Month: January 2024

Last week, Philadelphia’s NBC10 reported that city-owned electric vehicles frequently queue up at public charging stations along with everyday motorists, causing longer wait times for all. Reporters visited charging stations numerous times during work hours and routinely found city employees either waiting in line for a charger or waiting for their vehicle to finish charging, which can take up to an hour.

Some city employees told NBC10’s Claudia Vargas that they used the downtime to catch up on paperwork, while others sat in their cars apparently watching videos on their phones. Inspectors with Philadelphia’s Department of Licenses and Inspections (L&I) spend their workdays going to buildings and job sites, and any time spent waiting to charge is wasted.

Motorists complained about having to wait in line along with workers drawing a city salary, with one noting that city vehicles should “have a way to charge overnight in like their own facility.”

“It turns out they do,” Vargas reported. Philadelphia has 107 chargers to serve its fleet of 261 electric vehicles, but the chargers are poorly apportioned. NBC10 found that many of the city’s chargers are located at city-owned repair facilities, while others are installed at police departments and prison complexes that have no electric vehicles.

L&I has 115 E.V.s—more than any other department in the city—yet it has no chargers at any of its buildings or facilities. Instead, the city contracts with EVgo, a private company that operates charging stations across the country. The result: city employees spending a portion of each workday sitting in their cars, making other motorists wait longer.

Worse, charging during the workday means the city pays peak charging rates. If the fleet were able to charge overnight at city facilities, rates would be lower as there is less demand for electricity.

While the report is bad news for Philadelphia, it presents a broader lesson as well. As Congress and the Biden administration apportion billions of dollars to build out the nation’s E.V. charging infrastructure, it’s worth remembering how bad central planners are at distributing resources. Philadelphia has more than enough chargers to service its fleet of E.V.s, but none of them are in the right places. Instead, the city relies on the private sector to make up for its own shortcomings.

The post Philadelphia Relies on Private Sector Chargers To Charge City-Owned E.V.s appeared first on Reason.com.

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Harvard University President Claudine Gay announced her resignation on Tuesday, following  scrutiny of her academic record, including numerous allegations that she plagiarized passages in her published works. Six additional examples of plagiarism were recently discovered by Washington Free Beacon reporter Aaron Sibarium.

These allegations are very serious and have led numerous commentators—including Harvard students—to conclude that she must be held accountable. Even The Harvard Crimson‘s editorial board, writing in support of Gay, nevertheless acknowledged that she had committed plagiarism and that the university’s investigation had been inadequate.

But Gay’s resignation barely mentioned the plagiarism scandal. Instead, she mostly nodded to the criticisms she faced in the wake of the House antisemitism hearings, in which she appeared callously dismissive of calls for genocide against Jewish people.

“It has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor—two bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am—and frightening to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus,” she wrote.

That was the only line in the resignation letter that touched on the plagiarism concerns. The rest of it concerns the environment on campus.

It's official. Claudine Gay is out at Harvard. Below is the letter that just got sent out. pic.twitter.com/8DotxIrfzc

— Dan Primack (@danprimack) January 2, 2024

It makes sense for Gay that she would lean into the hearing as the proximate cause of her ouster, because she is a more sympathetic figure when that event is considered in isolation. While her explanations of Harvard’s speech policies in the face of relentless grilling by Republican political figures seemed tin-eared, it is in fact true that such policies are context-dependent; calls for violent political revolution are not necessarily violations of Harvard’s policies—or of the First Amendment—unless they are directed at specific individuals. She should not have lost her job for articulating that.

Yet Gay is no free speech martyr. She may have defended provocative political speech at the House hearing, but her brief tenure at Harvard has not been marked by some dramatic return to free speech principles. In 2023, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression ranked Harvard dead last on its college free speech list. Indeed, one might conclude that in order to restore free speech to Harvard, different leadership is sorely needed.

In any case, the plagiarism allegations had teeth. Reporters discovered numerous instances of Gay lazily copying other scholars’ exact passages without naming them and also failing to cite her sources. The political ideology of some of her accusers—including Christopher Rufo, a conservative writer and activist—makes no difference; Gay must be held to the same standards as other professors and students.

