Take the quiz here. (Hat tip: the amazing Tyler Cowen.)
We are big fans of Richard Epstein’s book Simple Rules for a Complex World (Harvard University Press, 1995) for many reasons. Consider aviation. In place of this convoluted academic analysis, we would advocate for the following simple rule: carriers may not remove a passenger once he or she or it has boarded an airplane and taken their assigned seat. Otherwise, without such a simple rule, efficient Coasian bargaining isn’t possible. (If you have 22 minutes to spare, below is a short video of Professor Epstein lecturing on his ideas.)
Why are some chemical weapons like Napalm and Agent Orange okay to use (as long as the U.S. military uses them) but others off limits? If we are going to continue acting as the world’s policeman and all-around moral enforcer (with disastrous results), then we should at least stop using chemical weapons ourselves and stop being so sanctimonious and self-righteous.
1. 🇨🇺 Cuba: Fulgencio Batista (bad); Fidel Castro (way worse)
2. 🇮🇷 Iran: Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (bad); Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (way worse)
3. 🇻🇪 Venezuela: Rafael Caldera (bad); Hugo Chavez/Nicolas Maduro (way worse)
4. 🇮🇶 Iraq: Saddam Hussein (bad); ISIL (way worse)
5. 🇱🇾 Libya: Muammar al-Qaddafi (bad); ISIL (way worse)
6. 🇸🇾 Syria: you get the picture
As members of the so-called “rationality community” like to say, the plural of anecdote is not evidence. (In 2016, for example, United Airlines denied boarding to only 3,765 of its more than 86 million passengers on overbooked flights, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.) But it looks like they are wrong, at least if consumers stop flying on United after their recent public relations disasters. First, United kicked off some little girls from a flight for wearing leggings. Now, United has forcibly removed an elderly paying passenger from his seat to make room for STAFF! (Maybe United needs to rebrand: Greyhound Air.)
Legal memo to United: “possession is nine-tenths of the law.”
In our next class, we will study the pleadings in the litigation between Facebook and Eduardo Saverin. In the movie The Social Network, for example, Eduardo confronts his best friend and business partner Mark Zuckerberg when he finally realizes that his original 30% stake in Facebook has been diluted all the way down to “point zero three percent.” (In the most dramatic scene of the movie (pictured below), Eduardo tells Mark: “You better lawyer-up, asshole, ’cause I’m not coming back for my 30 percent, I’m coming back for everything!”) Eduardo thus threatens to sue Mark and Facebook for significant monetary damages. But what evidence will Eduardo need to prove his case, and how will he be able to obtain this evidence? To delve into these key questions, we will review the main stages of litigation, including pleadings, discovery, trial, and appeal. In addition, because litigation has become so costly, we will also consider several methods of “alternative dispute resolution” (ADR), such as mediation and arbitration.
From Judge Posner’s forthright concurring opinion in the recent case of Hively v. Ivy Tech Community College, decided en banc by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit:
“A diehard ‘originalist’ would argue that what was believed in 1964 defines the scope of [The 1964 Civil Rights Act] for as long as the statutory text remains unchanged, and therefore until changed by Congress’s amending or replacing the statute. But … statutory and constitutional provisions frequently are interpreted on the basis of present need and understanding rather than original meaning. Think for example of Justice Scalia’s decisive fifth vote to hold that burning the American flag as a political protest is protected by the free-speech clause of the First Amendment, provided that it’s your flag and is not burned in circumstances in which the fire might spread. Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989); United States v. Eichman, 496 U.S. 310 (1990). Burning a flag is not speech in the usual sense and there is no indication that the framers or ratifiers of the First Amendment thought that the word ‘speech’ in the amendment embraced flag burning or other nonverbal methods of communicating.”
Full disclosure: we consider Richard Posner (pictured below) as one of our legal heroes and intellectual mentors.
Ears first? The tail? Or feet first? According to this scientific report titled “Seasonality of auricular amputations in rabbits,” which was published in the latest issue of the journal Laryngoscope, most people prefer to start with the ears: “New research carried out online has found that 59% of 28,113 respondents preferred to eat chocolate rabbits starting with the ears, 33% indicated that they had no starting point preference, and 4% indicated that they started with the tail or feet.” Or, as our mentor Thomas Schelling might say, bunny ears are a focal point. Happy Easter! (Hat tip: Tyler Cowen.)
Is this a bunny or a duck?
Hat tip: @AcademicBatgirl, via Twitter.
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