Category Archives: Law: Everything Else

I seriously considered writing an Administrative Law final exam question based on these facts, so I was delighted to see the publication of Eric E. Johnson's article, The Black Hole Case: The Injunction Against the End of the World, 76 Tenn. L. Rev. 819 (2009).

There's a handy summary at Technology Review: Blogs: arXiv blog: The Case of the Collider and the Great Black Hole.

Don't forget to check the RSS feed: Has the Large Hadron Collider destroyed the earth yet?

Category: Law: Everything Else. And I do mean Everything.

Bill would lower volume of loud TV commercials.

Do commercials get louder in recessions? In any case, while there are undoubtedly bigger fish for Congress to fry, this is a good idea for those not fast-forwarding on a DVR.

A group of law librarians at Stanford Law Library have drafted a very short petition directed at the Administrative Office of the US Courts to improve PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records), and you can see it (and sign it) at Improve PACER – The Petition Site:

We ask the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts to improve PACER by enhancing the authenticity, usability and availability of the system.

We the undersigned, urge the Administrative Office of the US Courts (AO) to make the following changes to the PACER system:

For verification and reliability, the AO should digitally sign every document put into PACER using readily available technology.

PACER needs to be much more readily accessible if it is to be usable for research, education, and the practice of law. Improved accessibility includes both lowering the costs for using PACER and enhancing the web interfaces.

Depository libraries should also have free access to PACER.

This is a great idea, and deserves support.

Via Dave Hoffman's I'll Pay You $1,000,000 if this Blog Post Is Wrong, a link to this casebook-ready complaint in a unilateral offer and acceptance case…with a criminal law angle. And the plaintiff is a law student.

Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Company, anyone?

Continuing on today's theme of asking dumb questions about areas of law I don't know enough about, here's a question about anti-trust law, spurred by the news that Administration Plans to Strengthen Antitrust Rules.

Why isn't this, which no one even attempts to hide, an anti-trust violation???

Basically, Microsoft will only allow netbook makers to load XP on machines that are a touch on the slow side, and don't have quite enough RAM — and have been crippled to prevent users from increasing it.

PC makers must limit screen size to 14.1 in. and hard-drive capacity to 160GB. Ultralow-cost PCs with touch screens will also be eligible. Earlier terms set in April did not allow touch screens at all and limited screen sizes to 10.2 in. and hard-drive capacity to 80GB. The processors are still limited to a single-core chip running at no more than 1 GHz, with memory limited to 1GB of RAM.

Why isn't this illegal? Don't the anti-trust laws prevent a software maker with a dominant position from dictating hardware to pc makers in order to protect the market share of a different product?

Then again, it may be wrong to blame Microsoft for what may actually be a case of collusion with the hardware people:

The goal of the program is apparently to limit the hardware capabilities of such PCs so that they don't eat into the market for mainstream PCs running Windows Vista, something both Microsoft and PC vendors would want to avoid.

That sure sounds like the sort of collusion I thought the anti-trust laws prevented. Everyone is being so open about this, I have to assume that there's a reason why it's legal. I'm just wondering what it could be.

There's a very interesting contrast between this news story, Cuomo Says Some A.I.G. Bonuses Will Be Repaid and the legal opinion AIG got on March 16, 2009 regarding its obligation to pay the bonuses (source: the American Lawyer).

This letter is going to be the fodder for a lot of law courses. The question it answers is artfully narrow; what it leaves out, and why it leaves it out, are fascinating issues that will engender many discussions in Professional Responsibility and Corporate Law.