prior probability

On the recommendation of my colleague, friend, and fellow Indophile Alex Tabarrok, I finally got around to reading Megha Majumdar’s debut novel “A Burning,” which revolves around a false criminal prosecution for terrorism and sedition. Here is the blog post by Professor Tabarrok that introduced me to this beautiful book, and here is an excerpt from Tabarrok’s post (link in the original): “What impressed me more was the less obvious commentary on social media, which is very relevant to the US. How does the pressure and potential of being seen by many others alter our choices? There are multiple mobs in A Burning; two of the mobs, one virtual, the other not, result in the brutal murders of innocent people, a third mob launches a star.” To the point, I wholeheartedly recommend “A Burning.”

While I am “on vacation” working on sundry scholarly projects and enjoying some R&R with my family, I created this film noir collage of some of the classic noir movies my family and I have seen during the month of July. You’re welcome!

What role does probability theory play in legal trials? What role should it play? In addition to my “Bayesian voting primer“–yes, the same one that an anonymous group of moderators found “unrefereeable“–, I have also been writing up an extended reply to and critique of Ron Allen and Mike Pardo’s “theory of relative plausibility.” Moreover, although my “Bayesian voting primer” and my extended reply to Allen & Pardo appear to be about different domains of laws (the primer is about elections, while the extended reply is about jury trials), both of these papers are ultimately about the same thing: “the aggregation of individual preferences” or decision-making by multi-member bodies. I will have much more to say about this topic in the next day or two.

That is how an anonymous group of self-described arXiv “moderators” described my most recent work in progress “Weyl Versus Ramsey: A Primer on Bayesian Voting,” which I have been diligently working on during my summer break and which I tried to post to arXiv, an open-access electronic archive for a wide variety of fields, including “theoretical economics,” the category I used to submit my paper. (Theoretical economics includes “social choice theory,” which is what my paper was about. See also the nasty email from arXiv, pictured below.) Better luck next time, I guess? Thank goodness for SSRN!

Today the Island of Puerto Rico celebrates “El Día de la Constitución.” On this day in 1898, the U.S. Army invaded Puerto Rico to expel the Spanish, and on this same day in 1952, the first democratically-elected Governor of Puerto Rico, Luis Muñoz Marín, proclaimed the adoption of the new Constitution of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. Although the Island is confronting many difficult social and economic problems, including high crime rates in San Juan, a shrinking private sector, and an out-of-control public debt–problems that originated with Governor Muñoz Marín by the way), we must also mention Puerto Rico’s many historic accomplishments. Aside from Costa Rica, the Island of Puerto Rico is the only other stable democracy in Latin American, and her elections have been consistently clean and fair.

But at the same time, we must also mention that Puerto Rico’s political status and constitutional identity are hotly-contested questions, even to this day. In fact, even before the Congress enacted the PROMESA law in 2016, creating a federal financial board with veto powers over Puerto Rico’s public spending, a strong case could have been made that Puerto Rico was a mere “colony” of the United States. After all, Puerto Rico is not allowed to participate in presidential elections because Puerto Rico is not a State, and her sole delegate in the Congress does not have voting rights. Now, with the PROMESA law firmly in place, Puerto Rico’s subordinate status is all the more glaring and obvious for the world to see. The PROMESA law also poses an important constitutional question:

When Puerto Rico adopted her Constitution, it was adopted “in the nature of a compact” between the people of Puerto Rico and the United States Government. Doesn’t the PROMESA Law violate this compact? If so, what practical legal remedy, if any, does the Island have?

I want to shout out the Spanish remix version of Camila Cabello’s beautiful song “Havana,” a song about a lost love, especially Daddy Yankee’s masterful contribution to the song, which begins at 1’24” … Among other things, Daddy Yankee sings: “La libertad … cuando volvera’ solo Dios sabe …” Sixty-one years of an obsolete and decrepit military dictatorship is enough; may my dear Cuba, my lost love, one day be free.

At the suggestion of some of my friends, I have decided to reserve the domain name for “the-war-room.org” and convert this virtual space into my personal website. My new website will house my research papers, course syllabi, and some personal photos and will become operational in the fall. Below is a sneak preview:

Paging my friends Randy Barnett, Josh Blackman, Will Baude, Larry Solum, and others … In preparing for my July 22 talk on “Constitutional Aspects of Puerto Rico’s Political Status,” I noticed that no other Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court joined Justice Thomas’s concurring opinion in the landmark Appointments Clause case that was decided on June 10, 2020. (That case involves the constitutional status of the members of Puerto Rico’s new neo-colonial financial oversight board.) Justice Thomas’s concurring opinion was explicitly based on the original public meaning of the Appointsments Clause, so either “public meaning originalism” is dead or the other textualist judges (e.g. Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh) disagreed with Thomas’s interpretation of what the original public meaning of the Appointments Clause is. (I will have more to say about my July 22 talk and the Appointments Clause case in the next day or two.)

Not the one featured in the video below! The story is here. (Hat tip: Tyler Cowen.)