Recently in Around the Web Category

• Is there nothing lawyers can't do? NSF-funded law review article divorced from reality: "Tort actions may impel industry to take voluntary steps to redesign chemical molecules ... to be less toxic." $366,785 of your tax dollars at work encouraging US courts to cripple American industry. [Oliver]
• Mac Donald on US v. Arizona argument. [Washington Examiner]
• Jeffrey Rosen still pushing bogus "Constitution in Exile" conspiracy theory. [Greve]
• Several amicus briefs in Rubashkin Supreme Court appeal. [ABAJ link roundup]
• Warren scandal grows; Penn Law also identified her as minority; despite claims from friends, minority status surely counted for something in Harvard Law hiring decision. [Zywicki @ Volokh; Jacobson; Coulter; Bader; Bader; Bedard; Popehat; earlier on POL]

• False criminal allegation leaves man unemployed, in hock to criminal defense attorneys. [NYDN]
• New York state health insurance mess. [McMahon @ Newsday]
• The Obama enemies list in action. [Strassel @WSJ]
• Has the new North Korean regime made a fatal "New-Coke"-like blunder in its internal marketing? A long read that's worth it. [38 North]

• Congratulations to my law school buddy, Ward Farnsworth, named dean of University of Texas Law School. [Statesman; Alcalde; UT; earlier at POL]
• Prosecution wraps their case against John Edwards; it seems to be built largely on embarrassing him. And why is it more illegal for Bunny Mellon to fund a mistress than a "BS-y antipoverty institute"? [Kaus; Hasen @ Slate; Politico]
• Ousted Senator Lugar pushing bad "Law of the Sea" treaty. [Rabkin @ CEI; Daily Caller; see also Tabin]
• Judge Richard Posner, who a decade ago argued that the First Amendment protects nude dancing, would not extend it to the right of citizens to record police officers. Fortunately, the other two judges on the panel disagreed. [Volokh; ACLU v. Alvarez]

• RIP Vidal Sassoon, an early challenger to bogus occupational licensing requirements. [Virginia Postrel in 1998]
• California rejects reform against disability filing mills, though ATRA coverage incorrectly calls it a question under the federal ADA.
• Who says we're not wealthier than 40 years ago? Even on a per capita scale, this is a remarkable increase about 50%. [Census Bureau via @thestalwart]
• Lincoln didn't invent Facebook. [Atlantic]

• John Yoo wins in the Ninth Circuit against Jose Padilla, no thanks to the Obama administration. [Yoo @ WSJ; Elwood @ Volokh; Fed Soc; Padilla v. Yoo]
• Third Circuit reaffirms conviction in United States v. Bond internationalizing local poisoning trial. [Greve; Adler @ Volokh]

• Illinois trial lawyers still trying for multiple bites at the apple in long-closed "light cigarettes" class action. [LNL; earlier]
• More on Sixth Circuit affirmance of Kentucky fen-phen convictions. [Erichson (who testified); NLJ]
• The problem with trial by formula. [Trask]
• Dealbook/NY Times on litigation investment firms.
• Predictive coding, which could potentially reduce the dramatic costs of e-discovery (and thus the ability of plaintiffs to use discovery as legal extortion) gets a chance. [Beck; RAND; Fulton County Daily Report with the view of the legal cartel]

• The cy pres problem is far from entirely fixed: a California-state consumer-fraud lawsuit against Acura resulted in a $94,500 award to the Make-a-Wish foundation that the plaintiffs' lawyers treat as their own personal donation. [press release; more on cy pres]
• A reminder: the gender-pay gap reflects career choices by men and women, rather than employer discrimination. In urban areas, single women in their 20s make $1.05 for every $1 single men in their 20s make, a number that goes up to $1.20 for "certain cities with a heavily knowledge-driven employment base." Law isn't going to "fix" this without top-down commands requiring women to prefer work to staying at home, a cure one would think is worse than the supposed disease. [Hymowitz @ WSJ; Lowry; Hymowitz @ WSJ]
• California appellate court awards punitive damages based on defendant's denial of wrongdoing. [Cutting]
• Disparate impact banking defendants fight back. [Bank Lawyer's Blog; earlier]
• N.D. California federal court rejects forum-shopping national class action. [Trask]
• Adam White on David Dorsen on the great Judge Henry Friendly. [WSJ (h/t D.R.)]
• "The GSA scandal obscures a broader problem: the shell game of federal largesse." [Mac Donald @ City Journal]
• Illinois, pension basket case. [Barro @ Bloomberg]
• Speaking of riots, Theodore Dalrymple bemoans the state of the UK. [City Journal; WSJ]
• Don't forget: you can follow us on Twitter: @pointoflaw; @tedfrank.