When Harvard’s governing board picks the next president, they should look for someone who both abides by principles of academic integrity and vows to improve the college’s free speech standing.

The post Harvard President Claudine Gay Resigns After Plagiarism Scandal appeared first on Reason.com.

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DATE:  May 23-24, 2024

LOCATION:  Durham, NC

ABSTRACTS DUE:  February 9, 2024

The Duke Center for Firearms Law and the University of Wyoming College of Law Firearms Research Center invite applications to participate in the sixth annual Firearms Law Works-in-Progress Conference. The conference will be held at Duke University School of Law in Durham, North Carolina on May 23 & 24, 2024. We ask all those interested in presenting a paper at the conference to submit an abstract by February 9, 2024.

At the Firearms WIP Conference, scholars and practitioners present and discuss works-in-progress related to firearms law broadly defined, including Second Amendment history and doctrine, federal and state gun regulation, and the intersection between firearms law and other areas of law.  The Firearms WIP Conference is the only legal works-in-progress event specifically focused on firearms law. Summaries of past conferences, including paper titles and attendees, are available here: 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023.

Conference sessions are lively discussions among authors, discussants, and participants. Each accepted paper is assigned to a panel of three to four scholars with a moderator who will summarize the papers and then lead a discussion. Sessions run from Thursday afternoon through Friday afternoon. There will be a casual dinner and social event Thursday evening following the afternoon session. All conference participants are expected to read the papers in advance and to attend the entire conference.

We accept papers on a wide array of topics related to gun regulation, including from scholars who are new to the field and interested in exploring the interaction between firearms law and other disciplines. Although participation at the conference is by invitation only, we welcome paper proposals from scholars and practitioners all over the world. Please feel free to share this call for submissions widely.

Submission Details

• Titles and abstracts of papers should be submitted electronically to andrew.willinger@duke.edu no later than February 9, 2024. Abstracts should be no longer than one page, and should be submitted as a PDF file saved under the file name “[last name, first name] – [paper title].” Please use the subject line “WIP Paper Submission” in your email.
• Authors will be informed whether their paper has been accepted no later than March 8, 2024.
• Workshop versions of accepted papers will be due in early May, so that they can be circulated to moderators and other conference participants in advance of the conference.

We expect that participants’ home institutions will cover travel expenses to the extent possible.  However, the Duke CFL and Wyoming FRC are able to cover some costs of lodging and travel expenses for authors who would not otherwise be able to attend.  This support is intended to encourage submissions from junior faculty, especially those who are new to the field.

Some background: The Firearms WIP Conference is modeled in part after Yale Law School’s Freedom of Expression Scholars Conference (FESC). The Duke and Wyoming Centers are both committed to developing to developing the Second Amendment (and arms law in general) as a field of scholarly study. Although the scholars affiliated with Duke and Wyoming have their own viewpoints—as expressed in their articles, amicus briefs, and other works—both centers publish diverse viewpoints. To the best of my knowledge, they are the only university centers on arms law or policy that do so.

If your paper is accepted for the conference, potential commenters include Duke’s Professors Joseph Blocher and Darrell A.H. Miller, Duke’s Executive Director Andrew Willinger, Wyoming’s Prof. George Mocsary, and Wyoming’s Senior Fellows Ashley Hlebinsky and me. Whether the commenters agree or disagree with your perspectives, they will provide constructive suggestions to improve your paper.

The post Firearms Law Works-in-Progress Conference 2024 appeared first on Reason.com.

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On December 29, Judge Ann Aiken of the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon took senior status, but she did not retire from the bench. On the very same day, Judge Aiken denied the federal government’s motion to dismiss Juliana v. United States, the so-called “Kids Climate Case,” and directed the parties to begin preparing for a trial. It is an astounding order that threatens to bring cliamte litigation back to the Supreme Court, and outcome few climate activists should want.

