The Faculty Lounge

Genetic Surveillance: Crime Scene DNA Used To Hunt Down Offenders' Relatives

The LA Times reports today a story that reflects more of this "policing über alles" mentality I discussed in my last post.  It seems that previously liberal California Attorney General Jerry Brown now plans to sample DNA at crime scenes and, using "partial match" technology, find felons in the state's burgeoning DNA database who are related to the apparent offender.  Police will then target these relatives for interrogation.

For now, the public will feel reassured that the comparison set is exclusively felons.  But how long will that last?  Testing and disclosure of DNA is becoming much more commonplace - for transplant databases, among other things.  At some point, states may seek access to these data sets.  And how long will it be before the government collects DNA for use as the definitive identifier - for passports and drivers licenses, perhaps? 

Before the 1960's, the U.S. had comparatively lax protection for individual privacy but police had relatively limited capacities to invade it.  In the 1960's and 1970's, we reconsidered these policies, and adopted a more protective approach to the Fouth Amendment. Now, however, as the Warren Court legacy recedes into deep history and protections for privacy similarly fade, we discover that government has new tricks and technology up its sleeve.  Here are just three: implantable subcutaenous human tracking devices, thermal imaging heat emission searches, and DNA database searches. For now, the use of some of these technologies is legally constrained.  But we cannot assume the permanence of those protections.   Certainly not with Governor Moonbeam playing police chief.    

Canada Supreme Court Nixes Suspicionless Dog Sniffs

The United States Supreme Court is moving toward allowing more and more suspicionless searching under the Fourth Amendment.  In Illinois v. Caballos, for example, the Court held that an officer may conduct a dog sniff of the outside of a car after a traffic stop.  In dissent, Justice Ginsburg argued that random dog sniffing is pretty much A-OK after this decision, writing:

[Caballos] clears the way for suspicionless, dog-accompanied drug sweeps of parked cars along sidewalks and in parking lots. Nor would motorists have constitutional grounds for complaint should police with dogs, stationed at long traffic lights, circle cars waiting for the red signal to turn green.

The Canadian Supreme Court, however, takes a different view and does not share this disrespect for individual privacy and autonomy.  The Court considered two cases (Kang-Brown and A.M.) where trained drug sniffing dogs sniffed backpacks in a high school and bags in a bus depot - in both cases, without reasonable  suspicion.  The Court held the searches violated Canadians' right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures as protected by the Charter of Rights.  I am not a student of Canadian law, and I'm not sure the degree to which Parliment may adopt legislation that empowers police to engage in these searches.  But the decisions make clear that this Court views dog sniffs as intrusive searches - a significantly different perception of the matter than that shared by the U.S.  Supreme Court. 

Some may argue that Canada faces less serious threats - particularly with respect to terrorism.  But fears of terrorism and widespread drug use are also handy tools for those who prefer a highly interventionist criminal justice state.   If Justice Ginsburg is right in her analysis - and I suspect she is - and the Courts and legislatures continue their embrace of policing über alles,  this Land of the Free will become discernably less so.

Early Intervierw Week, The Parody

"Chevron deference really does it for me", or so says Ms. Emily Bushnell, an NYU Law Student  in a highly entertaining  Law Revue spoof.   We watch snippets of her interviewing at one after another after another faceless firm, trying hard - as so many of us once did - to meet the prospective employer where they live.  The spoof certainly suggests that firms would do as well to have candidates chat about their view of Cheetos (quick fried to a crackly crunch versus baked to a delicate crunch) as to have them discuss litigation versus corporate.  At least maybe they'd feel free to be candid!

It's here.

Colleges and Slavery Investigations

One year ago the University of Virginia's board of visitors apologized for that university's connections to slavery.  And in the past year, self-investigations at the University of Maryland and William and Mary have begun.  After Brown University's Slavery and Justice Committee released its report back in 2006, I thought that other schools might follow Brown University's lead in talking about their connections to slavery.  I thought that Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, as well as a bunch of southern schools, like UVA, W&M, Randolph Macon College, Ole Miss, and UGA, might take up investigations.  Only part of my prediction has come true.

As Brittany M. Llewellyn and Alexandra Perloff-Giles report in today's Harvard Crimson,
Harvard's not going to be following them right now--a position I completely understand.  As I said about William and Mary's deliberations, the decision of what--if anything--to do is best left to a school's current students, faculty, and administration.  If Harvard students and faculty think this is something that should be pursued, they should pursue it, through their research and advocacy.   The rest of us who don't have to live with these difficult discussions shouldn't put the onus on Harvard's administration.  And certainly the current students and faculty (and even alums to the extent that they care) shouldn't expect the administration to carry the burden, either.  (The Crimson article draws an important distinction between Drew Faust's role as one of our country's leading historians and her role as president.)

One thing that I think a self-investigation would remind us is the school's connections to anti-slavery as well as proslavery thought.   Harvard, like Brown, was a major training ground for anti-slavery thinkers.   (A point made well in this article from the Crimson on Thursday.)  Brown's president during much of the antebellum period, Francis Wayland, was a leading antislavery advocate.  And Harvard--well, in Alabama I'm not so sure we think that Harvard was a hot-bed of proslavery thought.  Emerson, Thoreau, William Ellery Channing, Theodore Parker ... all Harvard alums.  (Of course, Joseph Story, Lemuel Shaw, Timothy Walker ... all Harvard alums, too.)

The illustration is of Harvard Hall, where Edward Everett lectured and set loose the seeds of Transcendentalism, in which Emerson and Thoreau and so many others found their antislavery ideas.

Alfred Brophy

A Phallacious Crime in Congo

From Reuters:
Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.    
Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur.

Rumors of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo's sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants.

Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure.

"It's real. Just yesterday here, there was a man who was a victim. We saw. What was left was tiny," said 29-year-old Alain Kalala, who sells phone credits near a Kinshasa police station.

Full story here.

Doug Glanville on Rookies and Veterans

Mr. Glanville--formerly of my beloved Phillies--writes in toady's New York Times:

You enter the big leagues (usually) as a young, vibrant, wide-eyed rookie, inspired and inspiring and still able to talk about your career with the excitement of a 5-year-old. Then, at the speed of light, you’re a seasoned veteran, with loads of “experience” by the ripe old age of 34, and it takes two whirlpool massages just to get ready for batting practice. ...

I understood that I was now entrenched on the other side of the bell curve. I was sliding downward into the “long in the tooth” spiked pit. My competition’s relatively minimal major league experience had become more valuable, in a way, than my library of experience. Somehow I had missed the transition point in my career where my value to a team had intersected with the value of a new kid on the block.

...

Young players don’t want feel dismissed just because they haven’t been around the block any more than veterans want to have their years of experience discarded. And after all, there are different types of contributions, to be made by young and old, that can get a team to the same place. It just depends on what you are looking for and how you want it done.

Read the whole article here.  Is this about law teaching, too?
Alfred Brophy

Easterbrook Discovers Effective Lie Detector Test

A major scientific finding has just surfaced in the Seventh Circuit.  In a new immigration opinion involving an asylum seeker, Judge Frank Easterbrook took a bold step into the land of pop psychology and endorsed a particular methodology of lie detection.   Like any good investigator, he first demolished other supposed methods of detecting deceit - demeanor, mannerisms, heavy sweating.  Then, citing what he apparently views sees as a definitive text on the issue - Richard Wisemans's Quirkology: How We Discover The Big Truths in Small Things, Basic Books, 2007 (and an extra value on Amazon,   when you follow their suggestion to buy it with Blind Spots: Why Smart People Do Dumb Things) - Easterbrook pronounces the definitive method to ferret out liars:

So what gives the liar away? Wiseman’s book recounts what is known about this subject. The major clue, apart from factual gaffes and inconsistencies that amount to confessions, is the amount of detail. “When it comes to lying, the more information you give away, the greater are the chances that some of it will come back to haunt you. As a result, liars tend to say less, and to provide fewer details”.  Id. at 59. Truth-tellers have normal amounts of memory failure. But “[w]hen it comes to relatively unimportant information, [liars] seem to develop super-powered memories and often recall the smallest of details. In contrast, truthtellers know that they have forgotten certain details and are happy to admit it.

Yeah, well, maybe.   In any case, at least a lawyer will know how to coach her clients the next time they have a case coming up in the Seventh Circuit!

H/T: Howard Bashman.

Workplace Prof Blog Books Millionth

Congratulations to Paul Secunda, Rick Bales and Jeff Hirsch as Workplace Prof Blog hits the notable Site Meter achievement of one million page views. 

In its three-plus years of existence, these folks have labored to produce a prodigious amount of content.  I thought only Co-op had figured out how the best way to bring in crowds, but based on Paul's announcement, apparently even Workplace it's own back catalog of sexy google material. 

