Like many names associated with colleges for generations, if not centuries, the University of Califorinia’s public law school, Hastings College of Law, bore the name of Califorinia’s first Chief Justice of its Supreme Court, who gave the state $100,000 in gold coins to found the school. In return, the law school was to be named after its benefactor, who would be its first dean, and his heirs would have a seat on the school’s board “forever.”

The University of California, Hastings College of the Law (“College”)—often referred to simply as “Hastings” by the legal community—has operated successfully in its current form since it was founded in 1878. Among the oldest law schools west of the Mississippi River, the College was founded by the first Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court, Serranus Clinton Hastings (“S.C. Hastings”), pursuant to his written agreement with the State of California, enshrined by State law (the “Act”). (Cal. Educ. Code, § 92200, et seq.) Continue reading →

Can’t one feel badly for a homeless person, a mentally ill person, whom one comes across in a public park? Of course one can. And when that person is black, it immediately dredges up the litany of reasons why the situation for black people might be very different than a white person, particularly if you’re inclined to make stereotypical assumptions about black people based upon these generic reasons. But what if that person strikes you and kills your dog in the uber-progressive white enclave of Park Slope, Brooklyn?

On Aug. 3, Jessica Chrustic, 40, a professional beekeeper, was walking her dog in Prospect Park a little after 6 a.m. when she saw a man rifling through the garbage outside the Picnic House. She had seen the man before — tall, with dreadlocks wrapped in a turban, carrying a long staff and often muttering to himself or cursing — and she usually kept her distance. But this morning there was no room to avoid him. Continue reading →

A mere 82 out of 350 students signed a petition that Maitland Jones, renowned, esteemed and now former contingent professor of organic chemistry at NYU.

Dr. Jones, 84, is known for changing the way the subject is taught. In addition to writing the 1,300-page textbook “Organic Chemistry,” now in its fifth edition, he pioneered a new method of instruction that relied less on rote memorization and more on problem solving. Continue reading →

As Eugene Volokh notes, the Title IX accuser suing Liberty University for being indifferent to her accusation that another student raped her, retaliation, and the now-former student who she accused. Plaintiff sought to sue pseudonymously. Under most circumstances, this would be a gimme motion, but not this time.

This decision concerns Plaintiff’s request to proceed anonymously as “Jane Doe,” at the same time she has repeatedly, publicly identified the accused student-defendant—whom she alleges is a “rapist.” Thus, on account of Plaintiff’s drafting of her complaint, the student-defendant cannot be afforded privacy in defending against this suit. Continue reading →

A running “joke” in crim law is that when cops need to manufacture suspicion, any conduct, no matter how benign, can be twisted into suspicious conduct. Walk too fast? Suspicious. Too slow? Suspicious. Walk the “right” speed? Very suspicious. It’s just a matter of surrounding the conduct with words to create the specter of some connection to crime. After all, it’s just sus.*

They tried this in South Carolina, after prolonging a stop for a broken third tail light (people, fix your damn broken tail lights!). and oral argument put it to the test. Continue reading →

A fascinating exchange between the Alabama solicitor general, Edmund LaCour, and the newest associate justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, occurred during oral argument in a challenge to the Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in Merrill v. Milligan. After LaCour argued that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment compelled racial neutrality, Justice Jackson took issue.*

Justice Jackson tells the Alabama solicitor general that the Framers of the 14th Amendment did NOT intend it to be “race neutral or race blind,” so taking race into account to protect minority voting rights is perfectly constitutional. Progressive originalism at work. pic.twitter.com/aCXAq2CnJu

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) October 4, 2022

Continue reading →

Online payment processors like Paypal are private companies and thus have the choice to do business with whomever they choose, provided it doesn’t discriminate against a protected class. But what happens when the choice is exercised in a way to disfavor unpopular political views or enterprises that do icky things?

In the past, it might never have occurred to a company to wield its business availability in such a way, but given the concerns about political correctness, does allowing a company engaged in evil enterprise not make the payment processor complicit? Sure, companies want to make money, but they’re similarly afraid of being blown up as a pariah for allowing their services to be used by the enemy of shriekers. This is particularly true for digital business, which relies to some extent on being cool enough to be acceptable to digital natives. Continue reading →

Mark Joseph Stern writes about a very serious issue, providing some valuable insight into a matter of some concern for lawyers now and of the future. What will they be taught about the Supreme Court, both as an institution and as to the decisions it’s issues since Justice Anthony Kennedy resigned.

Even law professors who maintained confidence that the Supreme Court would rise above politics are reconsidering their view after this term. “I have generally, up until now, resisted the cynicism of the ‘new legal realists’ that the Supreme Court isn’t a court, it’s just a policy council,” said Steve Sanders, a professor at Maurer School of Law. “I want my students to believe that legal argumentation, precedent, facts, and doctrine matter.” In the aftermath of this term, though, “it’s becoming increasingly difficult to deny that major constitutional decisions are almost purely about politics.”

Continue reading →

Tomorrow, the first Monday in October, begins the new term of the Supreme Court of the United States. Yes, it hasn’t yet been canceled, though not for lack of trying. The problem is that it’s a co-equal branch of a tripartite government. The other problem is that its decision in Dobbs reversing Roe v. Wade crossed a line that finally touched an issue the normies understood and touched their world.

