With great power comes great responsibility. Millions of people, including politicians, now use various social media platforms as a way to communicate with their followers easily and quickly. Along with the ability to instantly communicate a message to thousands of people comes the ability to “mute” or block those whose comments the user chooses not [...]
Illinois has one of the strictest laws in the country when it comes to people audio recording police officers in public. But then again, Illinois is also known for a long history of police corruption, and maybe the State thought it could prevent a few civil rights settlements by banning people from recording their interactions with police. Whatever the motivation behind the law, it doesn't [...]
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in United States v. Alvarez. At issue in this case is whether the Stolen Valor Act, 18 U.S.C. § 704(b)--which makes it a crime to falsely represent that you have been awarded any decoration or medal authorized by Congress for the Armed Forces of the United States--is [...]
I remember when Steve Lubet questioned whether former Solicitor General Ted Olson should be allowed to argue that the federal campaign finance reform statute was unconstitutional in Citizens United, because, as Solicitor General, he had argued a contrary position. At the time, I didn’t understand why that mattered since “advocates represent clients,” [...]
For the next month I will be focusing on prisoners’ issues, because I know that many prisoners’ families come to the CockleBur to keep up-to-date on legal developments affecting prisoners. So here is a roundup of the latest prisoner stories in the news. Last week, the New York Times published an editorial entitled, [...]
Last term, Justice Kennedy said in Salazar v. Buono, that a “cross by the side of a public highway,” marking “where a state trooper perished,” was not a statement of “governmental support for sectarian beliefs,” and therefore, would not violate the Establishment Clause. As Lee Corso would say: Not so fast Justice [...]
I guess I’m swinging for the fences at my first at-bat. Look, I respect Eugene Volokh; he’s really smart, well-practiced as a scholar, and (at least) bilingual – all things I can’t fairly say about myself. But it’s really obnoxious when he announces that his preferred rule of law just happens to [...]
I have been away from blogging for a week, but wanted to highlight a few noteworthy pieces from the legal blogosphere. I ran across this ATL article about a D.C. Superior Court judge that declared a mistrial in a murder case because the defense lawyer was horribly incompetent. The attorney was a recent [...]
Justice Alito’s dissent in Snyder v. Phelps, 09-751, has received more press than any of his previous Supreme Court opinions. I covered this topic last week on the CockleBur, as did Dahlia Lithwick, Jeffrey Rosen at the Washington Post, Michael Dorf, Josh Blackman, and the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties. Yesterday, John Paul Rollert at the Huffington [...]
I’m a sucker for those library book sales. You know – the ones where you pay a dollar for a hardcover and 25 cents for a paperback. Usually I pick up novels. Last week at Creighton’s main Reinert Library I couldn’t resist a book called Society without God. (I expect I was [...]