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Category Archives: Law
Is stare decisis a tautology?
Stare decisis, or the principle of binding precedent, means that a decision made by a court is binding on that court itself in future cases and on all inferior courts in the same legal jurisdiction. The rationale for this principle is the … Continue reading
Posted in Law, Logical Fallacies, Paradoxes
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Is an immoral promise a “promise”?
We address this paradoxical question in our work-in-progress titled “Immoral Promises.” We consider this question to be a “paradoxical” one because people are generally supposed to keep their promises according to most theories of morality. In short, most philosophers think it is morally wrong … Continue reading
Posted in Ethics, Law, Paradoxes
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The law of the law of the law of interpretation?
As we mentioned in our previous blog post, William Baude and Stephen Sach recently posted on SSRN an 85-page magnum opus titled “The Law of Interpretation.” (By the way, on the bottom of each page of their article, there is an … Continue reading
Posted in Law, Logical Fallacies, Philosophy
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The law of the law of interpretation
William Baude (University of Chicago) and Stephen E. Sachs (Duke University) recently posted on SSRN an important paper titled “The Law of Interpretation.” (How important? Their paper will be published in the Harvard Law Review–that important!) Law professors like Baude and … Continue reading
Posted in Law, Logical Fallacies, Philosophy
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Where do we place our bets?
Trump "will no longer comment" on TrumpU case… over/under on how long that lasts= 24 hours? https://t.co/tbpgOVIQpB — Colin Camerer (@CFCamerer) June 7, 2016
Posted in Bayesian Reasoning, Current Affairs, Law, Politics, Racism
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“Respondeat Superior” (the Law of Agency)
Because of the ubiquity of principal-agent relationships in the business world, we will spend an entire lecture on the law of agency in our next class. Also, although we have been focusing mostly on the founding of Facebook this semester, … Continue reading
Posted in Ethics, Law
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Metallica v. Napster
“Napster was the ultimate geek banner, a battle that had been fought by hackers on the biggest stage of all. Ultimately, the hackers had lost, but … it was still the biggest hack in history.”–Ben Mezrich, Accidental Billionaires (Ch. 18) … Continue reading
Posted in Ethics, Law, Music
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Honor Code (Lessons 8 & 9)
“This wasn’t right, damn it. This wasn’t fair.” –Quote attributed to one of the Winklevoss twins in Ben Mezrich, The Accidental Billionaires. In our next lecture, we are going to re-enact another pivotal scene from the film “The Social Network” … Continue reading
Posted in Ethics, Law
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Are employer dress codes illegal?
Vanessa Friedman has written a fascinating short essay titled “The End of the Office Dress Code.” In addition to her insightful interview of Susan Scafidi, a law professor at Fordham University and director of the Fashion Law Institute, Ms Friedman … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Law
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The Law of Ideas
“I’m thinking we keep it simple and call it the facebook.” –Harvard sophomore Mark Zuckerberg, as quoted in Ben Mezrich, The Accidental Billionaires. When Mark Zuckerberg registered the domain name for “thefacebook” and began building his new website in late … Continue reading
Posted in Ethics, Law
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prior probability 