Blog
The Constitution And Broad First Amendment Freedoms Are Obsolete, Say Left-Leaning Judges And Constitutional Law Professors
The progressive Georgetown University constitutional law professor Louis Michael Seidman argued Monday in The New York Times that we should just ignore the Constitution and…
Minding the Campus
How Law Schools Evade Market Competition
The plain truth, as many lawyers will tell you (Harvard Law graduate Hans Bader, for instance), is that law school is mostly a drawn-out prelude…
Blog
Chicago Voters Reelect Legally Insane Judge
In November, Chicago voters re-elected a legally insane judge charged with a crime of violence. "The Cook County Democratic Party…
Overlawyered
Free Speech Roundup
Common Cause vs. First-Amendment-protected political speech, part umpteen [Hans Bader, CEI]…
Blog
Community Reinvestment Act Induced Banks To Take Bad Risks, Economic Study Finds
The Community Reinvestment Act, which "prods banks to make loans in low-income communities,” encouraged banks to make riskier loans, concludes a recent study…
Blog
Fear The Regulatory Cliff, Not The Fiscal Cliff
Economist Bruce Bartlett notes that by cutting the federal budget deficit, the much-feared fiscal cliff will actually increase the size of the economy in the…
Blog
Free Speech, The Disfavored Stepchild Of The Law
In a recent column, George Will discussed how college students have been disciplined for racial or discriminatory "harassment" for constitutionally protected expression, such as…
Blog
Appeals Court Overturns Dismissal Of Challenge To Obamacare Contraception Mandate By Religious Colleges
According to law professor Jonathan Adler, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit effectively overturned a district court’s dismissal of a challenge…
Blog
Expert On Gun Regulation Says “Assault Weapons” Bans Are Useless
President Obama is backing a revival of the federal assault weapons ban that expired in 2004. UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh, perhaps the leading…
Blog
PolitiFact Is The Liar Of The Year
PolitiFact falsely depicted Michael Cannon, the director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute, as suggesting that state law overrides federal law, erroneously…
Blog
Obama’s Low-Quality College Bailout Will Fuel Skyrocketing Tuition
We wrote earlier about perverse federal financial aid policies that encourage colleges to jack up tuition. Recently, the Obama administration came up with something even worse.
The College Fix
Obama’s New College Bailout Will Fuel Skyrocketing Tuition
So argues Hans Bader of the Competitive Enterprise Institute: We wrote earlier about perverse federal financial aid policies that encourage colleges to jack…
Blog
Appeals Court Hears Challenge To Obama Administration Power Grab Over NLRB
This morning, the D.C. Circuit heard oral arguments in Noel Canning v. NLRB, which includes a challenge to President Obama's "recess" appointment of two…
Blog
Victory For Small Business: Lawsuit-Spawning Disabilities Rights Treaty Blocked
"By a vote of 61 to 38 with two-thirds needed, the U.S. Senate" Tuesday "failed to ratify the far-reaching Convention on the Rights of Persons…
National Review
Sneaky Stuff
Some Democrats are trying to sneak through legislative amendments that would, by overturning a number of Supreme Court decisions, both codify and expand disparate-impact causes…
Point of Law
Will lawmakers slip disparate impact, punitive damages into Title VI?
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination by recipients of federal education spending and other programs, does not currently allow…
Point of Law
Hans Bader on Disparate Impact Liability
In his recent article, New Pressure On Schools To Adopt Quotas, Speech Codes, And Low Standards?, senior attorney at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Hans Bader,…
Point of Law
Does Fisher Matter?
The recently-argued Supreme Court case of Fisher v. University of Texas has many people believing that the Court is likely to strike down the explicit…
Blog
More Lawsuits Against Doctors, Hospitals Due To Senate Amendment 3215 To NDAA
Earlier, I wrote about a proposed amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for 2013, which would dramatically increase lawsuits against schools and…
Fordham Law Review
Conflict Minerals Legislation: The SEC’s New Role as Diplomatic and Humanitarian Watchdog Sneaky Stuff
Congolese activists and others have continually asserted that this regulation will lead, and has already led, to an embargo of Congolese minerals, a drastic cost…
Blog
New Pressure On Schools To Adopt Quotas, Speech Codes, And Low Standards?
