Meeting the Sin Laws: Constitutional Law

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Constitutional Law

Meeting the Sin Laws

Musings on laws affecting adult entertainment, alcoholic beverages and other "vice" industries

Post Frequency: 1/day

Last Entry: August 20, 2008 at 12:53:00

Among the ABA Journal's Blawg 100

Posted on November 29, 2007
This is cool: Editors of the ABA Journal have selected Meeting the Sin Laws as one of the top 100 best websites by lawyers, for lawyers. Lawyers are being asked to vote on their favorites in each of the Blawg 100?s 12 categories. Voting ends Jan. 2, 2008...

The "adult" in adult entertainment

Posted on November 23, 2007
If you're a grammar snob, or maybe you're just terrified of sounding less-than-literate, check out The Grammarphobia Blog. Yesterday's entry: adult entertainment. There we learn that "[t]he use of 'adult? as a euphemism for sexually explicit (as in 'adult cinema' or 'adult entertainment') dates from only 1958, according to the OED...

Which year(s) were YouPorn?

Posted on November 19, 2007
An interesting article, Obscene Losses, by Claire Hoffman appears in this November's online edition of Conde Nast Portfolio. It begins:DVD sales are in free fall. Audiences are flocking to pornographic knockoffs of YouTube, especially a secretive site called YouPorn...

Well, we didn't try to suppress speech ...

Posted on November 19, 2007
... even if Judge Kanne of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals says, "yes, you probably did." This opinion is hot off the presses. In throwing out the Village of Washington Park's alcohol-ban in adult entertainment establishments, the Court writes:Because the purpose of the ban on alcohol consumption in newly licensed establishments was to prevent competition,strict scrutiny applies...

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If you can't beat 'em, buy 'em

Posted on November 07, 2007
The City of Warren (a suburb of Detroit) has bought an adult bookstore:The city of Warren has been known to purchase private businesses to aid long-term development goals. But city officials broke new ground with their recent purchase of an adult bookstore...

The Mild, Mild West

Posted on October 28, 2007
From the Seventh Court of Appeals of Texas comes this case. It concerns Kenneth Smartt, who began operating a business involving nude dancers (Xoticas) outside the city limits of Laredo in 1995. In 1998, Laredo annexed the property. Four years later, Laredo amended a previously existing ordinance to require those operating sexually oriented businesses to obtain a license and to refrain from conducting operations within 1,000 feet of a residential area...

Insight from the Inside: Dissenting Opinions

Posted on October 23, 2007
This past Sunday (10/21) I attended the Leo & Berry Eizenstat Memorial Lecture at the Ahavath Achim Syngogue. The guest of honor? None other than The Honorable Ruth Bader Ginsburg. What a superb Sunday outing. You can read about the speech here. Justice Ginsburg spoke about the importance of dissenting opinions and the role that they play in the SCOTUS's jurisprudence...

The Party of the First Part

Posted on October 15, 2007
I just finished reading The Party of the First Part, by Adam Freedman. What a super book. I wasn't sure what to expect, given that reading about 'words' and their origins can be like, well, yucky. None of that here. Mr. Freedman's writing is devilishly sharp, crisp and probing while maintaining a light feel...

Today's ban-out

Posted on September 05, 2007
"Fairview council votes to ban adult businesses despite attorney's advice that the ordinance would be unconstitutional," reports the Belleville-News Democrat here. It seems that the original, proposed ordinance had provided that only two businesses could open in the city...

Love Naught War

Posted on August 28, 2007
From Dr. Marty Klein's Sexual Intelligence (a wonderful blog), comes this this post: When Language is More Important than War. It's more on PBS's deliberation to self-censor the broadcast of Ken Burns' 14-hour documentary on WWII (which contains four instances of profanity -- war is ugly, after all) amid concerns from the Parents Television Council...

Ketching-up

Posted on August 26, 2007
It's a bird. It's a plane. It's ... a stripper? Granted, not exactly high heroics here, but some "strippers" at the Deja Vu club in Nashville were suspicious of $100 bills and called the police after a patron spent $600 of them. The man, who "authorities say used his computer to make fake $100 bills to buy lap dances at the strip club, has pleaded guilty to counterfeiting charges," according to the article...

