ENDEARING ARTICLE about Denis Thatcher (RIP), via Oxblog. Read more

MMMMMM, homemade liqueurs. Eeeeeek, no matter how much I love Jello with fruit in it I do not think pretzels (yes, pretzels) would be a good addition. Read more

HMMM…. Decided I couldn’t phrase things coherently without saying just a little bit more than I want to about my own personal situation. So, voila! the post is gone. Sorry. There’s lots of cool stuff in the rest of the blog though. Read more

HEH-HEH-HEH. Reason‘s blog is hosting a comments-box discussion of whether Brave New World is really a dystopia. All I can say is, Thank you for confirming my prejudices. Read more

NO WAY TO FIGHT. This is wrong. Seriously. More on this later if I can think of anything especially useful to say. Read more

CENTENARY OF ORWELL’S BIRTH TODAY–read some of his essays. Via The Rat. Read more

YES!!! Excellent piece on writing by Peter David–excerpts: Where do writers get ideas? They don’t get ideas. Ideas come to them. They come from the newspapers, or books, or TV shows. They come from movies, or friends. They come from happenstances that they witness or hear about second hand. If I’m making it sound like ideas are a dime a dozen, well…they are. Probably less. It is so darned easy to get ideas if you just set your mind properly.... Read more

POETRY WEDNESDAY: I’ve been reading Tim Powers’s Declare, on the advice of a blog-reader, and so far it’s terrific. Sort of a dark fantasy Cold War spy novel. Perfect summertime reading. However, it doesn’t excerpt well, which is why I haven’t been posting the usual quotes from my reading. Anyway, I wanted to get something fun up here after all. that. law. (Below the law post, you will find kids’ book recommendations, so there is a point in scrolling!) So... Read more

MORE LAWBLOGGING! Once again, I will rush in where angels fear to blog, as I take issue with people who know more than I do about the law. For prior instances of my hubris, click here (me vs. Prof. Jack Balkin) and here (me vs. Prof. Lawrence Solum). This time I’m arguing with Solum again, addressing what strike me as significant flaws in Solum’s defense of “really really strong stare decisis,” the belief that the Supreme Court should in all... Read more

HOW MODERATE STARE DECISIS COULD WORK. Professor Solum gives a few examples of how judges could respect precedent without giving it preeminence over text and/or history. He offers “precedent last,” “precedent as one factor to be weighed,” and “precedent as binding in the absence of clear error.” He rejects all of these options as unsatisfactory, often because they allow for too much discretion on the part of the justices. I actually like the absence-of-clear-error one, more on that in a... Read more