Greenberg: 'Why American Libel Law Is a Disaster'

My friend and colleague Dan Greenberg, a senior research fellow at the Cato Institute, has penned an editorial in which he explains "Why American Libel Law Is a Disaster" (free sign-up).  

The Eleventh Circuit affirmed dismissal of Alan Dershowitz's libel suit against CNN at the end of August for lack of evidence of "actual malice," the extraordinary standard of U.S. First Amendment law that requires public-figure plaintiffs to prove defendants' intent, knowledge, or smoking-gun recklessness as to the falsity of what they utter.

I don't disagree with the outcome in Dershowitz. But like concurring Judge Barbara Lagoa, I have serious reservations about the "actual malice" rule. The standard, calcified in constitutional law by New York Times v. Sullivan (U.S. 1964), is unique in the world in its broad application in tort litigation in purported protection of the freedom of expression.

Brigitte and Emmanuel Macron, 2019
PICRYL public domain

Though I am a free speech and press advocate six days out of seven, I have long been persona non grata in media defense circles when the subject of Sullivan rolls around. As a torts teacher, I understand that under-compensating victims of genuine harm, and of letting tortfeasors off the hook for socially intolerable conduct, have far-reaching adverse consequences for the social order. And I daresay that our present epidemic of misinformation has a direct lineage to Sullivan.

Dan Greenberg, who bears scars similar to mine as a plaintiff-survivor of formally unsuccessful defamation litigation, has written an op-ed for The Dispatch, "Why American Libel Law Is a Disaster."  He uses as case in point the libel suit (CNN) of French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte against "self-styled independent journalist" Candace Owens—and the fact that the Macrons almost surely will lose, despite the absurd and damaging assertions of the defendant.

Here are the opening paragraphs. 

Did you know that the president of France and his wife Brigitte are actually blood relatives in an incestuous marriage? Or that Brigitte is a transgender woman? Or that President Emmanuel Macron was manipulated into becoming the president of France through a CIA mind control program? Or that the Macrons conducted an extensive campaign of violence, fraud, and identity theft to cover all of this up?

Well, you probably didn’t know this, because nothing would lead a reasonable person to believe any of it is true. But this didn’t stop Candace Owens, a self-styled independent journalist, from propagating that delusional narrative. Over the last year, Owens produced an eight-part podcast, Becoming Brigitte, that placed the Macrons at the center of a vast and incredible conspiracy. In July, the Macrons sued Owens for libel in Delaware.

Professor Eugene Volokh at Reason has key excerpts from Dershowitz v. CNN, Inc. (11th Cir. Aug. 29, 2025), from Judge Lagoa's concurrence, and from the contrary concurrence of Judge Charles Wilson.

There is more on the Sullivan debate, including an edited version of the complaint in Greenberg's 2013 defamation suit against an Arkansas newspaper, in my textbook, 2 Tortz, ch. 15(B)(5)(c), "Reconsidering Sullivan," from page 516.

Conference launches 'Journal of Workplace Mobbing'

In July, I participated virtually in the second Niagara Conference on Workplace Mobbing, which launched the Journal of Workplace Mobbing.

As a co-organizer and a founder of the conference in 2024, I was privileged to address the assembly on this year's opening morning, in a panel that reviewed, "What Was Learned Last Year." 

The panel also comprised my friends and colleagues, Eve Seguin, University of Quebec in Montreal; Peter Wylie, University of British Columbia; Kenneth Westhues, University of Waterloo; and Caroline Crawford, University of Houston Clear Lake, chair. Dr. Qingli Meng was again the brilliant conference organizer in Niagara.

I will share more from the conference when videos are posted.

Meanwhile, I'm pleased to celebrate the launch of the Journal of Workplace Mobbing. The journal is an online, open source. Here is the table of contents of volume 1, number 1, comprising selected papers from the 2024 conference.

