I have grave misgivings about the red flag system as presented in the linked piece because it operates from the belief that any mental health issues are dangerous. The first example given of how this system would work is with the Virginia Tech shooter.
In middle school ,the shooter was diagnosed and treated for depression and selective mutism (severe social anxiety). That diagnosis does not mean he was dangerous and to red flag people who've received a diagnosis or sought treatment for any mental health condition is bad mental health policy.
I also think the nature of the judicial interdiction is not understood. Some college students reported strange behavior and stalking. The school notified the district attorney of their concerns, and based upon the red flags noted by the college students, a judge issued a temporary detention order solely for the purpose of determining whether he was dangerous to himself or others due to a mental illness. The order is like a warrant, it indicates credible evidence existed for a limited deprivation of his rights to facilitate a mental health examination, but its not conclusive. The police served him with the order and took him to the mental health facility. An independent psychiatrists found that he was not a danger, but that he was mentally ill (unspecified mood disorder) and should be receiving outpatient care. The shooter denied that he was depressed or suicidal and admitted he was taking Ativan for anxiety. The judge discharged him with an order that he seek outpatient care, which he did once. Psychiatrists aren't mind readers. This seems like a reasonably thorough process that is not going to be an iron-clad protection against mass shootings.
His mental health declined over the next year when he purchased his first gun. The main thing I saw when I revisited this that I wish would have happened is that the college notified the parents. This is a dicey issue, but these parents were supportive of him getting help when he lived at home.
I'm not sure what Red Flag laws are supposed to accomplish that existing mental health laws already provide. I was pointed to a David French piece this morning and it comes across as being more gun specific and a cynic might conclude its merely intended to provide an alternative path from gun control regulation.
Traditionally, a person could lose freedom and property if mental illness made one a danger to oneself or others. People shouldn't be deterred from seeking mental health care by laws that fail to make that distinction.
Illinois just passed a law banning ghost guns made with 3D printers or online parts. Apparently the number of gun violence incidents involving ghost guns in the state is doubling every year and expected to continue. Owners have six months to get them serialized. I wonder how many will comply? How effective is regulation of gun transactions in a brave new world where everyone is a producer?
A convict is supposed to raise issues in the state court system before taking it to federal court. That requirement originates from a Clinton era statute that limited habeas corpus petitions at a point in time when the federal courts were getting inundated with repeat filings.
Here, the prisoner appealed his conviction through the state court system and his post-conviction attorney did not raise an ineffectiveness of trial counsel claim. The SCOTUS says that the statute prevents the federal court system from reviewing new evidence on the issue. The dissent says there is a judge-made exception when ineffective counsel is given as an excuse. The majority (which includes justices that helped make the exception) say that the exception isn't that broad.
Nah, the federal Civil Rights Act of 1866 implicitly banned racial-endogamy laws, and that Act was subsequently converted into the 14th Amendment. For the next several years, racial-endogamy laws were repealed, went unenforced, and were voided by judges at least where Republicans held sway, including in Southern states during the early stages of Reconstruction. When the Supreme Court began to eviscerate the Fourteenth Amendment, beginning with the 1873 Slaughter-House cases, the tide retreated.
I'm not down for grafting a libertarian check on legislation to be administered by the recruiting class of the Harvard/Yale law school. I think the main issue in the country right now is the difficulty of legislating, both at the state and federal level Having an additional screen to maximize individual self-actualization won't make any of that easier.
I don't know whether abortion would pass Burt's test, it looks like it depends on who is on the Court. I think its more clear that it would pass the "Lochner test": "Is this a fair, reasonable and appropriate exercise of the police power of the State, or is it an unreasonable, unnecessary and arbitrary interference with the right of the individual to his personal liberty or to enter into those contracts in relation to labor which may seem to him appropriate or necessary for the support of himself and his family?"
Right, they did a temporary fix that they don't want to make permanent; not clear what it is. From my perspective, it's interesting that plaintiffs received an award of more money than the property is worth. A significant portion of the judgment is interest on the damages at a rate of 12% per annum from when the complaint was filed, something like $1.3M. That seems to be a punitive rate, well beyond prevailing market rates.
