Women Can’t Vote in Sistersville
At least according to the city charter.
Legal History
And No Warrants Shall Issue, Unless the King Says So
In what is surely an incredible coincidence, the partner of the reporter (Glenn Greenwald) who has been embarrassing the NSA over the past few weeks was just detained at Heathrow airport under the Terrorism Act, held for nine hours, questioned…
Happy Birthday to You, Happy Birthday to You, Here’s a Copyright Lawsuit, Happy Birthday to You
I don't know that I'd call this "a lawsuit for the ages," like the New York Times does. But that's mainly because around here that title is reserved for the four-year struggle over a $65 million legal claim that the plaintiff called a…
Official State Crap Update: Connecticut Punts the Wright Brothers
Here's the problem with trying to maintain a comprehensive list of the dumb things legislatures do: they keep doing them. It was just a few days ago that I posted "Official State Crap: Connecticut," the most recent in the remarkably…
More Fun With Jeremy Bentham
Present but not voting Of course, no reference to Jeremy Bentham would be complete without mentioning that his badly preserved corpse is still on display at University College, London. Bentham did not attend UCL but became affiliated with it in…
The Day Justice Douglas Threw a Book Out the Window
From the book In Chambers: Stories of Supreme Court Law Clerks and Their Justices, noted by Andrew Cohen in The Atlantic : Law clerks in this era all learned that none of [Justice William O.] Douglas' rules were ever to be ignored….
North Carolina Would Like to Opt Out of the Supremacy Clause
It has tried this before, as you may recall, and that didn't really turn out so well. That time was also much more of a serious group effort, whereas at least so far this is just a resolution sponsored by…
WWII Legal Ad Compared Clients to Nazis
Well, technically, just to the Wehrmacht: "If like Poland you're not ready for the onslaught, you too could be ruthlessly torn apart and partitioned between rival dictatorships! Let Bobbs-Merrill intervene on your behalf." This is from an interesting article by…
Mississippi Finishes Up the Paperwork on 13th Amendment
A mere 148 years after the end of the Civil War, Mississippi has become the last state to send in its paperwork on the 13th Amendment, which as you may recall was the one that abolished slavery. AMENDMENT XIII Passed…
Can the Pope Legally Resign?
Other than by dying, I mean.