Here's hoping that three years from now, The Faculty Lounge will be as vibrant as Workplace Prof!

Dartmouth Governance: No Democracy, Please

Todd Zywicki, over at the Volokh Conspiracy  has a post concerning the Dartmouth governing board's attempt to dilute severely the voice of democratically elected alumni trustees.  Another take on this issue can be found here.  The entire issue raises the question of accountability of these mammoth non-profit private universities.  To whom are they responsible?  Their current students?  Their alumni?  Their faculty?  Only the board of trustees?  The state attorney general, in his or her capacity to ensure that the charitable purposes of the university are being carried out without fraud or other malfeasance?  Why does the Dartmouth board think that it should have the power unilaterally to alter the university's governance structure?  Perhaps the Dartmouth administration might like to invite Robert Mugabe to provide some governance tips.   

Start-Up Possibilities

Inside Higher Ed reports this morning that NY  lawmakers have set aside funds to develop as many as three new law school in the state, one at a private institution and two as part of the SUNY system.  That would make 18 law schools in NY, adding to:  Albany,  Brooklyn, CUNY, Columbia, Cornell, Fordham, Hofstra, NYU, Pace, St. John's, SUNY Buffalo, Syracuse, Touro, Yeshiva, and New York Law School.

Market concerns tend to drive the debate over law school start-ups - do they really need 18 law schools in NY?  Competition for state and federal funding would mean less revenue allocated to established schools, right?  Will the reputation of established schools be enough to retain top tier students despite tuition discounts start-ups tend to offer?  I don't have the answer to any of these questions, but I'd welcome a broader discussion on the possibilities start-ups might hold for modernizing the process of legal education. 

I'd especially like to know whether its possible for start-ups to hold admissions numbers to a manageable size without pricing themselves out of the market.  I teach a substantive first year course every semester (Con Law - which I love), but I've yet to figure out how to divide 90 students in an 80 minute class into groups of 4 for any kind of meaningful group exercise.  The pedagogical literature tells me that the Socratic method is tired and outdated, and to the extent that was probably true even when we were law students, its especially true for the millennial generation we'll be teaching over the next decades.  For more on that see Millennial Law Prof.  Westlaw, Google and CALI help bridge the gap by bringing technology into the classroom,  but engaged inter-active problem solving - a critical part of lawyering - is hard to mimic in an over-crowded classroom.  New law schools appear to be taking the lead in providing valuable practice opportunities outside of the classroom - clinics, externship requirements, and the like.  But I don't know whether there's a corresponding focus on practice-oriented learning in the classroom - or whether start-ups are even in a position to make that part of their mission. 

Perhaps Dan can shed some light on this  . . .

On that note, the Inside Higher Ed article also notes that Drexel University’s law school received provisional accreditation in the shortest period of time allowed by the ABA - 18 months.  Bravo!

-Kathleen A. Bergin

Christian License Plate Considered in Florida

  Florida's legislature is considering offering a Christian license plate as an option to owners of Florida-registered vehicles.  Here is another link to an article discussing the plate, depicted in this post.  It does not appear that Florida is preparing to offer license plate options to other faiths or to atheists.  Forbidden endorsement?  Given the multiplicity of license plate styles -- everything from "save the manatee" to Florida Gators and FSU Seminoles to teachers and firefighters -- can it be fairly said that Florida is endorsing Christianity?  But if Florida's secular purpose is to provide a limited public forum for private expression, it cannot use viewpoint as a device to limit forum access.  So, Florida better be prepared to permit an Islamic license plate -- "Allah Akhbar," along with a green background and white star and crescent -- or an atheist plate -- "God is a Myth."   

Hat tip to Eli Underwood and Josh Marker.

Lemons Into Lemonade: Anti-Gay T-Shirt Spurs Great Free Speech Opinion

Kudos to Judge Ilana Rovner on the Seventh Circuit for her concurring opinion in Nuxoll v. Indian Prairie School District. 

A student in a suburban Chicago high school wanted to wear a "Be Happy, Not Gay" t-shirt on a Day of Silence - a date identified both nationally (and by the school's gay/straight alliance) as a time to draw attention to harrassment of gay people.  The school sought to bar the boy from wearing this shirt through the halls of Neuqua Valley High School, in Naperville, Illinois.  He sought a preliminary injunction against the school's action (which was denied) and he appealed to the Seventh Circuit. 