A bit of background. The Juliana litigation began in 2015, when a group of youth plaintiffs filed suit alleging, among other things, that the federal government’s failure to control greenhouse gases violates their substantive due process rights to life, liberty, and property, including a right to a “stable climate system,” violates their right to equal protection, and failed to uphold its “public trust” obligation to hold certain natural resources in trust for the people and for future generations.

As one would expect, the federal government sought to dismiss the case. Not only did the district court deny the motion to dismiss, it also denied the federal government’s request to certify the decision for interlocutory review. Faced with the prospect of extensive discovery requests and a looking trial, the federal government sought a writ of mandamus and stay of the proceedings, first with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and eventually at One First Street.

While the Supreme Court did not grant the federal government’s motions, it issued two orders—one in July and one in November 2018—that made clear the justices believed Judge Aiken had misapplied the relevant rules (including that governing interlocutory review) and not-so-subtly directing the Ninth Circuit to get the district court in line. The Ninth Circuit issued a stay and Judge Aiken reconsidered her prior decision to deny interlocutory review, leading to the Ninth Circuit’s decision in January 2020 to dismiss the case on standing grounds.

One might have thought the Ninth Circuit’s decision would have put an end to the Juliana litigation. After all, the Ninth Circuit’s mandate instructed the district court to dismiss the case, so that is all there was left to do after the plaintiffs had exhausted their opportunities for en banc review and certiorari. But Judge Aiken had other ideas, and instead ordered the parties to have a settlement conference and granted the plaintiffs an opportunity to amend their pleadings so as to keep the case alive.

As one would have predicted, the federal government again sought to have the case dismissed, arguing that the district court was required to do so given the Ninth Circuit’s  mandate, and that even were that mandate not binding the plaintiffs continue to lack standing and failed to state viable constitutional or other claims upon which relief could be granted. Once again, Judge Aiken refused to let the case die, denying the federal government’s motion, save for dismissing the plaintiffs’ equal protection and Ninth Amendment claims.

From Judge Aiken’s opinion:

The parties do not disagree that the climate crisis threatens our ability to survive on planet Earth. This catastrophe is the great emergency of our time and compels urgent action. As this lawsuit demonstrates, young people—too young to vote and effect change through the political process—are exercising the institutional procedure available to plead with their government to change course. While facts remain to be proved, lawsuits like this highlight young people’s despair with the drawn-out pace of the unhurried, inchmeal, bureaucratic response to our most dire emergency. Top elected officials have declared that the climate emergency spells out “code red for humanity.” Burning fossil fuels changes the climate more than any other human activity. The government does not deny that it has promoted fossil fuel combustion through subsidies; tax exemptions; permits for fossil fuel development projects; leases on federal lands and offshore areas; permits for imports and exports; and permits for energy facilities. Despite many climate change suits around the country, in 2023, the United States witnessed record-breaking levels of oil and gas production. And recent calculations conservatively estimate that the United States provides the oil and gas industry $20,000,000,000.00 annually in an array of subsidies.

Defendants maintain that, because tackling the climate crisis is complex, and no single remedy may entirely redress plaintiffs’ harms caused by climate change, the judiciary is constrained by the Constitution from offering any redress at all. . . . Defendants  contend that the issue of climate change is political in its nature, and that redress of plaintiffs’ alleged injuries must be sought from Congress. … That unnecessarily narrow view overlooks one clear and constitutional path to shielding future generations from impacts of the onslaught of environmental disaster: that it is the responsibility of the judiciary to declare the law that the government may not deprive the People of their Constitutional guarantee of the God-given right to life. U.S. CONST. art III; U.S. CONST. amend. V; Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 170 (1803).

Plaintiffs’ allegations are that collective resolve at every level and in every branch of government is critical to reducing fossil fuel emissions and vital to combating climate change. That curbing climate change requires an all-hands-on-deck approach does not oust the Court from its province or discharge it of its duty under the Constitution to say what the law is. Marbury 5 U.S. at 170. Combatting climate change may require all to act in accord, but that does not mean that the courts must “throw up [our] hands” in defeat. . . .

