
Posted by Dan Markel on July 3, 2009 at 02:22 PM in Article Spotlight, Criminal Law, Current Affairs, Dan Markel | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Limiting Online Provider Immunity
My last post argued that Section 230 should be reinterpreted to immunize only content that comes from third parties via the interactive service offered by providers. This would clear up many of the conflicts in the law, though providers would still be immune from some reprehensible conduct of its users.
Some types of conduct, however, should not be immunized even without reinterpreting the statute. This final post in the series will tackle a couple of examples: marketing statements and celebrity impersonation.
Continue reading "Limiting Online Provider Immunity"
Posted by Michael Risch on July 3, 2009 at 08:48 AM in Legal Theory | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Thinking Like an Entrepreneur or a Lawyer?
If you are interested in the intersection of entrepreneurship and the law, the Kauffman Foundation, the leading sponsor of entrepreneurship development in the country, has funded an Entrepreneurship Law resource on its website, www.entrepreneurship.org. This includes teaching materials. (I think I contributed something, but I just registered myself so I'm not sure.)
For many of the same reasons expressed in my last post (and based on a fair amount of experience in the area), my reaction to "entrepreneurship law" is something like my reaction to my own travails as an athlete, which is that I think too much (this is known as "paralysis by analysis"). For a short sample of my contrarian view on this subject, see Why the Law of Entrepreneurship Barely Matters, the gist of which can be boiled down to this excerpt:
The entrepreneur . . . sees the world as a moveable feast of phenomena, posing danger and opportunity to be seized and exploited, and choices to be made, over and over again. One entrepreneurship scholar sees the entrepreneur's mode of reasoning as effectual rather than causal: while causal reasoning posits a goal and seeks means to the goal, effectual reasoning "begins with a given set of means and allows goals to emerge contingently over time from the varied imagination and diverse aspirations of the founders and the people they interact with."
The essence of thinking like a lawyer is causal reasoning, and not surprisingly, lawyers and entrepreneurs tend to be ships passing in the night. (For a far more scathing assessment of the constricted scientific paradigm - in a Kuhnian sense - of legal academia, see Pierre Schlag's essay on spam jurisprudence and air law, and Richard Posner's bemused but ultimately mild concurrence.)
The scholar referred to in the block quote is Saras Sarasvathy (pictured, left), who is at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, and who established her chops working with Nobel Prize winner Herbert Simon (he of behavioral economics fame). I had the pleasure of chatting with Professor Sarasvathy for a few minutes when she was in Boston last December, and I was delighted to find a couple days ago that a site to which I subscribe, Big Think, had a series of online interviews with her. Enjoy!
Posted by Jeff Lipshaw on July 3, 2009 at 08:37 AM in Corporate | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Thursday, July 02, 2009
Theories of Corporate Compliance
Before I entered academia, I was a compliance attorney at a large, public company. Prior to that, I was a federal prosecutor in Manhattan. It was no accident that the large, public company hired me to work on compliance matters. During my fifth year at the United States Attorney's Office (around 2003-2004), I received several calls from recruiters who were looking for prosecutors interested in taking in-house jobs in "compliance."
Different people ascribed different purposes to corporate compliance departments. The DOJ perceived compliance as a means of leveraging its police power. Compared to outsiders, internal compliance people could more easily find and prevent wrongdoing.
Another view of compliance was that in addition to policing and deterring wrongdoing, it should serve as a means of improving ethical norms within corporations. If greed had driven Jeffrey Skilling and Bernie Ebbers, then compliance programs were needed to improve organizational culture.
Finally, there was a third view of compliance - that it would improve deliberation within companies. Specifically, employees would feel empowered to speak up and take action when it appeared their supervisors were violating the law or company policies. Hotlines and robust compliance organizations theoretically would facilitate such voice.
In sum, people would be deterred from wrongdoing, adopt nicer values and talk to each other more. What's not to like? More after the jump ....
