Digital age reinforces the need for judiciary to act as a bulwark against tyranny

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Crime and punishment roundup

Fiasco of Cliven Bundy prosecution points up that even those who break the law are entitled to a fair trial. “In the Bundy case, Judge Navarro slammed the FBI for withholding key evidence. Unfortunately, this seems to be standard procedure for the FBI.” [ James Bovard, USA Today ; Mark Joseph Stern, Slate ; earlier ] Don’t undermine structural protection Double Jeopardy Clause provides against prosecutorial overreach [ Jay Schweikert on Cato amicus brief in Currier v. Virginia] Case gives SCOTUS chance to reconsider “dual sovereignty” exception to Double Jeopardy Clause [ Ilya Shapiro on Cato certiorari brief in Gamble v. U.S.] “The room he was in happened to fall within 572 feet of a park and 872 feet of a school,” within the 1000 feet set by Tennessee law, result misery [ C.J. Ciaramella and Lauren Krisai, Reason (“Drug-free school zone laws are rarely if ever used to prosecute sales of drugs to minors. Such cases are largely a figment of our popular imagination.”)] Missed la...
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Commentary, Media Hits, and Events (March 5 – May 30)

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Here are my commentaries, media hits, and speaking engagements from March 5, 2018 through May 30, 2018. The bulk of these hits concern the CUNY protest, as well as the travel ban.   Articles Defiance and Surrender , 59 So. Texas L. Rev. (2018).   Commentary Conservative and Libertarian Lawyers in the Era of Trump , Lawfare (May 29, 2018). Dueling Cosmic Injunctions, DACA and Departmentalism , Lawfare (May 22, 2018). The Easy Way Forward on Trump v. Hawaii , Lawfare (Apr. 25, 2018). CUNY Law students heckled my talk on campus free speech , NY Daily News (Apr. 21, 2018). Students at CUNY Law Protested and Heckled My Lecture about Free Speech on Campus , National Review (Apr. 12, 2018). Testing California’s “Sanctuary Law,” Wall Street Journal (Mar. 13, 2018) (with Ilya Shapiro) ( Reproduction ). Analysis of IRAP v. Trump Part I: The Fourth Circuit’s Reliance on Pre- and Post-Inauguration Statement s, Lawfare (May 27, 2017). Analysis of IRAP v. Trump Part II: Th...
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Unions explore ways to dodge Janus in advance

In the pending Janus case, the Supreme Court may recognize a First Amendment right of government workers not to be obliged to pay mandatory union dues as a condition of employment, while not disturbing the situation for private sector employees, who have no such First Amendment right. Presto, an opening for union subterfuge involving pretend privatization of the government jobs: The unions’ version is to create and insert between government and employees sham “private” units to handle human resource and payroll functions and, thereby, assume the role of “legal employer.” Ironically, some of the first groups of unionized employees to be targeted for such a strategy are in sectors where public-employee status had itself been a subterfuge: independent home health care workers paid with state moneys who had only been declared public employees in the first place as a way to herd them into unions. With the new twist, these independent workers could thus have been reclassified twice: firs...
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