I think it might not have been until I read Jane Jacobs's Death and Life of Great American Cities last spring that I realized that I was a land-use guy. Libertarians are sometimes chided for failing to understand the way that the state inevitably structures even seemingly-free transactions, but when I walk down a street, I see a world of intentional and unintentional ramifications of government policies. Which is to some extent Jacobs's point.

May she rest in peace.

Will notes (perhaps indirectly) below recent posts have been lacking in substance.

Of course I apologize, along with, I'm sure, the rest of us here at Crescat. But, lest we forget our roots, that (at least speaking as one Crescat's early readers) Crescat started off as mainly "a blog about nothing." (posts were selected largely at random)

At any rate, readers might argue which format is better, but personally, I prefer posts that are intelligible (and, in part, entertaining) to those of us who happen not to be inextricably tied into the legal world.

I have not yet read the Supreme Court's opinion today in Day v. McDonough, so I can only make superficial observations. Here are two.

1, the lineup is pretty neat. Ginsburg, Souter, Kennedy, Roberts, and Alito all join the majority opinion. Thomas, Scalia, and Breyer dissent. Stevens and Breyer join an opinion saying that while the two of them disagree about whether the majority or the dissent is right, they do agree that the Court ought to stays it judgment until a related case finishes so as to avoid a miscarriage of justice.

2, here's the opening quote of Scalia's dissent:

The Court today disregards the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (Civil Rules) in habeas corpus cases, chiefly because it believes that this departure will make no difference. See ante, at 9. Even if that were true, which it is not, I could not join this novel presumption against applying the Civil Rules.

A reader writes, "It does seem like you haven't been posting much of substance recently", and then suggests two possible substantive topics.

First, there's this article about a proposed abortion law in Ohio, which-- from the press reports-- seems like it violates the Supreme Court's doctrine on the right to an abortion and also seems like it might arguably violate the Constitution's right to travel. But since the bill is reported to not even be on the legislative calendar, it looks no more worth worrying about than your average editorial in the National Review.

Second, there's this blog post by Dale Carpenter about new federal regs defining the abstinence in abstinence-only more narrowly, in particular to exclude gays, under the theory that since they can never get married, they should never have sex. This seems a profound misunderstanding-- the fact that gays are forbidden by law to marry in most places is just further evidence about why pre- (or in this case non-)marital sex is nothing to get worried about.

So hopefully that reader will be happy now.