Now we’re doing some serious research. A little googling found a story which explained that the homeowners built a wall on their property but it didn’t work, they consulted golf course experts who said a net could not be constructed high enough, and since the verdict was entered the club has reconfigured the 15th which has stopped the balls.
The story also mentions that an injunction was entered, so I wonder if the damage award is bifurcated between (1) past injury and (2) future injury if the club does not take steps to stop golf balls. In any case, they are appealing.
Now we're doing some serious research. A little googling found a story which explained that the homeowners built a wall on their property but it didn't work, they consulted golf experts who said a net could not be constructed high enough, and since the verdict was entered the club has reconfigured the 15th which has stopped the balls.
The story also mentions that an injunction was entered, so I wonder if the damage award is bifurcated between past injury and future injury if the club does not take steps to stop golf balls.
Basically Boston was too lazy in allowing any flag to fly and then not allowing this one because they thought they would get sued. They needed to establish limits in advance so that the flag pole could not be considered a public forum. Texas was not required to provide specialty plates to the Sons of Confederate Veterans because those plates were subject to review by a government agency that found the design offensive.
Walking through the process: after briefs are filed and oral arguments heard, the Justices meet in private and vote on _how_ they would decide the case. I don't think this is a simple up-or-down vote, but a thumbprint of the legal framework they believe controls the outcome. I assume five Justices voted more or less to overrule Casey. Unless Roberts says, me too!, I'm not sure how gets to be in such a majority and control the opinion.
What Roberts can try to do is cobble together a dissenting framework that appeals to enough of the (initial) majority and minority to constitute the eventual majority opinion. I think Emma had a piece on an Alito dissent earlier this year that got some (IMHO unfair) criticism in the comments for being too long for a dissent. I think Alito clearly must have had the majority at conference and lost it either because his written opinion raised second thoughts or the dissent rose the challenge of persuading a new majority.
Roberts does not control the decision assignment when he is not in the majority. That power goes to the senior Justice in the majority, which presumably is Thomas, who presumably delegated it to Alito.
I don't think Thomas agrees with the Court's stare decisis jurisprudence, so would be unlikely to want to evaluate it to this case. He probably assigned it knowing that he couldn't keep a majority with the way he would write it.
My own intuition is that the leak came the furthest away in connection to the Justices possible. The last leak in 1979 was from someone in the government publishing office.
The Democrats are running a mask hypocrite in my newly gerrymandered Congressional district. I expect to see a lot of picture of her without a mask at a Chicago party earlier this year with other Chicago pols. Also underlines that she doesn't live in the district, she's a Chicago carpetbagger.
We're flying for the first time since the pandemic in a few weeks and my wife is glad they're dropping the mandate cause she would lose her sh!t if the flight got delayed by a freedom mutiny. She'll wear her mask, I'll probably wear mine, but I'm sort of disappointed because I was curious to watch how many wore their masks, particularly those who wear it until seated, when they open a bag of nuts for the rest of the flight. People!
I think sex education in the U.S. is something more than the anatomical coverage of human reproduction in biology class. It's typically taught in health class with issues of sexually transmitted disease, contraception, consent, good/bad touching and different people you can see for support. It would be addressed with issues like healthy diet, exercise, drugs, importance of sleep, cleanliness, etc.
In my state, parents can opt their child out of sex ed., and local school districts are generally not required to follow state programming in this area, so long as they offer sex ed. and its medically accurate.
While I agree wholly with the general sentiments here, I feel obligated to point out that Lincoln didn't appoint Johnson, he was selected by Republican nominating convention in Baltimore in May of 1864. Lincoln's directions to his Secretary sent to observe the proceedings was that he officially had no preference in the nomination as all of the potential nominees and their supporters are his friends and allies and did not want to alienate any. It was the sentiment of the delegates that they needed a War Democrat on the ticket to be successful in the general election, and they came around to Johnson probably because he was the most famous that fit the requirements.