• Qingli Meng, Foreword, Honoring the Pioneers
• Kenneth Westhues, Address, Top Twenty Takeaways from Research on Workplace Mobbing
• Qingli Meng, Workplace Mobbing vs. Workplace Bullying: Understanding the Distinction
• Janice Harper, The Brave New World at Work: From the MeToo Movement to Donald Trump, Political Litmus Tests Transform the Workplace
• Ann Marie Flynn, Executive Action as the Cure: The Essential Role of University Leadership in Mobbing Prevention
• Frances Widdowson, Mobbing and Wokeism: Experience and Analysis
• Peter Wylie, Shoot the Messenger: A Personal Account of Academic Mobbing

Here is the ISSN-registered Journal's "About":

Journal of Workplace Mobbing is a cognitive, intellectual, scholarly, and academic platform dedicated to the rigorous study of workplace mobbing. As the first refereed, open access journal focused exclusively on this phenomenon, this interdisciplinary journal serves as a critical space for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to explore the complexities of mobbing.

We invite scholars to actively engage in this critical academic discourse, contributing to the advancement of knowledge, the deepening of global awareness and understanding of workplace mobbing, and the development of informed policies and effective interventions—ultimately fostering healthier, more equitable, and just workplace environments.

Authors can find guidelines and submission instructions here. 

Here is the journal editorial team:

• Senior Editorial Advisor: Kenneth Westhues, Sociology, Emeritus, University of Waterloo, Canada
• Editor-in-Chief: Qingli Meng, Criminology, Niagara University, USA
• Lead Editor: Richard Peltz-Steele, Law, University of Massachusetts, USA
• Managing Editor: Peter Wylie, Socioeconomics, Retired, University of British Columbia, Kelowna, Canada 
• Editorial Advisory Board: 
• Emily Godbey, Art History, Retired, Iowa State University, USA
• Janice Harper, Anthropology, Independent Scholar, USA
• Gorazd Meško, Criminology, University of Maribor, Slovenia
• Florencia Peña, Anthropology, National School of Anthropology and History, Mexico 
• Stephen Petrina, Educational Technology Support, University of British Columbia, Canada
• Copy Editor: Martin Sawma, Sociology, Mellen University 

Court ruling against union furthers 'labor peace' fantasy

The union-management duopoly holds the 
American worker captive.

Google Gemini image CC0

The Massachusetts Appeals Court decided a First Amendment case against a labor union yesterday, and—hold on to your hat—I'm with the union and think the case wrongly decided.

The case involved a school employees' union in Andover, Massachusetts (different school, same Andover, which has curious recent resonance, but that's another story). According to the court's recounting, the education union and Andover school committee discussed a one-time $800 payment to instructional assistants in negotiation, but the payment did not make into the contract.

After the contract was concluded, the union went to the Andover town meeting with a warrant article, a way for citizens to put items on the meeting agenda, and asked for the town's endorsement of the $800 payment. The town approved the measure, and the union then sought to enforce it with the school committee.

The school committee accused the union of bargaining in bad faith by, from the committee's perspective, going behind their backs to the town meeting to secure a term that had failed to make it through the negotiation. The union defended on the merits under state law requiring employers and unions to negotiate in good faith, and also defended on First Amendment grounds for its right to petition the town meeting.

The court ruled for the committee on both issues. The union had conducted itself in bad faith, and the First Amendment did not preclude application of the good faith requirement in state law.

I think both conclusions are wrong. And if they're not wrong as a matter of regulatory requirement and constitutional constraints, then, at minimum, the outcome is bad policy.

First, the court concluded, in agreement with the Commonwealth Employment Relations Board, that the union acted in bad faith. The court relied on prior examples in case law of "double crosses," accepting the premise that the union went behind the back of the school committee. The court used the word "bypass" three times, describing the union conduct as having "bypassed" negotiation with the committee. That's one way to look at it. 

Another way to look at it is that the union "bypassed" nothing. The union negotiated in good faith and the bargain was concluded. Thereafter, the union used a different means to reach a desired end.

