Spurred by my asymptotic approach to grading, I resolved to see if I could get a copy of Procrastination: Why You Do It, What to Do About It Now from the Miami-Dade public library.
Unfortunately, it seems there is only one copy in the collection and it is checked out. Given the sort of person this work likely appeals to, I am not hopeful that it will be returned any time soon.
This is really very funny — but only if you are an academic internet law geek: Info/Law » Easterbrook was wrong.
It seems that newly elected GOP chief Reince Priebus graduated from the University of Miami School of Law in 1998. For a write up of his activities as a law student see University of Miami | School of Law – Reince Priebus, JD’98: UM Degree Sets Him Apart. He was a student leader, and was here around the same time as our other recent political star, Senator Marco Rubio ’96.
Not everyone is a fan, however, of what Mr. Priebus has been up to since he graduated. See for example this Wisconsin blogger’s take, New GOP National Chair Is Voter Obstruction Operative from Wisconsin. (And, more about the voter suppression in Wisconsin.)
And finally, consider this little thought experiment from Steve Benen: how would certain elements of the partisan press be reacting if Reince Priebus had just been elected to chair the Democratic Party?
The free-market approach to gun control over at Crooks and Liars seems pretty clever: A Modest Proposal: What If We Required Mandatory Gun Insurance?
Combine this with strict liability for misuse of a weapon — liability which resides with the manufacturer and/or distributor if they fail to make sure that the purchaser is insured, on the insurance company if they allow a policy to lapse without evidence that someone else has provided the insurance or the gun has been sold or destroyed, and on the purchaser if the next in chain of title is not insured, and pretty soon we might be getting somewhere.
I try not to use this blog to promote my other projects too often for fear of becoming a broken record. But sometimes I cannot resist.
Over at Jotwell we’ve been publishing a whole lot of interesting reviews of recent scholarship relevant to the law, and I could be bragging about it every week. But the two most recent essays have been particularly extraordinary, and I recommend them to everyone.
Sex/Power/Law is Robin West‘s review, for our Jurisprudence section, of Marc Spindelman, Essay, Sexuality’s Law, 20 Colum. J. Gender & L. (forthcoming 2011). It begins like this:
Marc Spindelman’s essay Sexuality’s Law, forthcoming in the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law, is one of the most extraordinary pieces of legal writing on the interrelations of law, culture and sexuality to appear in a law journal in well over a decade, perhaps much longer.
It ends with:
This is writing that matters, that serves truth, that responds to injury, and that restores one’s faith in the legal academy; this is what legal scholarship can be.
And the stuff in between is well worth your time.
Banana Republic.Com is Frank Pasquale‘s review, for our Cyberlaw section, of Jonathan Zittrain, Ubiquitous Human Computing, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A, vol. 366 no. 1881 3813-3821 (28 October 2008):
Wasn’t the internet supposed to solve these problems? Wouldn’t a “wealth of networks” guarantee opportunity for all, as prediction markets unearthed the “wisdom of crowds?” It turns out that the net, while mitigating some forms of inequality in the US, is accelerating others. Jonathan Zittrain’s essay “Ubiquitous Human Computing” examines a future of “minds for sale,” where an atomized mass of knowledge workers bid for bite-sized “human intelligence tasks.” Zittrain explores some positive aspects of the new digital dispensation, but the larger lesson is clear: without serious legal interventions, an expansive global workforce will be scrambling for these jobs by “racing to the bottom” of privacy and wage standards. This review explains Zittrain’s perspective, applauds his effort to shift the agenda of internet law, and argues that trends untouched on in Zittrain’s essay make his argument all the more urgent.
This review is a little longer than our usual fare, but it’s a rollicking read about a very important subject.
Unfortunately, it’s Today’s Award for the Silliest Theory of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Jotwell Blenderlaw