For awhile in my state, if you were registered through the federal motor vehicle law, you got a federal only ballot. I think a state law was passed to incorporate federal registration, but I'm not sure since it doesn't pertain to me.
In terms of predictions, I remember that just before Russia invaded Georgia, a poll of international relations scholars predicted Russia would not invade Georgia that year. This was true across all major schools of international relations (realist, liberal, constructivism), but not true for those who identified as Russian specific IR scholars. At least in those one example, it seems like country-specific knowledge, presumably its history, led to better predictions.
Qualified African-American female candidates are probably rarer than conservative candidates, particularly as Republicans will generally get to appoint/elect candidates 50% of the time across the country. The FedSoc is sorting out the "squishies" like Souter and making sure their candidates qualifications cannot be questioned. I don't think Barrett's record for example is ambiguous, at least as to what the FedSoc values.
If there had been an analogous concerted movement to get a black female on the SCOTUS (or a broader aim at proportionate representation on the Court), Jackson (and others) would have been appointed to the D.C. Circuit earlier and have more of a record. Not that I think that it would make sense to create such a narrow infrastructure.
Jackson's not particularly young, more like average. The average age of the current justices when appointed is 50.9, and she will be be 51 in September. For comparison, Amy Coney Barrett was 48 years old when appointed and had written 89 opinions as a circuit court justice.
I don't think this is about having a sparse record. The conservative legal bar is engaged in getting numerous conservative jurists into positions where their qualifications can't be questioned. Court of Appeals justice is the position most like Supreme Court justice. Serving as an Appeals Justice provides an opportunity for conservatives legalist to evaluate their conservative legal bona fides. There is not similar support for African-American female lawyers.
On closer look (after reading your link to the Lawrence Applebee's), the executive works for a franchisee that operates 47 Applebee's, probably around Kansas City. So I don't think my take is good, but Rob Gill is misleading people by saying this guy is from Applebee's.
Applebee's is a franchise, and I suspect the actual audience for this e-mail was its real customers, the franchisees to whom Applebee's sells its food and brand. Those customers were hurt by loss of demand from the pandemic and subsequent trouble with finding/keeping labor. They are presumably cancelling or not renewing their franchise agreements.
The Applebee's closest to me closed this week, and directed customers to one on the other side of town. The e-mail strikes me as telling franchisees that things are going to get better, keep buying our stuff. The notion that higher gas prices depresses wages seems like pass the bong in the dorm kind of thinking.
I guess it depends on who was wasting whose time & money. The sentence included $120,106 in restitution to the City for wasted time investigating the hoax. I don't begrudge trying to get money back, at the very least to deter future schemes.
I think my previous thoughts were that the State's Attorney had screwed over Smollett by not settling through some alternative program, but these would have required acceptance of responsibility, even if impaired by drugs or mental health issues. I don't think I realized how much media Smollett was generating in his quest to be a civil rights icon.
If I'm understanding the issues in this appeal, they are not going to exonerate him from the public's perspective. He went to trial and was convicted. (I'm surprised that his lawyers didn't appeal the double jeopardy issue before trial for this reason) We haven't heard the last of Jussie Smollett.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Mass Shootings, Rampages, And Cascades of Failure”
I have grave misgivings about the red flag system as presented in the linked piece because it operates from the belief that any mental health issues are dangerous. The first example given of how this system would work is with the Virginia Tech shooter.
In middle school ,the shooter was diagnosed and treated for depression and selective mutism (severe social anxiety). That diagnosis does not mean he was dangerous and to red flag people who've received a diagnosis or sought treatment for any mental health condition is bad mental health policy.
