Each year, many people wait eagerly for the Academy Award nominations. I wait for something different. The National Trust for Historic Preservation has just announced its annual list of “America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places,” which you can see at http://www.preservationnation.org/issues/11-most-endangered/. Not to ruin the suspense, but this year’s list names:
America’s State Parks & State-Owned Historic Sites
Black Mountain, Kentucky
Read the full postTwo words struck me in Elena Kagan’s brief speech this morning: humbled and blessed. Kagan used both words to describe her reaction to her nomination to the Supreme Court. Such words are commonplace on such occasions and may be little more than platitudes, but they both identify important idea. “Blessings” are typically thought to come from God, “from whom all blessings flow” as a popular doxology puts it. Humility, too, is a uniquely Christian virtue, as Thomas Aquinas wrote centuries ago. Humility also plays a surprising role in legal thought, as particularly evidenced by the many tributes to retiring judges who are praised for their humility.
Read the full postThe Supreme Court has been busy addressing issues that have been characterized as pollution yet which were far from the minds of the writers of our standard environmental laws. The Court just granted certiorari in Video Software Dealers Ass’n v. Schwarzenegger, 556 F.3d 950 (9th Cir. 2009), which struck down a California statute regulating the sale of violent video games to minors. Violent entertainment has often been described as cultural pollution, especially in the aftermath of the Columbine High School massacre in 1999. Duke political scientist James Hamilton’s book “Channeling Violence” presents a sophisticated analysis of violent entertainment as a problem of toxic wastes. Yet the courts have uniformly rejected any effort to regulate such cultural pollution, even as it affects minors.
Read the full postThis week’s deadline for submitting our federal income tax returns was accompanied by the ritual publication of the returns of the President and the Vice President. As usual, I was interested to see the charitable giving choices of our elected leaders. President Obama gave 5.9% of his earnings to charity, except that number is much higher — 19.6% — when his Nobel Peace Prize is included. (The prize does not constitute income, so the donation is not deductible either). By contrast, Vice President Biden gave just 1.4% of his earnings to charity.
Read the full postSurely it is not a coincidence that Justice Stevens announced his retirement after 34 years on the Supreme Court just one hour after Bart Stupak announced his retirement from the House of Representatives after 18 years of service there.
Read the full postI am writing this as I watch the NCAA basketball tournament, which reminds me of the many ongoing debates about achieving level playing fields in sports, politics, and law. There is something uniquely American about the desire to ensure that our favorite pastimes are governed by rules that treat everyone equally. That is why one of the most closely watched telecasts of the college basketball season doesn’t feature any basketball at all. Instead, the nation is captivated for an hour as the 64 teams that get to play in the basketball tournament are announced. And then the fans of the teams that fancied themselves as one of the 64 but whose names were not called complain about their “unfair” exclusion from the tournament.
Read the full postI promise that not all of my posts will be this self serving, but I am pleased to report that I just received the first copy of my new book, “Law’s Environment: How the Law Shapes the Places We Live.” Yale describes it as follows:
John Copeland Nagle shows how our reliance on environmental law affects the natural environment through an examination of five diverse places in the American landscape: Alaska’s Adak Island; the Susquehanna River; Colton in California’s Inland Empire; Theodore Roosevelt National Park in the badlands of North Dakota; and Alamogordo in New Mexico. Nagle asks why some places are preserved by the law while others are not, and he finds that environmental laws often have unexpected results while other laws have surprising effects on the environment. Nagle argues that sound environmental policy requires better coordination among the many laws, regulations, and social norms that determine the values and uses of our scarce lands and waters.
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