The warrant article was an extant feature of local government. Bargaining never took the warrant article off the table. If the school committee wanted to extract from the union a pledge not to seek the $800 payment through any alternative channel, or not to pursue warrant articles at all, then the committee could have put that ask on the table. Maybe the two would have settled on $400 instead of $800. We'll never know.

The union engaged in no deception. The union violated no term of the agreed upon contract. The union availed itself of a lawful process. Town voters were free to say to the union, "If you wanted that $800, you should have bargained for it in the contract." The town meeting was free to say no. Apparently, meeting voters rather agreed with the union that the negotiated contract needed an $800 enhancement. The school committee might ought search its soul to determine why the town meeting, another and more democratic part of the same local government, thought ill of the concluded terms.

Second, the court concluded that the "good faith" argument survived First Amendment strict scrutiny as applied. Following the example of the U.S. Supreme Court, the Appeals Court applied strict scrutiny prophylactically, as the former Court has not made clear whether the appropriate standard is strict scrutiny or something less. 

The Appeals Court reasoned that labor peace is a compelling governmental interest under strict scrutiny, and that the good faith requirement, applied in this context, narrowly furthers the governmental interest in labor speaking with one voice in furtherance of an exclusive bargaining prerogative.

I can illustrate the problem with this reasoning with reference to my own workplace, where the university faculty is unionized. 

Savory Tort readers will know that I am no fan of the union, and I am not a member. In 2020, amid the pandemic, the union that purported to represent me and all faculty colluded with the university to cut faculty pay. Over my objection, the union asked for progressive cuts that hit the higher compensation packages in the law school especially hard—for me, to the tune of 12%—while sparing others across the campus. That did not strike me as fair and equal representation of the members of the bargaining unit. So I sued.

Kudos to the Liberty Justice Center, which carried on the lawsuit magnificently. No fault of theirs, we lost. I expected that outcome in the heavily pro-union First Circuit. I always knew that the cause likely would be an uphill slog to the U.S. Supreme Court. And unsurprisingly, after having unsettled the waters in other respects in recent years, SCOTUS by the time we got there seemed to have lost its appetite for further forays into labor law. The Court passed on our appeal. 

I'm content that I had the chance to get my story out there. And lo and behold, to their credit, the university later repaid the covid cuts to faculty. Did my lawsuit have anything to do with that? Did the university have to put its money where its mouth was on its declarations to the courts that alleged losses of aggrieved faculty were overblown? Well, .... 

You're welcome, faculty and union. Though my thank-you card might have been lost in the mail—?

Like the Appeals Court in the instant case, the First Circuit demonstrated either ignorance or indifference to the reality on the ground. The analysis adopts the fiction that an exclusive bargainer represents the interests simultaneously of each and every worker, whose individual needs are uniform and fungible. Never would nor could the union act contrary to the interests of any minority class within the bargaining unit. 

Fantasy.

There are plenty of faculty in my law school who, after seeing how the union treated us when the going got rough, are ready to vote ourselves out and into our own separate bargaining unit. The problem is that non-tenured faculty are afraid that the university will give us a raw deal as punishment for separating.

One might think that management would be delighted to see a union broken. Far from it. The exclusive bargaining prerogative of a unitary union preserves the status quo, keeping those in power in power, on both the union side and the management side. Multiple bargaining units would challenge the duopoly. One bargaining unit might gain an advantage over the other, and the other might try to leverage that advantage against management. 

There's a term for that dynamic, by the way: "the free market."

In the law school, we might be able to form our own bargaining unit, to further our interests, if we could speak to the university and reach agreement that current contractual protections are a baseline, to which either party may retreat if going-forward negotiations fail on the first round.

However, the good faith standard binds management, as well as the union. The duopoly union-university, which does not want the hassle of a separate bargaining unit anyway, will claim that the good faith standard prohibits management from even speaking to minority interests. (I would disagree.)

