Recent Bluessky Posts- Happy Bastille Day to those who celebrate it. Was always a special day in my house growing up. July 14, 2026 Michael Froomkin
- Jotwell Jurisprudence: Thomas Bustamante, Bentham on the Citizen’s Duty to Hold Political Authorities Accountable, JOTWELL (July 14, 2026), juris.jotwell.com/bentham-on-t.... 1/2 July 14, 2026 Jotwell
- Thought I might mention that Judge Kathleen Williams, author of this very fine opinion on Trump's attempt at collusive litigation to get both a slush fund from the Treasury and a free pass from IRS, storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us..., is a graduate of the University of Miami School of Law. July 14, 2026 Michael Froomkin
- Jotwell Adlaw: Nicholas Parrillo, The Administrative Law of the Civil Service, JOTWELL (July 13, 2026) (reviewing Nicholas Bednar, Presidential Control of the Civil Service, 110 Minn. L. Rev. 2065 (2026)), adlaw.jotwell.com/the-administ.... July 13, 2026 Jotwell
- I demand they send me $100,000 forthwith. If they can demand stuff with no legal basis, why can't I? July 10, 2026 Michael Froomkin
Monthly Archives: July 2019
Good Sound Bites
Posted in Politics: Impeachments
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Peek Behind the Curtain
Photo by Nick Lockey
Posted in AI
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Video of Panel on “Regulating Safety and Quality” of Medical AI
Recently (June 1, 2019), I participated in a conference on AI & Medicine called Machine M.D. The organizers at the University of Ottawa have posted video from the event, so here’s Panel #1 on “Regulating Safety and Quality“. I was the first speaker, early in the morning…
Posted in AI, Talks & Conferences
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Note to Self: Enable DNS over HTTPS on Firefox
How to enable DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) in Firefox. Hope it plays nice with VPN…
Posted in Uncategorized
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Almost as Good as ‘No Vehicles in the Park’
‘No Vehicles in the Park’ is the basis of one of the great teaching texts for jurisprudence. HLA Hart famously asked,
A legal rule forbids you to take a vehicle into the public park. Plainly this forbids an automobile, but what about bicycles, roller skates, toy automobiles? What about airplanes? Are these, as we say, to be called “vehicles” for the purpose of the rule or not?’
Believe me, any law professor can fill two hours running hypotheticals off this. There us even the occasional real-life case.
Comes now, however, the Nevada Highway Patrol, in the person of Nevada Highway Patrol Trooper Travis Smaka, who pulled over a vehicle in an HOV lane (not a park) that appeared to have only one occupant — only to be told by the driver that there was in fact another “occupant” in the vehicle: the corpse he was transporting. Trooper Smaka was unpersuaded, but he let the driver off with a warning. (See Police: No, a corpse doesn’t count toward the HOV lane passenger minimum for details.)
So, if the HOV rule is “minimum two occupants in the vehicle,” should a corpse count? Or, as my wife says, how about a pregnant woman in Alabama? If a fetus is a ‘person’ for manslaughter purposes, it is a person for HOV occupancy purposes? Or what about a telepresence robot being operated by some third party? Could that count?
Update: ‘Pearls Before Swine’ weighs in.
Posted in Legal Philosophy
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