Hiding is Dropping the ball

Posted on August 18, 2007
This case was recently decided by the Superior Court of New Jersey (Appellate Division).The petitioner, Fayette Fair Trade, Inc. ("Fayette"), which is wholly-owned by a shareholder, Rosario, appealed from a final determination of the Director of the Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control ("ABC") suspending its license based on a finding of an undisclosed business interest in the license, and the licensee's failing to disclose that interest in the application, or providing false, misleading or inaccurate information about it...

Virtual Dollhouse

Posted on August 15, 2007
In Edgewater, Florida there's this house. Somewhere, maybe in Edgewater, there's this Web Site, "CocoDorm.com, where visitors can, for a fee, watch live video streams from the Edgewater house, where chiseled young males are paid $1,200, plus room, board and meals, to live in the two-story home for a month and have sex with each other on schedule," reports the Miami Herald here...

Liquor Law Watch

Posted on August 12, 2007
This decision comes down from the Montana Supreme Court.It concerns one bar's effort to transfer its liquor license to a soon-to-be casino in Great Falls. Before issuing the license, Montana's Department of Revenue ("DOR") published a notice of the license application in the newspaper...

Mr. Dead

Posted on August 07, 2007
This Seventh Circuit case is about horses. It is not pretty; in fact, it's kinda dark.Judge Posner, writing for the majority, begins, "Cavel International, the principal appellant (we can ignore the others), produces horsemeat for human consumption. The plant at which it slaughters the horses is in Illinois...

Spam

Posted on August 05, 2007
This week's issue of The New Yorker includes this article, entitled "Damn Spam." Written by Michael Spector, the article explores the federal government's attempt to rid -- or at least curb -- that most-annoying affliction suffered by e-mailers across the globe: spam...

Not-so-sinful: Dogs

Posted on July 25, 2007
"If you eliminate smoking and gambling, you will be amazed to find that almost all an Englishman's pleasures can be, and mostly are, shared by his dog." -- George Bernard Shaw

Mommy, this commercial is making me thirsty...

Posted on July 21, 2007
... so please give me your purse -- I'll need your money, your car keys and my fake I.D. card.This opinion was issued this week from the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. The plaintiffs are the parents of minor children, and the defendants are (among others) domestic manufacturers and importers of alcoholic beverages, including Anheuser-Busch, Inc...

Irrebuttably rebuttable

Posted on July 12, 2007
From the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals comes this decision.The appeal concerns The Lion's Den, which opened at a rest stop off of Interstate 70 in Dickinson County, Kansas in September 2003. According to the opinion, The Lion's Den is probably the first sexually oriented business in the County in at least 25 years, and it may be the first such business in County history...

Newsflash: strip clubs run legitimate businesses

Posted on July 08, 2007
Do I sound crass? Forgive me, but I'm hardly surprised when stories like this sell ink. In a special report ("The Naked Truth about Strip Clubs"), William Sherman for the NY Daily News reports that "there are about 3,600 strip clubs nationwide," and "from a business point of view, it's all like Las Vegas was in the early '70s...

Inadvertent martyrdom

Posted on July 01, 2007
"A porn actress who claimed she performed oral sex on a state trooper who stopped her for speeding lost her chance to avoid the ticket he issued because she failed to appear in court Friday," reports USA Today here. Two quick comments: I thought that kinda thing happened only in books and movies...

Going once, going twice ... sold!!!

Posted on July 01, 2007
"His topless nightclub was only open for a few days, but a businessman in Pasadena is walking away with a $1.5 million tip from the city to shut it down, and turn the property over for re-use, it was reported Saturday," reports CBS News here. You can read a detailed story here, courtesy of the Pasadena-Star News...

Life's a beach sometimes

Posted on June 29, 2007
Two federal, appellate opinions concerning adult entertainment were issued this week.From the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, there is Forty One News, Inc. v. County of Lake. Long story short: 41 News, an adult book and video store, sued the county under 42 U...

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