Dorf on Law

by Sherry F. Colb In my Verdict column for this week , I discuss the phenomenon of "Virtuous Pedophiles," a group of individuals who experience attraction to children but claim not to act on that attraction.  Their goal, in forming their web site and belonging to it, is to support each other in their efforts to remain pedophiles in desire only.  In my column, I discuss some of the issues raised by the formation of a community like this, issues that derive primarily from a skepticism one might have about the members' ability to refrain from ever acting on their desires.  By contrast to Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), virtuous pedophiles would have to be completely unwilling to tolerate relapse and recidivism. A congratulatory chip that says a man has been "30 days sober" from having last raped a child would be completely unacceptable. The question that arises, then, is--beyond the support of having a likeminded community committed to refraining from hurting childr...

by Neil H. Buchanan Extreme vitriol has become the coin of the American political realm in 2016.  The seeds of ugly political discourse that Newt Gingrich so deliberately planted and nurtured  have fully flowered.  Too many conservative politicians and pundits now regularly denounce candidates as "sick," "pathetic," and other lovely bits of invective.  Some (thankfully not many) people on the left respond in kind.  Naturally, the public takes notice and adapts its own dialogue to copy what it hears emanating from the political mosh pit. The interesting question is whether this low level of discourse has any impact on actual political outcomes, and even more importantly, on the policy choices that must be made after elections are over.  I do not have a definitive answer, but I suspect that things are getting worse, that this does affect elections, and that governing is becoming ever more difficult because so many people are willing to attack other people...

by Michael Dorf My latest Verdict column explores the policy and legal implications of the Dallas police force's use of a "bomb robot" to kill cop-killer Micah Johnson after negotiations for his surrender apparently broke down. I conclude that while some sorts of future bomb robots could raise difficult moral questions, the use of this one in this instance did not--at least qua bomb robot. In other words, if the police acted improperly in killing Johnson when they did, it was because they acted precipitously, not because they used a bomb robot. In this post, I want to pivot from the end of the Dallas massacre to its beginning. In the wake of the Dallas murders, most leaders--including some not normally known for their restraint--made responsible statements condemning Johnson's actions, while recognizing both that police use of force against people of color remains a serious problem and that Black Lives Matter and other protesters do not bear responsibility for Jo...

by Neil H. Buchanan FBI Director James B. Comey recommended last week, after an exhaustive investigation that went on for more than a year, that no charges be brought against Hillary Clinton for using a private email server for State Department business.  Immediately, the two political parties reverted to form. Although my focus here is on Democrats and liberals, it is necessary to note at least briefly that the Republicans' response is not only predictably unhinged but ultimately self-defeating. The Republicans, as I described a few days after Comey's announcement, immediately went into overreach mode.  They called a hearing to yell at Comey, another hearing to yell at Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and now (essentially at the invitation of Comey himself) they are requesting that the FBI start another investigation, this time hoping to prove that Clinton lied to Congress. It is obvious why they are doing all of this, but it is fascinating that they do not see how b...

by Michael Dorf According to a familiar gun-rights slogan, “when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.” The slogan is literally true. By definition people who possess guns in violation of the law are criminals. The power of the slogan, however, comes from the fact that such people are criminals not only because they are in violation of the law forbidding gun possession, but also because the sort of person who is willing to possess a gun in violation of the law is also likely to be willing to violate the law in other ways. He is inclined to commit other crimes, aided by his gun. Worse, because law-abiding citizens are unarmed in the world in which guns are outlawed, the gun-toting criminal is more likely to succeed in his various felonious acts because he need only evade the police. Ordinary unarmed civilians are no match for him. But there is a flip side to the guns/outlaws slogan. It might go like this: “When guns aren’t outlawed, outlaws blend in with ordinary citizens....

by Michael Dorf This week I have been attending and speaking at the somewhat misleadingly named Vegetarian Summerfest , a five-day annual vegan conference that brings together speakers on nutrition, ethics, the environment, and other aspects of the vegan movement. On Wednesday, I gave a talk titled Animal Rights as a Social Justice Movement, in which I focused on the lessons the animal rights movement can learn from the civil rights, women's rights, and LGBT rights movements. Yesterday, I gave a talk titled Is Death Harmful to Animals (Including Humans)? , in which I addressed an argument--traceable to the philosopher Epicurus--that death is not a harm. Although the argument originated in a discussion of how humans should live, it now features in debates over whether moral consideration for animals entails only that animals be treated humanely while being raised for food or whether moral consideration for animals entails refraining from most exploitation of animals altogether. T...

by Neil H. Buchanan Republicans can always be counted upon to take an advantage and push it too far.  And now, having decided that Donald Trump did not respond to the FBI's conclusions in the Clinton email inquiry in the rabid way that they would have preferred, here they go again. As I predicted in my Dorf on Law post two days ago discussing the all-too-foreseeable aftermath of the FBI's director's comments, any serious discussion of the issues is over, but "the non-serious discussion ... has barely begun."  Congressional Republicans, upset that the FBI did not recommend criminal charges against Hillary Clinton, have decided to drag Bureau director James Comey in front of a committee to explain himself. Meanwhile, House Speaker Paul Ryan, who has spent the last eight months shrinking before our very eyes, now says that Clinton should be barred from classified briefings.  He makes Trump look reasonable by comparison. Similarly, as I also anticipated, Ho...

by Sherry F. Colb In my Verdict column for this week , I wrote about the case of Birchfield v. North Dakota .  In Birchfield , the Supreme Court held that states may criminalize the refusal of a DWI (Driving While Impaired) arrestee to take a breathalyzer test, even absent a warrant, but they may not criminalize the refusal of a DWI arrestee to take a blood test, absent a warrant.  The basic logic of the decision rests on the intrusiveness of a blood test (in terms of both physical intrusion and informational exposure) relative to a breath test, coupled with the need for police to have some test that accurately reveals how much alcohol is in a DWI arrestee's system, given the significance of successfully prosecuting and thereby deterring driving while under the influence of alcohol.  In my column, I praise the Court's decision for the most part and take particular note of the fact that (1) the Court considered informational privacy as a relevant part of its assessment o...

by Neil H. Buchanan [Update: I have edited the fourth-to-last paragraph below to reflect that the Lewinsky scandal grew out of the Republicans' breathless pursuit of the Paula Jones case, not -- as I originally wrote here and in the linked March 2015 post -- out of the Whitewater investigation.] FBI director James Comey announced today that the Bureau would not recommend that charges be brought against Hillary Clinton for using a private email server during her years as Secretary of State. Although Comey's statement included what a New York Times reporter described as "an extraordinary public tongue-lashing," that tongue-lashing was actually rather mild: "'There is evidence to support a conclusion,' [Comey] said, that Mrs. Clinton 'should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation.'" That is hardly the stuff of political bumper stickers.  It is annoying to the Clinton campaign, no doubt, but in the l...

{Editor's Note: For this 4th of July, we have a guest post from William Hausdorff, who received his PhD in Biology from the Johns Hopkins University/National Institutes of Health and conducted post-doctoral research in biochemistry at Duke University.  For the past 25 years he has worked and published widely in the field of international public health, initially with the US Centers for Disease Control/US Agency for International Development in Washington DC and Cairo, Egypt, and more recently within the vaccine development divisions of two pharmaceutical companies.  At present he is a freelance consultant based in Brussels, Belgium. He has closely followed presidential politics since the days of McGovern/Nixon.  His special interest is in the intersection of science and society, dating from his undergraduate thesis on the health effects of Agent Orange.} The Curtain Opens I didn’t expect this. I didn’t expect that I would be given a series of real life lessons, here ...