prior probability

That is the title of my latest work in progress, which I wrote up these last few days during my stay at my college alma mater UCSB (the campus is pictured below) and which I just posted to SSRN (see here). Below is the abstract of my paper:

“Did Adam Smith’s academic superiors at Balliol College, Oxford conspire to search his private rooms, and was the young scholar then reprimanded by them for the heresy of reading David Hume? Although this 18th-century conspiracy story has been retold many times, its veracity has never been corroborated. This paper thus contributes to the Adam Smith literature in three ways: by assembling in one place the original reports of the Oxford conspiracy, by showing how this oft-told Adam Smith conspiracy story has evolved over the years, and by subjecting these accounts to lawyerly scrutiny.”

Enjoy!

Although 7 November is the official “Victims of Communism Memorial Day” (see here), why not May Day instead?

Below is a gallery of some window-seat snapshots of my travels from Orlando to DC to Santa Barbara.

In my previous post, I mentioned that my wife and I were able to attend the opening of a special exhibition on “1898: U.S. Imperial Visions and Revisions” at the National Portrait Gallery. Here, I will highlight my contribution to this excellent exhibition: my very first law review article on “The Pamphlet Wars: The Original Debate over Citizenship in the Insular Territories,” which was published in 1999 in volume 38 of the Revista de Derecho Puertorriqueño–101 years after the Spanish-Cuban-American War of 1898. My paper, which I researched while I was still in law school in the early 1990s, surveys the fascinating legal and policy debates in North America between the Expansionists, who supported the acquisition and annexation of overseas colonies by the United States, and the Anti-Imperialists, who were opposed.

We are in our nation’s capital to attend the opening of a special exhibition on “1898: U.S. Imperial Visions and Revisions” at the National Portrait Gallery. I will blog about this excellent exhibition in the next day or two.

That is the plural of Das Adam Smith Problem as well as the title of my most recent work-in-progress, which I have posted to SSRN (see here). In honor of David Hilbert, the abstract of my paper contains just 23 words: “Besides the original Das Adam Smith Problem of lore, what other aspects of Adam Smith’s life and work remain contested, open, or unsolved?” For your reference, the table pictured below, which appears on page 10 of my paper, pretty much sums up what I have been reading and working on these days:

I have posted a revised draft of my most recent paper “COASE’S PARABLE” to SSRN. This paper, which traces the intellectual origins of the late Ronald Coase’s “reciprocal harms” idea (an idea with radical moral, political, and legal implications that has haunted me since my first year of law school — it was my beloved mentor and law professor Guido Calabresi who introduced me to Coase’s counter-intuitive idea in the fall of 1990), will be published later this year in a special symposium issue of the Mercer Law Review; in the meantime, my Coase paper is available here. (Professor Coase is pictured below during his early University of Chicago days.)

Yesterday was the last day of the spring semester at my home institution, and starting tomorrow my wife and I will be visiting a number of places over the next two weeks, including Las Vegas, Nevada (to celebrate our 11th wedding anniversary); Santa Barbara, California (to visit my alma mater UCSB); and Washington, D.C. (to attend some lectures and visit some cultural sites), so I will be blogging much less frequently in the days ahead.