prior probability

On this day (8 May) in 1794, the father of modern chemistry Antoine Lavoisier, along with 27 co-defendants, are tried, convicted, and put to death by a revolutionary tribunal in Paris. According to a popular legend, the appeal to spare the French chemist’s life so that he could continue his experiments was cut short by the judge in his case, Jean-Baptiste Coffinhal: “The Republic needs neither scholars nor chemists; the course of justice cannot be delayed.” (The judge himself would be executed less than three months later.)

I heard this beautiful ballad–the song “Smile” by Nigerian artist Wizkid–for the first time somewhere in Sin City. Thanks Shazam!

I met the love of my life on the 64th anniversary of Paris Liberation Day (25 August 2009; my birthday!), and today, Cinco de Mayo, is our wedding anniversary! Alas, I don’t have a picture from that fateful day, so this one from ten years later will have to do.

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.