• Epstein on DOJ lawsuit against Apple. [Epstein @ Ricochet]
• Replaying the Duke Lacrosse case at the New York Times with Patrick Witt's reputation; and why isn't there more of a scandal with Yale's abuse of an already abusive process? [KC Johnson @ MTC]
• The federal prosecutorial overuse of §1001 charges, turning minor civil regulatory violations into federal felonies. [WSJ]
• PLF speaks out against the ridiculous Toyota sudden acceleration class action litigation in the Ninth Circuit. [PLF]
• Lawsuit against Iowa government alleges subconscious discrimination based on disparate impact, using theory rejected in Wal-Mart v. Dukes. [Overlawyered; Sailer]

• Ohio Supreme Court urged to review abusive certification of class action in Cullen v. State Farm, where, speaking of Wal-Mart v. Dukes, lower courts disregarded individualized defenses. [WLF; ATRA; WLF brief]
• Why the Supreme Court should curb the Alien Tort Statute. [Bellinger @ WaPo; Overlawyered; related @ Volokh]
• New Hampshire "early offer" statute proposed. [TortsProf; SeaCoast Online]
• Nearly half of the Warren Court justices were infrequent questioners (and Ruth Bader Ginsburg has fallen asleep during oral argument), but that Clarence Thomas is uniquely quiet among the historically unusually hot bench of the current Supreme Court is somehow evidence that he's a bad justice. [Drumm via Alkon]
• Remember Obama Girl? She's shilling for a Kentucky Social Security disability lawyer now. [YouTube (h/t R.U.)]

Richard Epstein discusses his new book Design for Liberty at LLL.

It happens so often I should just create a keystroke macro to save time blogging about it, but, yes, once again, Dahlia Lithwick got something embarrassingly wrong when trying to criticize a right-winger, this time distorting a blog post by Randy Barnett about Justice Scalia to set up a future unfair attack on Scalia if he doesn't vote on the Obamacare litigation the way Lithwick wants him to. And Ed Whelan dismantles Lithwick's typically shallow analysis of the Obamacare litigation, where she, inter alia, misrepresents the arguments of lower-court judges on the litigation. Earlier.

• Who says Wal-Mart v. Dukes ends class actions—or even employment class actions? Certainly not Richard Posner. [McReynolds v. Merrill Lynch; Trask; Karlsgodt; Seyfarth Shaw; Baker Hostetler; WSJ Law Blog; earlier at POL]

• Richard Epstein on safety nets: "These can cushion individuals from shock in the short run, but the balance is not sustainable in the long run. Too many people climb into the nets, leaving too few productive individuals to support them." [Hoover]
• Charity auction for Friars Club doesn't deliver on the promised goods of Oscar tickets, so not only refunds purchasers their $27,000 purchase price, but offered them first-class roundtrip airfare and a luxury hotel stay. Not good enough, say plaintiffs, who hire BigLaw firm to sue for $250,000 in damages including "intentional infliction of emotional distress." [Am Law Daily]
• Mazie Slater attempt to free ride on class action ex-partners litigated doesn't fly with New Jersey federal judge. [Lawyers USA]
• EDNY magistrate shoots down defendant's request for plaintiff's log-in information for Facebook and other social network sites. Such an overbroad request and intrusion on privacy can deter plaintiffs from bringing legitimate actions, so this is a good ruling. But let's see judges recognize the problems caused by overbreadth in the other direction. [Turkewitz]
• Coverage of Chevron/Ecuador $18 billion Lago Agrio judgment. Theodore Boutros notes that the ability of Ecaudorian President Rafael Correa to silence a critical newspaper with a criminal libel prosecution demonstrates the corrupt judiciary of Ecuador. [Boutros @ Forbes; Mastro video interview @ WSJ; California Lawyer]
• For all the complaints about working conditions at Foxconn (which do seem very unpleasant), Chinese workers prefer it to other alternatives. [Atlantic]
• The Landlord's Tale. [CJ]

Heather Mac Donald and Kay Hymowitz remember the great social scientist, who wrote widely for City Journal. Wilson's annual lecture at the Manhattan Institute is irreplaceable. His last piece for the Washington Post in January was a model of clarity taking down the complaints about supposedly growing inequality; in 2007, he joined POL in criticizing the Hurricane Katrina insurance litigation in the Wall Street Journal.

• Loser pays bills pending in New Hampshire and Tennessee. [Torts Prof]
• Plaintiffs rely on fraud-on-the-market theory to get class certification in securities case, but, when it comes to avoiding summary judgment, rely on expert who contradicts the theory. Federal judge correctly doesn't buy it. [Roberts]

• Richard Epstein on health-care markets. [Kirkendall]
• Unseatbelted teenager dies when falling out of moving car while vomiting; mother and Maryland AG blame Four Loko; press uses photo of boy when he was eleven. [Baltimore Sun via WTOP]
• Buried lede: federal government hounds 62-year-old to suicide for regulatory infractions. [NYT]
• Don't try to open a business in San Francisco unless you're already rich. [Wright]
• Accusation: paternalistic federal prosecutors lax in charging crimes on Indian reservations. Native Americans should be given more self-governance rights. [NYT]
• A year after Tucson, real-world effects of Koch demonization by Left. Only coverage is local. [Wichita Eagle]
• What media bias? Double-standards for Santorum. I'm not a Santorum fan (a big-government social conservative is the worst of all possible worlds to me), but I don't understand why he can't be treated fairly. [WSJ]
• California's demographic revolution. [Mac Donald @ City Journal]