The legislative and executive branches of government wield constitutional powers entrusted to those branches by the People through the democratic process. … So too, as part of a coequal branch of government, the Court cannot shrink from its role to decide on the rights of the individuals duly presenting their case and controversy. Marbury, 5 U.S. at 170. . . .

Some may balk at the Court’s approach as errant or unmeasured, but more likely than not, future generations may look back to this hour and say that the judiciary failed to measure up at all. In any case over which trial courts have jurisdiction, where the plaintiffs have stated a legal claim, it is the proper and peculiar province of the courts to impartially find facts, faithfully interpret and apply the law, and render reasoned judgment.  Such is the case here.

Among other things, Judge Aiken declares the existence of a substantive due process right to a “climate system that can sustain human life.”

Exercising “reasoned judgment,” the Court finds that the right to a climate system that can sustain human life is fundamental to a free and ordered society.

Defendants contend plaintiffs are asserting a right to be free from pollution or climate change, and that courts have consistently rejected attempts to define such rights as fundamental. Defendants mischaracterize the right plaintiffs assert. Plaintiffs do not object to the government’s role in producing any pollution or in causing any climate change; they assert the government has caused pollution and climate change on a catastrophic level, and that if the government’s actions continue unchecked, they will permanently and irreversibly damage plaintiffs’ property, their economic livelihood, their recreational opportunities, their health, and ultimately their (and their children’s) ability to live.

In this opinion, this Court simply holds that where a complaint alleges governmental action is affirmatively and substantially damaging the climate system in a way that will cause human deaths, shorten human lifespans, damage property, threaten human food sources, and dramatically alter the planets ecosystem, it states a claim for a due process violation. To hold otherwise would be to say that the Constitution affords no protection against a government’s knowing decision to poison the air its citizens breathe or the water its citizens drink. . . .

We cannot vow to uphold the Constitution’s protection of a God-given right to life, and at the same time, exercise “judicial restraint” by telling plaintiffs that “life” cannot possibly include the right to be free from knowing government destruction of their ability to breathe, to drink, or to live. “It cannot be presumed that any clause in the [C]onstitution is intended to be without effect.” Marbury, 5 U.S. at 174. Plaintiffs have adequately alleged infringement of a fundamental right and defendants’ motion to dismiss is denied on this issue.

The most startling part of Judge Aiken’s decision is not the sweeping assertions of constitutional rights, but her refusal to certify the opinion for interlocutory review, without comment. This is striking because it was Judge Aiken’s prior refusal to permit interlocutory review which ultimately prompted two separate Supreme Court orders indicating that she had misapplied the standard in 28 U.S.C. §1292 and the Ninth Circuit’s ultimate stay.

The last time around, Judge Aiken deigned to explain her actions, offering both an explanation for her initial denial of interlocutory review and her subsequent reversal. This time, however, her opinion offers not a word in defense of her decision to deny the federal government’s request, even though nothing has changed that would alter the application of §1292’s standards to this case, and the Supreme Court’s admonitions remain on point. There is simply no other way to describe this aspect of her opinion other than as outright judicial defiance (and illustrates how some “shadow docket” orders are more a measured response to misbehavior by lower court judges than a sign of High Court activism).

Judge Aiken’s decision is not merely defiant, but reckless as well. The Department of Justice has little choice but to seek review of this decision, even if through a writ of mandamus, and if the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit does not intervene, the question could reach the Supreme Court, where the justices are already considering whether to grant review of other climate litigation.

Those filing various nuisance and tort suits against energy companies have been working hard to keep their cases out of federal court (and with much success). Whereas the energy companies characterize the suits as unbounded efforts to dictate energy policy in state courts, the plaintiffs in those cases stress that they are simply pursuing state law claims in state courts, and that such questions are not worth the Supreme Court’s review. Suits like Juliana (and the recently filed Genesis B case),  threaten to disrupt the plaintiffs “business as usual” narrative and offer the justices good cause to step in to make sure climate litigation does not get out of hand.

Many cliamte activists are cheering Judge Aiken’s latest ruling. But should her shenanigans lead to premature High Court review of pending climate claims, they may come to rue the day Judge Aiken refused to let the Juliana litigation stay dead and buried.

