Amber Taylor speculates about the legality of a city's choice to ban the childless from certain parks. I am unaware of any state nondiscrimination policies that would rein the municipality in, so that leaves the constitution. the ususal doctrinal rule is that one needs a rational basis for the policy. That people with children are much less likely to be frequenting the park in order to find children to abuse seems facially plausible, and since there exist factual circumstances under which that would be credible, that seems to end the matter.

The wisdom of the policy is a more intriguing question, but without some sense of the magnitude of the underlying problem, it's not easy to assess. Now if the city were to demand biological mother- or father-hood as a prerequisite to entering parks, that might violate some version of the Moore v. East Cleveland principle.

Norwood, the first Institute for Justice property-rights case to appear in a state Supreme Court after Kelo, was argued today. Is there independent life in the Ohio Constitution? We will see soon.

UPDATE: Not that soon. This hearing turns out to be over a fascinating injunction-bond question, not the fundamental legality of the private taking.

In response to Sudeep's and Phoebe's posts on people not washing their hands after using the bathroom:

I was actually shocked that the figures were so high. Three out of every four men washes his hands after using the bathroom? That is certainly not the case in the second-floor bathroom at YLS.

Some firm interviewers from demonstrated interest in this site, and also interest in leaving comments. Please do so here.

What are they teaching in schools these days?

(via the ever lovely and talented Phoebe Maltz.)

This has been pre-empted by the Paul Hortwitz's post on PrawfsBlawg, but I thought I'd note the discussion of the blogosphere on last night's Gilmore Girls.

Rory: "I can't believe I'm on the blogosphere."

Paris: "See for yourself. Just Google "Rory Gilmore sex boat."

Emily Kadens, who taught my Prosecuting Crime class that I blogged about here, here, here, here, here, and here, has some thoughts at the Leiter Reports about the historical evolution of the Socratic Method. Apparently it has changed from being a tactic of taking students into a thicket and then leading them out to its current form-- taking the students into the thicket and leaving them there.

Via Josh Claybourne, I see that there is an effort to pass legislation forcing the Supreme Court to televise its oral arguments. I am unsure about the constitutional issues here (enumerated power? separated powers?) or whether they are frivolous, so I will leave them aside.

As I remember what I have heard-- I cannot amass the links now-- one of the Court's objections to immediate broadcast of most oral arguments was that they would mislead the public into thinking that oral arguments were something other than a dog-and-pony show. Or put more fairly, they would mislead the public into thinking that the work of the court was not largely about reading briefs, looking at legal texts, and so on. At his re-confirmation hearing to be Chief, Rehnquist told the Judiciary Committee that he would be willing to consider putting cameras in the courtroom if they could do it without having the massive lights shining in his face, which his big complaint with the televised SJC hearing.

While, being a court nut, I would love to be able to see oral arguments in real time without sleeping on the court steps the night before, let me offer a few compromise suggestions.

1, rather than televising the arguments, we could of course broadcast them over radio. That eliminates the problem of bright lights interfering with the business of justice, and also Justice Souter's objection that when cameras enter the courtroom they will do so over his dead body. It does not, however, circumvent the more general objection that people will misleadingly think that oral arguments are what the thing is all about.

Which brings us to my suggestion 2:

Even if we think there are valid reasons to not release tapes of oral arguments for several weeks or months after the case is argued, why not broadcast the opinion announcements on radio? As several people have pointed out, a Justice's reading of his or her opinion (or occasionally a dissent) frequently differs a little bit from the written text, both because large boring parts are missing, and occasionally little explanations and thoughts are inserted. For the most part this announcement is heard only by the hundred or two people in the courtroom plus anybody who digs up the recording later on Oyez. Why not broadcast it to the world? Opinions are the work of the court, and surely this court would be happy to have more people know about what it has decided and why.

Since the rise of the law-blogosphere, every scheduled opinion day features thosands of people reloading and reloading How Appealing or ScotusBlog or WID.AP.ORG waiting for the opinions to come online sometime between 10 and noon. I once had to go to the courtroom and pace the halls waiting to see if Kelo had come down. Even if oral arguments should remain archived for various good reasons, why not televise-- or radio broadcast-- the announcements?