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The Becker-Posner Blog
The narrow question whether public school teachers should continue to have tenure, as they mostly still do, opens into the broad question of the extent to which education should be provided by a free market or by the government. It is rare for private employers to offer tenure contracts to their employees unless the employees are represented by a union, as public school teachers often are; and so the question of tenure for public school teachers is unavoidably a question about the desirability of permitting teachers to unionize. However, quite apart from unions, public school teachers have traditionally obtained tenure after a short probationary period, by statute. Teacher tenure is now under fire in many states as are teachers’ unions. There is general recognition that education provides significant external benefits—significant enough to warrant public subsidy. But public subsidy needn’t imply public provision of the subsidized service.
The Volokh Conspiracy
The so-called “duty to retreat” has been in the news recently, and has long been of interest to people interested in self-defense law. Some have argued that the duty to retreat is a special case of the general requirement that lethal force may only be used when necessary to prevent death, serious bodily injury, rape, kidnapping, or perhaps some other serious crimes. But I think this “corollary of the necessity requirement” view misses an important point, which I want to blog about briefly here.
One Sunday morning in the fall of my third year of law school, Judge Terence Evans called to offer me a clerkship in his chambers for the following year. A judge on the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, Evans...
The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog
Law Blog - WSJ
BREAKING NEWS: The Justice Department is still of the opinion, after 200-plus years, that federal judges may strike down unconstitutional laws. As promised, Attorney General Eric Holder today filed a 3-page, single-spaced letter with the Fifth Circuit outlining the department’s views on the concept of judicial review. Actually, the letter is two and a half pages, but let’s hope Judge Jerry Smith rounds up. During arguments in a health-care case on Tuesday, Judge Smith demanded the Justice Department produce the letter, in light of President Barack Obama’s commenting that the Supreme Court would be taking an “unprecedented, extraordinary step” if it struck down the Affordable Care Act. Obama later clarified that he meant the court has rarely struck down a law that “was passed by Congress on a economic issue, like health care.”
Business relationships are kind of like marriages. In the beginning, everyone’s excited, and life is fresh and full of promise. “Things are really going to change around here,” you think. You know that you’re going to need to make some adjustments, some compromises, but it’s all going to be worth it.
Above the Law: A Legal Tabloid - News, Gossip, and Colorful Commentary on Law Firms and the Legal Profession