I also think the nature of the judicial interdiction is not understood. Some college students reported strange behavior and stalking. The school notified the district attorney of their concerns, and based upon the red flags noted by the college students, a judge issued a temporary detention order solely for the purpose of determining whether he was dangerous to himself or others due to a mental illness. The order is like a warrant, it indicates credible evidence existed for a limited deprivation of his rights to facilitate a mental health examination, but its not conclusive. The police served him with the order and took him to the mental health facility. An independent psychiatrists found that he was not a danger, but that he was mentally ill (unspecified mood disorder) and should be receiving outpatient care. The shooter denied that he was depressed or suicidal and admitted he was taking Ativan for anxiety. The judge discharged him with an order that he seek outpatient care, which he did once. Psychiatrists aren't mind readers. This seems like a reasonably thorough process that is not going to be an iron-clad protection against mass shootings.
His mental health declined over the next year when he purchased his first gun. The main thing I saw when I revisited this that I wish would have happened is that the college notified the parents. This is a dicey issue, but these parents were supportive of him getting help when he lived at home.
On “So Let’s Pass Some Laws and Make The World A Better Place”
I'm not sure what Red Flag laws are supposed to accomplish that existing mental health laws already provide. I was pointed to a David French piece this morning and it comes across as being more gun specific and a cynic might conclude its merely intended to provide an alternative path from gun control regulation.
Traditionally, a person could lose freedom and property if mental illness made one a danger to oneself or others. People shouldn't be deterred from seeking mental health care by laws that fail to make that distinction.
"
Illinois just passed a law banning ghost guns made with 3D printers or online parts. Apparently the number of gun violence incidents involving ghost guns in the state is doubling every year and expected to continue. Owners have six months to get them serialized. I wonder how many will comply? How effective is regulation of gun transactions in a brave new world where everyone is a producer?
On “Supreme Court Ruling Makes Overturning Convictions For Representation Harder”
A convict is supposed to raise issues in the state court system before taking it to federal court. That requirement originates from a Clinton era statute that limited habeas corpus petitions at a point in time when the federal courts were getting inundated with repeat filings.
Here, the prisoner appealed his conviction through the state court system and his post-conviction attorney did not raise an ineffectiveness of trial counsel claim. The SCOTUS says that the statute prevents the federal court system from reviewing new evidence on the issue. The dissent says there is a judge-made exception when ineffective counsel is given as an excuse. The majority (which includes justices that helped make the exception) say that the exception isn't that broad.
On “Capacious, Ordered Liberty”
Nah, the federal Civil Rights Act of 1866 implicitly banned racial-endogamy laws, and that Act was subsequently converted into the 14th Amendment. For the next several years, racial-endogamy laws were repealed, went unenforced, and were voided by judges at least where Republicans held sway, including in Southern states during the early stages of Reconstruction. When the Supreme Court began to eviscerate the Fourteenth Amendment, beginning with the 1873 Slaughter-House cases, the tide retreated.
"
I'm not down for grafting a libertarian check on legislation to be administered by the recruiting class of the Harvard/Yale law school. I think the main issue in the country right now is the difficulty of legislating, both at the state and federal level Having an additional screen to maximize individual self-actualization won't make any of that easier.
I don't know whether abortion would pass Burt's test, it looks like it depends on who is on the Court. I think its more clear that it would pass the "Lochner test": "Is this a fair, reasonable and appropriate exercise of the police power of the State, or is it an unreasonable, unnecessary and arbitrary interference with the right of the individual to his personal liberty or to enter into those contracts in relation to labor which may seem to him appropriate or necessary for the support of himself and his family?"
On “Wednesday Writs: First Amendment in Shurtleff v Boston”
Right, they did a temporary fix that they don't want to make permanent; not clear what it is. From my perspective, it's interesting that plaintiffs received an award of more money than the property is worth. A significant portion of the judgment is interest on the damages at a rate of 12% per annum from when the complaint was filed, something like $1.3M. That seems to be a punitive rate, well beyond prevailing market rates.
"
Now we’re doing some serious research. A little googling found a story which explained that the homeowners built a wall on their property but it didn’t work, they consulted golf course experts who said a net could not be constructed high enough, and since the verdict was entered the club has reconfigured the 15th which has stopped the balls.
