Brutal first day of class?

Join us for happy hour at the Billy Goat! Have a drink, a burger, and meet fellow Federalists. 5:30 on Tuesday, September 4.

Election law panel today!

Join FedSoc, Law Dems, and Republican Club TODAY for an all-star election law panel.

We've got two Federal Election Commissioners, plus the general counsel from both the DNC and the Republican Governors Association. If anyone can tell you how current law affects the upcoming election, these guys are it!

See you in McDonough 203 at 2:00! As always, food will be provided.

McDonnell TODAY

Bob McDonnell
Attorney General of Virginia
Today at 4:00
McDonough 205.

Federalist Society presents Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell. He will discuss the myriad issues facing Virginia and other states in the run-up to the November elections: emergency preparedness, the definition of marriage, property rights, crime, and more!

Join us on Wednesday, October 18 @ 4:00 in McDonough 205. As always, food and beverages will be served!

Fraud, misdeeds, and liability-oh my!

Join us TODAY for a discussion of corporate officer & director liability. Discussion of recent cases by:

Donald Parsons, Vice Chancellor of the Delaware Courts of Chancery

Commentary by Professor Jeffrey Bauman

2:30 Today, Room 140
Food and drinks will be served!

Fraud, misdeeds, and liability-oh my!

Join us TODAY for a discussion of corporate officer & director liability. Discussion of recent cases by:

Donald Parsons, Vice Chancellor of the Delaware Courts of Chancery

Commentary by Professor Jeffrey Bauman

2:30 Today, Room 140
Food and drinks will be served!

Lunch with Professor Volokh

Pizza With A Prof!

Join us for lunch today with Professor Sasha Volokh. He's brand new at GULC, doing great law & economics work, and fresh from clerkships with Kozinski, O'Connor, and Alito.

That's TODAY--Hotung 2000 @12:15. See you there!

Posner Tonight!

Lifetime Service Award tonight!

Join us to hear the illustrous RICHARD POSNER. He will be speaking on the topic of "Judicial Self-Restraint." Award and address at 6:00 in Hart Auditorium, with cocktails and hors d'oeuvres afterward in the Hotung lobby.

Tidbit for Thought

Was walking to the grocery store the other day and passed a group of Immigrant Rights supporters. This group identified as Socialists and one of their banners stated, "No human is illegal." Now, call me crazy, but does it seem strange to anyone else that a group calling themselves Socialists would cite to some sort of "higher law" like they did? Certainly someone could be illegal under positive law, so their statement could only make sense if they believe in some higher moral law in which all men share equally as legal citizens. Yet don't most Socialists scorn the very idea of a higher law? Marx did say that religion is the "opiate of the masses." Perhaps the higher law is grounded in something else: rationality? But didn't a higher law grounded in rationality lead to the very burgeois system the Socialists eschewed? Perhaps I'm forgetting some basic tenet of Socialism or something, but I'm pretty sure there's some incongruity there. I would find any explanations or corrections helpful.

This Would Be a Problem...

From M. Drudge: "Patriot Act Catches a Baby-Food Thief - The case of Samih Jammal, convicted with the help of the Patriot Act and FISA wiretaps of fencing stolen baby formula, sits on the fine line between the government's terrorism-fighting role and its duty to protect citizen's rights. The WALL STREET JOURNAL reports the use of FISA warrants helped prosecuted Arizona grocery wholesaler Jammal, who was convicted of operating a baby formula theft ring.The JOURNAL notes that Jammal, a "U.S. citizen born in Lebanon, was never charged with any offense related to terrorism." Jammal "is appealing, contending that FISA evidence used against him was illegally obtained and crippled his defense. ... 'It's baby formula of mass destruction here,' he said at one pretrial hearing." Developing..."

Mr. Jammal has a point. Someone should save me from my continued slip and slide toward the left!

Views on Georgia v. Randolph?

I have deleted my original post to help make more immediately visible Galen's post about TOMORROW evening's event featuring Judge Silberman. It should be a delightful occasion for Federalists and non-Federalists alike! Hope to see you there!

Family Voters

This is an ingenious discussion of the political and legal shifts of the "family vote" over the last 100 years. For instance these passages:

The dominant wing of the GOP tilted in favor of the banks, the great industries, and--perhaps more surprisingly--the feminist movement. Indeed, as early as 1904, the National Association of Manufacturers had formed an alliance with the feminists, for they shared an interest in moving women out of their homes and into the paid labor market. When the feminists reorganized as the National Woman's party in 1917, the manufacturers' association apparently provided secret financial support. More openly, Republican leaders embraced the feminists' proposed Equal Rights Amendment, first advanced in Congress in 1923. The GOP was also the first major party to endorse the ERA in its platform. ...