The status quo is thus preserved indefinitely. And the consequence is that the union remains in power indefinitely, long past even the lives of its founding members, and despite its work at cross-purposes with the the legal obligation to serve the workers. The institution of the union becomes a thing apart from the workforce and hellbent on self-preservation.

I grant that the application of strict scrutiny, as in the instant case, is something of an "eye of the beholder" problem. If one thinks that "labor peace" as a compelling governmental interest means a power duopoly that binds workers to terms that are not in their best interests, then yes, I can see my way to preservation of exclusive voice as a means to that end. 

I rather challenge the initial premise. "Labor peace" to me means a functional system in which workers and management have a meaningful opportunity to negotiate terms of employment. If that is the compelling governmental interest, and I contend that that is Congress's express purpose, then a rule applied so as to disarm both union and management from lawful means to advance their causes is hardly narrowly tailored to any legitimate end.

Yesterday's Appeals Court decision commits workers to imprisonment on the union-management hamster wheel. The loser is not so much the union, but the worker.

The case is Andover Education Association v. Commonwealth Employment Relations Board, No. AC 24-P-465 (Mass. App. Ct. Sept. 9, 2025). Justice Joseph M. Ditkoff authored the unanimous opinion of the panel, which also comprised Justices Desmond and Englander.

Gutting consumer protection is not libertarian

The Trump administration is gutting consumer protection upon a policy at odds with market freedom.

Moves such as the dismantling of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB), OK'd by the courts three weeks ago, are rationalized by libertarians as market efficiency measures. Yet even as an economic conservative myself, I have trouble seeing how predatory lending, hidden fees and terms, and unfair competition—all of which the CFPB combated—facilitate a level marketplace. 

Free market theory depends on a series of preconditions, including a free flow of information between buyer and seller. Misrepresentation unlevels the playing field, undermining the freedom of the market actor who is deceived. Knee-jerk libertarian absolutists are shilling either ignorantly or willfully for corporatocrats, ironically at the expense of individual economic liberty.

Late last week the administration abandoned rule-making on modest compensation for airline passengers upon the delays and cancellations that have become our everyday experience in air travel in America. I wrote about the EU compensation system in 2023. That system has now turned 20, while the United States becomes ever more an outlier for its passionate embrace of oligopoly and disdain for consumers. Well, we have Russia to keep us company.

Soon, my 1L Torts students will reach our study of express assumption of risk as a liability defense. They will learn how profoundly permissive are American courts of binding boilerplate, notwithstanding any realistic showing of assent, much less understanding, on the part of consumers. (More.) Solutions to this problem have been theorized capably by scholars for more than a decade, yet policy makers, even constitutional originalists supposedly committed to express liberties such as the Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial, show no serious interest in reform.

Given the futility of the consumer's plight, I got a laugh out of an on-screen notice my television recently delivered from HBO Max. 

"Your continued subscription to and/or use of HBO Max confirms that you have"—the text started, before hitting the end of the screen.

"OK" was the only permitted response.

I could have shut down my Roku and walked away. 

I didn't. I agreed and continued.

What's an immortal soul when Peacemaker season 2 beckons?

Stornaiolo publishes book of memoir, travel tracts

Ugo S. Stornaiolo Silva has published a new book, Wandering Meanderings (Into the Idea of Love): The Libertarian Catholic Essays (2023-2025) (2025) (Amazon).

Polymath Stornaiolo writes on political theory, history, and law, and authors poetry, besides. His poetry is collected in Princely Rhymes (2023) (Amazon). This latest book is deeply personal, intermingling interests with memoir and travel log. Here is the publisher's description.

Wandering Meanderings is a memoir-in-essays by a man between homelands, Catholic by anchor, boundless by culture, who keeps a passport in one pocket and notebook in the other.

From Kraków trams, Viennese Mass, and Westminster corridors to nameless winter streets, these essays track how love, friendship, and meaning are made at human scale: slowly, locally, face to face.

