Free Republic

More than 650 law professors, including 13 affiliated with Yale Law School and 21 with Harvard Law School, have signed a letter to the Senate arguing that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh should not be confirmed because of his “lack of judicial temperament.” The professors pointed to Kavanaugh’s appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week amid allegations of sexual misconduct, where the Yale Law School graduate defended himself and called the attacks a “grotesque and coordinated character assassination.” “The question at issue was of course painful for anyone. But Judge Kavanaugh exhibited a lack of commitment to judicious inquiry,”...

When Dallas police used a bomb-carrying robot to kill a sniper, they also kicked off an ethical debate about technology’s use as a crime-fighting weapon. In what appears to be an unprecedented tactic, police rigged a bomb-disposal robot to kill an armed suspect in the fatal shootings of five officers in Dallas. While there doesn’t appear to be any hard data on the subject, security experts and law enforcement officials said they couldn’t recall another time when police have deployed a robot with lethal intent. […] “If lethally equipped robots can be used in this situation, when else can they...

On Hunter of Justice, my colleague Nan Hunter provides an updated list of law professors who are or will soon be working in the Obama administration. (H/T Brian Leiter)

I read over at Howard Bashman's How Appealing that 160 law professors have sent a letter to the Senate requesting that Roberts be rejected for the Supreme Court. (You can find the link here, but many people are downloading it and you may have to try a few times.) In reading the proposed reasons for denying Roberts a seat I was quite taken aback by the political rather than legal reasons offered. As a libertarian, it always depresses me when those in my chosen field, (law), make politics the norm in the legal forum. This post is not from a...