*  *  *

For those interested, here are my prior posts on the Juliana litigation:

• “Is Kids Climate Case Coming to an End?” Nov. 26, 2018.
• “Ninth Circuit Dismisses Kids Climate Case for Lack of Standing (Updated),” Jan. 17, 2020.
• “Kids Climate Plaintiffs to Seek Rehearing En Banc,” Jan. 20, 2020.
• “Ninth Circuit Denies Petition for En Banc Rehearing in Kids Climate Case,” Feb. 10, 2021.
• “Will the Justice Department Settle a Case the Ninth Circuit Already Dismissed?” May 26, 2021.
• “States Seek to Intervene to Prevent Settlement in Kids Climate Case Ninth Circuit Already Ordered Dismissed,” June 9, 2021.
• “Blue States File Brief Encouraging District Court to Consider Juliana Settlement,” July 7, 2021.
• “Juliana Plaintiffs Opt Against Filing Cert Petition in Kids Climate Case,” July 13, 2021.
• “District Court Judge Revives Kids Climate Case,” June 1, 2023.
• “The Next Kids Climate Case: Genesis B. v. EPA,” Dec. 15, 2023.

The post Federal Court Again Refuses to Dismiss Juliana Climate Case appeared first on Reason.com.

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An Idaho judge has denied the state’s request to dismiss a lawsuit that argues Idaho’s abortion ban law is overly vague, leading women to be denied “necessary and potentially lifesaving obstetric care.”

“Idaho’s interlocking abortion bans hinder and delay necessary obstetric care and make it nearly impossible for medical professionals to continue providing obstetric care in the state,” reads the complaint, filed in September 2023. “Pervasive fear and uncertainty throughout the medical community regarding the scope of the exceptions to abortion bans have put patients’ lives and physicians’ liberty at grave risk.”

The lawsuit, filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights, argues that while abortions are technically permitted to “prevent a pregnant woman’s death,” this description is unclear, leaving physicians unsure of when they can intervene. 

Further, physicians who are found guilty of performing an abortion not covered under this exception face two to five years in prison, causing doctors to be hesitant to perform procedures that they believe are medically necessary out of fear of prosecution. 

“Facing the threats of losing their medical licenses, thousands of dollars in fines, and up to five years in prison, it is no wonder that doctors and hospitals in Idaho are turning patients away—even women in medical emergencies,” the complaint states. “Plaintiffs respectfully ask this Court for a declaratory judgment clarifying the scope of Idaho’s Medical Exceptions, and granting any and all declaratory or injunctive relief necessary to protect the health and lives of pregnant people in Idaho.”

However, last month, the Idaho Attorney General’s Office asked state Judge Jason Scott to dismiss the lawsuit in its entirety. Last week, Scott denied this request, allowing to suit to go forward. Scott did, however, dismiss two of the four claims against the state made in the complaint, including the claims that the law violates the Idaho Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause and substantive due process provisions. Scott also dropped Idaho’s governor, attorney general, and the Board of Medicine as defendants in the case.

Despite having some claims dismissed, supporters of the lawsuit expressed optimism that the suit has been allowed to go forward.

“We’re grateful the court saw through the State’s callous attempt to ignore the pain and suffering their laws are causing Idahoans. Now the State of Idaho will be forced to answer to these women in a court of law,” said Gail Deady, senior staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, in a Friday press release. “In every state where abortion is banned, pregnant people are suffering.”

The post Judge Blocks Attempt To Dismiss Lawsuit Challenging Idaho Abortion Ban appeared first on Reason.com.

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Few people, and even fewer senators, would blink an eye at the news that the 690th most valuable company in the United States was being sold.

Unless, as is the case, that company happened to be named “U.S. Steel.”

In response to last month’s news that U.S. Steel would be purchased by Japan-based Nippon Steel, a bipartisan group of senators—including Sherrod Brown (D–Ohio), John Fetterman (D–Penn.), Josh Hawley (R–Mo.), Marco Rubio (R–Fla.), and J.D. Vance (R–Ohio)—have condemned the decision. The three Republicans have gone a step further by formally asking the Biden administration to block the deal because it represents a supposed threat to national security. As a political matter, the reactions to the sale of U.S. Steel have served as a nice reminder that the impulse to intervene in the private affairs of publicly traded companies runs across both major parties.