For him, beauty wrestles with the sublime, proximity argues with digital distance, and mentors, muses, and peers form the living triad of a life, as Erasmus and Thomas More hover like friendly ghosts, Lords Acton and Byron quarrel on his shoulders, and Leo Tolstoy and Mark Fisher speak across the dark. Travel becomes a way of thinking, and thinking a way of keeping faith with places and people.

This is a conservative book of affections, a romantic book of cities, and a refusal of modern affectations. Attention is not love, algorithms aren’t providence, and abundance without presence is a desert. The remedy is old and demanding: fidelity to the near until meaning appears.

Part travel log, part philosophical meditation and part confession, Wandering Meanderings invites anyone who has felt out of place yet alive to truth, beauty, and goodness to step back onto the pilgrim’s road into the idea of love itself.

Stornaiolo works as a legal researcher for the Centre for Law and Religious Freedom at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland. He serves as an associate editor for The Miskatonian and writes as well for The Libertarian Catholic and for the Mises Institute.

I have featured Stornaiolo's work here on The Savory Tort before, including two books that preceded Princely Rhymes: Jueces Como Soberanos: Una Exploración Jurídico-Política del Poder Supremo de la Corte Constitucional Ecuatoriana (2022) (Amazon), and Achaean Disputes: Eight Centuries of Succession Conflicts for the Title of Prince of Achaea (2024) (Amazon).

Stornaiolo is an Ecuadorean and European attorney, now living in Kraków, and a friend, colleague, and former LL.M. student of mine. He kindly has visited my U.S. classes via Zoom to speak on topics such as comparative constitutional law and the Ecuadorean case law on the rights of nature.

Corporate leader shares world beyond the boardroom

Rare glimpse of Lavery joining a photo subject
on the other side of the camera, Guinea-Bissau.
The photo is blurry because I took it.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Jersey (UK)-based corporate governance consultant Siobhan Lavery, when she's not calling the shots in the boardroom, is a brilliant photographer and travel writer, besides my dear friend, and I'm eager to share my enthusiasm for her work.

Lavery is virtually an anthropologist when on the road, loving to roll up her sleeves, literally, to immerse herself in the customs of indigenous people, from West Africa to Oceania. Having long kept handwritten travel journals, she is making use of her time now to share her adventures through both text and images.

Lavery has started transferring journals to her Odyssey Diary on Substack. Her writings recount not only the joys of exploring the world, but sometimes the drama of navigating a home culture of business and politics that doesn't value personal growth through absence from the office. She ultimately left her full-time position to start a consultancy. If you're stuck on the workaday hamster wheel, you will relate and might even be inspired.

Lavery meanwhile is publishing her spectacular photography from around the world at Odyssey, on Smugmug. There's lots to explore there. Images are filed by "Countries," "Photo Essays," and "Stories." Content dates to 2010 and covers the Alaska, the Arctic, Angola, Benin, Borneo, Chile, Ethiopia, Ghana, Greenland, Haiti, Iran, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova and Transnistria, Papua New Guinea, Romania, Tajikstan, Togo, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.

In 2020, just before the pandemic struck, Lavery and I traveled for Carnival to Guinea-Bissau, which is not yet on the website. So I know she has more photos and stories yet to share.

Nuclear arms, testing still imperil life on earth

The August Atlantic published a few select photos of nuclear tests by military photographers in Nevada amid a series of stories on nuclear arms.

Nuclear power plants aim to fire back up around the country and around the world. That's causing those of us who remember The China Syndrome and The Day After, not to mention real-life Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, to feel anxious. 

Our anxiety is fed by the additionally burgeoning risk of a new nuclear arms race. Like many people, I, and apparently the editors of The Atlantic, are thinking back on the Cold War, when a nuclear holocaust seemed about as likely as not.