The story also mentions that an injunction was entered, so I wonder if the damage award is bifurcated between (1) past injury and (2) future injury if the club does not take steps to stop golf balls. In any case, they are appealing.
[link deleted]
"
Now we're doing some serious research. A little googling found a story which explained that the homeowners built a wall on their property but it didn't work, they consulted golf experts who said a net could not be constructed high enough, and since the verdict was entered the club has reconfigured the 15th which has stopped the balls.
https://www.fox29.com/news/family-wins-nearly-5m-lawsuit-against-country-club-after-home-pelted-with-golf-balls-for-years
The story also mentions that an injunction was entered, so I wonder if the damage award is bifurcated between past injury and future injury if the club does not take steps to stop golf balls.
"
There is a legal defense of "coming to the nuisance" that would probably apply here in many states.
"
Basically Boston was too lazy in allowing any flag to fly and then not allowing this one because they thought they would get sued. They needed to establish limits in advance so that the flag pole could not be considered a public forum. Texas was not required to provide specialty plates to the Sons of Confederate Veterans because those plates were subject to review by a government agency that found the design offensive.
"
Did one of the opinions leave a sour taste in your mouth?
On “Summing Up Justice Alito’s Draft Opinion in Dobbs v Mississippi”
Walking through the process: after briefs are filed and oral arguments heard, the Justices meet in private and vote on _how_ they would decide the case. I don't think this is a simple up-or-down vote, but a thumbprint of the legal framework they believe controls the outcome. I assume five Justices voted more or less to overrule Casey. Unless Roberts says, me too!, I'm not sure how gets to be in such a majority and control the opinion.
What Roberts can try to do is cobble together a dissenting framework that appeals to enough of the (initial) majority and minority to constitute the eventual majority opinion. I think Emma had a piece on an Alito dissent earlier this year that got some (IMHO unfair) criticism in the comments for being too long for a dissent. I think Alito clearly must have had the majority at conference and lost it either because his written opinion raised second thoughts or the dissent rose the challenge of persuading a new majority.
"
Roberts does not control the decision assignment when he is not in the majority. That power goes to the senior Justice in the majority, which presumably is Thomas, who presumably delegated it to Alito.
I don't think Thomas agrees with the Court's stare decisis jurisprudence, so would be unlikely to want to evaluate it to this case. He probably assigned it knowing that he couldn't keep a majority with the way he would write it.
My own intuition is that the leak came the furthest away in connection to the Justices possible. The last leak in 1979 was from someone in the government publishing office.
On “Travel Mask Madate Struck Down: Read It For Yourself”
The Democrats are running a mask hypocrite in my newly gerrymandered Congressional district. I expect to see a lot of picture of her without a mask at a Chicago party earlier this year with other Chicago pols. Also underlines that she doesn't live in the district, she's a Chicago carpetbagger.
"
We're flying for the first time since the pandemic in a few weeks and my wife is glad they're dropping the mandate cause she would lose her sh!t if the flight got delayed by a freedom mutiny. She'll wear her mask, I'll probably wear mine, but I'm sort of disappointed because I was curious to watch how many wore their masks, particularly those who wear it until seated, when they open a bag of nuts for the rest of the flight. People!
On “Here Comes the Groom(ing)”
I think sex education in the U.S. is something more than the anatomical coverage of human reproduction in biology class. It's typically taught in health class with issues of sexually transmitted disease, contraception, consent, good/bad touching and different people you can see for support. It would be addressed with issues like healthy diet, exercise, drugs, importance of sleep, cleanliness, etc.
In my state, parents can opt their child out of sex ed., and local school districts are generally not required to follow state programming in this area, so long as they offer sex ed. and its medically accurate.
On “Why Was Andrew Johnson President?”
While I agree wholly with the general sentiments here, I feel obligated to point out that Lincoln didn't appoint Johnson, he was selected by Republican nominating convention in Baltimore in May of 1864. Lincoln's directions to his Secretary sent to observe the proceedings was that he officially had no preference in the nomination as all of the potential nominees and their supporters are his friends and allies and did not want to alienate any. It was the sentiment of the delegates that they needed a War Democrat on the ticket to be successful in the general election, and they came around to Johnson probably because he was the most famous that fit the requirements.
