prior probability

This epic “rap battle of ideas” begins at 1’29”; enjoy!

In addition to my teaching duties and my duties as editor of The Pegasus Review (my home institution’s undergraduate research journal), I published the following scholarly papers on various areas of the law, including copyrights (paper #1 below), judicial decision-making (#2), contract negotiations (#3), constitutional law (#4), and stare decisis (#5). Here is a comprehensive compilation of my 2019 papers:

1. Of Coase and Copyrights: The Law and Economics of Literary Fan Art in The NYU Journal of Intellectual Property & Entertainment Law (forthcoming). I revisit Hemingway’s classic novella The Old Man and the Sea to illustrate the problem of “literary fan art.”
2. The Case for Bayesian Judges in The Journal of Law/Journal of Legal Metrics. Although this paper is pretty short by law review standards (only 8 pages), here is an even shorter version, which I posted to the online Journal of Brief Ideas.
3. So Long Suckers: Bargaining and Betrayal in Breaking Bad in The Journal of Strategic Contracting and Negotiation. If you liked the TV series “Breaking Bad,” I think you will like this paper.
4. Domestic Constitutional Violence in The University of Arkansas Little Rock Law Review. I discuss whether President Eisenhower exceeded his constitutional powers when he ordered the use of force to resolve the Little Rock Crisis of 1957.
5. Bitcoin, the Commerce Clause, and Bayesian Stare Decisis in The Chapman Law Review. In this work I present a Bayesian approach to illuminate the common law doctrine of stare decisis.

I also discussed the problem of illicit promises with Brian Frye on his Ipse Dixit podcast (see here), spoke about several recent U.S. Supreme Court cases involving Puerto Rico at a Florida Bar-approved CLE workshop (here), and updated my intellectual autobiography, which is now titled Life, Love, and Law: Confessions of a Cuban-American Law Professor (unpublished manuscript). Now, back to work fun …

Artist credit: Suzan Charlton

This prizewinning chess problem by Paul Bekkelund first appeared in the Norwegian chess magazine Sjakk-Nytt circa 1947 (hat tip: Cliff Pickover).

Yes! “The Elements of AI” is a series of free online courses (all of which are available here) created by the University of Helsinki and Reaktor. According to the official website for the Elements of AI, these courses combine theory with practical exercises and are designed “to encourage as broad a group of people as possible to learn what AI is, what can (and can’t) be done with AI, and how to start creating AI methods.” More details here, via James Vincent (The Verge).

Happy birthday, my dearest Sydjia!

[Review of “Jerks, zombie robots, and other philosophical misadventures” (MIT Press, 2019) by Eric Schwitzgebel.]

Professor Schwitzgebel’s beautiful new book (pictured below and available here via the MIT Press) consists of 58 short philosophical reflections. Like a modern-day Montaigne, Schwitzgebel reflects on and ruminates over a wide variety of eclectic topics in no particular order. He concedes in his preface (p. 3) the lack of a unifying or overarching theme; instead, the chapters are organized in five parts as follows (note: all page and chapter numbers refer to the Dec. 5, 2018 draft of Schwitzgebel’s book):

1. Jerks and excuses (chs. 1-13),
2. Cute AI and zombie robots (chs. 14-23),
3. Regrets and birthday cake (chs. 24-36),
4. Cosmic freaks (chs. 37-45), and
5. Kant versus the philosopher of hair (chs. 46-58).

In place of a comprehensive review, then, I will select my favorite chapter from each part of the book, and I will then review, in reverse order, only those five chapters in the hopes of persuading you to read the entire tome for yourself. So, without further ado, let’s jump right in … Continue reading →

That is the title of my latest paper, which was published in Volume 9 of the Journal of Law, available here (via the Journal of Legal Metrics) or here (via SSRN). In summary, my paper contributes to the literature on adjudication by proposing a simple method for operationalizing Eric Posner and Adrian Vermeule’s valuable insights about the Bayesian nature of the judicial process. (See Posner & Vermeule (2016), “The votes of other judges.”) Also, although the Journal of Law may look and sound like a conventional law review, it is really a bundle of smaller-scale esoteric journals–including the Journal of Legal Metrics, the Journal of Attenuated Subtleties, and quite a few others–all published in a single volume. According its official website, the Journal of Law “is an incubator of a sort, providing legal intellectuals with something akin to what business schools’ incubators offer entrepreneurs: friendly, small-scale, in-kind support for ideas for which (a) there might be a market, but (b) there is not yet backing among established, deep-pocketed powers-that-be.” As such, I am especially humbled and honored to have published my latest Bayesian paper in the Journal of Law. (Fun fact: According to WordPress, this is my 2501st all-time blog post since I began blogging in July of 2013!)

Degrees of judicial belief …

Alas, my Christmas break ends early this year (I resume my teaching duties on Monday, Jan. 6). In the meantime, here is a subset of what I have been (or will be) reading over the holiday season (in addition to the readings in my ongoing legal progress lit review):

1. Vitalik Buterin, Quadratic payments: a primer. Given my interest in non-binary voting methods, this primer is a must-read for me.
2. Tyler Cowen, The epistemic problem does not refute consequentialism. This 2003 paper defends the ethical theory of moral consequentialism. Because I have criticized consequentialism in many of my previous posts (including my review of Professor Cowen’s book “Stubborn Attachments,” I want to give Cowen’s defense of consequentialism a fair hearing, so to speak.
3. Duke Law & Technology Review, Symposium for John Perry Barlow. The Duke Law & Technology Review recently published an entire issue devoted to the ideas of Barlow (pictured below), who died last year. When I began teaching my cyberlaw seminar in the early 2000s, I would always assign Barlow’s influential essay “Selling wine without bottles,” which invited us to rethink the concept of property rights in the Internet age, so it is only fitting that I revisit Barlow’s influential ideas about technology and their relation to law.
4. David Epstein, Range: why generalists triumph in a specialized world. This book has popped up on various blogs and Twitter feeds that I follow, so I have added it to my reading list.
5. Samuel G. B. Johnson, et al., Belief digitization: do we treat uncertainty as probabilities or as bits? Because of my interest in probability theory and all things Bayesian, this paper is a must-read for me. (Hat tip: Tyler Cowen.)
6. Pauline Kleingeld, On dealing with Kant’s sexism and racism. It turns out the great Kant was himself a horrible Kantian! How should we make sense of this moral contradiction?
7. Eric Schwitzgebel, Jerks, zombie robots, and other philosophical misadventures. I have already read a draft of this beautiful book and will be writing up a review in the days ahead.

Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year …