prior probability

Although Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia have petitioned for Statehood multiple times, neither the House nor the Senate has acted on these petitions. Why not? In Senator Mitch McConnell’s case, the reason is probably some combination of racism and politics: Senator McConnell is a member of the Republican Party, so he might reasonably fear that Puerto Rico and D.C. would tilt the balance of political power in the U.S. Senate by electing a cohort of four racial and ethnic minorities–two of them Spanish-speaking and all of them Democrats–to that august body. Still, this theory does not explain Nancy Pelosi’s inaction. (Also, the case of D.C. might require a constitutional amendment, since it is a federal enclave under Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution.)

Check out this New Yorker essay by Corey Robin about Clarence Thomas, the longest-serving Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. Here is an excerpt:

When [Justice Thomas] joined the bench, on October 19, 1991, the Soviet Union was a country, Hillary Clinton was Arkansas’s First Lady, and Donald Trump had recently declared the first of his businesses’ six bankruptcies. Since then, Thomas has written more than seven hundred opinions, staking out controversial positions on gun rights and campaign finance that have come to command Supreme Court majorities. “Thomas’s views,” the Yale law professor Akhil Reed Amar has said, “are now being followed by a majority of the Court in case after case.” That was in 2011. Today Thomas is joined on the Court by Neil Gorsuch, who frequently signs on to Thomas’s opinions, and Brett Kavanaugh. 

Image credit: Shannon Henderson

The full article by Zachary Crockett is available here.

If you have ever wondered what is the most famous (or infamous) crime that was committed in each one of our 50 States, check out this list compiled by NYT contributors Tina Jordan and Ross MacDonald.

Image Credit: Ross MacDonald

Michael Huemer poses an important legal question in this blog post: Are Internet giants like Google and Facebook and popular websites like Twitter and Instagram “publishers” or “platforms”? In other words, should these Internet firms be legally liable for user-generated content? Here is Huemer’s argument (link in the original): Continue reading →

Although I have taught college and graduate-level courses in Constitutional Law since 1998, I had never thought about this question until now. Check out this footnote (pictured below) on pp. 87-88 of Cecilia Watson’s beautiful book on the history of the semi-colon:

This entertaining video poses an important question: should governments ban cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, regulate them, or just leave them alone? Hat tip: @ATabarrok

Does WordPress (the platform I use to blog) count as social media? If so, then Jaron Lanier has written an entire book explaining why you should delete this blog as well as your other social media accounts. (Pictured below is the back cover of his book outlining his arguments.) I guess “Digital Puritanism” is a thing!