Randal O’Toole (Cato@Liberty) reports on his experience. The technology sounds very cool, and I take it that so far it has been pretty accident-free. Of course, my first reaction to hearing about this was “how dangerous!,” but it’s not like this is a new technology trying to replace an absolutely safe current technology — and it may well be that such a car is already safer than the average real driver, or will soon be safer. It will be very interesting to see how this develops (and of course to explore the legal dimensions).

Thanks to Opher Banarie for the pointer.

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I just ran across an interesting case, Memphis Pub. Co. v. Nichols (Tenn. 1978). The Memphis Press-Scimitar published the following article that mentioned Mrs.

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A reader asks:

In a discussion thread on another blog, I hazarded an observation that marriage is NOT a contract as typically defined at law. I based this on my view that marriage does not contain elements that a contract must contain, such as a definition of goods and services offered in exchange for consideration.

My interlocutor held that marriage does, indeed, contain all the necessary elements of a contract, including defined exchange and payment for it.

I have researched this question online, but can find no satisfactory answer. Black’s Law (2nd ed.) seems to treat marriage as a legal status, but not a contract.

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As a follow up to my previous post, I wish to comment briefly on Jeff Rosen’s revival of Cass Sunstein and his invention: the Constitution-in-Exile Movement that seeks a return to the pre-1937 Supreme Court doctrine. As my previous post makes clear, the challenge to the Affordable Care Act is in no way based on the return to anything. It is based solely on refusal to acknowledge an unprecedented, uncabined, unnecessary and dangerous congressional power to compel all Americans to enter into contracts with private companies.

In addition to being irrelevant, however, the so-called Constitution-in-Exile Movement is also a myth. In 2005, I engaged in a week-long debate with Cass Sunstein about this on the Legal Affairs’ Debate Club. You can read the whole thing here.

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If the Supreme Court invalidates the individual insurance mandate, it need not call into question any other law that has ever been passed in the history of the United States. Why? Because the Congress has never before exercised its Commerce Power to impose a requirement on the American people to enter into a contract with a private company, upon pain of a penalty payable to the IRS. All the Court need do is confine Congress to the powers it has always exercised, including all the powers it exercised since the New Deal which also includes all the powers that were upheld by the Warren Court. A decision to invalidate would be the most minimal of minimalist decisions as it would apply to one law, and only one law.

True, the Affordable Care Act is a major piece of legislation.

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