On “Where Do State’s Jurisdictions Really End?”
For awhile in my state, if you were registered through the federal motor vehicle law, you got a federal only ballot. I think a state law was passed to incorporate federal registration, but I'm not sure since it doesn't pertain to me.
On “In Defense of a Useful History”
In terms of predictions, I remember that just before Russia invaded Georgia, a poll of international relations scholars predicted Russia would not invade Georgia that year. This was true across all major schools of international relations (realist, liberal, constructivism), but not true for those who identified as Russian specific IR scholars. At least in those one example, it seems like country-specific knowledge, presumably its history, led to better predictions.
On “Wednesday Writs: Ketanji, I Barely Know Ye (But I’m Trying)”
I'm not sure I disagree with you, but non-white female lawyers are pretty rare themselves. From the ABA's most recent survey of the legal profession:
White: 86%
African-American: 5%
Hispanic: 5%
Asian: 2%
Native American: 0.4%
Multi-racial: 2%
Women: 37%.
Qualified African-American female candidates are probably rarer than conservative candidates, particularly as Republicans will generally get to appoint/elect candidates 50% of the time across the country. The FedSoc is sorting out the "squishies" like Souter and making sure their candidates qualifications cannot be questioned. I don't think Barrett's record for example is ambiguous, at least as to what the FedSoc values.
If there had been an analogous concerted movement to get a black female on the SCOTUS (or a broader aim at proportionate representation on the Court), Jackson (and others) would have been appointed to the D.C. Circuit earlier and have more of a record. Not that I think that it would make sense to create such a narrow infrastructure.
"
Jackson's not particularly young, more like average. The average age of the current justices when appointed is 50.9, and she will be be 51 in September. For comparison, Amy Coney Barrett was 48 years old when appointed and had written 89 opinions as a circuit court justice.
I don't think this is about having a sparse record. The conservative legal bar is engaged in getting numerous conservative jurists into positions where their qualifications can't be questioned. Court of Appeals justice is the position most like Supreme Court justice. Serving as an Appeals Justice provides an opportunity for conservatives legalist to evaluate their conservative legal bona fides. There is not similar support for African-American female lawyers.
On “Applebee’s Internal Memo Leaked”
On closer look (after reading your link to the Lawrence Applebee's), the executive works for a franchisee that operates 47 Applebee's, probably around Kansas City. So I don't think my take is good, but Rob Gill is misleading people by saying this guy is from Applebee's.
"
Applebee's is a franchise, and I suspect the actual audience for this e-mail was its real customers, the franchisees to whom Applebee's sells its food and brand. Those customers were hurt by loss of demand from the pandemic and subsequent trouble with finding/keeping labor. They are presumably cancelling or not renewing their franchise agreements.
The Applebee's closest to me closed this week, and directed customers to one on the other side of town. The e-mail strikes me as telling franchisees that things are going to get better, keep buying our stuff. The notion that higher gas prices depresses wages seems like pass the bong in the dorm kind of thinking.
On “Wednesday Writs: January 6th Defendants Edition”
I guess it depends on who was wasting whose time & money. The sentence included $120,106 in restitution to the City for wasted time investigating the hoax. I don't begrudge trying to get money back, at the very least to deter future schemes.
I think my previous thoughts were that the State's Attorney had screwed over Smollett by not settling through some alternative program, but these would have required acceptance of responsibility, even if impaired by drugs or mental health issues. I don't think I realized how much media Smollett was generating in his quest to be a civil rights icon.
If I'm understanding the issues in this appeal, they are not going to exonerate him from the public's perspective. He went to trial and was convicted. (I'm surprised that his lawyers didn't appeal the double jeopardy issue before trial for this reason) We haven't heard the last of Jussie Smollett.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.