how are cases named?
How did the medical marijuana case now before the Supreme Court come to be called Ashcroft v Raich? I gather that it began life as a criminal case, which would normally be titled US v Raich. Or it could be a civil suit seeking an injunction against certain practices of the DoJ, in which case it might be titled Raich v Ashcroft.
Are appeals often renamed? Is there a rule?
Dec.23: Todd Larason comes through, citing the Raich camp’s website:
It began as Raich et al. vs Ashcroft et al. — Raich is suing Ashcroft, seeking an injuction preventing Ashcroft & others from doing certain things; it isn’t an appeal of a criminal case as US v. Lopez was.
Ashcroft filed the petition for certiorari, so at the supreme court level he’s the petitioner, and it turned from Raich v. Ashcroft to Ashcroft v. Raich.
oh goody, an obscure question of common law
(This item was written in October but somehow never got out of “draft” status.)
Constructive Trusts and Restitution After Theft: Rasmusen discusses a legal quandary.
It hits me that this item calls for a law category not under politics. I’m surprised that this is the first such.
who stole whose concept?
Atheism and Unalienable Rights by Robert E. Meyer (also cited today on RRND):
Skeptics want to deny that rights come from God, but if they are correct, then there is no sound philosophical footings undergirding their perpetual claim to any rights. They are walking on a tenuous tightrope of conceptual fiat. Obviously they have not thought this issue through very carefully. . . .
In other words, atheists who speak of rights are guilty of what Ayn Rand (an atheist) called “the fallacy of the stolen concept”. Obviously Meyer has not taken the time to find a libertarian atheist (how hard can it be?) and ask a few questions. It would be amusing – for a few minutes – to hear him and an Objectivist debate the roots of rights. ( . . more . . )
GPL goes to court
netfilter project was granted a preliminary injunction against Sitecom GmbH
“To my knowledge, this is the first case in which a judicial decision has been decreed on the applicability and the validity of the GNU GPL”, says Dr. Till Jaeger, partner of the Berlin and Munich based law firm JBB Rechtsanwaelte that represented the netfilter/iptables project in the litigation.
tax matters
Carl Worden writes in Sierra Times:
Now pinch yourself and review this astonishing turn of events: A highly trained and educated federal prosecutor in Memphis was unable to convince 12 American citizens that Vernice Kuglin was required to pay federal income taxes. He was clearly unable to produce a single section of the Tax Code to that end, and the jury was unanimous in clearing Kuglin of all charges against her. If the foregoing was not so, Kuglin would have been convicted.
I remain puzzled. ( . . more . . )