Tidbits

Does this signal a return to Lochnerian due process?

This week, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals gave labor groups and their political cronies in Illinois a good, swift kick in their collective behinds.In 520 South Michigan Ave. Assoc., Ltd. v. Devine, the court reversed the district court’s dismissal of an employer’s challenge to an amendment to an Illinois law prohibiting the use of temporary workers during a strike. . . .

Illinois law makes it a crime to employ “professional strikebreakers.” A few years ago, the state broadened this prohibition to criminalize the hiring of day laborers and temporary staff during strikes. After the amendment was enacted, the plaintiff, who was in the midst of a strike and facing probing inquiries from the local Illinois states attorney for Cook County, sought a declaratory judgment that the Strikebreakers Act is preempted by federal law. The district court found that the employer lacked standing, but the Seventh Circuit disagreed and remanded the case for decision on the merits.

Rather than stop there, the Seventh Circuit then launched into a biting critique of the constitutionality of the amendment. According to the court, the Strikebreakers Act places an impermissible limit on the employer’s use of an economic tactic that is protected by federal law. . . . (From Lou Michels at Suits in the Workplace)

Escape from D.C. In which economist (and Englishman) Tim Harford writes of his impending reassignment from D.C. to London:

There’s another point to consider [in favor of taking the London assignment]. Even living in Hackney I would be less than an hour away from the shopping and the arts of one of the world’s great cities. To get quickly from DC to the heart of one of the world’s great cities requires a helicopter trip to Manhattan.

Last, and certainly least, is this bit of wisdom from a constitutional scholar très manqué:

I am dismayed that Judge Samuel Alito is receiving any consideration for such an important post as Supreme Court justice. His known views are extremely partisan, reactionary and contrary to the provisions of the Constitution and the wishes of the majority of the American people.

Karen Price
Austin

Contrary to which "provisions" of the Constitution, the one that guarantees everyone a free lunch or the one that says we should lie prostrate before our enemies? And which majority would that be, the one that lies along the Kennedy-Schumer axis?