Stationary Bandit

Unique Pepsi in India

If this occurred in the US, I wonder what the amount of damages would have been.

Soft drinks manufacturer Pepsi has been ordered to pay 20,000 rupees ($445) in damages to a man from Delhi who found a condom in a sealed bottle.

Story here.

Ban on Cow Slaughter in India

Narendra Modi on Wednesday termed the Supreme Court verdict upholding the 1994 Gujarat government order banning slaughter of bulls and bullocks over the age of 16 years as "significant" and said it would have an "impact on national life".

"Our Constitution provides for cow protection. Mahatma Gandhi also used to advocate it. But unfortunately it (ban on cow slaughter) was not done due to vote bank politics. The Gujarat Government had banned it and we are victorious today," Modi said.

He said the verdict was "very significant" for those who love the cow and believe in non-violence and "it would have a major impact on our national life."

Story here.  I understand the logic behind sacred cows (see here).  But as P.T. Bauer argued long ago, the status of cows in India constrains India's growth prospects.  Cows use resources such as food that could be consumed by people.  Less food leads to less productivity (at least in the developing world).  Assuming this is feasible, one wonders why the Supreme Court decided in favor of the cows if India is pursuing a growth agenda.

Do the Ten Commandments Cohere to US Law?

Eugene Volokh argues that in 7 out of 10 instances, they do not.

Do we have a right to tobacco?

I thought we did.  Apparently I am wrong.

A judge Wednesday tossed out a lawsuit brought by a 115-year-old private club that sought to strike down New York state and city no-smoking regulations so it could continue to honor its members — who include Walter Cronkite and Carol Burnett — with ceremonies that include lighting up.

The Players Club is no more entitled to special privileges than are pro-tobacco organizations that tried unsuccessfully to overturn the smoking ban, U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero said Wednesday.

"Individuals have no 'fundamental' constitutional right to smoke tobacco," the judge said.

Story here.  I wonder if I have a constitutional right to Guinness or Coke?

Richard Epstein and the Supreme Court

If you think back to Clarence Thomas's Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 1991, what most likely comes to mind are the explosive allegations of sexual harassment made by the law professor Anita Hill. Years from now, however, when observers of the court look back on the hearings, they may well focus on a clash that preceded Hill's accusations -- an acrimonious exchange that few remember today.

What could Jeffrey Rosen be referring?

Early in the hearings, Joseph Biden, the Delaware Democrat who was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, voiced a concern about Thomas's judicial philosophy. In particular, he singled out a speech that Thomas gave in 1987 in which he expressed an affinity for the ideas of legal scholars like Richard A. Epstein. A law professor at the University of Chicago, Epstein was notorious in legal circles for his thesis that many of the laws underpinning the modern welfare state are unconstitutional. Thomas tried to assure Biden that he was interested in ideas like Epstein's only as a matter of ''political theory'' and that he would not actually implement them as a Supreme Court justice. Biden, apparently unpersuaded, picked up a copy of Epstein's 1985 book, ''Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain,'' and theatrically waved it in the air. Anyone who embraced the book's extreme thesis, he seemed to be suggesting, was unfit to sit on the court.

So what's the problem with Epstein's views? 

At the time, it was impossible to know whether Biden was right to worry. He was surely right, though, that Epstein was promoting a legal philosophy far more radical in its implications than anything entertained by Antonin Scalia, then, as now, the court's most irascible conservative. As Epstein sees it, all individuals have certain inherent rights and liberties, including ''economic'' liberties, like the right to property and, more crucially, the right to part with it only voluntarily. These rights are violated any time an individual is deprived of his property without compensation -- when it is stolen, for example, but also when it is subjected to governmental regulation that reduces its value or when a government fails to provide greater security in exchange for the property it seizes. In Epstein's view, these libertarian freedoms are not only defensible as a matter of political philosophy but are also protected by the United States Constitution. Any government that violates them is, by his lights, repressive. One such government, in Epstein's worldview, is our government. When Epstein gazes across America, he sees a nation in the chains of minimum-wage laws and zoning regulations. His theory calls for the country to be deregulated in a manner not seen since before Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal.

You can almost feel the disbelief in the importance of property rights as the most fundamental right.   How dare Epstein (or Thomas) proclaim property as the guarantee of all other rights?  What about the importance of civil liberties that conflict with property rights?  Mustn't we protect the New Deal at all cost? 

Thanks to Alex Tabbarok for the pointer.

Berman and the Christian Right?

I am a bit surprised by this.

Professor Harold J. Berman of the Emory University School of Law in Atlanta says some of his friends are "afraid of the Christian right."

That's why they objected to his joining Pat Robertson's legal group -- the American Center for Law and Justice -- in a U.S. Supreme Court brief that supports Texas' Ten Commandments monument at the state Capitol.

The ACLJ's brief is one of dozens submitted for today's oral arguments over the Texas monument and Ten Commandments displays in two Kentucky courthouses.

The 87-year-old Berman says his participation does not mean he agrees with Robertson's conservative politics, or his penchant for using religion to bolster his political views. In 2003, Robertson launched a campaign urging supporters to pray that three liberal justices of the high court "will be led by God to step down ... so we can have three conservatives who will interpret the Constitution, not try to rewrite it."

Here is the whole story.

States' Rights vs. International Opinion

The Supreme Court decided on Tuesday that states cannot make 16- and 17-year-olds eligible for execution.  Nineteen states had such laws. Justice Kennedy wrote that

"It is proper that we acknowledge the overwhelming weight of international opinion against the juvenile death penalty, resting in large part on the understanding that the instability and emotional imbalance of young people may often be a factor in the crime."

So we have decided to overrule the laws of individual states because of international opinion?  Since when does international opinion decide constitutional questions?  I suspect will become a new basis for judicial activism.