Continue reading "Theories of Corporate Compliance"
Posted by Miriam Baer on July 2, 2009 at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)
Complexity, Judgment, and the Subprime Crisis - The Hedgehog's View
At the end of April, Dave Hoffman and two of his colleagues at Temple, Jonathan Lipson and Peter Huang, organized a fascinating day-long colloquium on issues of complexity arising in the current financial crisis. Among other presentations, Barry Schwartz from Swarthmore gave a talk on "the paradox of choice" (i.e., more choice, or more complex choice, doesn't necessarily make consumers happier), and Joe Grundfest gave a luncheon keynote. One of the questions that kept occurring to me was the context of the complexity issue - what exactly were we trying to fix, if anything? My analogy was this: if law is a "science," and something about the financial crisis (whether complexity or something else) reflects a disease, then what is the relationship between what we know about the disease and the regulatory medicine we would want to prescribe? I liken financial boom-and-bust to bipolar disorder - is there a regulatory equivalent of lithium that we are assured will tamp down the peaks and valleys? And even if there is, do we want to prescribe it? Maybe we like the booms enough to bear the busts! To keep the analogy going, there's a good chance Tchaikovsky and Van Gogh were bipolar - would we have their art if they had been medicated?
More on the hedgehog below the fold.
Continue reading "Complexity, Judgment, and the Subprime Crisis - The Hedgehog's View"
Posted by Jeff Lipshaw on July 2, 2009 at 07:51 AM in Article Spotlight, Corporate, Current Affairs, Legal Theory, Lipshaw | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Signing Off . . . .
Thanks again to Dan for inviting me to blog here in June. Thanks also to everyone who commented on my posts, either on-line or off -- I'm grateful for the thoughtful feedback. Best wishes to all for a happy remainder of the summer.
Posted by Michael O'Hear on July 1, 2009 at 05:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
The Identity Trail: A Canada Day Book Recommendation
Also by way of commemorating Canada Day (although I'm sufficiently assimilated that I'd forgotten it was taking place, which somehow seems both very American and totally typical of a Canadian holiday), let me recommend a book that has been out for a while but should be of strong interest to many of our readers. And it's by Canadians! It's titled Lessons From the Identity Trail: Anonymity, Privacy and Identity in a Networked Society, and edited by Ian Kerr (an old friend of mine), Valerie Steeves, and Carole Lucock. Here's a description:
During the past decade, rapid developments in information and communications technology have transformed key social, commercial, and political realities. Within that same time period, working at something less than Internet speed, much of the academic and policy debate arising from these new and emerging technologies has been fragmented. There have been few examples of interdisciplinary dialogue about the importance and impact of anonymity and privacy in a networked society. Lessons from the Identity Trail: Anonymity, Privacy and Identity in a Networked Society fills that gap, and examines key questions about anonymity, privacy, and identity in an environment that increasingly automates the collection of personal information and relies upon surveillance to promote private and public sector goals.
This book has been informed by the results of a multi-million dollar research project that has brought together a distinguished array of philosophers, ethicists, feminists, cognitive scientists, lawyers, cryptographers, engineers, policy analysts, government policy makers, and privacy experts. Working collaboratively over a four-year period and participating in an iterative process designed to maximize the potential for interdisciplinary discussion and feedback through a series of workshops and peer review, the authors have integrated crucial public policy themes with the most recent research outcomes.
I should note that not all of the contributors are Canadian -- but, with Degrassiesque flair, it still easily passes Canadian content requirements. It looks like a great book. What's more, the pieces are all available for download online, although that shouldn't stop you from buying it too. Ages ago in blog time, the legal blogosphere had a discussion about the propriety of blowing the cover of an anonymous law professor/blogger. This book seems like a must-read for those who are interested in these kinds of issues. (I thought Brian Leiter's comments on these issues were well worth reading, although I don't share his views. For some tentative thoughts of at least one semi-Canadian, see this piece.)
Posted by Paul Horwitz on July 1, 2009 at 02:21 PM in Paul Horwitz | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Nice to visit
Happy July, everyone. Thanks to Bernie Madoff, it's been an interesting week for those of us who think about white-collar crime. I can't possibly add to Jayne Barnard's play-by-play account of Bernard Madoff's sentencing proceeding, but I do have my own thoughts about the supposed deterrent value of his150 year term of imprisonment.
