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Puerto Rican Statehood Bill
Since 1898, Puerto Rico has been a colony of the United States. But two weeks ago (12 Feb. 2014), Senators Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) and Martin Heinrich (D-New Mexico) introduced Senate Bill 2020, the Puerto Rico Status Resolution Act, which would … Continue reading
An Academic Turing Test?
Check out the Turingesque website arXiv vs. snarXiv, which presents the titles of two science papers, side by side, but only one of the titles is “real”, i.e. is an actual title selected from a paper posted on a popular electronic … Continue reading
Another form of sports betting
Should NFL coaches or Major League Baseball managers be required to pay a fee in order to protest a bad call? They would be if football or baseball were an Olympic sport. Here is an excerpt from this fascinating report in the … Continue reading
Reasonableness = Random Adjudication*
* This “micro-law review article” was revised and updated on 25 Feb. 2014– Like Richard Epstein [1], prior probability agrees that “reasonableness,” standing alone, is an open-ended and indeterminate legal standard. Yet, at the same time, this legal standard permeates … Continue reading
Time Out for Black History Month
According to David Becker (from the website Jazz in America), the first recording by an all-black band occurred in 1921 when Edward “Kid” Ory and his Sunshine Orchestra recorded the songs “Creole Trombone” and “Society Blues.” Kid Ory had a … Continue reading
Law School Prediction Markets?
Why don’t law professors try using “mini-prediction markets” to forecast the outcome of Supreme Court cases or the outcome of bills pending before Congress? That is, why don’t law professors let their students, colleagues, and friends bet on the future outcome of … Continue reading
Why are prediction markets illegal?
Because regulators — the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in particular, which has the legal authority to regulate commodity markets — have declared prediction markets to be “contrary to the public interest”. But if the “public interest” is the … Continue reading
“A bet is a tax on bullshit”
Or so says Alex Tabarrok, an economics professor at George Mason University and one of our intellectual role models. (We are revisiting Alex’s previous post on bets and beliefs, given that earlier this week we offered to bet on the … Continue reading
Hobby Lobby Case, Part 2
Yesterday, Professor Scott Gaylord and I discussed the religious rights of closely-held corporations under the religion clauses of the First Amendment, one of the main legal issues in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., an important constitutional case which will be argued … Continue reading
Hobby Lobby Case
All are invited to attend the Fourth Annual Professors Debate at the Dwayne O. Andreas School of Law in Orlando, Florida from 4:45 to 6 pm in Room ALC 203. Professor Scott Gaylord, Jennings Professor and Emerging Scholar at Elon … Continue reading
