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The lectures notes are here. The live chat is here.

The lectures notes are here. The live chat is here.

Othen v. Roster was authored by Justice Brewster of the Texas Supreme Court.

Here a map of the property at issue in Othen, courtesy of the Dukeminier web site.

 

Here is a map of the Atlantis Beach Club from the New Jersey Supreme Court case, and a contemporary article from the New York Times. Also, here is a listing of the current fees to use the beach (assuming you can find it).

View Larger Map

You can also learn about a recent Texas Supreme Court opinion, Severance v. Patterson, concerning easements on the beach of the Gulf Coast here and here.

 

As an originalist, even I can see the implications of marriage in our era have changed from when marriage meant someone was strictly “off-limits.” Many marriages today end in divorce, especially marriages where one or both members has a stressful career, like serving on the highest court in the land or being a tax law expert. Under these circumstances, engaging in outings with a member of the opposite sex, such as a romantic evenings at the opera, would cause a rational observer to expect the relationship to progress in a romantic way notwithstanding any spousal complications.

Similarly, many relationships today start in the workplace, especially amongst busy professionals, so the fact that two members of the opposite sex happen to work together cannot defeat the presumption that heterosexual hanging out is a preface to dating. In fact, working together can be conducive to romantic compatibility as it indicates shared interests and experiences, e.g. in adjudicating constitutional disputes. Even where the parties may have a somewhat contentious relationships in the workplace—say one represented NOW and the other thinks constitutional rights should be frozen at a time when women were basically property—such pre-relationship disagreement, as romantic comedies tell us, are indicative of the passion and healthy ability disagree that sustain lasting and meaningful relationships.

Courtesy of the Harvard Law Record. AS <3 RBG.

H/T Lots of people on Twitter.

This is huge.

When the history of President Obama’s drive for national health care is written, there are several moments that will be looked back upon as having cemented the law in place. There were “conservative” Democrats Ben Nelson and Bart Stupak dropping their objections to Obamacare to get the legislation across the finish line. There was Chief Justice John Roberts  siding with the Supreme Court’s liberals to uphold the constitutionality of the law. There was President Obama’s reelection victory, which crushed any feasible path to full repeal. On Thursday, Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s delivered yet another blow to opponents to Obamacare by endorsing the law’s Medicaid expansion in his state. Scott’s decision is of both symbolic and substantive importance.

“Your money or your life.”

Update: Some more analysis on this decision:

Scott, like other red-state governors, has come under intense pressure from hospitals. The Florida Hospital Association, which stands to benefit significantly from the expansion, has been lobbying, advertising and polling to try to persuade state officials to expand. Scott, a former hospital executive, has close ties to that community.

But if administration officials are quietly celebrating, the White House is unlikely to gloat too publicly. It has every incentive to continue to urge governors to sign on. The success of its health reform law depends on other states following suit so the law can expand coverage to as many uninsured Americans as possible. In the case of Florida, the administration apparently sweetened the deal by signing off on a Medicaid waiver the state wanted to continue privatizing the program for existing beneficiaries. “They’ve made it as easy as possible,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the president of the conservative American Action Forum. “They need to make the Affordable Care Act work.”

Update 2: More from Michael Cannon:

There is speculation that Scott made a deal with the Obama administration: he would drop his opposition to the Medicaid expansion in exchange for HHS approving Florida’s plan to put its Medicaid enrollees in managed care plans. HHS approved Florida’s plan today. But economists have shown that moving Medicaid enrollees into managed care increases state and federal spending because it lures more people into the program. So it appears that Scott supported ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion so that the Obama administration would support his.

Scott says he still opposes having Florida create a health insurance Exchange. Then again, he said the same thing about the Medicaid expansion. So in addition to whatever other damage his flip-flop does, he has squandered his credibility as an opponent of ObamaCare.

Justice Thomas revealed some insights into how he writes opinions. Hint: he wants the average non-lawyer to understand.

“I think we do that with the opinions we write,” he said. “We write them in a way that they’re inaccessible to the average person.” With that fascinating segue, he explained the logic behind his writing

What I tell my law clerks is that we write these so that they are accessible to regular people. That doesn’t mean that there’s no law in it. But there are simple ways to put important things in language that’s accessible. As I say to them, the beauty, the genius is not to write a 5 cent idea in a ten dollar sentence. It’s to put a ten dollar idea in a 5 cent sentence.

That’s beauty. That’s editing. That’s writing. 

The editing we do is for clarity and simplicity without losing meaning, and without adding things. You don’t see a lot of double entendres, you don’t see word play and cuteness. We’re not there to win a literary award. We’re there to write opinions that some busy person or somebody at their kitchen table can read and say, “I don’t agree with a word he said, but I understand what he said.”

He went on to recall a legal scholar asking why his opinions are 25% shorter, on average, that opinions by his colleagues. “I said, I think I would say it’s editing,” he said. “Editing, editing, editing. We do a lot of editing, and it’s very aggressive. We eliminate a lot of trivial nonsense. And I do not like cuteness in my opinions. You save that for your own stuff. It is all meat and potatoes.”

Indeed, I don’t know if  a Justice Thomas opinion has ever been nominated for a Green Bag award.

I think Justice Scalia goes out of his way to add the “cuteness.”