Madoff's attorney, Ike Sorkin, had previously argued for a sentence of 12 years' imprisonment, which Sorkin contended constituted Madoff's life expectancy (Madoff is 71 years old) minus one year. (Sorkin was using data drawn from the Social Security Administration). Even assuming Sorkin's prediction of how long Madoff would live is correct, the problem with life expectancy sentences is that they lack expressive value. We tend to use prison sentences as a shorthand for moral culpability and societal disgust. "Expectancy" based sentences, calibrated to the particular defendant's circumstances, undermine our ability to rely on those shorthands. And for a guy like Madoff, "12 years" sounds awfully tame.
Moreover, as Doug Berman explained, even if Judge Denny Chin had sentenced Madoff to something like 20 years' imprisonment (which presumably would have lasted the remainder of Madoff's life), it would have set a new ceiling for future white collar sentences. Defendants who caused merely hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud losses (rather than Madoff's billions) would have been able to argue that they should receive significantly lower terms of imprisonment. I'm not sure this is right - if Chin explicitly had said that the 20 years' was intended to exceed Madoff's life expectancy, government prosecutors would have been able to reject later attempts to use the "20" as a ceiling or anchor for sentencing. Nevertheless, you can see the problem with life-expectancy sentences: they can be easily manipulated by later defendants who seek to make false comparisons.
At the same time, I don't think Judge Chin's 150 year sentence raised the ceiling all that much for "typical" white collar or corporate fraudsters. 150 years is a fanciful number, and Madoff's fraud is an outrageous, once-in-a-lifetime (one hopes) case. Madoff's sentence may therefore be seen by most future courts as simply an outlier, only to be mentioned in passing, whereas 20-25 year terms of imprisonment will continue to remain the standard "frame" with which sentencing courts approach large-scale criminal frauds.
Posted by Miriam Baer on July 1, 2009 at 01:44 PM in Criminal Law | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Durkheim’s Law and Order
A terrible crime is committed, the kind that brings scores of relatives to their knees in grief and sets thousands more residents on edge; the kind of crime that can lead people to question their own sense of the rightness of the moral order in which they live. A wrong doer is identified. Upon him the moral outrage of the community is turned. Through the expression of that outrage in punishment (originally in the most physical and painful ways), the sense of rightness to the moral order is restored.
This, in cliff-note form at any rate, is the theory of the social function of punishment proffered by pioneer sociologist Emile Durkheim in his 1893 book De la division du travail social (The Division of Labor in Society). Most sociology and criminology students over the years have acknowledged that it captures at least some of what the complex processes we call “criminal justice” represents (but also processes like lynching and the torture of enemies). Durkheim was arguing against the optimism of penal reformers in his era who believed that the primary function of criminal justice was social defense through the rational operation of deterrence, incapacitation, and where possible, penal reformation. Efforts to cloak the criminal justice system in the clothes of rational science and organization, Durkheim believed, would be frustrated by the persistence of the emotional and moral responses that he described.
In America, paradoxically, our public has always supported the optimistic reformist ideology about penal justice. (See my article on Lombroso and American popular consciousness in the Texas Law Review, 2005). Even our recent turn toward very extensive use of imprisonment has been promoted relentlessly on the claim that prison works to reduce crime. Ironically, it is the law enforcement establishment, ---that modern bureaucratic nexus created to realize the modern goals of social defense, police and prosecutors especially, --- who seem to believe in the Durkheimian version of their job description.
Continue reading "Durkheim’s Law and Order"
Posted by Jonathan Simon on July 1, 2009 at 11:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
The Vacuous Private Law of Homeowners' Associations (Below the Fold) After Vacuous Reflections About My Vacuous Life
Here we are, back for the fourth summer stint on PrawfsBlawg. It's hard to believe, when Dan first invited me to do this, in July, 2006, I was an outsider to the legal academy looking in (per Bob Uecker, "gosh, they're having fun in there.") Also, Twitter was unknown. Twitter has done a lot to focus my blogging, because, call me an old whatever, but I can't believe anybody gives two hoots about the mundane details of my life, whether by blog entry or tweet, something I wasn't considering back in 2006 while in a New Orleans carwash watching what looked like melted rainbow sherbet ooze all over my car. Steve Bainbridge seems to be able to get away with food and wine, but he seems to know what he's talking about. I try to maintain a connection to something legal (or, if not legal, funny).
