Law Students

If John McCain was born in the United States, aren't Guantanamo prisoners here, too?

Posted on May 02, 2008
John McCain was born in the Panama canal zone, a fact that delights pop legal scholars and has produced of a handful of newspaper articles about whether the Senator is constitutionally eligible to serve as the next President, since Article II of the Constitution requires that presidents be "natural born citizens...

What Pennsylvania Means

Posted on April 26, 2008
I'm back from three weeks in Philadelphia. I'm obviously disappointed by what happened Tuesday, though happy that we kept it to less than 10 points and excited by the energy and enthusiasm of all the volunteers I worked with.The national media have been playing Pennsylvania as a potential game-changer for the Democratic race, one that has party elders (read: super-delegates) beginning to doubt Obama's strength as a potential general election nominee...

Hiatus

Posted on April 03, 2008
I'm headed down to Philadelphia for the next couple of weeks to help with Sen. Obama's GOTV effort in Pennsylvania. As a result, I'll be on hiatus from blogging. Wish me luck!Best,Peter

Hoist on their own petard

Posted on March 26, 2008
Talk about being hoist on their own petard. A lawyer involved (on the pro-environmental side) in the automakers' lawsuit against California's car emissions standards spoke at Yale today about a recent court decision holding that Vermont could adopt California's emissions standards, if and when the EPA ever signs off on California imposing them...

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Obama's latest kerfuffles

Posted on March 15, 2008
It's incoming on several fronts for the Obama campaign today, with controversial statements by his (now retired) pastor finally bubbling up from the the blogs to the headlines and disclosures of additional Rezko money to his state legislative races.Obama's candid statement on the HuffingtonPost might help to allay the pastor issue, or at least keep it from dominating more than a couple of newscycles...

The Silly "Big State" Argument

Posted on March 12, 2008
Stephen Colbert tackled this subject a few days ago, a did a far better job than I can. But that won't prevent me from overing my 2 cents.The Clinton campaign's recent argument that she is the better general election nominee because she bests Obama in primaries in the "big states" that will matter in November is silly: the primary electorate is different from a general election electorate, and ability to win the former is, at best, indirect evidence of any talent for winning the latter...

OPEC, Oil Production, and Environmentalism

Posted on March 10, 2008
OPEC's refusal to increase oil production over the past three years marks a sharp departure from the cartel's historical practice of regulating output to keep global prices within a "band" established by the cartel. Although the band strategy reduced short-term profits, it quite consciously promoted OPEC's longer-term domination of world oil markets--it discouraged oil exploration in high-cost, non-OPEC countries, it eliminated economic incentives to invest in alternative sources of energy, and reduced political pressure in western nations to free themselves of OPEC oil...

The Spitzer Mess--It was a sting of Spitzer

Posted on March 10, 2008
Now I don't want to defend what Spitzer did, which was illegal, hypocritical, and wrong. There is, however, an interesting investigatory angle to the story: According to this New York Times story, the feds didn't just happen to snare Spitzer during a routine investigation into a prostitution ring...

It isn't just Pennsylvania

Posted on March 06, 2008
The Obama campaign needs to make clear over the next couple of weeks that Pennsylvania is just one of a dozen or so remaining contests and that, while it is the largest remaining state (excluding a possible do-over in Florida and Michigan), it isn't going to decide the primary...

Where's this race headed?

Posted on March 05, 2008
Pennsylvania? Puerto Rico? The Convention? I think the Democratic race will be decided sometime between the final primary and the Convention itself in late August. After her wins last night Sen. Clinton has every right to keep fighting on, and, assuming she wins Pennsylvania, will have little reason to drop out before the last primaries--something that is particularly true if, as I now expect, Florida and Michigan schedule do-overs to coincide with Puerto Rico's race on June 7...

When Should A Democrat Quit?

Posted on March 03, 2008
This question has been the subject of much discussion over the past week. My humble thought is that a candidate has every right to keep pursuing the Democratic nomination long as she (or he)has a legitimate shot at winning either a majority of the pledged delegated or a majority of the popular vote--excluding Florida and Michigan...

Where are Barack's Numbers?

Posted on March 02, 2008
We're two days into March, and the Obama campaign still hasn't released February fundraising totals. All they've said is that they're "significantly" ahead of Sen. Clinton's $35 million haul. There are two possible reasons for the radio silence--and either one of them makes me think that we won't get a number until after the primaries this Tuesday...

Mortgages, Walking Away, and Morality

Posted on March 02, 2008
A growing number of Americans stuck with real estate losses, according to the Wall Street Journal, have decided to mail their keys to the lender and walk away from their homes. In several states--notably California--state law prohibits a mortgage lender from going after any assets other than the home that secures a mortgage, so other than a temporary headache and the destruction of one's credit record, a borrower stuck with house worth less than his mortgage loses nothing if he lets the property fall into foreclosure...

Staggering

Posted on February 29, 2008
The sums that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama raised this month are staggering--$35 million for Clinton (so far), and a possible $50 million haul for Barack.Both candidates raised the overwhelming majority of that money online, mostly from smaller donors, a fact that should fundamentally alter the campaign finance debate going forward...

