I Fought the Law

Stop All the Hadron Collidin'

In a rare intersection of freaky physics and freaky law, a couple of dudes are suing CERN, the Department of Energy, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, and the National Science Foundation in U.S. District Court in Hawaii in an attempt to prevent CERN from activating the Large Hadron Collider this summer (story here).

The LHC is designed to re-create the conditions that were present immediately after the Big Bang. The plaintiffs fear that the LHC will create a black hole that will swallow the earth, or do any number of other unexpected disastrous things. Scientists have identified small yet real possibilities that things like this will happen.

From a legal standpoint, CERN is saying that the U.S. court in Hawaii has no jurisdiction over them. I suspect that when Justice Field wrote Pennoyer v. Neff he didn't envision personal jurisdiction extending to foreign entities hell-bent on world annihilation, and truth be told this is probably an issue best left either to military personnel or international super-spies.

But the best part of the article for me was the profile of one of the plaintiffs:

Mr. Wagner, who lives on the Big Island of Hawaii, studied physics and did cosmic ray research at the University of California, Berkeley, and received a doctorate in law from what is now known as the University of Northern California in Sacramento.

Nice to see another Berkeley physics student-turned-laywer making a name for himself in the world of jurisprudential cootery. Watch out for those cane spiders, Mr. Wagner.

Ninja edit: I just realized that that quoted sentence is really poorly constructed. It's supposed to be read like this:

Mr. Wagner -- who lives on the Big Island of Hawaii -- studied physics and did cosmic ray research at the University of California, Berkeley, and received a doctorate in law from what is now known as the University of Northern California in Sacramento.

But it could easily be read like this:

Mr. Wagner, who [1] lives on the Big Island of Hawaii, [2] studied physics and did cosmic ray research at the University of California, Berkeley, and [3] received a doctorate in law from what is now known as the University of Northern California in Sacramento.

Stupid New York Times.

Posted by hb at March 31, 2008 12:54 PM