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Category Archives: Law
Review of Finding Law (part 3)
We have been commenting on Professor Stephen Sachs’s scholarly paper “Finding Law.” In brief, we agree with Sachs that law does not have to written down to be “law.” But as we explained in our previous post, we disagree with … Continue reading
Posted in Law, Philosophy, Probability
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May reading list
Does reading make you a better person. Probably not! But reading is a great way to expand your horizons. So, now that the spring semester is almost over, this is what we will be reading during the month of May: … Continue reading
Posted in Bayesian Reasoning, Culture, History, Law
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Follow the money
Posted in Bayesian Reasoning, Economics, Law, Politics, Questions Rarely Asked
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Class No. 13 (The United Airlines Case)
Have you ever been bumped off a flight or received shabby service from a commercial airline carrier? In our next class, we will take a break from “The Social Network” in order to debate United’s fateful decision (see memes below) … Continue reading
Posted in Current Affairs, Ethics, Law
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Starve the beast: let’s just repeal the 16th Amendment
Posted in Bayesian Reasoning, History, Law
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Simple Rules (United Airlines edition)
We are big fans of Richard Epstein’s book Simple Rules for a Complex World (Harvard University Press, 1995) for many reasons. Consider aviation. In place of this convoluted academic analysis, we would advocate for the following simple rule: carriers may … Continue reading
Posted in Economics, Law
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Class No. 12 (“You better lawyer up …”)
In our next class, we will study the pleadings in the litigation between Facebook and Eduardo Saverin. In the movie The Social Network, for example, Eduardo confronts his best friend and business partner Mark Zuckerberg when he finally realizes that … Continue reading
Posted in Ethics, Law
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Justice Scalia’s Living Constitution
From Judge Posner’s forthright concurring opinion in the recent case of Hively v. Ivy Tech Community College, decided en banc by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit: “A diehard ‘originalist’ would argue that what was believed in 1964 defines the … Continue reading
Posted in Bayesian Reasoning, History, Law
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Class No. 11 (Is Facebook a monopoly?)
“But with … incredible growth came new problems.” –Ben Mezrich, The Accidental Billionaires, Ch. 22. In our next class, we will debate whether Facebook is an illegal monopoly. After all, Facebook is the most popular social network in the world … Continue reading
Posted in Current Affairs, Ethics, Law
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Do we really need a supreme court? (In praise of judicial federalism: our final reply to Solum, for now.)
We will conclude our critique of public meaning originalism by posing the following judicial thought-experiment: What if we were to let the Supreme Court whither away? That is, what if the Senate simply stopped confirming any more new nominees to … Continue reading
Posted in Bayesian Reasoning, History, Law, Questions Rarely Asked
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prior probability 