I'll republish here in low resolution four photos The Atlantic featured from the era of above-ground nuclear testing. The photos are in public domain, as they are in the possession of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)—collaterally, a reminder of NARA's importance amid its recent, inimical politicization. The photos were published previously in a military-photo compilation edited by Michael Light, 100 Suns: 1945-1962 (2003) (cover inset above).

 

The Atlantic issue, captioned "Eighty Years on the Edge" (cover inset at left), is well worth examining in whole. Coverage ranged from the historical to the contemporary. Inter alia, Noah Hawley traced the origin of Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle (1963) to the advent of the atomic bomb. And Ross Andersen explained how American absence in world leadership is setting the stage for the new nuclear arms race. 

I spent two weeks in Nevada this summer and saw that its atomic history persists, for better and for worse. 

To my surprise, there is an active program monitoring ongoing radiological risk, and a federal program only recently ended to compensate people for radiation exposure that resulted in illness. 

The Radiation Exposure and Compensation Act of 1990 expired in 2024 and afforded modest compensation to persons made ill, mostly by cancers. Onsite participants in atmospheric tests were entitled to $75,000; "downwinders" of atmospheric tests, present in specified areas near the Nevada Test Site, now called the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS), were entitled to $50,000; and uranium miners working from 1942 to 1971 were entitled to $100,000. I picked up a pamphlet from an education program of the School of Medicine at the University of Nevada Las Vegas that encouraged claimants (pictured below).

The Desert Research Institute of the Nevada System of Higher Education, in collaboration with the National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Field Office of the U.S. Department of Energy, maintains a network of air and groundwater monitoring stations surrounding the NNSS. The NNSS describes itself today as a government "enterprise of multi-mission, high-hazard experimentation facilities." The Community Environmental Monitoring Program watches for "manmade radioactivity that could result from NNSS activities" and publishes its data online with an interactive map. At right is a map of CEMP monitoring stations, and below (RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), is one of two CEMP monitoring stations at Tonopah, Nevada.

Though nuclear testing has abated above ground and below, government test sites of all kinds abound still in Nevada. The sites encompass vast swaths of desert, and active sites are well cordoned off with fences and warning signs—including but far from limited to the famous Area 51. (All below photos, RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.) 

A CEMP station in Tonopah, Nevada, monitors air quality and dispenses pamphlets for curious onlookers.

The U.S. Department of Energy shares and leases the Tonopah Test Range ("Area 52") with the Defense Department and contractors.

Signs warn of a U.S. Air Force test site between "Extraterrestrial Highway" Nevada Route 375 and Groom Lake "Area 51."

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management now preserves Lunar Crater, where astronauts once practiced moon landing.

Still operational, a small U.S. Defense Department installation near Lunar Crater affords a staging area.

Displays at the Nevada State Museum and even a bawdy show at the Venetian in Las Vegas highlight Nevada's nuclear history.

"Earth Station," on the Extraterrestrial Highway in Hiko, Nevada, near Area 51, stocks alien-themed souvenirs.

Roberts publishes critique of U.S. government in crisis, endures harassment after criticizing accreditor

Professor Alasdair Roberts, a friend and colleague at UMass Amherst Public Policy, recently published a new article, "The Crisis of Design in American Government." Meanwhile, he endured a baseless investigation after criticizing an academic accrediting organization.

Professor Roberts generously workshopped his thinking on the mismatch between the constitutional design of American government and the needs of contemporary society in a lecture at my law school in March 2025. I wrote then about his compelling ideas.

The refined version became the 2025 Charles Levine Memorial Lecture, which Professor Roberts delivered at the School of Public Affairs, American University, in May 2025. From those remarks, he developed the article in the Asia Pacific Journal of Public Administration, published by Routledge at the start of July 2025 (SSRN). Here is the abstract.

