Jan

17

Private Prisons and Accountability

Posted by: | January 17, 2012 | 4 Comments

Last week, in Minneci v. Pollard (No. 10-1104), the United States Supreme Court held that employees of privately run federal prisons cannot be sued for money damages for violations of constitutional rights.  By coincidence, last week also saw the release of a new report on private prisons by the Sentencing Project.  The report raises a multitude [...]

Jan

16

John Paul Stevens’ Restraint

Posted by: | January 16, 2012 | 1 Comment

After he retired in 2010, John Paul Stevens published Five Chiefs: A Supreme Court Memoir.  After a brief description of the first twelve Chief Justices of the United States Supreme Court, from John Jay through Harlan Fiske Stone, he describes in more detail the last five with whom he was professionally acquainted.  Stevens clerked for [...]

Jan

15

A Second Look at the Sharia Law Amendment

Posted by: | January 15, 2012 | 1 Comment

Last week, the Tenth Circuit issued a decision on Oklahoma’s “Sharia Law Amendment.” A quick summary for those who haven’t followed: In 2010, Oklahoma voters approved a ballot initiative that amended their state’s constitution to prohibit Oklahoma courts from “considering or using” either “international law” or “Sharia Law” in making judicial decisions. A district court [...]

Jan

13

Delay in Criminal Procedure: What’s Good for the Goose Is . . . Well, Never Mind

Posted by: | January 13, 2012 | Leave a Comment

Earlier this week, in Gonzalez v. Thaler (No. 10-895), the Supreme Court rejected Rafael Gonzalez’s pro se habeas corpus petition because it was filed about five weeks too late.  The Court did not comment on the deep irony of this decision: what Gonzalez was complaining about in his petition — the issue that the Court refused to address on [...]

Jan

13

Baseball’s New Plan for Daily Interleague Play Is Not without Precedent

Posted by: | January 13, 2012 | 1 Comment

Major League Baseball is changing again. For more than nine decades, from 1901 to 1994, it was a cardinal rule of baseball that teams in the American and National League met in exhibition games, the All-Star Game, and the World Series, but never in games that counted during the regular season. Since 1994, we have [...]

Jan

13

An Interview with Professor Gordon Hylton

Posted by: | January 13, 2012 | Leave a Comment

[Editor’s Note: This blog is the first in a series of interviews with faculty and staff at the Law School.]  Professor Gordon Hylton is a graduate of Oberlin College, where he majored in History and English Literature. He holds a J.D. and M.A. in History from the University of Virginia and a Ph.D. in the [...]

Jan

12

Tebowing and the Constitution

Posted by: | January 12, 2012 | Leave a Comment

Much has been made of Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow’s outward expressions of his Christian faith, especially his practice of kneeling in moments of prayer—“Tebowing” as it is now called—after touchdowns, some of them admittedly a bit miraculous. A recent issue of Time magazine, for example, included an article on Mr. Tebow, his faith, and the [...]

Jan

12

Amid Differences, a Call to Work Together to Improve Mental Health Treatment

Posted by: | January 12, 2012 | 1 Comment

It wasn’t part of her prepared remarks, but Prof. Lucinda Roy of Virginia Tech University may have offered an especially important point as she began her keynote address at a conference Wednesday at Eckstein Hall on mental illness commitment laws and other issues related to mental illness. It had been an intense, and at times [...]

Jan

11

Why the Law Degree Is Called a J.D. and Not an LL.B.

Posted by: | January 11, 2012 | 1 Comment

Professor Greipp’s fascinating post on Lois Kuenzli Collins, an early female graduate of Marquette Law School, made reference to Ms. Collins’ law degree being upgraded to a J.D. in the late 1960s. That was actually a fairly common occurrence at that time, as thousands of American lawyers in the 1960s found themselves the possessors of [...]

Jan

11

The Conservative Turn in Copyright Politics

Posted by: | January 11, 2012 | Leave a Comment

David Brooks had an interesting column earlier this week in which he asked, “Why aren’t there more liberals in America?” According to Gallup Poll numbers, about 41% of Americans self-identify as conservative, versus 36% moderate and 21% liberal. This strikes Brooks as a bit of a puzzle, since the financial crisis and the economic downturn [...]

Jan

11

The GAB’s Duty of “Careful Examination”: Why Judge Davis Got It Right

Posted by: | January 11, 2012 | 11 Comments

I have written a few things on my personal blog about the GAB’s authority and duty to conduct a more thorough review of recall petitions than it apparently intends to conduct. Last Thursday, Judge Mac Davis ordered a more extensive review. Ed Fallone thinks that the judge got it wrong. I disagree. Here’s why. Ed [...]

Jan

11

A Tale of Three States, Part 6: Happy Days

Posted by: | January 11, 2012 | Leave a Comment

In the previous post in this series, I took the imprisonment data from Indiana, Minnesota, and Wisconsin back to 1991.  I’ve been interested, though, in pinpointing when exactly the Minnesota-Wisconsin imprisonment disparity arose, which requires going back further — much further, to the 1950′s.  Here are the numbers: WI Imprisonment Rate (per 1000,000) Percent Change MN [...]

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