Leaked White House Executive Order on 'Censorship' Violates Two Basic...
Earlier this week it was reported that the Trump administration was drafting an executive order to combat perceived “censorship” of conservatives on online platforms such as Facebook and Google....
View ArticleStates Making Predictable Grab for Revenue via Online Sales Taxes
Fallout from the 2018 South Dakota v. Wayfair Supreme Court decision, which allowed remote sales tax collection from online purchases, has begun and The Wall Street Journal editorialized on the...
View ArticleWhere Facebook Interim Report on Bias Falls Short
Today former U.S. Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ), in fulfillment of an arrangement with Facebook, released an independent Interim Report (and accompanying op-ed) cataloging the primary concerns of...
View ArticleNew Civil Liberties Alliance Fighting for Constitutional Limits on Government...
Thanks to the New Civil Liberties Alliance for hosting a great event this week, during which their staff attorneys recounted the status of some of the biggest cases in which they’re currently involved....
View ArticleCosts of Government Steering by Direct Ownership or Control of Resources
If one thinks government ought to run a sector of the economy (single-payer health care, education, retirement, energy), then almost by definition that individual would not be inclined toward...
View ArticleMore Shields and Fewer Swords in Realm of Federal Regulation
Yesterday the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) held a fascinating event on one of their marquee cases, Baldwin v. United States (read more in my post from last month—it’s the second of the four...
View ArticleCautiously Optimistic about Facebook's New Approach to Speech
It seems increasingly the case that there is a lot more to like about what Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has to say than not. His recent speech at Georgetown University, outlining the company’s general...
View ArticleTrump Administration Challenges Constitutionality of California Climate Pacts
Just when I thought the Trump administration could not get any bolder in challenging California’s self-anointed power to determine national climate policy, the Department of Justice (DOJ) on Wednesday...
View ArticleVIDEO: How to Build a Political System to Protect Liberty
Our friends at Learn Liberty have started releasing new videos again, and we couldn’t be more excited. One of the most recent, “3 Different Ways Constitutionalism Affect Liberty,” stars Prof. Ilya...
View ArticleTwitter's Ban on Political Ads Has No First Amendment Implications
Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey announced that the social media platform will ban all political advertising. This comes on the heels of Facebook’s recent announcement that the company won’t fact...
View ArticleGovernment of Singapore Demonstrates Real Online Censorship
Singapore’s recent policing of online content provides an instructive example of the difference between private curating of material by platform owners and dangerous curtailing of free speech by...
View ArticleDown in Flames: Judge Dismisses New York Climate Lawsuit against ExxonMobil
New York Supreme Court Justice Barry Ostrager today acquitted ExxonMobil of all charges brought against the company by New York Attorney General Letitia James.
View ArticleUSMCA Won't Protect Tech from Trudeau
A point of contention in the debate over the new U.S., Mexico, Canada (USMCA) trade agreement has been whether or not the final deal will include language inspired by Section 230 of the Communications...
View ArticleBest Books of 2019: A Republic, If You Can Keep It
Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch explains in vivid detail the purpose of the separation of powers in his 2019 book A Republic, If You Can Keep It. He presents specific examples of what happens when...
View ArticleBest Books of 2019: The Narrow Corridor
Predatory governments with high corruption, that don’t respect political and economic freedoms, are extractive. Countries with these sorts of institutions tend to be both poor and repressive. Countries...
View ArticleDutch Supreme Court Upholds Climate Lawsuit against Government
The Dutch Supreme Court on December 20th rejected an appeal by the Dutch government to overturn an appellate court’s October 2018 decision to uphold a lower court’s June 2015 decision requiring the...
View ArticleYear in Review 2019: Supreme Court
The nature of the term ending in June 2019 was set at the end of 2018 when the cases were selected. When the term opened there were only eight justices on the court, Justice Kennedy having stepped...
View ArticleWeighing Bad Capitalism and Good Socialism
Recently economics professor Walter Block of Loyola University New Orleans wrote a great op-ed for The Wall Street Journal titled “Bad Capitalism and Good Socialism.” It helps clarify some confusion...
View ArticleBest Books of 2019: Legal Systems Very Different from Ours
Many years ago at a Mont Pelerin Society conference in Reykjavik, I saw David Friedman give a talk on Icelandic law during the Free State period, roughly 1000-1300 A.D., when the island had no central...
View ArticleAs Supreme Court Debates CFPB Constitutionality, Agency Accountability Hangs...
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments last week over the constitutionality of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and whether, as currently structured, it is too far removed from executive...
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