In a tepid opinion,  Judge Posner reversed the trial court.  Judge Rovner roared in concurrence.  She strongly backed the Supreme Court's decision protecting student speech in Tinker v. Des Moines Indpendent Community School District - and particularly worried that majority had improperly recast it as a case about viewpoint discrimination.  She also made powerful claims for the role of youth in shaping society and initiating political change.  She did not treat the t-shirt as deep political claimsmaking, but she accorded the issues of sexual orientation and identity deep respect by demanding that students be allowed to engage the issue in the high school.  One can easily make the case that the very act of suppressing Nuxoll's viewpoint, in this context, diminishes the seriousness of the issue in contention.

I particularly liked this passage:

I heartily disagree with my brothers about the value of the speech and speech rights of high school students, which the majority repeatedly denigrates. Youth are often the vanguard of social change. Anyone who thinks otherwise has not been paying attention to the civilrights movement, the women’s rights movement, the anti-war protests for Vietnam and Iraq, and the recent presidential primaries where the youth voice and the youth vote are having a substantial impact. And now youth are leading a broad, societal change in attitude towards homosexuals, forming alliances among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered (“LGBT”) and heterosexual students to discuss issues of importance related to sexual orientation. They have initiated a dialogue inwhich Nuxoll wishes to participate. The young adults to whom the majority refers as “kids” and “children” are either already eligible, or a few short years away from being eligible to vote, to contract, to marry, to serve in the military, and to be tried as adults in criminal prosecutions. To treat them as children in need of protection from controversy, to blithely dismiss their views as less valuable than those of adults, is contrary to the values of the First Amendment.

In Larry Solum's words, get it while it's hot!

H/T to How Appealing.

Gore For President. And No, I Am Not Joking.

Weeks ago I argued that Gore was more likely than Hillary to score the Democratic nomination.  I continue to believe this is true - and that every time Hillary lands a punch, as she did to a non-negligible degree in Pennyslvania - it brings Al Gore all that much closer to the Democratic nomination.  Let me be clear: I am not predicting that Gore is actually likely to get the nod - only that he is more likely than Clinton to do so and that his odds are on the rise.   

Why does he make sense?  Hillary's successful efforts in Pennsylvania and Ohio suggest that Obama may have real trouble with these important states.  And polls show that many blue collar Dems will vote McCain.  But Hillary is loathed - seriously and totally hated - by large segments of America.  And given her campaign's approach to race in this campaign, it is far from clear that she could fully reconstruct the traditional Democratic coalition.  (Not for nothing, John McCain is hanging out with Hank Sanders near the Pettus Bridge in Selma.)  And let's be candid: a superticket, featuring both candidates, is at least as likely to lose voters than it is to win them over.  Not that either of these folks seems eager to try it out.

But the toughest reality of all is that, in a year of total discontent with Republicans, there are a flock of other Democrats who could probably win this thing.  Now, neither Obama nor Hillary would ever tolerate being displaced by a Joe Biden, Tim Kaine or even John Edwards.  After all, they've put their hearts and souls on the line for the nomination - and supporters might well feel betrayed if either surrendered the nomination to a non-candidate.  They could only step aside for Democratic royalty, for someone truly unique.  A former vice president.  A Nobel prize winner.  Obama and Hillary could, if they chose, hand the keys to Gore and leave the Democratic coaltion not only intact, but enlarged.

I've long supported Obama, and I continue to see him as the best choice for the job.  But I've been troubled by my anxiety that both he and Hillary would be headed for a November train wreck.  Recently I've been floating this Gore idea to friends.  Many people dismiss it initially as unrealistic.  But the more they ponder it, the more they get excited.  A certain depression has set in among Democrats who have not strongly aligned with the two existing candidates and the prospect of a Gore candidacy offers a lot of hope.  If, in a few weeks, the balance of superdelegates remains uncommitted and Hillary stays in the race, pressure is going to rise for a solution.  And you can bet that John McCain is praying that Al Gore isn't it.

Update: At RealClearPolitics, we now see that Steven Stark of the Boston Phoenix is also starting to think Gore.

