Following the crisis of 9/11, Congress did what it does best. Give its power away. It wasn’t that Congress hadn’t done so before (anyone remember the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution?), but post 9/11, the confluence of two things ramped up governance by executive bureaucracy. On the one hand, Congress was paralyzed, incapable of accomplishing much of anything because of divisive politics and the fear of being responsible for its own actions. On the other hand, executive agencies were reaching their full stride, no longer humbled by limits and expertise, but available as harbingers of change where Congress perpetually failed.

And this was the case for all executives, regardless of party or purpose. Continue reading →

There are hosts of questions, from why House Speaker Kevin McCarthy would pretend giving Fox Entertainment’s Tucker Carlson exclusive access to more than 40,000 hours of video footage was the beloved “transparency” to video showing the Qanon Shaman being accompanied through the capitol’s hallways by a phalanx of police.

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The effort immediately brought to mind the survey about how many unarmed black men were killed by cops.

The results were revealing. Overall, nearly half of surveyed liberals [sic] (44 percent) estimated roughly between 1,000 and 10,000 unarmed black men were killed whereas 20 percent of conservatives estimated the same.

Most notably, the majority of respondents in each political category believed that police killed unarmed black men at an exponentially higher rate than in reality. Over 80 percent of liberals guessed at least 100 unarmed black men were killed compared to 66 percent of moderates and 54 percent of conservatives.

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A law prof emphatically made the point, that while Florida’s governor seems to be on a drunken unconstitutional law enactment spree, until such time as some of the goofier bills become law, and aren’t laughed out of court as unconstitutional crap, they’re not worth getting too worked up about.

After all, performative bills are nothing new, and until they actually become law and are sustained, they’re just plays put on to soothe the fevered breasts of useful idiots. Laugh or cry, they don’t matter until they matter. One such performative law seeks to undo the seminal 1964 Supreme Court decision in New York Times v. Sullivan. Ron DeSantis doesn’t like it. Continue reading →

It never really hit home until I was sitting with a bunch of friends at a party and the subject of dermatologists came up. I was the only straight male in the group, and I sat silently as the others gushed about how much they loved, not liked, but loved, going to the dermatologist. After a while, I spoke up. “Ew,” I said. Unless there was a serious problem, why would anyone want to see a dermatologist? They looked at me like I had two heads. They liked some random guy poking and prodding them. They liked being examined. Ew.

I don’t like doctors. It bugs Dr. SJ to no extent, but I will only go to the doctors if there is a damn good reason to go. The greatest invention of medicine is urgent care, what we call “doc in a box,” where you go without an appointment with a specific complaint and the doc deals with the specific complaint and otherwise leaves you alone. Continue reading →

Ed. Note: Chris Halkides has been kind enough to try to make us lawyers smarter by dumbing down science enough that we have a small chance of understanding how it’s being used to wrongfully convict and, in some cases, execute defendants. Chris graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a Ph.D. in biochemistry, and teaches biochemistry, organic chemistry, and forensic chemistry at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington.

The murder of Janice May
Eight-year-old Janice Elizabeth May was attacked at about 4 PM on Saturday, 26 November 1955, in Canton, IL. She later died from her injuries (bleeding and skull fractures). Taxi driver Lloyd Eldon Miller left town shortly thereafter, concerned about the possibility of legal action involving child support. He was arrested in Danville, IL, and Mr. Miller signed a confession at 12:15 AM on 1 December. He was convicted of her murder, sentenced to death, and came within about seven hours of being executed. He was eventually released, and all charges were dismissed in 1971. Continue reading →

The time was 2018, and some women were feeling their oats. One such woman was Moira Donegan, who created the infamous “Shitty Media Men” list, an idea of such insufferable hubris that it would have been inconceivable at pretty much any other time in social history. Imagine throwing out to angry women an opportunity to take revenge on any man who did them wrong or pissed them off, and spread the word, true or false, factual or fantasy, where no one named, no one accused, needed to be proved bad nor had a chance to defend himself. Continue reading →

[Prefatory note: This week we’re doing a song parody of the Bob Newman/Buck Owens classic “Pfft You Were Gone,” arguably made famous by the show “Hee-Haw.” Here’s a link to the song if you aren’t familiar with it.

Cheers
–CLS] Continue reading →

Each time a new law is proposed, enacted or signed in Florida, a smart and very decent friend twits something along the lines of, “and so The Atlantic will publish another million articles about why the real problem is college students.” I appreciate his angst, that from his perspective, whatever problems arise from campus consequence culture are dwarfed by  unconstitutional right wing laws that expressly seek to prohibit, if not criminalize speech and ideas. He’s frustrated and I can understand his frustration.

But that doesn’t mean he’s right. Continue reading →

If I had kept my notes from Con Law, I would check to see whether there was any mention of the “Major Questions Doctrine” taught when I was in law school that I’d somehow forgotten over the years. After all, memory is the 13th thing to go. But it’s emerging as a potent tool in the Supreme Court’s arsenal against Executive Branch administrative actions. Is there really such a doctrine?

The doctrine requires Congress to “speak clearly when authorizing an [executive branch] agency to exercise powers of vast ‘economic and political significance.'” If such a broad delegation of power isn’t clear, courts must rule against the executive’s claims that it has the authority in question. Continue reading →