If I were inclined to vacuous reflections about life, however, I would extol the pleasures of not of litigating, but of home brewing beer, a subject touched upon in these parts recently. My son, Matthew, and I are on our third batch of the summer, having invested $100 in the basic tools of the trade. Our first 43 bottles were an Irish stout recipe, which we named "Max and Annie's Jewish Stout," after our two dogs. We've since moved on to "Max and Annie's Michigan Porcupine Pale Ale" (a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale recipe), and "Charlevoix Steam Beer," which is presently fermenting in the crawl space where it is cool. Our plan is to lay down a carboy full of mead for a full year in a few weeks. This is a stretch but the legal connection is that I can't post the labels, because I am positive at least the second two violate a whole raft of copyright and trademark rights.
But enough of me. Let's go below the fold where YOU can hear me whine about the governance of homeowner's associations.
Posted by Jeff Lipshaw on July 1, 2009 at 11:19 AM in Corporate, Legal Theory, Lipshaw, Property | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)
Thanks, Prawfs
Well, June just flew by quicker than I had hoped. I apologize for the slow posting the last ten days or so. I've been drowning in preparations for argument of a summary judgment motion in a pro bono case I'm working on, representing a group of homeowners in a lawsuit against Norfolk Southern over a closed railroad crossing. It's actually a great teaching case for those interested in prescription and adverse possession, and maybe Prawfs will let me post a couple of short posts about it later this summer, after the results come in. Thanks to Dan and the other Prawfs for letting me crash their party for the month. I look forward to future visits.
Posted by Eduardo Penalver on July 1, 2009 at 09:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Rotations
Happy Canada Day everyone (and particularly, Paul, Rob, Erik, Glenn, Trevor, Austen, and derivatively, Alice)! Here are some reflections on the holiday by notable expats.
Posted by Dan Markel on July 1, 2009 at 09:17 AM in Blogging | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
The ART of Michael Jackson
I've just been talking to a tax colleague, Sarah L., about fascinating and topical legal issues -- no, not the Supreme Court's opinions in the firefighter or banking cases, or Justice Souter's retirement or the new consumer finance agency-- instead, we've been trying to get the full story on Michael Jackson's paternity and the custody of his three children. Sarah has pointed out, "it sounds like he took *full* advantage of ART (assisted reproductive technology). Here's what I've gleaned from various gossip sources: Michael Jackson is not the biological father of any of the children, and his ex-wife, who carried two of the children, is not their biological mother. All three kids were conceived using egg donors, sperm donors, and IVF. Also, Michael Jackson never adopted any of the children. Depending on how this plays out, there could be a lot of legal issues here."
As we write this, a will has just surfaced, according to a Wall Street Journal story, although it is still not clear whom (if anyone) was named as testamentary guardian or as conservator of the estate for the children. Besides, the "parents" are typically the preferred guardians; Debbie Rowe's status is complicated, but she apparently gave birth to 2 of the 3 children while she was married to Jackson.
In our world, where eggs and sperm can -- appropriately -- be sold, where surrogacy has been so much in the news (Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker, just to drop a few names), where Jon and Kate are splitting up and they're splitting the care for the 8,where we've heard little in the past month from Nadya Suleman and her octuplets (see here for the article that Jennifer Collins and I wrote about that ART situation), custody of the Jackson children may simply be a footnote -- but a useful one for my trusts and estates and family law casebooks.
Posted by Naomi Cahn on June 30, 2009 at 04:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
Going from 'Us' to 'Them'
A few years ago, Nancy Rappaport published a short essay in the University of Toledo Law Review, called "Going from 'Us' to 'Them' in 60 Seconds," in which she described her appointment, relatively early in her career, to an associate-dean post:
Scarcely a half-hour after the official announcement had been made concerning my appointment, I was at the faculty copy machine, and one of my colleagues walked in. He (mostly in jest, I think) told two other colleagues, who were standing nearby, “Hey, don't talk about that in front of Nancy. She's a ‘them’ now.” And thus it began: the transition from being an “us” to being a “them” in the blink of an eye.
I had a similar experience, a few days ago, after it was announced that I am going to take on some associate-dean work at Notre Dame: a colleague said (jokingly, I hope!) something like, "so, you decided to give up on being part of the solution and decided to become part of the problem, eh?" (Ouch!). I hope not! Dean Rappaport writes, "Going from an 'us' to a 'them' also means that, unless your friends on the faculty are very special people, your relationships with them will change." Again, I hope not.