The American political system confronts two distinct crises. The first is the crisis of the moment, stemming from President Trump’s controversial actions since January 2025. The second is the deeper crisis of design, relating to flaws in the system’s architecture that predate Trump and will persist beyond his presidency. In the long run, the crisis of design is more consequential. Over-centralisation within the system has contributed to four pathologies: overload, gridlock, societal polarisation, and programmatic inefficiency and sclerosis. A better-designed system would be one in which authority was devolved and central institutions reconfigured. Systemic reform will be hard to accomplish because of constitutional constraints and a culture of anti-governmentalism. Still, structural changes are essential. History demonstrates that large and complex political systems are fragile. They are particularly prone to collapse under turbulent conditions like those facing the American system in coming decades.

Professor Roberts published an eight-minute explainer video, too:

Meanwhile, Professor Roberts endured this year a suspiciously unfortunate series of events, reaching a culmination also at the start of July 2025.

As Roberts explained on his Substack: "For seven years, I have been asking questions about the governance and policies of NASPAA [Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration], an accrediting organization for graduate public policy and public administration programs. I have never succeeded in getting on-the-record answers to these questions."

In January 2025, Roberts published an article, "False globalism: Public Administration in the United States in the Twenty-First Century," in the journal, Administrative Theory & Praxis. The article challenged NASPAA for asserting that its claims to global authority as an accrediting authority belie a U.S.-centric hegemony that eschews genuine efforts of diversity and inclusion.

Subsequently, Taylor & Francis (T&F), the publisher of the journal and parent company of Routledge, received a complaint against Roberts, alleging that "False Globalism" contained "inaccurate data." T&F opened an investigation. Roberts observed that T&F also publishes the Journal of Public Affairs Education, the "official journal" of NASPAA.

T&F's investigation found some minor misstatements, described on the Substack, one arguable, one based on a mistaken report by NASPAA itself. Roberts agreed to minor corrections accordingly. Nothing was discovered that would come close to undermining the integrity or thesis of the article.

To Roberts's surprise, the complaint persisted for months. He continued to cooperate with the investigation and provide supporting data for his assertions. T&F demanded further changes to the article. But this time, as Roberts described, proposed changes were more in the nature of added "rejoinder" than mere correction. In July, Roberts refused further changes. T&F backed down and at last closed the investigation.

Roberts wrote, "For me, this investigation was a prolonged, lonely, time-consuming, and costly experience."

In eagerness to protect itself, T&F seems to be running a process that facilitates the abuse of academic researchers while protecting complainants who effect harassment by transaction costs. Roberts is meticulous in his work and willing to defend his integrity, and he enjoys some protection of status in tenure. T&F's process meanwhile facilitates a problematic chilling effect on academics who might be more junior or less idealistic than Roberts. 

Rep. Dan Webster (R-Fla.) wrote, "Power tends to protect itself merely to maintain its own status and control. Principle gives up power for the sake of the highest good and to create the best public policy.... Power and principle cannot coexist."

R.I. classifies e-bikes, limits bike path access, but pedestrians remain at risk without enforcement

Kudos to Rhode Island legislators who in 2024 limited state bicycle trails and paths to a single class of e-bikes.

The 2024 law, H7713, chief-sponsored by my own Rep. Jennifer Boylan (D-Barrington, E. Providence), defines three classes of electric bikes:

• Class 1: Bicycle equipped with an electric motor that provides assistance only when the rider is pedaling, and that ceases to provide assistance when the electric bicycle reaches twenty miles per hour (20 mph).
• Class 2: Bicycle equipped with a throttle-actuated electric motor that ceases to provide assistance when the electric bicycle reaches twenty miles per hour (20 mph).
• Class 3: Bicycle equipped with an electric motor that provides assistance only when the rider is pedaling, and that ceases to provide assistance when the electric bicycle reaches twenty-eight miles per hour (28 mph).

Only class 1 e-bikes are permitted on the East Bay Bike Path, a paved, 14-mile rails-to-trails route that runs near my home, and which I use regularly (2019, 2021). Fully motorized vehicles are not allowed on paths and never have been.