Ice Cream Cakes Equal Love

No, this isn't a law post or one about ice cream cakes, per se.  Rather, it's about a beautiful Wednesday night and my own love for found objects - or in this case, found language.  One of the great virtues of my current job is its location.  Drexel is less than a mile from Center City Philadelphia and two blocks from the very Ivy campus at Penn.  It was there, by the Van Pelt Library, that I found myself spending twenty minutes channeling college.  Students were milling about, debating whether to hit the books or head directly to Quizzo.  Couples were strolling by, holding hands, laughing.  A lone individual here and there was enjoying a cigarette.  And all around me I heard people chatting.  And as one of those talkers passed me, on a cell phone, she left a single phrase in her wake: "Ice Cream Cakes Equal Love."

That was her gift to me - a snippet of the English language.  My own Duchamp readymade.  What could she have meant?  Was she discussing birthday cake choices, agreeing with a confidante that her loving boyfriend had made a telling choice?  Was she explaining her own decision to forgo the usual Duncan Hines (or was it Betty Crocker?) and instead shell out for the Carvel?  Or is there a more obscure explanation? I'll never know, and am left to project my own meaning on the words.

Perhaps I needn't even do that.  TM charges good money for a mantra - for the which the main required trait is its inscrutability.  Now I can sit quietly under the elms and ponder my ice cream phrase for hours.

Once upon a time, I would have tried to transform the phrase into a short story.  Today, though, it will have to stand on its own two feet.  A piece of art all on its own.  A readymade. 

Exams

Alas, it's that time of the year where many of us are either writing or grading exams.  Here at Willamette our semester ends mid-April, so I am hard at work grading my way through a stack of crim pro exams. 

I'm always curious what others do to make this task less onerous.  One of my colleagues suggests beer, but I will probably save that for after tenure.  Listening to music helps a bit;  Verdi's Requiem always seems to set the appropriate mood. Perhaps it's the echoes of my students in the "salve me, fons pietatis" (save me, thou font of mercy)?

I also tend to put my friends in the fact-pattern, which never fails to amuse me.  Puerile, perhaps, but reading about Miranda for the 80th time is just that much more bearable when the "defendant" discussed is a friend or family member.

But for true amusement, my hat goes off to Stephen Bainbridge, who has posted these hilarious exam-taking instructions:

Don't Flush, Get Arrested

Did you know that it is illegal to sell beer in Nebraska unless there is a simultaneous pot of boiling soup on the stove?  Or that  butter substitutes are not allowed in state prisons in  Wisconsin?  (Hm on that one.) Or that men commit a crime when they knit during fishing season in New Jersey?  You probably didn't but that's the point.  I love to cite such odd laws when I teach, and ask students what authority such legal restrictions have.  Most often, enforcement is left up to the officer, leaving a cursing man in Michigan straight to jail/court for using profanity in the proximity of women and children--and also an unsympathetic cop.

Some other good ones:

-Kentucky:  "No female shall     appear in a bathing suit on any highway within this state unless she be escorted by at     least two officers or unless she be armed with a club".

Nebraska: The owner of every hotel in Hastings, Nebraska, must provide each     guest with a clean and pressed nightshirt. No couple, regardless of marital status, may sleep     together in the nude. Nor may they have sex unless they are wearing the special nightshirts.

A collection of these laws, state-by state, can be found here.

Is An Online JSD Next? Serious Law Bibliographies For People With Time

Patrick O'Donnell, over at Ratio Juris, is putting up some substantial bibliographies in a variety of areas of law.  I can't  speak for their comprehensiveness - and indeed, he is taking on so much real estate that they necessarily reflect signficant choices on his part - but they sure would give an aspiring scholar (with time) something to gnaw on.  There are four up so far (and the links are listed below) but many others are due to follow.  I wonder whether the University of Phoenix will want to sign him up to run an online JSD (or will it be SJD)  program?

Criminal law bibliography

International law, human rights and comparative law bibliography

American Indian law bibliography

Bioethics, environment and ecology bibliography

Saving the Constitution from Lawyers: Part III

For nearly thirty years as a political scientist, I have focused my research and writings on two main subjects: the American presidency, and gun control. In both areas, I discovered full-blown constitutional theories that were starkly at odds with prevailing analysis and understanding. The more I examined these theories, the clearer it became that they distorted facts, ignored or misstated past writings, relied on selective analysis, and overstated conclusions, in a manner resembling the adversarial, advocacy-based American legal system -- a system well suited to American justice, in which one-sided arguments collide to produce a just outcome, but antithetical to scholarly inquiry. When applied to constitutional theorizing as published in student-run law journals, the result, in these instances, was stark distortion of any sane reading of the Constitution.