The Democrats also welcomed the "Maternalists" into their ranks, female activists who--while believing strongly in equal legal and political rights for women--also emphasized the natural differences between the sexes when it came to childbirth and child care. They favored federal programs for the training of girls in home economics and for "baby saving," meaning efforts to reduce infant and maternal mortality. They fiercely opposed working mothers and day care. Under this Maternalist influence, every New Deal domestic program openly assumed or quietly reinforced the goal of a "family wage" and the model American family of a breadwinning father, a homemaking mother, and an average of three or four children. In short, from 1912 until 1964, the Democrats were--on balance--the pro-family party. The Republicans, on balance, were the party of business interests and the feminists. ...

For the Republican party as reshaped by Reagan now saw pro-family social conservatives in political alliance with the interests of the banks and the large corporations. Main Street and Wall Street were under the same tent, which was a very new development. ...

Indeed, the GOP has done absolutely nothing to curb the egalitarian frenzy and the gender-role engineering set off by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and enshrined at the Pentagon. Equity feminism still rules these roosts.Or consider child care. A timely veto by Richard Nixon stopped the government's day care juggernaut in 1971, but only for a few months. The same year, Nixon signed a Republican-designed measure also backed by the National Organization for Women (heir to the GOP-favored National Woman's party). This law allowed families to deduct day care costs from their income tax, cleverly labeling them "business expenses." This has since grown into a credit worth between $1,500 and $2,100 in reduced taxes for households using day care. Even the wealthiest qualify. Meanwhile, families that sacrifice a second income to keep a mother or father at home receive nothing except a higher net tax. Bills to correct this gross inequity have been regularly introduced in Congress since 1996, most recently the Parents' Tax Relief Act of 2006 (H.R. 3080). However, the Republican leadership has ignored them. To underscore the lost opportunity here, note that conservatives in Canada rode to victory just a few weeks ago by embracing a plan to extend that nation's day care benefit to stay-at-home parents; not a whiff of this, though, in the recent State of the Union address.

Regardless of whether one agrees with the author's obvious preference for mothers staying at home, the political analysis is insightful and the presentation of policy tradeoffs and interests honest - the stresses average people face.

Follow-up on Epstein and Google

A suit against Google was dismissed by a Philadelphia judge. The judge didn't discuss fair use doctrine--which is one of Google's two main legal claims supporting their project--at all.

Epstein's prediction was that east-coast courts would be unfavorable to the Google Library project because that area is the seat of the publishing industry. Though Epstein specifically mentioned the suit in the Southern District of New York, my guess is that he'd classify Philly as east coast. Maybe Google will have an easier time that Epstein thought.

See the article on WSJ here.

Debate Leads to More Law, Less Politics?

This article by Terry Eastland ends with the following interesting comment on the effect CJ Roberts is having on the Court:

"The other day Justice Breyer told an Alabama audience that the justices discuss cases more under Roberts than they did under Rehnquist. Roberts is surely responsible for that, and it marks an important change.

Justices Stevens and Scalia have both complained over the years about the conferences held on the Fridays of weeks with oral arguments. It is then that the justices at least tentatively decide cases, and yet under Rehnquist the justices typically did little more than declare their votes. For Roberts to invite discussion means that Roberts himself has to come to the conference table fully prepared. That's not hard to imagine. But the other justices have to come prepared as well, or risk embarrassment.

Over time, the Roberts effect may produce not only larger majorities and more stable rulings but also a Court that, thanks to conferences that really are conferences, pays more attention to working out the relevant law and less to mere politics. The distinction between law and politics is, of course, precisely what Roberts (and Samuel Alito) insisted upon during their confirmation hearings, and it lies at the heart of judicial conservatism. The prospect of the continuing advancement of that philosophy is a happy one, and a reason to say hail to this particular chief."

Comparative Federalism

Thought this Slate article on the UAE was worth Federalists pondering. Particularly:

"It's a federation of seven somewhat autonomous sheikdoms—Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm al-Qaiwain, Ras al-Khaimah, and Fujairah. Under the country's constitution, each emirate maintains principal control of its own oil revenues and other natural resources. They turn over a set percentage of their revenues to the federal government, which takes care of defense, diplomacy, education, public health, banking, and several other concerns for everyone. But that's the extent of it: The constitution gives each emirate explicit and exclusive control over any matter not specifically assigned to the federation. For example, a conservative emirate like Sharjah has the right to institute its especially strict code of decency, which prohibits bathing suits, midriffs, and skirts above the knee."

Unlike some federal systems (eg Russia), this one has real teeth: the component parts have bargaining power with the federal government. Japan is a unitary state, so by contrast there is little possibility of experimentation regionally; the Japanese generally must get fresh policy ideas from abroad.