Though the legislation passed in 2024, signs went up just this summer (pictured, above and below, RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). Meanwhile, the problem of persons flouting the law has only grown worse.

My experience has been like that of Ethan Hartley, writing for East Bay RI in August:

It couldn’t have been 10 minutes after this author posted up with a camera trying to grab some photos of people enjoying the bike path near Watchemoket Cove—a particularly scenic stretch of the East Bay Bike Path, located in Riverside off Veterans Memorial Parkway—that I heard the far-off sound of sputtering engines coming from far down the path in the direction of Kettle Point.

That was notable, and odd, considering fully motorized vehicles are not allowed on the bike path.

Yet here they rode. Two young men, perched atop what appeared to be miniature dirt bikes. They were respectful enough, riding on the correct (right) side of the road, in a single-file line, and they weren’t going too fast or revving their little illicit engines obnoxiously.

Problems on the East Bay Bike Path, from lack of snow removal to trash dumping to dangerous road crossings, have long been problematic for lack of enforcement. The bike path comes under the jurisdiction of the state Department of Environmental Management (DEM), rather than local police. DEM asserted, credibly to my mind, that it lacks the resources it would need to police the state's bike paths. 

I feel like jurisdiction is a problem we should be able to figure out without much fuss. Yet the problem has remained intractable in my 14 years here, apparently despite even a child's death.

At the annual conference of the New England Political Science Association in the spring, I ran into Roger Williams University Political Science Professor June Speakman, who also is a state representative (D) from districts on the East Bay Bike Path, the towns of Bristol and Warren. Rep. Speakman told me that some local residents were agitating for legislation that would compel foot and bike traffic on bike trails both to stay on the right.

I was horrified at the prospect, I told her. At present, foot traffic stays left, and bikes right. The idea is that the bikes can see facing pedestrians easier than when overtaking, and pedestrians can see oncoming cyclists who might not be paying attention—and jump out of the way.

I've made that jump a few times over the years. Usually it's a youth staring at a cell phone. Once it was a senior who might not have been able to see well in the waning light of dusk.

Now when I am on foot I worry about oncoming bikes, e-bikes and motorbikes, often traveling well in excess of 20 mph. When a racing cyclist passes fast, I don't mind so much, because racers are usually extremely attentive. But why anyone thinks kids or seniors at dusk will be more responsible on an e-bike than they are already on a bicycle, I can't fathom.

So I say kudos to the legislators who enacted the 2024 bill, and who made no changes in 2025. Before we talk about changing anything more, let's address the enforcement problem.

The United Kingdom and Australia have been racked with anxiety recently over the criminal case of an intoxicated British backpacker who crashed a scooter into and killed a father of two in the crowded city center of Perth, Western Australia.

Collisions are inevitable. And I know which side loses when it's pedestrian vs. any motorized vehicle, electric or otherwise, at 20 mph or more.

Transparency research conference issues CFP for '26

The Ninth Global Conference on Transparency Research has issued its call for papers.

The conference is set for June 24-26, 2026, at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. The conference theme is "Transparency Under Pressure."

The deadline for paper and panel submissions is January 20, 2026, with final papers of 7,000 or fewer words due April 20, 2026. The CFP suggests a non-exhaustive list of topics:

• Transparency and crises
• Transparency and governance
• Transparency, secrecy, and privacy
• Open government and e-government
• Freedom of Information and access to data
• Transparency and artificial intelligence
• Transparency and digital surveillance
• Transparency in political institutions
• Transparency and corruption 

The Global Conference on Transparency Research was founded under the direction of my esteemed colleague Suzanne J. Piotrowski (pictured), professor at Rutgers School of Public Affairs and Administration, and director of the Transparency and Governance Center.

The first conference convened at Rutgers–Newark in 2011. The conference hosts an always warm and collegial group of scholars who study transparency and accountability from a broad range of disciplines, embracing both quantitative and qualitative methods.