For offenders whose crimes are usually relatively minor (carjackers should not bother) and whose bank accounts remain lofty, a dozen or so city jails across the state offer pay-to-stay upgrades. Theirs are a clean, quiet, if not exactly recherché alternative to the standard county jails, where the walls are bars, the fellow inmates are hardened and privileges are few.

Hmm. May not be such a bad idea. But I forget, again, what was the point of incarceration?

Full story in NYT here.

Popagandhi has a wonderful post on her journey.

She begins with,

For a good chunk of my life, I responded to that perennial question with the classic answer that always shut everybody up. “Lawyer,” I’d say curtly. And that was that. Everybody understood. And approved.
The truth was, I didn’t want to be a lawyer. I thought I did — growing up in a society like ours, if you did well enough at school, and displayed certain abilities, your pick of professions was expected to revolve around medicine and law. It wasn’t easy to say: I want to be a roving photojournalist.

This reminded me of all the times I was asked the same question. “Lawyer” I always said, without the slightest hesitation. There were many detours, but the answer never changed . Music, art and travelling were always hobbies. Just fun. Never something I had to do.

When I read her post today I thought of how close I am to completing the Six-year-old’s dream. In six months I will have my degree and be enrolled at the Bar.

Now when someone asks me, So what do you want to be when you grow up? unflinchingly I say, an Academic.

In hindsight I realise I never really wanted to be a lawyer. I wanted to be a student of law my whole life. It took three years of law school to understand the nuanced difference.

Yet, no regrets and very few complaints (pun intended). Few are as lucky as I am.

Yesterday Somnath Chatterjee delivered the the Dr Kailash Nath Katju Memorial Lecture on Separation of Powers under the Constitution and Judicial Activism.

I quote a part of his lecture since he has so succinctly compiled all the instances of mindless activism.

“The Honourable High Court of Delhi in recent times dealt with subjects ranging from age and other criteria for nursery admissions, unauthorised schools, criteria for free seats in schools, supply of drinking water in schools, number of free beds in hospitals on public land, use and misuse of ambulances, requirements for establishing a world class burns ward in a hospital, the kind of air Delhiites breathe, begging in public, use of sub-ways, the nature of buses we board, the legality of constructions in Delhi, identifying the buildings to be demolished, the size of speed breakers on Delhi roads, auto rickshaw overcharging, growing frequency of Delhi road accidents and enhancing road fines.”

The common argument in favour of such activist courts is that the executive has been inefficient, thus forcing the judiciary to enter the executive domain and create a command and control system, for the sake of the common man.

One question though. Does the executive ever say that the judiciary has been inefficient and there are cases pending over twenty years and hence government departments must take over the disposal of these pending cases? And if they did, what would happen?

PS. My favourite one is the size of speedbreakers on Delhi roads.

…………… is on EconLog where Caplan has given a rave review to Landsburg’s More Sex is Safer Sex.

I haven’t managed to get the book yet but Caplan quotes a part of it here.

“Imagine a country where almost all women are monogamous, while all men demand two female partners per year. Under those circumstances, a few prostitutes end up servicing all the men. Before long, the prostitutes are infected; they pass the disease on to the men; the men bring it home to their monogamous wives. But if each of these monogamous wives were willing to take on one extramartial partner, the market for prostitution would die out, and the virus, unable to spread fast enough to maintain itself, might well die out along with it.”

Excellent article by Clint Bolick on an activist judiciary in the WSJ.

Will Wilkinson’s latest paper on “happiness research” called In Pursuit of Happiness Research: Is It Reliable? What Does It Imply for Policy?

Randy E. Barnett’s piece in WSJ on the importance of lawyers, especially defense lawyers. Barnett’s book “Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty” offers some of the best arguments for upholding the originalist interpretation of perhaps the only liberal constitution left.

Reason has compiled some of Friedman’s quotes in this piece by Brian Doherty.

Some of my favourites….

I think a major reason why intellectuals tend to move towards collectivism is that the collectivist answer is a simple one. If there’s something wrong, pass a law and do something about it.

We talk about ourselves as a free enterprise society. Yet in terms of the fundamental question of who owns the means of production in the corporate sector we are 48 percent socialistic because the corporate tax is 48 percent.

I had a debate…with that great saint of the U.S. consumer, Ralph Nader. I posed the question of state laws requiring people who ride motorcycles to wear helmets.…That law is the best litmus paper to distinguish true believers in individualism…because the person riding the motorcycle is risking only his own life. He may be a fool to drive that motorcycle without a helmet, but part of freedom…is the freedom to be a fool.

….since I agreed with the Supreme Court. The SC has declined to reconsider an application to appoint sitting High Court Judges for Enquiry Committees set up by various state governments.

The rationale is obvious. Apart from the pending case work, the reports of such committee are usually recommendatory and could cause prejudice and problems for judicial independence when the report disagrees with the executive.

Full story here.

One of the biggest music giants EMI has decided to sell its music online without “digital rights-management” (DRM) technology which is used to prevent piracy. This is a win-win for all music buyers.

Full article in the Economist here.

Previous post by me on DRM and Steve Jobs here.

I know I have abandoned my blog for the last few months, and I have no excuses, I’ve just been lazy and very busy.

But this link from Madman made me jump right back.

To quote from the story,

India’s female civil servants are being told to provide details of their menstrual cycles in a new job appraisal form.

Women in India’s sprawling bureaucracy have been angered by the new form sent out this year which asks, among questions about their goals and skills, “when was your last menstrual period?” and “give details of your menstrual history”.