Archive for the ‘law’ category

“Are you guys really here to get me into trouble.”

January 26th, 2010

The L.A. Times has an interesting story of a the Fish and Wildlife Service busting a guy for trying to sell an elephant skull. 

Did it matter that this elephant was legally in the United States and died of natural causes? Of course not. The Fish and Wildlife Service isn’t concerned about right and wrong. They are concerned about enforcing the law. It doesn’t matter whether or not it actually protects species.

There are good reason for the Fish and Wildlife Service to zealously prosecute the law as written. But no one should ever assume that bureaucrats enforcing the laws actually leads to good outcomes. 

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Obama’s Guantanamo mistake

January 24th, 2010

Two days after Inauguration Day, Obama apparently thought it would get his Administration off to a good start by announcing that he was going to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay without one year. I assumed, (incorrectly it turns out) that his Administration had a plan for doing this. I didn’t think this was necessarily a bad move. I don’t agree with Obama on much, but I thought he had some common ground on Gitmo. I’m not sure we do.

A year has gone past and Guantanamo is still open. And for good reason. We need some place to keep people who we arrest on battlefields, but aren’t affiliated with a country. Also, for these enemy combatants, there are good reasons to keep them outside of the United States. I don’t have a problem with Guantanamo being open for these reasons, but that was never my problem with Guantanamo.

My problem with Guantanamo is that people are kept there without a trial. How in the world can we keep people detained for year after year without trial? I’m not arguing they should be given full Constitutional rights, but they deserve a trial. I just wish Obama understood the most important issue at Gitmo and would have made sure people got trials.

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Posted in law, politics

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Why, oh why was I not smart enough to go to Yale Law?

December 15th, 2009

I didn’t get good enough grades in college and I didn’t score high enough on the LSAT to go to Yale Law. But if I would have I don’t know how I would have turned down an offer from a super-high-powered law firm to defer employment for a year in exchange for $80k. From the WSJ:

When I witnessed the job-search drama as a student at Yale Law School, just about the most desirable placement was a spot at Cravath. It didn’t seem to matter that even summer associates at Cravath were expected to close Time Warner deals way past midnight. Nor did anyone seem to care that a new hire could regularly expect to have his viewing of Saturday Night Live disrupted by an emergency call from the office. Prestige whores will give it up for their choice currency, and Cravath carries that elite cachet.

Or at least it did. The class of associates that just joined Cravath was asked to defer their arrival for a year in exchange for a sweet deal: They would receive $80,000 to not work, plus they would get benefits and student-loan payments. This offer was optional.

Not one Yalie took the offer. I sure would have. I would have loved to do nothing for ski, backpack, and hang out at the beach for a year, all while making $80k. In fact, that’s just about my dream job. Then again, afterwards you would be a slave to Cravath, Swaine, & Moore, but such is life.

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Posted in law

The ultimate insult in the Kelo v. New London saga

November 10th, 2009

Susette Kelo and her neighbors’ land was taken in New London, Connecticut as part of a redevelopment plan to allow Pfizer to expand their offices. But Pfizer has now  announced that not only are they not expanding their offices, they are closing up shop in New London. The Hartford Courant reports:

Pfizer Inc. will shut down its massive New London research and development headquarters and transfer most of the 1,400 people working there to Groton, the pharmaceutical giant said Monday.
The move comes in the wake of Pfizer’s recent merger with Wyeth, and is part of a global consolidation of the two companies’ research operations. Groton will be the biggest of the company’s five major global research sites, the company said. The move from New London to Groton will take place over the next two years.

Not only is Susette Kelo and her neighbors’ land vacant today, Pfizer is leaving. Nice work New London.  A couple months ago my wife and I stopped by New London and took some pictures. Here’s what the view from Susette Kelo’s house looks like today:

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We Are Devoting Too Many of Our Best Minds to Lawyering

October 7th, 2009

Justice Scalia recently said in a interview that we are wasting too many good minds lawyering:

I used to be disappointed that so many of the best minds in the country were being devoted to this enterprise.

I mean there’d be a, you know, a defense or public defender from Podunk, you know, and this woman is really brilliant, you know. Why isn’t she out inventing the automobile or, you know, doing something productive for this society?

I mean lawyers, after all, don’t produce anything. They enable other people to produce and to go on with their lives efficiently and in an atmosphere of freedom. That’s important, but it doesn’t put food on the table and there have to be other people who are doing that. And I worry that we are devoting too many of our very best minds to this enterprise.

And they appear here in the Court, I mean, even the ones who will only argue here once and will never come again. I’m usually impressed with how good they are. Sometimes you get one who’s not so good. But, no, by and large I don’t have any complaint about the quality of counsel, except maybe we’re wasting some of our best minds.

This is undoubtedly true. I know really smart people whose work produces absolutely no real value for society. For example, what value for society does a tax attorney produce? They do not increase knowledge or produce anything of real value, instead they spend their time navigating the labyrinthine tax code. If we had simpler laws, we wouldn’t need to devote some many smart people to figuring out the laws.

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Posted in economics, law, politics

Kelo v. New London: The Aftermath

September 29th, 2009

In 2005, the Supreme Court ruled on the controversial property rights case–Kelo v. New London. In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that cities could exercise eminent domain for purely economic development purposes, even if they took the land from one private property owner and transferred it to another. According to the Court, this was an acceptable “public use” under the Fifth Amendment.

But governments do not necessarily make good decisions about economic development and the Kelo situation is a good example. It’s four years after the Supreme Court’s decision and the land the land that the City of New London took from Susette Kelo and her neighbors for “economic development” is still vacant. None of the 3,169 new jobs and $1.2 million a year in tax revenues have materialized. 

Earlier in the month, my wife and I were near New London, so we stopped by to see what the land looks like today. Below are picture I took of the site:

View to the south from where Susette Kelo’s house once stood:

View to the west from where Susette Kelo’s house once stood:

Trees on the Susette Kelo’s block:

View to the north on East street:

One block North from Susette Kelo’s, more condemned land: 

View to the north, same location:

Bing maps has a nice aerial perspective of this location, especially when you use the Bird’s Eye feature.

This is a sad case of hubris. People homes were taken and replaced with empty lots?

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Posted in Photography, law

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