Recent Bluessky Posts- Jotwell Int'l & Comp: Erin F. Delaney, Litigation in the Shadows of Empires, JOTWELL (May 28, 2026) (reviewing Trevor T. W. Wan, Globetrotting Advocates: Foreign Barristers in Hong Kong Courts, 73 Am. J. Comp. L. 872 (2025)), intl.jotwell.com/litigation-i.... May 28, 2026 Jotwell
- Having some trouble detecting my choices here for how they share my data. May 27, 2026 Michael Froomkin
- I think Qui Tam is unquestionably constitutional if only because of its ancient pedigree, and for many other reasons too. But the Supreme Court has flirted with saying that qui tam relators do not have standing, and Scalia & Co came close to doing it in the Lujan case. Justice Kennedy prevented it. May 27, 2026 Michael Froomkin
- Isn't assaulting a Senator a federal crime? Not that our craven US Attorneys would prosecute... May 27, 2026 Michael Froomkin
- This sort of well-funded sham support to undermine Democrats by promoting terrible candidates in primaries is just poisoning the (already rather polluted) well of democracy. It's a pity shame is on life support. OTOH, given Paxton, it seems as if the GOP can shoot itself without help. May 27, 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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