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Category Archives: Law
Emancipation Proclamation
In honor of Honest Abe’s birthday today (2/12), we pose the following essay question regarding the Emancipation Proclamation, one of the most famous executive orders of all time. Was President Lincoln’s historic proclamation constitutional? That is, did Lincoln have the … Continue reading
Posted in History, Law
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Class No. 5 (Lies and Deception)
When was the last time you were lied to, or when was the last time you told a lie? In our next class, we will study the law and ethics of deception. Generally speaking, it is morally wrong to tell … Continue reading
Posted in Ethics, Law
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Class No. 4 (Contracts and Vampires)
In our next class, we will consider the law and ethics of two separate promises depicted in the movie “The Social Network”–the informal coding agreement between the Winklevoss twins and Mark Zuckerberg as well as the informal partnership between Zuckerberg … Continue reading
Posted in Ethics, Law
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Statutes as lemons (critique of Kavanaugh, 2016)
We have just finished reading Brett Kavanaugh’s highly original essay “Fixing Statutory Interpretation” in the Harvard Law Review, vol. 129 (2016), pp. 2118-2163. (Kavanaugh, who we shall now refer to as “K-1”, is a federal appellate judge on the D.C. … Continue reading
Posted in Bayesian Reasoning, Game Theory, Language, Law
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Virtue signalling in the age of Trump
As libertarians, we have always supported open borders as a matter of principle, but we are somewhat amused though not surprised by all the virtue signalling and moral grandstanding being displayed by our academic colleagues against Trump’s new immigration policy. … Continue reading
Posted in Bayesian Reasoning, Ethics, Law
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Class No. 3 (Due Process and the Burden of Proof)
In our previous class, we discussed the law and ethics of Facemash, a short-lived website Mark Zuckerberg created in the fall of ’03—a few months before he launched the beta version of Facebook. This week, we will re-enact Zuckerberg’s “Ad … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Ethics, Law
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The Ethics of Facebook Live
What legal or ethical obligations, if any, do social media companies like Facebook owe to the public at large? Last year, for example, at least 57 violent or illegal acts—including shootings, burglaries, and beatings—were transmitted via live-video platforms like Facebook Live. According to Mary Anne Franks, a law … Continue reading
Posted in Bayesian Reasoning, Ethics, Law, Web/Tech
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What are the most important unsolved problems in law?
Hola! This intriguing post by our blogging colleague and philosophical friend Tyler Cowen (asking about unsolved problems in economics) got us thinking about unsolved problems in the domain of law. But does it make any sense to talk about soluble … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Economics, Law, Philosophy
4 Comments
Actuarial table of Trump’s justices
Last year, Donald Trump released a shortlist of conservative jurists he said he would consider as possible U.S. Supreme Court replacements for the late great Justice Antonin Scalia. Recently, our friend, colleague, and fellow blogger Josh Blackman (of seven-screen fame) compiled the somewhat morbid table below calculating the … Continue reading
Posted in Bayesian Reasoning, Law, Politics, Probability
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prior probability 