Category Archives: Law

Business, Economics, Education, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture

The Law-School Bubble

5 Comments

How it happened:

The small town lawyer used to loom large in the American psyche. When an American of a certain age pictured a lawyer he thought of Abraham Lincoln, Atticus Finch, Perry Mason, or Matlock.

These lawyers were regular guys who took the business that walked in the door. If you went to law school expecting to be Perry Mason or Matlock you were certainly disappointed by how boring your life was, but not by what you earned.

After L.A. Law and The Firm Americans stopped thinking of lawyers as solo practitioners and somehow decided that all lawyers were good looking, interesting, and super, extra rich. This drew a whole new wave of confused history majors from college to law school, and floated a thirty year boom in the number of law schools, the number of law students, tuition, and profits. This was awesome news for law schools, less so for everyone else.

It didn’t help that it was subsidized by the student-loan program.

Business, Economics, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The National Raisin Reserve

1 Comment

Prepare for life without it:

…it seems likely that this is the end of the National Raisin Reserve, because I doubt the government will be interested in maintaining a program that actually costs taxpayers’ dollars to run, rather than just farmers’ raisins. It may also have an impact on the 20 other crops that are subject to market orders, from almonds to spearmint, though it seems safe to bet that these will be litigated, with the government strenuously arguing that the market orders for these crops are nothing like that nasty, unconstitutional, wrinkly old National Raisin Reserve.

More broadly, this is a welcome move to limit the government’s generally expansive notions of when it may take your property without payment. However, don’t get too excited, because it doesn’t do too much to limit eminent domain where compensation is offered, or “regulatory takings” in which government rules make your property practically worthless, but not quite so worthless that it has to pay you for the lost potential uses.

There’s a lot more work to do, particularly on civil forfeiture.

Business, Education, Health, Law, Political Commentary

SCOTUS

4 Comments

More opinions coming today. Follow live at (where else?) Scotusblog.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Heh. From Amy Howe: “Don’t type the phrase ‘the Ninth Circuit is affirmed’ that often. My fingers rebelled.”

[Update a couple minutes later, scrolling through]

Court ruled against the government in Horne, in favor of the raisin farmers. This is potentially huge. It could be major blow to idiotic anti-market agriculture policies dating back to the Depression.

[Update a few minutes later]

Here is Amy’s round up of today’slast week’s court action, prior to today’s rulings [oops].

[Late-morning PDT update]

Hearing that more decisions will be announced not only on Thursday, but Friday as well. Both King v. Burwell and the same-sex marriage rulings will be huge.

[Late-afternoon update]

Ilya Somin discusses the implications of the Horne ruling:

whatever one thinks about the compensation issue, the Court’s holding on the question of whether a taking has occurred is an important victory for property owners. It ensures that personal property gets the same level of protection as real property under the Takings Clause, and that the government cannot avoid takings liability by giving owners a small share of the proceeds from the disposition of their property.

The ruling also calls into question a number of other similar agricultural cartel schemes run by the federal government. In addition to property owners, consumers of agricultural products are likely to benefit from the decision, if these cartel schemes can no longer operate. Freer competition between producers in these agricultural markets will increase the amount of goods sold, and thereby lower prices. Lowered food prices are of particular benefit to poor and lower-middle class consumers, who generally spend a higher proportion of their income on food than the affluent do.

Republicans don’t emphasize enough how these market interventions by the government hurt the poor. Including minimum wages laws.

Business, Law, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Google

3 Comments

Oh, yes, we can totally trust the company:

Yes, Chromium is bypassing the entire source code auditing process by downloading a pre-built black box onto people’s computers. But that’s not something we care about, really. We’re concerned with building Google Chrome, the product from Google. As part of that, we provide the source code for others to package if they like. Anybody who uses our code for their own purpose takes responsibility for it. When this happens in a Debian installation, it is not Google Chrome’s behavior, this is Debian Chromium’s behavior. It’s Debian’s responsibility entirely.

Yes, we deliberately hid this listening module from the users, but that’s because we consider this behavior to be part of the basic Google Chrome experience. We don’t want to show all modules that we install ourselves.

If you think this is an excusable and responsible statement, raise your hand now.

Nothing evil about that at all. Nope.

I wonder if they’re pulling this stunt on the Fedora packages as well?

I don’t normally have a camera on my desktop, or a mike plugged in. I keep the camera taped on my laptop. Not sure if I can physically disable the mike, though.

[Update a while later]

I apologize for any confusion. The “quote” above is not a literal one. I just put it in quotes to distinguish from the blogger’s own commentary. It is his paraphrase of what Google says. I’ve changed it to italics.

Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The IRS’s Latest Email Excuse

19 Comments

…draws it closer to rogue-agency status:

Let’s cut to the chase here: The IRS is obstructing justice because it doesn’t want the truth to come out . The agency has been caught red-handed targeting opponents of the Obama administration, including the tea party, pro-Israel groups and conservative news media.

It purposely delayed issuances of tax-exempt status to nonprofit groups and held investigations entirely outside its own mandate.

What the IRS is hiding is bound to be the work of malicious political operatives cloaking themselves as impartial civil servants, plotting among themselves against their political enemies through email.

The stiff-arms given by the IRS at every juncture — from Lerner’s invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination at a House hearing to this latest claim about preventing duplicates — is consistent with that scenario.

I’d say it’s already been full rogue for many months.

Education, History, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Remembering Runnymede

3 Comments

My thoughts on today’s anniversary, over at PJMedia. I haven’t been posting much because I’ve been attending a mini-conference on the subject, which was fascinating. I learned a lot of history from a lot of learned people. Sadly, it’s a history that we have not been teaching our youth. It doesn’t fit the narrative.

[Tuesday-morning update]

More thoughts from Iain Murray.

[Bumped]

[Afternoon update]

We need a Magna Carta for the regulatory state.

Indeed.