Dorf on Law

In response to my post about how a social worker whose job is to discern the wishes of people who die alone probably killed the creatures the deceased cared about most (her dogs), I received an email pointing me to another horror story, this one perpetrated by the Department of Children's and Family Services (or whatever DCFS stands for) in Chicago against the parents of a baby with unexplained broken ribs. It makes riveting reading on the Lag Liv blog , authored by a University of Chicago law student and mother. (Go to the October Archives and start reading at Oct. 5. The saga continues for months.) To make a long story short, this is pretty clearly a case of bureaucrats run amok. A doctor and various social workers conclude that the baby's injuries are the result of abuse at his parents' hands---based only on the injuries---and then stick to that conclusion even as the evidence mounts that the injuries arose during delivery. But read it for yourself for the full ho...

In my role as amateur film critic, here are a few thoughts inspired by Charlie Wilson's War . "Based on" a true story, the film depicts one Congressman's successful effort to gain covert funding for supplying sophisticated weaponry to the mujahideen forces in Afghanistan fighting the Soviet occupation. In retrospect, of course, U.S. backing of the mujahideen has been cited as an example of the law of unintended consequences: The very people we armed and trained to fight the Russians in the 1980s became the Taliban and al Qaeda in the 1990s, turning their attention (at least in the case of the latter) to the U.S. Charlie Wilson's War lets Congressman Wilson himself off the hook for this particular bit of blowback by showing Wilson, after the defeat of the Soviets, vigorously but vainly campaigning for aid to rebuild Afghanistan's civilian infrastructure. Instead, we ignored Afghanistan as it descended into civil war and worse. The lesson, it seems, is that ...

From Rawalpindi comes shocking news that Benazir Bhutto has been assassinated. Many details remain uncertain, but the horrific basics are clear enough: Benazir Bhutto was killed at a PPP rally in Rawalpindi [along with at least 30 others]. . . . The election rally, with “foolproof security”, was held at Liaqut Bagh - a site which had already seen the assassination of another Prime Minister of Pakistan, Liaqut Ali Khan. There were earlier reports of security threats on her rally - similar reports were issued before the suicide attack on her in October. [ link ] Sadly, the South Asian subcontinent has been down this road before. More than once , in fact -- but one moment stands out as eerily reminiscent: [An] heir to a miraculous name, disappeared in a fiendish conjurer's trick: amid the theatrics of an electioneering stop, and in the puff of smoke from a bomb... Apart from the egregious act of violence that killed [the former Prime Minister], the bloody shirt of extremism and commun...

This past week, my favorite radio show, This American Life , focused on the theme of "home alone," with stories about people living alone (episode here ). The first of three segments considered people who lived alone and then died alone, with most of the segment taken up with the saga of an elderly woman named Mary Ann. Lying on death's door in the hospital, Mary Ann calls the one human being she barely knows---the woman who delivers her prescriptions from the pharmacy---to plead that she feed her two dogs, whom Mary Ann has left tied up in her home. Mary Ann tells the woman that she will reimburse her for the costs, saying the dogs are all she has. Days later, Mary Ann dies. Emily, the social worker whose job it is to piece together Mary Ann's life sufficiently to arrange a burial and the disposal of her estate, arrives at the house and the very first thing Emily does is to call animal control to take away the dogs, presumably to a municipal shelter where they a...

Who says tax law isn't sexy? TaxProf Blogger (and U Cincinnati Law School Associate Dean) Paul Caron has posted an item picked up from the AP about a new Texas tax of $5/customer on the patrons of strip clubs, dubbed by wags the "pole tax." The AP story, quoted in turn by Caron, states: Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law expert at George Washington University, said the Texas tax goes too far. "It seems clear legislators are targeting strip clubs because they're unpopular," Turley said. "Laws like this would expose any unpopular industry to punitive taxes. It could be abortion clinics." Let's give Professor Turley the benefit of the doubt here and assume that he was quoted out of context. There is, after all, nothing per se unconstitutional about legislators targeting for taxation those activities that are unpopular. So-called "vice" taxes on tobacco products, alcohol and other products or services the state wishes to discou...

And so with that once-innocuous expression, I throw my support in the War on Christmas to the side of the unholy warriors. Okay, I'll be among the first to admit that the whole concept of a War on Christmas is absurd. The notion that religious Christians in 2007 America are an oppressed group is mostly a clever political strategy for a powerful group to claim the mantle of victimization. That said, in a country of 300 million people and almost as many bloggers, one can always find someone to say something legitimately hurtful. Thus, when I googled "war on Christmas 2007," the first entry to pop up was this blog entry from something called the Atheist Revolution blog . Tooling around a bit on the blog, I concluded that its author is a reasonable person who does not mean to deliberately insult religious people. Nonetheless, the "war on Christmas" entry does contain the following addressed to a local school board member who defended the posting of "Merry...

In what probably should be chalked into the ‘not too surprising’ column, the Bush administration last night rejected California’s request for permission to regulate cars as sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions under Clean Air Act Section 209. Under 209, states are preempted from regulating cars as sources of pollution with one exception. CA can do so if it gets a waiver from EPA (CA petitioned for the waiver in December 2005). The process is laid out in Section 209(b) of the Clean Air Act. The conventional wisdom was that EPA had little room to deny the waiver in this case. Under the Act, it was free to do so if (A) anything in the CA petition was “arbitrary and capricious” (the California Air Resources Board actually put together pretty solid arguments); (B) CA did not need State standards to meet “compelling and extraordinary conditions” (more on this below); or (C) the CA standards and accompanying enforcement procedures were not “consistent” with the federal regulation of ...

In last week's New Yorker magazine, Malcolm Gladwell reviewed James Flynn's new book, What Is Intelligence , in which Flynn provides strong evidence that average I.Q. is increasing over time worldwide. (Review here , while the link lasts.) Both Flynn and Gladwell use Flynn's data to debunk claims about inherent racial differences in IQ and, more broadly, to question what exactly it is that IQ tests measure. What IQ tests measure, they both say, is the capacity for abstract as opposed to concrete reasoning, a capacity that is progressively developed and rewarded as societies move from pre-industrial to industrial to post-industrial. Thus differences between populations within societies can be accounted for by socio-economic conditions without any need to posit inherent and inheritable differences. Meanwhile, in this week's New Yorker, Caleb Crain writes an essay about the global decline of reading, attributable largely to the increase of tv viewing. (The data show ...

Suppose an FBI agent approached a generally law-abiding citizen that I'll call "Shmerizon," and the following conversation ensued. FBI Agent : I'd like you to whack Shmarlos the Shmackal. He's a terrorist. Shmerizon : By whack, you mean . . . . FBI Agent : You know what I mean. Shmerizon : Uhm, isn't that illegal? FBI Agent : I'm with the government. If I tell you to do this in the interest of national security, it's not illegal. Understand? Shmerizon proceeds to kill Shmarlos, even though another citizen, Shmest, when presented with the same demand, refused to act without a court order. Now suppose that instead of prosecuting Shmerizon for murder, and without denying that what Shmerizon did was clearly illegal at the time notwithstanding the FBI Agent's statements, the government decides that Shermizon should be given retroactive immunity for the murder because he shouldn't be punished for helping out his government in time of need. Even...

Intrigued? Check out my FindLaw column on the topic here . Feeling cheated by the absence of a full blog post from me today? Sorry about that. At least the column is a bit longer than usual. And you can read Jamie's post , just below. I've got exams to grade. Posted by Mike Dorf