I began blogging on 5 July 2013, so today is the ten-year anniversary of this blog! To commemorate this occasion, I am reblogging my post from 28 November 2015, where I shout out a few of my fellow bloggers — the ones who have inspired me the most. To this list I would now add Bryan Caplan (see here, though I hate the Substack platform), Paul Caron (here), Peter Clark (here), Craig Collins (here), Sheree (here), and Larry Solum (here).
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. –That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Forget the fireworks, hot dogs, and cold beer until you have committed these immortal words to memory and have read the whole thing, for on this day (4 July) in 1776, the delegates of the Second Continental Congress, who are assembled at the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia, “mutually pledge to each other [their] Lives, [their] Fortunes and [their] sacred Honor” by publicly and unanimously ratifying the Declaration of Independence, thus committing an act of high treason, punishable by death.
There is no doubt the Supreme Court of the United States has become a “political court”, to borrow my mentor Richard Posner’s apt phrase (no, we still haven’t forgotten the illegitimate and disastrous Bush v. Gore decision!), but how politicized has this unelected, unaccountable, and quasi-legislative committee become, and in what direction: conservative right or progressive left? For some tentative but novel insights into these questions, check out the short and excellent blog post titled “Purple June” by my colleague and friend Josh Blackman, a law professor in Houston, Texas — the first installment of many on the last batch of cases decided by the high court in June of 2020, 2022, and 2023. (Suffice it to say, I am looking forward to reading and commenting on Professor Blackman’s upcoming posts!)
Beware of blog posts on sports, politics, foreign policy, or race! To commemorate the upcoming ten-year anniversary of this blog (5 July 2023), I am featuring ten of my lamest blog posts:
“Cause-in-fact” is a common law doctrine used to determine the scope of legal liability in accident cases. In summary, judges apply a counterfactual “but-for” test to determine whether event x was a necessary or “legal” cause of outcome y; in other words, “but-for event x, outcome y would not have happened”. This test can also be extended to historical events. By way of example, on this day (28 June) in 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg (pictured below, left), were assassinated in Sarajevo, the capital of the Austro-Hungarian province of Bosnia and Herzegovina. (The perpetrator of this heinous act was 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip, a member of Young Bosnia and one of a group of assassins armed by the Black Hand, a secret military society formed in 1901 by a group of army officers in the then-Kingdom of Serbia.) The assassination of Ferdinand and Sophie became the casus belli of the Central European conflict that eventually expanded to become the First World War.
So, to commemorate the upcoming ten-year anniversary of this blog (5 July 2023), I am featuring ten of my previous blog posts having to do with national flags:
