Calvert Publications

• Beyond drug law reform: We need a new Wickersham Commission
  George W. Liebmann
  2010-01-11
  Change is in the offing for U.S. drug policy. More than a dozen states, including Maryland, have adopted medical marijuana laws. Attorney General Eric Holder, a decisive member of a sometimes indecisive administration, stated that federal laws against marijuana possession would not be enforced against persons immune under such state laws.

• Reforming Certiorari Jurisdiction
  George W. Liebmann
  2009-12-24
  This indignant screed is prepared in support of a proposal circulated by Professors Paul Carrington and Roger Cramton and endorsed by several dozen judges, academic lawyers and practitioners. The proposal would somewhat enlarge the Supreme Court’s docket and transfer control of most of it to a certiorari division of the Supreme Court consisting of five Court of Appeals judges appointed in rotation by the Judicial Conference, which would be empowered to grant between 100 and 120 certiorari petitions per year.¹

• Of 'Czars' and History
  George W. Liebmann
  2009-10-27
  The recent Senate hearing on the Obama administration’s ‘czars’ deserves more attention than the facetious comments of Dana Milbank. We see now the latest instance of a bi-partisan and recurrent problem, last seriously discussed at the time of Watergate. At that time the constitutional scholar Alexander Bickel observed "In opposing cant of ‘not men, but measures’, Burke therefore resisted rule by non-party ministers who lack the confidence of the Commons. . . we may today oppose excessive White House staff- government by private men whom Congress never sees. It was not for nothing that the American Constitution provided for ‘executive departments’ and for Senate confirmation of the appointment of great officers of state." His contemporary constitutional scholar Philip Kurland described Watergate as the consequence of "court locusts. . . [who] instill in the President’s mind a divine right of authority to command his subjects. This is a most fitting description of the Executive Office of the President under Nixon."

• At the Court of the Sun King: The Vice of Centralization
  George W. Liebmann
  2009-09-10
  What can be said of the Obama administration? This is not Roosevelt's 100 days: it has left no permanent impression on the American economy or government. This is no reform administration, though it follows 16 years of inadequate presidential leadership. When it is considered that the Defense, State, Treasury and Justice Departments are all led by the alumni of two failed administrations, no one had a right to expect an administration which, in Wilson's words, would "cleanse, reconsider, and restore."

• Sun ignores facts in DHR suit
  George W. Liebmann
  2009-08-08
  Your editorial of August 5 on the Massinga foster care decision fails to make clear the reasons why Attorney General Douglas Gansler and Judge J. Frederick Motz properly felt that a further hearing was required ("A breach of trust," Aug. 6).

• Maryland and the Stimulus: Responsibility Deferred
  George Liebmann
  2009-03-12
  Few states can have used the benefits accruing to them in the Obama administration’s stimulus bill as irresponsibly as Maryland. We may pass in review the bill’s effect on Maryland public policy:

• Not Just for Mother in Law: Accessory Apartments Benefit Society and the Economy and It's Time for Tax Credits to Promote Them
  P.Hare and G. Liebmann
  2009-01-29
  Twenty years ago, we separately produced publications urging that governments should provide incentives for the creation of accessory apartments (sometimes called "mother-in-law apartments") in owner-occupied housing. Our writings pointed out that there was a shortage of small-unit housing; that household sizes had dropped, rendering many large homes ripe for partial use by renters; that it was irrational to maintain regulations that discouraged extended families from living next to each other; and that Germany, Japan and Finland had provided such incentives as housing policy.