Unconfirmed reports that a Saudi Arabian man who brutally murdered his five-year old daughter would be released after paying “blood money” to the girl’s mother have sparked intense debate and condemnation. The victim suffered horrific injuries, including a crushed skull, broken back, broken ribs, a broken left arm and extensive bruising and burns. The father, a self-styled “cleric,” has claimed that he was motivated by the child’s “inappropriate” behavior and his suspicions about whether her virginity was still intact. Reports of the case coincided with a heavily lampooned call by a Saudi cleric for babies to be dressed in burkas as a prophylactic measure to protect them from sexual crimes.
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Burglary’s Silver Lining
By Hudson Kingston
Last month a judge in the UK caught a fair amount of flak from everyone, up to and including the prime minister, for saying that it takes a lot of courage to commit a burglary. He received a formal reprimand, and piqued the attention of satirist David Mitchell, who said: “David Cameron said that burglars weren’t brave at all but were ‘cowards’. I don’t know how he knows that but it’s a good job because presumably, if they were braver, they’d break into loads more places.” Mitchell went on to explain that words mean something and Prime Minister Cameron made the classic mistake of assuming bad people are bad all over, and goes on: “Having established that burglary is a bad thing, he thinks linking it or its practitioners with any positive attributes, however incidental, is an idea too sophisticated for the British public to grasp.”
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Evaluating Ireland’s Special Case
By idalton
While the world’s economic interest has focussed for much of the last month on seemingly unending negotiations in the US over the fiscal cliff and debt ceiling, certain Eurozone leaders have been trying to use this respite to make progress in resolving their own crises. Although political dramas such as those developing in Italy and Germany are attractive headlines, Ireland’s continued drive to secure relief on its publicly-held banking sector debt is undeniably the most important subplot facing Europe in early 2013.
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Piers Morgan and the First Amendment
By Jonathan Peters
Follow me @jonathanwpeters on Twitter.
I have no idea if it’s ironic to have 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife (I mean, why have so many spoons in the first place?), but I do know it’s ironic to exercise your First Amendment rights in order to deport a man for exercising his First Amendment rights, all to discuss a provision of the Bill of Rights.
Enter: Piers Morgan.
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Saving Antitrust from Bork’s Influence
By Anthony Kammer
Dylan Matthews posted a fascinating interview with law professor Barak Orbach yesterday, which goes a long way toward explaining the current, withered state of antitrust law.
Robert Bork, more than any other individual, is responsible for the transformation of anti-trust law from one of the most important checks against consolidated economic and political power into an area of modest consumer protection laws. As Orbach stated, “Antitrust was defined by Robert Bork. I cannot overstate his influence.”
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Rod Smolla: Most off-campus Internet speech will be ruled beyond the reach of public schools
By Jonathan Peters
This is the eleventh in a series of interviews I’m conducting with lawyers and scholars who’ve made a mark on freedom of expression. Follow me @jonathanwpeters on Twitter.
Rod Smolla is president of Furman University. Previously, he was dean of the Washington and Lee School of Law, dean of the University of Richmond School of Law, and director of the Institute of Bill of Rights Law at the College of William & Mary. Smolla is an expert on free expression and academic freedom, and he has argued before state and federal courts around the country, including the U.S. Supreme Court, where he won the landmark case Virginia v. Black. Smolla is the author of numerous books, among them: “Free Speech in an Open Society,” which won the William O. Douglas Award as the year’s best monograph on free expression; “Deliberate Intent,” which was made into a movie by the FX cable network; and “The Constitution Goes to College,” which explores the constitutional principles that shaped American higher education.
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