It came on top of a variety of other decisions, last term and in years past, that were hated by a politically-focused slice of the polity, but this time, in Dobbs, it crossed a line that touched the lives of a majority of Americans, that was contrary to what the majority of Americans accepted and, indeed, wanted as a right. You may disagree, vehemently, but the numbers don’t lie. In the minds of many, this sealed the fate of the Supreme Court as an institution that was built to be immune from politics but had now been captured by politics. Continue reading →

A decade ago, I could imagine Ken White writing a post at Popehat about taint snorting. Maybe Techdirt’s Tim Cushing, if not Mike Masnick, extolling the virtues of anti-SLAPP legislation. But that was before a litany of sacred cows arose, seizing people’s consciousness and turning the most basic reality into a minefield of women whose narratives trump accuracy.

Eugene Volokh wrote a law review article and a post at VC naming a person who sought to prosecute her claims pseudonymously. But as it turned out, she was a vexatious litigant and the court pulled the plug on her.

Several months ago, I wrote about a frequent litigant, in connection with a federal case of hers in in which (1) she was first allowed to proceed pseudonymously but then (2) was depseudonymized by the judge after evidence related to her past cases had emerged. I used her name in connection with that case, as the judge had, and also drew connections (based on public records) between that case and other cases that she had been litigating pseudonymously.

Agree or not, the use of pseudonymous litigation has been one of Eugene’s scholarly issues, and he’s focused on it regularly of late. This was a matter of significant interest in the course of his argument, and he used it to argue his case. The “frequent litigant” was not happy about it.

Several weeks ago, the litigant filed Doe v. Volokh, No. 22STRO05198 (L.A. Superior Ct.), a petition for a “harassment restraining order” in California court.

The allegations made by this “frequent litigant” against Eugene raise facile tropes that have become pervasive, overarching and unchallengeable to many who believe they are the arbiters of polite society.

On July 11, 2022 I received two harassing phone calls from different people, calling me cunt, bitch, slut, lying on men etc and indicating they would rape and kill me.

I was terrifying and fearful for my life. Later I figured that Eugene Volokh (Volokh) has published my personal information online and the death threats came from his readers/haters.

He states that I was convicted of several crimes but he leaves out the fact that I am currently seeking post-conviction relief due to wrongful conviction.

I previously received several court orders to protect my real name as a rape victim.

Further, he alleges that I had made similar rape accusations against other people which again portrays me in a false light.

On July 12, 2022 I made contact with Volokh and asked him to respect the court orders and my privacy and take remedial action. He refused to do so even after I informed him of the death threats I received.

According to Eugene, the only “personal information” posted about her was her name. Here, you have a person who seeks to compel Eugene to remove her identify because she declared herself a “rape victim,” whose convictions are unmentionable because she’s seeking post-conviction relief, who obtained court orders to “protect her real name as a rape victim” and who claims to have received telephone calls from Eugene’s “readers/haters” to rape and kill her. And Eugene callously refused to “respect court orders” despite her receiving death threats.

Eugene doesn’t quite say it, but then he’s more polite than I am. It’s ridiculous to believe that any reader of Volokh Conspiracy would call and threaten her and this stinks of an outright fabrication. If it happened, far more than her claim would be needed to prove it. As for the rest of her claims, she throws a series of victim tropes against the wall to see if one sticks, all facile to claim and which have become a suit of armor against anyone who would even consider questioning whether she was “terrifying and fearful” for her life.

Ultimately, she alleges that what Eugene has done by using her name after it was “depseudonymized” by the court in a matter of significant scholarly interest was harassment. Eugene was harassing her.

Eugene responded with an anti-SLAPP motion, and with Ken’s “sage counsel,” the court ruled in his favor.

A decade ago, this sort of conduct would have given rise to a hundred blawg posts, everyone condemning the vexatious litigant’s effort to silence Eugene and cleanse the internet of her name so no one knew what shenanigans she was pulling. As for the tropes raised, rape victim, name calling, rape threats, death threats, terrifying, etc., these claims would have been ripped to shreds as baseless lies thrown into the wild. But that was then. Now is not then.

My take on this is:

1.) You had a legal right to use her name.

But:

2.) Shouldn’t have used her name as a matter of politeness.

It may be true and is likely true that none of the abuse she received came as a result of publishing this information. But it also seems as though she may have experienced real fear and discomfort as a result of the publication, to the extent that it has disrupted her life. That may be due to her own illogical or incorrect thinking, but (giving her the benefit of the doubt that she is telling the truth) I don’t see any benefit to causing a person unnecessary distress.

This commenter wasn’t so much being critical of Eugene for having named the litigant as putting the concern for her “unnecessary distress,” even if false, first. As a matter of “politeness,” her feelings come first. Another commenter was not so thoughtful.

So this woman contacts you and asks you to stop writing about her, and to remove your prior writings about her. You respond that you have a legal right to to write about her. She files suit against you, you prevail, and then you write about the whole affair, thus adding to your public writings on the woman who initially sought to have you not write about her.

You’re such a classy person.

There was a time when the question of this person’s being named by Eugene wouldn’t have mattered, as Masnick’s Streisand Effect would have put her name everywhere, How dare a vexatious litigant try to conceal her identity by going after a law prof, a blogger, Eugene Volokh. Today, not even Eugene will mention her name in his post, although he asserts his right to do so. And still some of his readers chastise Eugene for being insufficiently concerned about her feelings.

Well, I think that you can address the problem and even refer to this exact case without naming the specific person.

If you are concerned that she is a vexatious litigant, I think it would be reasonable to inform someone that is going up against her in litigation so that she can be declared a vexatious litigant.

Eugene explains why this wouldn’t be viable, but that really isn’t the point. Claim victimhood and distress and that’s good enough to demand that her feelings prevail.