4/26/1995: U.S. v. Lopez decided. The post Today in Supreme Court History: April 26, 1995 appeared first on Reason.com ..read more

Today the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Trump v. United States, the presidential immunity case. Much of the argument concerned issues left unresolved during the Trump presidency.  First, during the Mueller investigation, it was alleged that Trump violated the federal obstruction of justice statute. I, and others, countered that a criminal statute should only apply to the President if there is a "clear statement" to that effect. In other words, a general criminal statute should not be read to apply to the President.  Second, it is true that in 1995, the Office of Legal Counsel ..read more

(Miguel Juarez Lugo/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom) I and others have long argued that making legal migration easier is the best way to reduce disorder at the border. To a large extent, this basic Economics 101: if a much-coveted good or service is banned or severely restricted, that predictably creates a large black market. Thus, just as alcohol prohibition led to widespread bootlegging and illegal purchases from the likes of Al Capone, so severe migration restrictions predictably incentivize illegal migration. In a new paper for the Peterson Institute for International Economics, my George Mason Univers ..read more

Back in August 2023, I wrote about a potential Seventeenth Amendment conflict in Kentucky. Under Kentucky law, in the event of a Senate vacancy, the Governor could only appoint a temporary Senator of the same political party as the former Senator. The Kentucky Legislature has a Republican super-majority with a Democratic Governor. And the Governor indicated that he thought this constraint on his powers to appoint a Senator violated the Seventeenth Amendment. Vikram Amar suggested there were indeed problems. As history played out, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky remains in office, so this i ..read more

4/25/1938: United States v. Carolene Products decided. The post Today in Supreme Court History: April 25, 1938 appeared first on Reason.com ..read more

The post Thursday Open Thread appeared first on Reason.com ..read more

(NA) CBS News recently published an article reviewing the impressive success of the Uniting for Ukraine program, which allows Americans to sponsor Ukrainian migrants fleeing Russia's brutal invasion of their country. Ukrainians with such sponsorship can live and work legally in the US for up to two years. Since it began two years ago, the program has enabled some 187,000 Ukrainians to come to the United States, begin working and contributing to our economy, and all with little controversy or opposition: In April 2022, the Biden administration created an unprecedented program known as "Unitin ..read more

From today's decision by Judge Arun Subramanian (S.D.N.Y.) in Flynn v. CNN, Inc.: Plaintiffs Jack and Leslie Flynn have sued Defendant Cable News Network … under Rhode Island's false-light statute. The Flynns claim $75 million in damages. The entire dispute stems from a six-minute segment and, more specifically, the segment's use of a twosecond clip in which the Flynns appear. The Flynns say the segment falsely painted them as "QAnon followers." The parties agree that QAnon is "an American conspiracy movement that began in 2017." The conspiracy centers around "Q," who is supposedly "a high-ra ..read more

An excerpt from his column in yesterday's N.Y. Times: Last Thursday, in the music humanities class I teach at Columbia University, two students were giving an in-class presentation on the composer John Cage. His most famous piece is "4'33"," which directs us to listen in silence to surrounding noise for exactly that amount of time. I had to tell the students we could not listen to that piece that afternoon because the surrounding noise would have been not birds or people walking by in the hallway but infuriated chanting from protesters outside the building. Lately that noise has been almost c ..read more

In P.D. v. Sullivan (S.D.N.Y.), plaintiff alleges: New York State Mental Hygiene Law 9.39 is used to admit individuals to a hospital solely for emergency observation and evaluation as a person "alleged" to have a mental illness. An admission under MHL 9.39 is not a formal adjudication that an individual suffers from a mental disease or defect. NYS Office of Mental Health Transmission of Mental Health Records to NICS. New York Mental Hygiene Law 7.094 authorizes the Office of Mental Health (OMH) to collect, retain, modify, or transmit data or records for inclusion in the NICS system ..read more