What to do when the list is used as a venue for making accusations of unconstitutional behavior

[Volokh, Eugene]

	Brian makes a good point, so far as it goes.  A few thoughts,
though:

	(1)  If the facts are as alleged, which is to say that Prof.
Murphy was put on a watch list simply because of his anti-Administration
speech, it seems to me that it's not a very interesting hypo.

	(2)  Relatedly, I'm pretty sure that Prof. Murphy's passing
along his story to this list, and Prof. Segal's forwarding it, were not
attempts to simply pose a hypo.  Rather, I take Prof. Murphy's goal in
publicizing the story generally -- and to the CONLAWPROF list in
particular -- is to assert that the Administration *is* acting
unconstitutionally, not just to ask whether some hypothetical scenario
would be constitutional.

	(3)  So given that the list was used as a venue for making
charges about the Administration's supposed unconstitutional behavior --
in fact, behavior that would be patently and outrageously
unconstitutional if it in fact occurred -- I'm not inclined to simply
conclude that my role in response should be to assume the facts and
explore the abstract legal questions.  Or am I mistaken on that?

	Eugene

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Brian Landsberg [mailto:blandsberg at pacific.edu] 
> Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2007 9:57 AM
> To: Volokh, Eugene; conlawprof at lists.ucla.edu
> Subject: RE: WM
> 
> The problem is that this list is hardly a useful venue for 
> fact-gathering.  We would be better off to simply treat Prof. 
> Murphy's story like one of the many hypos in Eugene's books 
> and analyze the constitutional issues based upon those facts.