Dorf on Law

Recent Posts from Dorf on Law

• Cloture, the Constitution and Democracy

  By Mike Dorf The recent procedural theatrics over starting Senate debate on the health care bill provide only the latest occasion for reflecting on the oddity of the cloture rule, which effectively requires 60 votes…

• KSM (non)Politics

  By Mike Dorf I don't have much to add to the substantive discussion--sensible and otherwise--of the Justice Department's decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court.  I do want to register what will…

• Future Generations of Europeans and Americans

  -- Posted by Neil H. BuchananMy latest FindLaw column (available here later today) revisits one of my favorite policy issues: public investments in infrastructure, education, and so on. I used my recent travels in Europe…

• Who May Deem a Woman an Egg-White? A Karamazovian Inquisition in Chancery

  By Bob Hockett Sherry’s thoughtful post last Monday, November 9th reminded me of a couple of equity-rooted considerations that have occasionally floated before my mind, in connection with the morality and legality of abortion, ever since first encountering…

• Anonymous Campaign Donations Revisited

  By Mike Dorf In my latest FindLaw column, I examine a recent Ninth Circuit decision, Doe #1 v. Reed, that rejected a claimed First Amendment right of anonymity for people who signed a petition to…

• The Credit Card "Business"

  By Mike Dorf As various commentators have noted, the traditional business model of credit card companies is peculiar.  Here is how James Surowiecki described it in a May issue of the New Yorker: Their best…

• The Master's Tools: Religion and Taxes

  Posted by Neil H. BuchananIn a post here earlier this week, Mike Dorf continued his discussion of his colleague Steve Shiffrin's new book, The Religious Left and Church-State Relations. At the risk of over-simplifying, Mike's…

• A Polyvocal Legal Future for France and Europe?

  By Mike Dorf In another Cornell Law School celebration of a recent faculty book, last week we examined Mitch Lasser's new book, Judicial Transformations: The Rights Revolution in the Courts of Europe.   I was one…

• A Tale of Two 'Marriages'

  By Bob Hockett Martha Nussbaum gave an interesting talk at Cornell this past Friday on the subject of same-sex marriage, a subject which figures into her forthcoming book on 'the politics of disgust.' (This was…

• Bone Marrow Transplants and Abortion

  Posted by Sherry Colb In my column this week, located here, I discuss a case in which plaintiffs challenge the constitutionality of a federal criminal law that prohibits the provision of compensation to bone marrow…