The legislative and judicial branches are going head to head in Texas, over a "pole tax." Sounds noble, right?

Not exactly... since the referenced "poles" are those found in strip clubs. Texas State Rep. Ellen Cohen wants to charge strip club patrons a $5 tax, with proceeds funding programs for the betterment of society. Don't strippers do enough for society already?

Cohen's law — some dubbed it the "pole tax" — was expected to raise millions of dollars, with the money dedicated to sexual assault programs and health care for the uninsured.

Gov. Perry signed the law last June and it went into effect this year.

Jenkins ruled the law unconstitutional, writing that erotic dancing is a form of expression protected by the First Amendment. Laws regulating expression must pass strict constitutional tests.

Jenkins focused on the dedication of the fee revenues to the uninsured, writing that he saw no evidence linking the activity of nude, erotic dancing to a lack of health insurance among the dancers.

We wonder if Travis County District Judge Scott Jenkins was listening to Madonna's "Express Yourself" when he made his ruling.

Cohen vows to revive $5-per-patron strip club fee [Houston Chronicle via TaxProf]

No, that's not some insult hurled at the distinguished constitutional law professor by a right-wing zealot; it's a fact. From a memorandum that went out to Harvard Law School students this morning:

In order to help you plan your spring schedules, I need to let you know that Professor Laurence Tribe’s class this spring is being cancelled because he has recently been diagnosed with a brain tumor that is benign but will require medical treatment. Professor Tribe has asked me to convey this information and his regrets about this necessary decision.

We wish Professor Tribe the best of luck with his treatment regimen, as well as a speedy recovery.

From one tipster:

It's just a matter of time before knee-jerk dittohead-wannabes bust out jokes like "Isn't liberalism a form of a brain disorder?" Then again, this could end up straight out of Woody Allen's Everyone Says I Love You, if the removal of the brain tumor turns Tribe into a fire-breathing right-winger.

Professor Tribe is a public figure, and he has surely had every epithet in the book leveled at him, multiple times. Nevertheless, even if he's a big boy (who has better things to do than read blog comments), please keep the discussion civil. Thanks.

* Affirmative action not gone quite yet for Michigan schools. [AP via How Appealing]

* Convicted debutante killers not so happy at sentencing. [CNN]

* Nebraska corporate farming ban violates dormant commerce clause; Nebraska will appeal to the Supreme Court. [Jurist]

* Dracula Jr.'s a lawyer. [WSJ Law Blog]

* 13 States and DC sue EPA to get them to, you know, protect the environment. [MSNBC]

This is a continuation of our prior post about an event we recently attended at Georgetown Law School, "On Liberty: A conversation between Justice Stephen Breyer and Professor Charles Fried." For more background about the event, click here.

For the conclusion to our write-up, keep on reading. We bring you a "true confession" from Justice Breyer, as well as Professor Fried's interesting views on gay marriage.

(Before returning to Harvard Law School, Professor Fried was a justice on the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, the state's highest court. But he was back in academia when they decided the gay marriage case, Goodridge v. Department of Public Health.)

Our coverage continues, after the jump.

As we mentioned earlier, on Friday we headed downtown to Georgetown Law School for "On Liberty: A conversation between Justice Stephen Breyer and Professor Charles Fried," of Harvard Law School. We were invited to this event by Georgetown Law Professor Neal Katyal (whom we thank for his hospitality).

Yesterday we shared with you our photos from the event. Now, the first half of our write-up -- after the jump.

A quirky and fun story in the Saturday New York Times (which nobody reads except us) describes the legal crusade of one John Lagana. He'd like to ride his WaveRunner around the shores of East Hampton, but can't, thanks to the wealthy beach town's ban on water scooters.

So like any good American, Lagana is taking the matter to court. And he has an interesting historical argument:

The case is now pending in state appellate court, where a panel of judges must decide if an obscure 17th century charter known as the Dongan Patent does indeed protect a man’s right to buzz around the waterways on a machine its signers could hardly have imagined.

When King James II deeded the eastern tip of the South Fork — which now includes East Hampton, Amagansett and Montauk — to a group of settlers in 1686, the governor in chief of the province of New York, Thomas Dongan, drew up the patent, granting “freeholders and inhabitants” of the area the right to “enjoy without hindrance” recreational activities like “fishing, hawking, hunting and fowling.”

The legal power of such deeding documents, which exist throughout Long Island and in other early-settled places, has been upheld by courts including the United States Supreme Court.

Lagana buttresses this with constitutional contentions:

Among Mr. Lagana’s arguments is that a passage in the federal Constitution prohibiting the creation of “any law impairing the obligation of contracts,” and a provision in the original New York State Constitution protecting “grants of land made by the authority of the king,” gives Dongan power in perpetuity. “If you’re going to ignore the Dongan Patent, you might as well throw out the Constitution,” he said.

The tony town has several counterarguments. Their main point is that "the patent is too vague and out of date to govern a modern municipality." But they also have historical contentions of their own:

[Gary] Weintraub, the town's lawyer, pointed out that if East Hampton were to live by the centuries-old patent, it would have other obligations, including the annual tax to the king of “the Sum of one Lamb Yearly and fourty shillings, curant money.”

Assuming East Hampton was not in arrears at the time of the American Revolution, that would amount to 230 lambs and 9,200 shillings the town owes, payable to Queen Elizabeth.

Merry Christmas, Your Highness? Or baaa, humbug?

At Odds Over Right of Kings, and Jet Skis, on Long Island [New York Times]

We agree with Andrew Sullivan: Dahlia Lithwick did a superb job in her write-up of the Scalia-Breyer debate, which took place Tuesday night at the Capital Hilton. We attended as guests of the ACS, whom we thank for their hospitality.

For our fourth and final post about the evening -- prior posts here, here, and here -- we'll quote liberally from Lithwick's great Slate piece, with commentary of our own appended and interspersed.

It all appears after the jump.

Question: Now that the Supreme Court is hearing hardly any cases these days, how are the justices spending all their free time?

Answer: On constitutional law road shows, in which they debate the proper way to go about interpreting that foundational document. What fun!

On Tuesday, Justice Antonin Scalia and Justice Stephen G. Breyer held forth on the subject before a packed ballroom at the Capital Hilton. The event was co-sponsored by the American Constitution Society and the Federalist Society. It ran for about an hour and a half; Jan Crawford Greenburg, of ABC News, served as moderator.

Our prior coverage of the event appears here and here (photos). Our third installment appears after the jump.

Yesterday the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two cases concerning the use of race as a factor in assigning students to public schools: Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District #1, out of the Ninth Circuit, and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education, out of the Sixth Circuit.

It appears that SCOTUS virgin Teddy Gordon, representing the petitioners in Meredith, did just as badly as many members of the snooty SCOTUS bar expected. For a blow-by-blow account of his ill-fated argument, see this reader comment.

Our commentary on the arguments, plus links to audio-casts and written transcripts, after the jump.