            One such example, examined in much greater detail in Saving the Constitution from Lawyers, is the Unitary Executive theory as applied to the president’s commander-in-chief (CIC) power. Advocates of a strong presidency can make a credible, “living Constitution” argument in support of the two-century expansion of presidential power as a necessary development for a large, powerful nation and where, for the most part, the public and the rest of the government have supported this development. Yet law journal writing in the 1980s and 1990s promoted an allegedly new “originalist” view, the Unitary Executive. First developed in the Reagan Justice Department, the theory then sought, and arguably found, scholarly legitimacy in the pages of law reviews. Its linchpins are 1) the claim that presidential power had declined, not increased, since 1789; 2) that presidents have sole and exclusive control over the executive branch, and 3) that the other two branches of government may not interfere with whatever the president declares to be within his sole prerogative. The first claim contradicts one of the most well established truisms of American governance, as presidential power has (with fluctuations) grown, not declined, since 1789. The other two claims represent a flat rejection of checks and balances in the separation of powers system. One may propose in the modern era that checks and balances are obsolete or ineffective, but one may not argue that the Constitution’s founders rejected the very power arrangement that is the centerpiece of American governance -- yet writers in law reviews have busily done just that. Then in 1996, law professor John Yoo published a 135-page law journal article arguing that the framers established presidential CIC powers modeled on the British monarchy, when in fact the framers did the reverse: they rejected giving monarchical powers over the military and war to the president. For all its pretensions and erudition, Yoo’s analysis, now shrouded with academic legitimacy and embraced by the second Bush administration, is a cartoonishly distorted depiction of what the founders said and wrote. Does America need this imperialist presidency today? That, at least, is an arguable proposition. Did the founders create such a presidency? Not a chance.

            Second, law reviews were the well-spring for a new theory of the Second Amendment’s “right to bear arms,” arguing that the amendment provides an individual right to own and use guns for purposes other than service in a government-regulated militia (as the first part of the amendment says: “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”). While popularly misunderstood, the amendment’s framers, court decisions, and history all confirm the militia-based meaning. But in 1960, a law student wrote an article for a prominent law journal asserting that the amendment protected personal self-defense (ignoring self-defense’s common-law lineage), and also a right to overthrow the government (a proposition of startling absurdity). Within ten years, two more articles appeared staking out this position; in the 1970s, six more were published; in the 1980s, 21 were published in law journals; in the 1990s, 58 (from the late 19^th century to 1959, 13 law journal articles all endorsed the militia view). Today, the Supreme Court is poised, for the first time, to embrace the law-review-invented individualist view in the Heller case. Should the Second Amendment be now read to protect personal self-defense because of threats from crime or terrorism? Perhaps. But did the founders create such a right? No.

Art, Abuse, and Free Speech

  Last week I posted an item concerning Aliza Shvarts, the Yale senior whose art project was said to consist of repeated self-inseminations and induced abortions (the art element appeared to consist of a video record of the miscarriages, together with a display of the physical evidence in the form of an emulsion of blood and vaseline warpped in plastic).  I took down the item when it became debatable whether this was or was not a hoax.  But the plot has moved on, and so I bring it back.  Yale issued a statement that it was all a creative fiction, and Shvarts promptly contradicted Yale in her own statement.  Now Yale says it has disciplined the lecturer and faculty adviser who supervised the project and asserts that it will not permit Shvarts to exhibit her work unless she "confesses in writing that the exhibition is a work of fiction."  Assume that Yale is bound to comply with the First Amendent (which, of course, it is not).  Can Yale validly bar the exhibit?  Is this a refusal to subsidize speech or a penalty imposed on it?  Refusal to subsidize, I say.  But does imposition of the condition of coerced confession of fiction change things?  Or is this, too, merely a refusal to subsidize speech that Yale deems inappropriate?  See, e.g., NEA v. Finley.

Making A Party Out Of Hazardous Waste Disposal

Most of us realize that we are sitting on a pile of hazardous waste - from household chemicals to old computers, CRT's, and other items that look awfully tame when they're sitting on the shelf at Best Buy or Circuit City.  Hoover, Alabama makes disposal of these items a big event.  Maybe we should turn disposal of this waste into a big social gathering - making the socially responsible choice also a fun way to socialize with neighbors.  For next year's Earth Day, perhaps we could have a national hazardous waste disposal party!