prior probability

SLoG stands for State & Local Government Law Blog, and this new legal blog is available for your edification here. You’re welcome! (Hat tip: Brian Leiter.)

Once again, I am assigning the award-winning film “The Social Network,” along with episode 4 of “Tiger King,” in my business law survey course. (For your reference, see my Fall 2021 Syllabus, the first four pages of which are pictured below. Click on a specific image to see a larger version of that page.) This term, however, will most likely be the last time I assign “The Social Network,” which depicts the events leading up to the creation and meteoric rise of Facebook. In brief, I have three objections against this film. One is that the movie, as of August 31, is no longer available on Netflix. Another is that it is somewhat sexist, especially in light of today’s hyper-sensitive #MeToo environment. (“The Social Network” has no female leads and fails the infamous Bechdel test.) But my main objection is that this movie is now horribly dated. When the film was first released in 2010, Facebook was the darling of Silicon Valley — a scrappy little startup with a fun and innovative way to bring real-life friends closer together. Today, by contrast, Facebook has for all practical purposes become an evil Big Tech behemoth, along with Apple, Google, and Microsoft. Though come to think of it, perhaps this real-life role reversal makes “The Social Network” more relevant than ever!

(a) Folium of Descartes, (b) Witch of Agnesi, (c) Cubical Parabola, (d) Semicubical Parabola, (e) Strophoid, and (f) Cissoid of Diocles

That is the title of my 2007 paper on judicial senility, which I am showcasing today as part of my “Throwback Thursday” series in which I feature my most “vintage” scholarly works. As an aside, my four-page paper on “Senile Justices” is one of only two “empirical” papers that I have ever written. (I will revisit my other empirical paper in a future post. My other works are either theoretical or historical in nature.)

In summary, inspired by the work of historian David Garrow, my paper attempts to measure the true extent of the problem of judicial decrepitude among the members of the Supreme Court of the United States since the court’s inception in 1789. After collecting and presenting the relevant data, I conclude (contra Garrow) that the incidence of judicial decrepitude is relatively infrequent and rare.

That is the title of this report by Laura Tedesco and Rut Diamint, which was just published in Foreign Affairs. (Alas, annoyingly, the article is paywalled, but you can obtain a link to an ungated version of the article by clicking on the “continue reading” icon and then entering your email address.) In any case, the key to understanding what is happening in Cuba today is to recognize the undeniable fact that the Cuban people are ruled by a gerontic and obsolete military dictatorship.

Aside from status signalling, of course? According to this essay by Agnes Callard, “a university is a place where people help each other access the highest intellectual goods. A university is a place of heterodidacticism.” Robin Hanson, however, replies to Callard and corrects her here. According to Hanson, “… most complex social institutions just don’t have a single thing they are for; they are for many things.” Hanson 1, Callard 0.

Despite my repeated and public protests (see here, for example), I am scheduled to teach five in person sections (with up to 200 students per section) in the same small crowded classroom! To make matters worse, three of those sections meet back to back to back every other Tuesday from 4:30 pm to 8:50 pm, while the remaining two sections also meet back to back every other Thursday, from 4:30 pm to 7:20 pm, putting me and my students in harm’s way for another three hours. I have repeatedly requested a “reasonable accommodation” to space out my classes or move them outdoors, but to no avail. Alas, not only is my university insisting on holding such large-scale super-spreader gatherings; professors like me who refuse on public health grounds to convene them will themselves be subject to disciplinary proceedings. Worse yet, many of my colleagues have decided to stick their heads in the sand by remaining silent. I suppose this situation will change once enough students and faculty become sick or hospitalized; in the meantime, the only conclusion I can reach is that university administrators don’t give two bits about my health or that of my students.