Lawsuits against schools and colleges have nothing to do with our troops and their needs. But that didn’t stop Senators from seeking to add a harmful…
Blog
Obama Breaks Pledge Against Middle-Class Tax Hikes By Proposing Tax Increase On Dividends, Capital Gains
Blog
Myths About Thanksgiving
The first Thanksgiving didn’t usher in a time of plenty for the Pilgrims. The Pilgrims continued to confront the specter of starvation until they ditched…
The College Fix
Why Michigan’s Affirmative Action Decision Will Be Overturned
Hans Bader of OpenMarkets.org, explains why the recent appeals court decision to uphold affirmative action in college admissions in Michigan will not stand for long:…
Overlawyered
Discrimination Law Roundup
EEOC continues to pressure employers over use of criminal background checks in hiring process [Hans Bader, Daniel Schwartz, Jon Hyman, earlier]…
Blog
Investment Falls Off A Cliff, Threatening Economy
Investment has fallen "off a cliff" reports The Wall Street Journal, as companies worry about the "fiscal cliff" at the start of next year,…
Blog
Liberal Judges: Equality Is Unconstitutional
On Thursday, a federal appeals court, dividing along ideological lines in an 8-to-7 ruling, struck down a provision of the Michigan state constitution prohibiting racial…
Blog
Bad Economic Omens Since The Election
Since the election, the stock market has fallen substantially. The S&P 500 has fallen over 5 percent. The prospect of "Taxmageddon" (massive tax increases…
Blog
FEMA’s Wasteful “Disaster Socialism”
In the Washington Examiner, Shikha Dalmia of the Reason Foundation notes that FEMA has been as slow after Superstorm Sandy as it was after…
Investor's Business Daily
Obama To Unleash Racial-Preferences Juggernaut
Last month, moreover, the Education Department pressured the Oakland school district to impose "targeted reductions" in the number of black students suspended. The department charged…
Blog
Conservative Self-Deception In 2012 Hid Need For Policy Changes
Cato
OCCUPY PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE: HOW THE GOVERNMENT’S UNCONSTITUTIONAL ACTIONS HURT THE 99%
The constitutional problems with Sarbox primarily lie with the enforcement body that enforces the new regulatory regime–the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB)–and the broad…
Blog
Government Pressure to Remove Billboards Against Voter Fraud Is Not “Market Forces”
Earlier, I wrote about illogical but widespread claims (found on Huffington Post, Daily Kos, and elsewhere) that billboards noting "Voter Fraud Is a Felony"…
Blog
Auto Industry Expert: “Romney’s Plan Also Would Have ‘Saved’ Detroit”
Earlier, we noted that the auto bailouts temporarily look more successful right now than they likely will be in the long-run since Toyota's bogus safety issues,…
Blog
Did Bush Save General Motors? Obama Messed Up Chrysler
If you accept the dubious logic the federal government "saved" the auto industry (which requires ignoring other things that rescued General Motors, such as the…
Blog
Obamacare Will Increase Health Insurance Costs In California, Washington, D.C., And Elsewhere
California officials concede that their state’s Obamacare exchange will hike premiums for policyholders by up to 25 percent. In the District of Columbia, small…
Blog
Investigators: Operation Fast And Furious Was Product Of “Deliberate” Obama Administration Strategy
According to The Daily Caller, congressional investigators have concluded that Operation “Fast and Furious” was “a product of DOJ ‘deliberate strategy’ laid out by” Attorney General “Eric Holder”…
Blog
Scapegoating Free Speech To Hide Massive Government Failures?
Earlier, I wrote about how the U.S. government had scapegoated free speech for the terrorist attacks in Libya, claiming that the attacks were…
The Daily Californian
Guilty Until Proven Innocent
in April 2011, the U.S. Department of Education ordered all American colleges and universities to comply with certain new disciplinary procedures for students accused of…
Blog
PolitiFact Fixes Two Of Its Three Errors Related To The Supreme Court’s Ledbetter Decision
PolitiFact just revised a webpage discussing the Supreme Court’s Ledbetter decision that once contained an error that we discussed here and brought…
Blog
No, Billboards Denouncing “Voter Fraud” Don’t Violate Constitutional “Right To Vote”
One of the most basic principles of constitutional law is that the Constitution only binds the government -- not private individuals -- so…
Blog
PolitiFact Smears Supreme Court, Provides False Political Talking Point For Democratic Party
Earlier, the left-leaning "fact-checker" PolitiFact made the false claim the Supreme Court had declared employees are barred from suing over pay discrimination even…
Blog
Welfare Nation
The Daily Beast
More Fact Checker Fail
Fact checkers from the LA Times to Candy Crowley have made a number of erroneous "factual claims"–and yes, indeed, conservatives, the errors do all seem…
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Racial Quotas Create Double Standards
Your editorial, "Henrico's Numbers," was right to defend colorblind student discipline. It would be a terrible mistake to ignore misconduct by some minority students in…
The Volokh Conspiracy
When Fact Checkers Have Trouble With Facts
Another example of fact checkers having trouble with facts can be found in Politifact’s commentary on whether it was fair for President Obama to criticize…
Blog
Obama Makes False Claim About Supreme Court Decision; Fact-Checkers Parrot It
Reading a Supreme Court decision is so hard! If you are a fact-checker, it's much easier just to let President Obama, a critic of a…
Washington Post
Letter to the Editor: The Limits of Free Speech
Jonathan Turley was right [“Shut up and play nice,” Outlook, Oct. 14] to criticize the Obama administration for backing “the passage of a resolution” at…
Blog
Canadian Government Official Calls Anti-Abortion Speech Illegal “Bullying”
Bullying has been defined by opportunistic politicians to include a broad range of speech, including core political speech. The latest example is anti-abortion advocacy:…
Red State