Posted by Rick Garnett on June 30, 2009 at 11:48 AM in Life of Law Schools | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)
Reinterpreting Section 230
My last post identified several puzzling results of current Section 230 jurisprudence, such as immunity for articles written by freelancers, but not by employees. A common suggestion to remedy this and other conflicts is to withdraw immunity for any and all publication decisions by provider. Thus, providers are liable if they reprint an email - they decided to publish. They are also liable for the freelance article - they hired a contractor to provide content.
This is arguably within the ambit of the statute. The immunity only extends to "information provided by another information content provider." An information content provider, in turn, is "any person or entity that is responsible, in whole or in part, for the creation or development of information."
Under this proposal, the decision to publish something (or hiring someone else to provide it) constitutes "responsibility...in part, for the creation or development." This makes the provider a partial information content provider, and thus the published information is not solely from "another." This is the theory used in the Roommates.com case to deny immunity where the information users provide is in response to a provider written survey that suggests particular answers.
There's only one problem with this proposal - it's directly contrary to the statute's goals and language. See why after the jump.
Continue reading "Reinterpreting Section 230"
Posted by Michael Risch on June 30, 2009 at 10:28 AM in Legal Theory | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Osborne and due process
Two weeks late to the party, but a few thoughts on District Attorney's Office v. Osborne, in which the Court declined to recognize a right under due process (procedural or substantive) to have DNA testing performed on evidence held by the state.
Continue reading "Osborne and due process"
Posted by Howard Wasserman on June 30, 2009 at 06:54 AM in Howard Wasserman, Law and Politics | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)
Monday, June 29, 2009
Sentence Explanations . . . and South Park
I have a new paper on SSRN entitled "Appellate Review of Sentence Explanations: Learning from the Wisconsin and Federal Experiences." As I observed in an earlier post, I've become very interested in the way that sentences are explained to defendants, and how appellate review of explanations can potentially contribute both to procedural justice goals and to substantively better sentences. My forthcoming article in the Florida State Law Review focuses on "explanation review" in the federal system. The new paper focuses on the contrasting experience in Wisconsin and proposes a general framework for explanation review that blends the best features of the Wisconsin and federal systems. As I see it, the fundamental vice of the federal system is to permit sentencing judges to avoid any explicit engagement with the purposes of punishment if they impose a sentence within the recommended guidelines range. The fundamental vice of the Wisconsin system is the reverse: the Wisconsin Supreme Court permits sentencing judges to avoid any explicit engagement with the state sentencing guidelines; it is enough if judges expressly invoke the purposes of punishment in explaining their sentences. My proposal seeks to promote engagement with both guidelines and purposes.
As a bonus, this is my first paper with a South Park reference. I actually cribbed from my own teaching notes from Sentencing, where I have used an analogy to the Underpants Gnomes to good effect in teaching the leading Wisconsin case on explanation review, State v. Gallion. (The basic idea is this: much as the Gnomes do not explain how they will convert underpants into profits, the Wisconson Supreme Court does not explain how to convert the generic purposes of punishment into a meaningful sentence explanation -- even though the Supreme Court requires all Wisconsin sentences to be explained by reference to the generic purposes.) Based on my experience in teaching Gallion, I would heartily recommend the use of South Park references in law teaching. Perhaps others would like to suggest additional episodes that lend themselves well to the law school classroom.
In any event, the abstract of the new paper appears after the jump.
Continue reading "Sentence Explanations . . . and South Park"
Posted by Michael O'Hear on June 29, 2009 at 10:52 PM in Criminal Law | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
Ricci, politics, and the appellate process
Dan asked for initial thoughts on Ricci. I have not had a chance read it, but here are a few initial comments on the procedure and politics of the decision, piling on earlier comments from Media Matters and from Jonathan Adler.