As a matter of economic policy, however, those senators have completely missed the point. More government intervention is not going to save U.S. Steel. Indeed, decades of protectionist policies seem to have contributed to its downfall.

“Arguably, US Steel has been a disappointment since the day it was formed,” writes Brian Potter, a senior infrastructure fellow at the Institute for Progress, in his Construction Physics Substack newsletter. “The company’s large size made it unwieldy to manage, and it was late to every major advance in steelmaking technology of the last 100 years, from continuous rolling to the basic oxygen furnace to the minimill….As far as I can tell, no major steelmaking technology over the last century came out of US Steel.”

Though U.S. Steel enjoyed global dominance in the aftermath of World War II, in no small part because the war had wrecked large portions of Europe’s and Japan’s industrial bases, it was already on the decline by the 1960s and early 1970s. After Nippon—the company now poised to buy out what remains of U.S. Steel—surpassed it as the world’s largest steel company in 1971, U.S. Steel responded “not by trying to improve their operations, but by demanding government protection from ‘unfair’ foreign trade practices,” writes Potter.

Thus began a 50-plus-year effort by the federal government to prop up U.S. Steel. Those interventions have taken many forms, including “hundreds of import restrictions; tens of billions of dollars in state, local and federal subsidies and bailouts; exemptions from environmental regulations; special ‘Buy American’ rules just for integrated steelmakers like U.S. Steel; and federal pension benefit guarantees,” wrote Scott Lincicome, vice president of the Cato Institute’s Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies, in a 2021 rundown on how protectionism had failed American steel companies and their employees. Even before President Donald Trump slapped 25 percent tariffs on nearly all imported steel, about half of all anti-dumping tariffs imposed by the federal government were aimed at various types of foreign-made steel, according to Lincicome.

What has all that government aid done for U.S. Steel? Today, the company makes about one-third as much steel as it did in the mid-1950s and employs about 10 percent as many people as it did during its heyday. U.S. Steel was dropped from the S&P 500 in 2014 and ranked as the 690th most valuable company based in the United States before the Nippon purchase was announced. As Potter notes, that means U.S. Steel ranks behind the Texas Roadhouse steakhouse restaurant chain and employs around the same number of people as Chewy, the online pet care delivery service.

Would the sale of either of those companies attract the attention of senators or be condemned as a risk to American national security? Of course not.

The difference between Texas Roadhouse and U.S. Steel mostly comes down to branding and lobbying.

“One of the smartest things the founders of U.S. Steel did was put ‘U.S.’ in the firm’s name,” suggests Dominic Pino in a post at National Review. While it is certainly not the only example out there, the branding of U.S. Steel (a fully private company, don’t forget) “makes it sound like it’s a bad thing for America if it’s purchased by a company from another country,” Pino concludes.

As for lobbying, it is no secret that U.S. Steel has long maintained a powerful presence in Washington. That goes all the way back to the company’s more successful early days, when it used its sheer size in the market “to bully other steelmakers and extract money from consumers,” writes Potter. “When this stopped working, it used its political influence to prevent consumers from buying low-cost foreign steel. Improving the efficiency of its operations was something it did as a last resort when left with no other options.”

Like people, companies get better at the things they work to improve on. Long ago, U.S. Steel decided that it didn’t need to innovate to compete more successfully in a global marketplace if it could instead extract benefits from the political process. Ironically, that same political process could now be the thing that prevents U.S. Steel from being acquired by a more successful firm.

The idea that national security is threatened by Nippon’s purchase of U.S. Steel is utterly silly. And the associated idea that the federal government has failed to adequately cradle American steelmakers from foreign competition is simply false. Protectionism failed U.S. Steel by cushioning the company when it needed to innovate, and another round of federal intervention to prevent its sale makes no sense.

The post Protectionism Ruined U.S. Steel appeared first on Reason.com.

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