Andrew Rosenthal, in the New York Times here and here writes about the pressure to treat Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, [who I can’t resist calling ‘The Joker’] not as a criminal but as an ‘enemy combatant’, largely because that pesky Bill of Rights would […]
Law
Mental Health and ‘Punishment’ versus ‘Treatment’
If you think about it, we also have two parallel prison systems, one under criminal law, the other under civil law. We worry a lot about ‘incarceration’ and the ‘mental health’ of prisoners. Yes we have too many people in […]
Asset Forfeiture
Many organizations, from Institute for Justice to Reason and Cato, have crusaded for the elimination or limiting of the practice of asset forfeiture. Property can be confiscated for crimes where one has not been found guilty. The reason is, as […]
The Parallel Structures of Criminal and Civil Law, and the Hole in the Bill of Rights
American criminal law, first on the federal level, and later, when the Supreme Court started to apply the Bill of Rights to the states in the 20th century [and at local level as well], has some restrictions on the government in […]
Rest In Peace, Nino Scalia – But!
Antonin Scalia [1936-2016] was one of the best loved judges for his wit, and hated for his legal reasoning. For the most part, he was a hero to those who wish to uphold the text of the United States Constitution […]
Man of the Left George Skelton Admits California Income Tax is too Top-Heavy on the Rich! Plus, Apparently Man of the Left Thomas Piketty Endorses Proposition 13!
George Skelton, LA Times columnist and generally a ‘progressive,’ admits, that the California state income tax is too top-heavy on the few and the rich. A welcome insight from someone on his side of the political spectrum. Note that Mark Paul, […]
California Law and Sex Partner Switch
This is a strange story. A man got a woman to sleep with him by pretending [in the dark, I suppose] to be her boy friend. Now apparently if you impersonate a husband in this way, it is rape under […]
Last Call in California
Huh? It would make a lot more sense, automobile-dependent as California still is, to keep the alcohol closing hour at 2 a.m. and insist that Starbucks and other coffee houses stay open till 4 a.m. If I went pub-crawling in […]
Why ‘entitlement’ programs aren’t really entitlements
I fully agree with Jim Huffman of Lewis and Clark Law school that the ‘entitlements’ of Social Security and Medicare are not, in any moral sense, entitlements. That does not mean that I favor eliminating them. The problem with Social […]
How The Tobacco Companies Should Spend Their Money
Once again, in the debate over California’s Proposition 29, the tobacco companies seem to have all the money in the world, even though relatively few people smoke nowadays. Under the circumstances, I don’t shed much of a tear for them. […]