Obama's Taxing and Spending

Posted on February 28, 2008
The Wall Street Journal concedes that Obama's major proposals are essentially budget-neutral:One challenge is to tally up his tax cuts and spending increases to see whether they're matched by tax increases and spending cuts, as he says they are. To skip to the bottom line: Sen...

The Showdown in Cleveland

Posted on February 27, 2008
Sen. Clinton's deadpan challenge, "Meet me in Ohio. Let's have a debate about your tactics and your behavior in this campaign," left me hoping for fireworks Tuesday night, a political equivalent to the shootout at the O.K. Corral.I was disappointed. Sure, the debate had its moments--Sen...

(Not) Vetting Barack

Posted on February 26, 2008
For some time now, the Clinton campaign has insinuated that if the press would only cover the scandalettes in Obama's past, Clinton would have locked up the Democratic nomination by now. The real problem for Clinton, however, isn't that the press hasn't checked into Barack's record--it's that when they do, they find that, to quote the immortal Gertrude Stein, "there's no there there...

Mortgage Bailout

Posted on February 24, 2008
It is anything but a surprise that a mortgage bailout plan drafted by one of the nation's biggest lenders, Bank of America, amounts to little more than federal taxpayers buying lots of under-performing loans from the very banks that (foolishly) wrote them in the first place...

Obama and Cockiness

Posted on February 24, 2008
Interesting. The New York Times has picked up on just a hint of cockiness in Barack's latert appearances: Mr. Obama is on an electoral roll, polls show him pulling closer in Ohio and Texas, crowds show him the Big Celebrity Love, what?s not to like? A touch of cockiness is discernable in his manner now; he is like a gambler convinced his every dice roll will come up double sixes...

Last Night's Democratic Debate

Posted on February 22, 2008
Barack Obama won last night's debate by not losing it. Hillary was her usual, masterful self at the debate, quick with facts and figures and generally on top of her game. But for the the first time in the 19 Democratic debates we've had so far, Obama seemed an almost equal master of minutiae, and his performance will blunt the escalating chorus of criticism that he's a talker lacking specifics...

Our missile defense program

Posted on February 21, 2008
Of course the American military shot down a disabled spy satellite to test--and demonstrate--our missile defense program; as Gail Collins points out in her column today, the official safety explanation simply isn't compelling on its own. And seen for what it was, the test was a spectacular success: we not only hit the satellite, we appear to have punctured its fuel tank, a nice, small, hard target probably not much bigger than the warhead we'd need to hit on an incoming missile...

An independent Kosovo

Posted on February 18, 2008
While I'm all for an independent Kosovo, I predict that today's events will produce a couple of unintended consequences:1) Darfur. Kosovo's independence is the final nail in the coffin of any hope that Sudan's government will acquiesce to a robust U.N...

Obama's Speech in Virginia

Posted on February 10, 2008
Obama's speech Tuesday night at the Virginia Democratic Party's JJ dinner was an entirely typical political speech, and, coming from Barack Obama, that made it interesting.I heard Obama deliver his stump speech when I was campaigning in New Hampshire...

A (very modest) defense of super delegates

Posted on February 10, 2008
Judging from the cable network talking heads blabbering on about the election returns last night and today's headlines in the New York Times and Washington Post, super delegates have emerged as the political issue du jour. There are nearly 800 of these in the Democratic party--congressmen and senators, governors, state party officials, and garden variety "insiders"--who may hold the balance of power between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton...

Let's vote again in Michigan and Florida--and let's have the campaigns help pay for it

Posted on February 08, 2008
The last thing our party needs is a bitter August fight over seating delegates. The second-to-last thing our party needs is to have disenfranchised voters living in two important November swing states. John McCain will be a tough enough opponent this fall without internal divisions on our side of the aisle--Democrats need to enter the general election season unified and ready to go...

Edwards drops out

Posted on January 31, 2008
As I predicted, Edwards is now out of the race. Rumblings deep down in the press coverage of his decision to quit the presidential campaign suggest that pressure from financial and union backers did, indeed, affect his decision: they wanted a chance to cast their lots with a candidate more likely to win...

Off to S.C.

Posted on January 23, 2008
Along with 20 or so other YLS students, I'm off to South Carolina tomorrow (Wednesday) to campaign for Barack Obama. It should be exciting--we need to win this one!Updates on my return.

Will Edwards Drop Out?

Posted on January 23, 2008
There has been quite a bit of speculation about whether John Edwards will soon quit the presidential race, particularly after his dismal 4 percent showing in Nevada. As recently as last month the Edwards campaign explained that it had a "four state" strategy--try to win one of the four early states, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, or, at the very least, do consistently well and generate some momentum going into Feb...

The Primaries, or, my time in New Hampshire

Posted on January 20, 2008
Apologies for the long hiatus from blogging. Meryl and I were in France from December 26th to January 6, and we've had exams since the 8th. For my first post back, I want to write about the two days in between--January 7th and 8th--which Meryl and I spent in New Hampshire volunteering for the Obama campaign...

On Vacation

Posted on December 21, 2007
I'm going to be on vacation until early January. I'll be posting when I can, but probably won't be making regular updates for the next two weeks.Merry Christmas!

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