Rand Paul: Banning TikTok Is 'Group Hysteria'
"Every day I confront a bill that wants to ban another Chinese company," the Kentucky senator tells Reason.
Civil Liberties
State 'Bias Response Hotlines' Encourage People To Snitch on Their Neighbors for 'Hate Speech'
By the end of 2025, as many as 100 million Americans could live in a state where they can be reported for protected expression.
Age Verification Laws Meet VPNs and Lawsuits in a War Over Speech and Privacy
A new crop of restrictive laws faces a friendly reception in the courts but ongoing public resistance.
Syracuse Police Handcuffed an 11-Year-Old After Wrongly Accusing Her of Stealing a Car
"I can't make sense of it. I couldn't even finish watching the video," said the girl's mother. "That's not how you handle children."
Choice of Law in Takings Cases After Tyler v. Hennepin County (IV)
Two modest defenses of Tyler’s choice of law strategy.
Trump Is Trying To Fire Most of the White House's Civil Liberties Watchdog
The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board should be Trump's ally in a battle against the deep state. So why is he undermining it?
Calling Someone "White Supremacist" in Online Debate Is Opinion …
and thus not actionable defamation, unless defendant "implies undisclosed facts by insinuating that the plaintiff" engaged in specific racist acts or made (undisclosed) racist statements.
TikTok or Not, Americans Still Have a Right To Receive Communist Propaganda
A unanimous Supreme Court decision established as much in 1965.
Choice of Law in Takings Cases After Tyler v. Hennepin County (III)
The Court’s departures from standard choice of law principles (or, takings doctrine for federal courts gurus).
Michael Shermer: Conspiracy Thinking, Wokeness, and the Future of Free Thought
The founder of Skeptic magazine discusses whether conspiracy thinking is on the rise and whether it's coded right or left.
Our Amicus Brief Urging the Supreme Court to Hear Case on Overruling Kelo v. City of New London
The brief is on behalf of the Cato Institute and myself.
"TikTok's Tech Partners Face Massive Legal Risks by Relying on Trump's Promises Not to Enforce the Ban Law, …
as courts rarely protect defendants who count on executive non-enforcement," writes Prof. Alan Rozenshtein (Minnesota).
Man Sues HBO, Claiming He Is the Pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto, Inventor of Bitcoin
But "[n]othing in Plaintiff's conclusory assertions suggest that Plaintiff could plead facts plausibly linking his identity with that of the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto."
Choice of Law in Takings Cases After Tyler v. Hennepin County (II)
The Court's approach to the choice of law question (or, federal courts doctrine for property lawyers).
Choice of Law in Takings Cases After Tyler v. Hennepin County
The Tyler case and the choice of law questions it raises.
Hours After Going Dark, TikTok Is Back
The popular video app restored service in the U.S. after President-elect Donald Trump promised to postpone a federal ban.
The Laken Riley Act Reminds Us: If a Law Is Named After Someone, It's Probably Bad
Riley's murder was an atrocity. But the law bearing her name is a grab bag of authoritarian policies that have little to do with her death.
"Another Email Account Impersonating a Banker Working for [Plaintiff] Invited … Recipients … to Join a Fictitious Neo-Nazi Banking Club"
One of many allegedly defamatory statements allegedly sent by a former summer intern at a financial company; the court holds a proposed preliminary injunction against future speech by defendant about plaintiff would be an unconstitutional prior restraint, but issues a narrower injunction.
Hospital Staff Failed To Treat Her Miscarriage, Then Accused Her of a Crime
A new lawsuit alleges that, after failing to treat a placental abruption, medical staff conspired to have Brittany Watts arrested for her miscarriage.
Bill Maher's Saying Trump "Might Be" "Fucking" Republican Activist Laura Loomer Might Be Defamation of Loomer
A judge lets Loomer's defamation claim against Maher and HBO go forward.
DEA Ends Airport Gate Searches After Years of Documented Abuses of Civil Asset Forfeiture
The Justice Department temporarily suspended the program in November because of "significant risks" of constitutional violations.
Lawless IV: Leadership Failures Old and New
The pandemic showed the weakness of the leadership class. [UPDATE: Inadvertently posted it under my byline, but it's of course Ilya Shapiro's post, as the byline now reflects. -EV]
