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Category Archives: Law
An Aviation Thought Experiment (Public Choice Edition)
Hola! We have been invited to speak about a federal law known as “the Jones Act” during today’s “fiscal crisis” panel of the Encuentro Nacional de la Diaspora Puertorriquena. (The “Encuentro Nacional” will take place at El Centro Borinqueno, which … Continue reading
Posted in Economics, Law
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Epstein’s Critique of Hayek (Part 2)
In our previous post, we identified (via the loquacious Professor Richard Epstein) a potential contradiction in Hayek’s influential theory of “spontaneous order.” Briefly, decentralized markets are a good example of a spontaneous order, but markets require a set of rules … Continue reading
Posted in Economics, Law, Philosophy
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Epstein’s Critique of Hayek (Part 1)
We recently attended Richard Epstein’s lecture at George Mason University on “The Continuing Relevance of Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty.” (Disclosure: we are big fans of Epstein’s book “Simple Rules for a Complex World.”) In his lecture, Epstein delivered several devastating blows against … Continue reading
Posted in Economics, Law, Philosophy
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Oyez! Oyez! Oyez!
The law library of George Mason University has a wonderful collection of bobblehead dolls of our Supreme Court Justices and other historical jurists.
Posted in Culture, Law
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“Facebook Ethics” (A/B testing edition)
Thus far this semester, we have been reading about the historic events that occurred in Harvard College in late 2003-early 2004 and in Silicon Valley during the summer 2004 leading up to the launching and subsequent explosive growth of Facebook (or “thefacebook,” as … Continue reading
Posted in Ethics, Law, Web/Tech
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Legal liability of “innocent” co-authors for research fraud
Last week, we published a short letter in the journal Science in which we proposed extending the intentional tort of fraudulent misrepresentation to the most egregious cases of research fraud. After all, why should alleged academic fraudsters like Michael LaCour (political science) … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Law
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“Research fraud as tort”
That is the title of our short letter published in today’s issue of the journal Science (pictured below). Briefly, we propose extending the common law tort of fraudulent misrepresentation to research fraud published in academic journals. By the way, we … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Law
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Does the theory of vicarious liability apply to cases of research fraud?
How big a problem is research fraud, especially in the soft sciences like psychology, economics, and political science? By now, most people in Academia are familiar with the case of Diederik Stapel, a former professor of social psychology at Tilburg … Continue reading
More thoughts on the creation of a “Facebook legal privilege”
Broadly speaking, the law protects certain communications from forced disclosure in judicial proceedings. For example, the law recognizes an evidentiary “attorney-client privilege,” which is a legal privilege that protects confidential communications made to an attorney by his client. (In addition, … Continue reading
Posted in Current Affairs, Law, Uncategorized
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Double-edged swords (Bank Secrecy Act edition)
There is a fascinating and lively academic literature on the law and economics of the crime of blackmail. (Type in the word “blackmail” in Google Scholar and let the fun begin; also, for what it’s worth, you will find our … Continue reading
prior probability 