prior probability

Have you ever wondered why debates about politics, constitutional law, and philosophy can go on and on without end? More generally, why do people like to argue over such pointless matters? Even yours truly recently fell into this trap on Twitter, where Jonathan G. Harris (@jgharris7) and I debated the question, what is the optimal level of regulation? (The entire thread is available here.)

As it happens, our friend and colleague Bryan Caplan explains here why certain types of arguments resemble a Prisoner’s Dilemma:

If your opponent keeps arguing, you want to keep arguing so it doesn’t look like you’ve run out of arguments.

If your opponent stops arguing, you want to keep arguing to emphasize that your opponent has run out of arguments.

As a result, both sides have an incentive to argue interminably.  Which, as you may have noticed, they usually do.

In other words, there are times when making an argument is like the “defection” strategy in the Prisoner’s Dilemma, while maintaining silence is tantamount to cooperation! Do you agree with Professor Caplan’s analysis?

This is one reason why I decided long ago to delete the email app from my iPhone. I don’t like being reminded of the ever-growing number of unopened emails in my cluttered inbox, especially during my summer break.

That is the title of my latest paper (sans exclamation point), which will be published in the next issue of The Journal of Strategic Contracting and Negotiation. The subtitle is “Bargaining and Betrayal in Breaking Bad,” and you can read it here (via SSRN) or here (via Dropbox). In this fun paper, I introduce the rules of a strategic bargaining game called “So Long Sucker” to help business school instructors convey strategic concepts and impart good negotiation skills to their students. (FYI: To give you some idea of how sinister this game is, it was originally called “Fuck Your Buddy.”) In addition, to further bridge the gap between negotiation theory and strategic reality, my paper identifies many commonalities between the game So Long Sucker and the strategic interactions in the critically-acclaimed TV series Breaking Bad. (Warning: the paper is full of spoilers, so don’t read it unless you have already seen the TV series.) Enjoy!

What do law professors and most academics do during their “summer vacations”? Ironically, the last thing most of us do is go on vacation. Instead, freed from the toils of committee meetings and teaching duties, we work–we do massive amounts of reading, write every day, and generally devote ourselves to our scholarly projects. By way of example, I am looking forward to reading the following newly-created scholarly works on constitutional originalism this weekend, all of which popped up in my Twitter feed earlier this week:

1. Josh Blackman, “Originalism and Stare Decisis in the Lower Courts” (14pp.);
2. Saul Cornell, “Reading the Constitution, 1787–91: History, Originalism, and Constitutional Meaning” (25pp.); and
3. John Mikhail, “Is the Constitution a Power of Attorney or a Corporate Charter?” (34pp.).

Image credit: Ji Sub Jeong/HuffPost

Nigel Chiwaya and Jiachuan Wu kept track of all the times special counsel Bob Mueller declined to answer questions by members of Congress about his two-year investigation of President Trump. (See the screenshot of their compilation of deflections below.) The reasons for these artful dodges were varied. In some cases, for example, Mr Mueller objected to a question when he thought the question was beyond the scope of his investigation (9:31 AM: “Outside my purview”); in other cases, Mueller did not want to disclose his “internal deliberations” (e.g. 10:00 AM: “I can’t get into internal deliberations”). Mueller deflected 198 times in all.

Source: NBC News

By way of example, could a tweet disparaging special counsel Bob Mueller or an op-ed criticizing the Department of Justice’s new antitrust review of Big Tech be considered an “obstruction of justice” under the open-textured federal obstruction of justice statute (18 US Code, Section 1503)? Here is the text of paragraph (a) of the law:

Whoever corruptly, or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication, endeavors to influence, intimidate, or impede any grand or petit juror, or officer in or of any court of the United States, or officer who may be serving at any examination or other proceeding before any United States magistrate judge or other committing magistrate, in the discharge of his duty, or injures any such grand or petit juror in his person or property on account of any verdict or indictment assented to by him, or on account of his being or having been such juror, or injures any such officer, magistrate judge, or other committing magistrate in his person or property on account of the performance of his official duties, or corruptly or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication, influences, obstructs, or impedes, or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede, the due administration of justice, shall be punished as provided in subsection (b) ….