Judge Jones replies "Oh, it's on." Or something like that.

Unhappy with being told he was a partisan hack, Judge Jones has responded to the drubbing he got from Judge Reinhardt.  You can read the response of Judge Jones here.  Essentially Judge Jones answers Judge Reinhardt's charges by saying that Judge Reinhardt is everything that Judge Reinhardt says Judge Jones is. 

"No, I'm not.  You are." is not the most effective form of argument.  A better approach might have been to explain the delays between being assigned the case and hearing the motion.  Perhaps also with an explanation as to why an additional hearing was scheduled on a date that Judge Jones knew would give the plaintiffs the win they were seeking but would not allow the defendants to appeal.  The best approach, as it often is, would have been for Judge Jones to remind himself that he has lifetime tenure and not respond further.  But, of course, taking the high road is often no fun.

What is going on in Nevada?

Did the Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Nevada try to game the judicial system to make an appeal from one of his order moot?  Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals certainly seems to think so.

Notorious B.A.G. responds to J.Dick-Po

Noted legal lexi-con man Bryan A. Garner (a.k.a. Notorious B.A.G), fresh off his niche hit "Reading Law, feat. MC Scalia," has entered the fray to defend the collaboration against fellow Central Time Zone wordsmith Judge Richard Posner (J.Dick-Po). Quoth B.A.G.:

Yo, check it, for real. The trendatious atrocity of J.Dick-Po's review in The New Republic, containing elocutions of perverse adiposities to the new B.A.G.‑A-Scales book, came as a stupefing surprise—a most disappointing one. 

Read the whole thing.

Is Paul Ryan the fastest politician to run a Marathon?

He is not if you disqualify his made-up time.  Slate.com has a feature that allows users to see how long various famous politicians took to run a marathon.  Paul Ryan's actual finish time in the 1990 Grandma's Marathon puts him in fifth place. Who had the fastest marathon time?  John Edwards ran the 1983 Marine Corps Marathon in 3:30:18.  The fastest Republican is George W. Bush.  He ran the 1993 Houston Marathon in 3:44:42.  Check out the site to see who had the slowest time and also see where Sarah Palin fits in the mix.  The results may surprise you.

The Freedom to Own Slaves?

Prof. Dale Carpenter points out that St. Thomas University School of Law Professor Robert Delhunty is using a slavery analogy to argue (implicitly) in favor of a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage in Minnesota. Prof. Delhunty's premise is that whenever one party gets freedom, the freedom of another party is necessarily constricted:

[W]henever the law expands the freedoms of one person or group, it necessarily contracts those of another. When the U.S. Supreme Court raised the bar to success in libel suits brought by public officials, it expanded the freedom of the press but diminished the freedom to serve in public office without fear of being defamed. Freedom to publish narrows the right to safeguard a reputation.

Fairly cogent points. But, alas, he goes on:

[T]he constitutional amendment banning slavery necessarily ended the freedom to own slaves. But it is not an argument for that amendment that it expanded freedom without contracting it. It did both. 

It is rare, but perhaps occasionally wonderful, to see an argument reduce itself to absurdity. Prof. Carpenter breaks it down:

So slaveowners lost what Delahunty calls a “freedom” — “the freedom to own slaves” — when they were forced to live in a world where they could no longer own slaves. It’s just that slaves gained more freedom from their freedom than slaveholders lost from losing the freedom to own other people.

I am going to put this in the bottom ten percent of arguments I've seen against same-sex marriage.

Posner-Scalia feud heats up

As Reader(s)™ know, Justice Scalia wrote a book with Bryan Garner about canons of interpretation. Reader(s) also know that Judge Richard Posner has recently had some choice words for Justice Scalia. Today, these two threads of Gillette-Torvik Blog coverage come together to weave a cocoon of horror. Judge Posner has written a review of Justice Scalia's new book.

The review is not positive. It is also exceptionally long—some 5000 words. I confess I quit reading less than half way through, so I cannot recommend it. Luckily, however, Ed Whelan (a former Scalia law clerk) has written what amounts to a review of Posner's review at the National Review Online. It, too, is rather long, but at least Whelan had the good sense (and bandwidth, I guess) to publish his review in three parts (I, II, and III), so he was able to build up some suspense.

According to Whelan, the core of Posner's attack on Scalia is a charge that Scalia misrepresents six cases that he relies on to illustrate his interpretive canons. Whelan says this is false, and that it is in fact Posner who is misrepresenting the cases and misrepresenting Scalia's use of them. Of course, it's impossible to come to an informed opinion about who's right without reading the book, the reviews, and the cases—and I'm not going to do that because I have clients to represent and sports to watch. But Whelan's case against Posner (and for Scalia) appears rather convincing on its face.

Whelan pulls no punches, ending with a direct attack on Posner's standing as a public intellectual and his performance as a judge:

Over the years, a number of appellate lawyers who follow the Seventh Circuit have conveyed to me their astonishment at how sloppy Posner is as a judge. I had a similar reaction to his badly flawed book about judging. Nonetheless, Posner clearly has somehow acquired a reputation that inclines folks to credit his judgments. 

It is no small matter that Posner has abused his reputation to smear Scalia and Garner with his incendiary and ill-founded charge that they have broadly misrepresented the cases that they discuss. (It would, of course, not be a surprise if Scalia and Garner turn out to have made a small number of errors among the more than 600 cases they cite, but Posner has uncovered none.) Posner owes Scalia and Garner a prominent retraction and apology.

Intriguing.

ADDED:

More here.

Paul Ryan is a liar.

Slate.com points out that Paul Ryan has been lying about his time running the marathon.  Politicians lying about their politics or their political acccomplishments is one thing.  Lying about running, however, is beyond the pale.  After all, some things are important.

Eating less is one thing, but this is ridiculous.

There are simply some things I will not do to live longer.

A Gillette/Torvik Grudge match?

This afternoon the football team of the university located in the town I grew up in plays the football team of the university located in the town where Mr. Torvik grew up.  These accidents of geography sometimes form the basis of a rivalry.  Whether they do here depends on whether Northern Iowa can somehow pull off an upset or at least lose by less than the 30.5 points by which Wisconsin is favored.

Priests talking about non-violent murderers, seductive children, and gay marriage.

Sports Illustrated reports that George Huguely, the former University of Virginia lacrosse player convicted of murdering Yeardley Love, has been sentenced to 23 years in prison for the crime.  This Washington Post report says that Virginia law requires Mr. Huguely to serve at least 85% of his sentence which would be roughly 19 years and six months.  Mr. Huguely has already been in jail for about a year so he has around 18 years remaining on his sentence.  Both reports say that Judge Edward Hogshire deviated from standard practice by sentencing Mr. Huguely to less than the 26 years recommended by the jury that convicted Mr. Huguely.  It is not clear why Judge Hogshire went with a lower sentence.