Law & Society Blog

It is common practice in university departments to evaluate texts by way of “the principle of charity”. Some formulations of this principle make for fantastic additions to our analytical toolkit(s). Other formulations are mere distractions, and they waste our time.
It is misleading in the first place to speak of one single principle of charity, as […]

Glenn Greenwald argues:
The basic mechanics of American democracy, imperfect and defective though they may be, still function. Chronic defeatists and conspiracy theorists — well-intentioned though they may be — need to re-evaluate their defeatism and conspiracy theories in light of this rather compelling evidence which undermines them (a refusal to re-evaluate one’s beliefs in light […]

Here is an inspired cartoon by the Australian artist Bill Leak.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003345862
I don’t really want to lower the tone of this blog, but I have to say, this story is revolting at a level I find hard to express.
Greg Mitchell reports:
The true stories of how American troops, killed in Iraq, actually died keep spilling out this week. On Tuesday, we explored the case of Kenny Stanton […]

Geoff Manne at Truth on the Market offers the following insightful comment, extending a discussion about the proportionality of Skilling’s sentence compared to sentences meted out in the so-called “war on drugs.”The problem in the drug war context is quite different, at least for me…. The question there, however, is how to do so optimally, given the staggering social costs of over-deterrence; the risk of self-aggrandizing, politically-motivated, error-prone prosecution; and the reality of pretty good, existing agency-cost controls.

The ACLU has challenged the “Child Online Protection Act” (COPA), which would impose draconian criminal sanctions, with penalties of up to $50,000 per day and up to six months imprisonment, for online material acknowledged as valuable for adults but judged “harmful to minors.” Testifying on Monday, October 23, will be Rufus Griscom, founder and publisher of Nerve.com, Joan Walsh, editor-in-chief of the online magazine Salon.com and Dr. Lorrie Faith Cranor, an Associate Research Professor in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University.

One day, about a month into the trial, following a grueling cross-examination by the defense attorney of a witness from the CIA, which clearly harmed the government’s case, the federal prosecutors asked the judge for a closed hearing. In the closed hearing, with only the lawyers and the judge present, the lead prosecutor, from the U.S. Department of Justice, requested that the judge hold the defense attorney in criminal contempt for asking questions of the CIA witnesses that elicited prohibited classified information in open court.

In reply to a recent thread, Cosim had two pressing concerns over the ethics and legal philosophy behind free speech.

(1) “I’m not sure why the law should tolerate racist opinions; general propositions don’t decide concrete cases. For example, to take the Brandenburg case from American constitutional law, Klansmen spoke about sending “€˜the Black back to […]

Scott Horton has written a powerful essay on the moral and legal responsibilities of lawyers in a time of war.

Even though the passage of the NSA surveillance bill was stalled at the last minute, it is pretty clear that the only reliable means of ensuring privacy is to rely on technology, not on the law. For example, here is an excerpt from the privacy policy one of the leading providers of anonymous internet access:[W]e disclose personal information only in the good faith belief that we are required to do so by law, or that doing so is reasonably necessary to: comply with legal process; respond to any spamming and related abuses of netiquette claims; or protect the rights, property or personal safety of [our co, our customers, or the public.