Continue reading "Ricci, politics, and the appellate process"
Posted by Howard Wasserman on June 29, 2009 at 04:09 PM in Civil Procedure, Howard Wasserman, Law and Politics | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)
The Daily Show -- Stewart and Huckabee on Abortion
This is a joint post with June Carbone
In mid-June, Jon Stewart conducted another of The Daily Show’s multiple part interviews with former Governor Mike Huckabee. While the previous show had focused on gay marriage, Stewart asked Huckabee to choose a topic he’d like to discuss. Huckabee’s choice: “the pro-life issues,” paraphrased by Stewart as “abortion.” The two reprised the continuing debate over abortion – and as has become increasingly the case, conducted the discussion almost entirely on Huckabee’s terms. The articulate former preacher set forth the importance of a “culture of life” and how abortion denigrates it by permitting abortions triggered by comparatively trivial concerns about the “inconvenience” of the pregnancy. Huckabee emphasized that every human life has value.
Stewart responded with a classic defense of a woman’s right to reproductive autonomy. His embrace of the pro-choice position focused almost exclusively on a woman’s right to control what happens to her body.
Missing entirely from this conversation was any articulation of why a woman might choose an abortion and why many women (and supportive fathers, husbands and boyfriends) might view it as a profoundly moral act. Huckabee’s references to “tak[ing] a human life” because the baby represents an “interference” or an “interruption” to the mother’s life, socially or economically, fails to acknowledge that the woman’s decision is likely to be heavily influenced by concerns about the fate of the child rather than selfish concerns. Stewart’s defense of a woman’s right to bodily integrity, though more sympathetic, reinforced Huckabee’s notion that pregnancy is the issue..
We know of no women (other than those facing serious health issues) who would choose an abortion because of the effect of the pregnancy. Instead, women choose abortion because they care profoundly about the future of their children. Women who elect abortions know that true commitment to a child is an enormous – and lifelong – undertaking. The pregnancy is the easy part. They know also that to raise a child properly requires resources, support, and maturity. They understand as well that the number of children for whom they can provide a decent chance in life is limited. Having a child at seventeen, if it derails the mother’s life chances, shortchanges that child and the children she might have later. Having a third child when a mother is struggling to provide for the two she already has diminishes the prospects for all of them. Women who choose to terminate a pregnancy because of the supposed “economic inconvenience of the pregnancy” are making a decision that they cannot provide adequately for that child at that point in their lives. It is because of a profound appreciation of the value of children’s lives, not a casual disregard for them, that women choose abortions.
Continue reading "The Daily Show -- Stewart and Huckabee on Abortion"
Posted by Naomi Cahn on June 29, 2009 at 02:13 PM in Gender | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBack (0)
Hiring Chairs for 2009-10: Announce Yourselves Here Please
N.B. This has been bumped to the front, and will be every couple weeks or so.
As is customary around this time of year, we are hoping law schools will use this space to share some relevant information regarding hiring for the coming year. Specifically, if you're a prawf, please share the following information related to the Fall 2009 and/or spring 2010 hiring season:
Posted by Dan Markel on June 29, 2009 at 10:30 AM in Getting a Job on the Law Teaching Market | Permalink | Comments (32) | TrackBack (0)
Ricci Overturned by Scotus 5-4
H/t to Scotusblog (via Adler), which is live-blogging. The opinion is here. Reactions?
Posted by Dan Markel on June 29, 2009 at 10:12 AM in Constitutional thoughts | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Sunday, June 28, 2009
In praise of "The Wire"
Sorry for the long blogging silence. I had promised myself that I would complete (fully sourced) the penultimate draft of my current article, so I have spent just about every working minute of the past couple weeks filling in footnotes. That fun now complete, I can return to some blogging. Later this week, I will have some thoughts on some recent, including the end-of-term flood. For now, let me wade back in with some pop culture.
Continue reading "In praise of "The Wire""
Posted by Howard Wasserman on June 28, 2009 at 01:42 PM in Culture, Howard Wasserman | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)
Saturday, June 27, 2009
A Real Thriller
NB. Back to the front...
I can’t think of any law school who could pull this off singlehandedly, but a group at the College of William and Mary managed quite a feat on April 19 – a world-record number of people completed the infamous dance sequence en masse from Michael Jackson’s Thriller. I still think that’s one of the coolest videos ever created. Hearing Vincent Price say, “Ya’ll,” is, well, priceless, and John Landis, director of the video, also directed some of the best films of the eighties. What are some of the other best music videos of all time?
Posted by Kelly Anders on June 27, 2009 at 01:01 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
