Whoever wrote this blog entry seems to think so. But don’t Internet users knowingly and voluntarily consent to Google’s privacy policy when we sign up for Gmail? Or do Google’s terms of service constitute a tortious “invasion of privacy” under the common law? (hat tip: digg)
Who is the lesser evil?
This semester we taught Torts II and studied various theories of legal liability, such as vicarious liability, strict liability, products liability, rescue (the general no-duty rule and exceptions to the rule), the Federal Tort Claims Act (federal government liability), defamation, and invasion of privacy. We also studied several commercial torts, including fraud, misrepresentation, and the duty to disclose. It’s now that time of year again … exam time. To prepare for your exam, consider the following questions–what is the common thread (if any) unifying these various torts? In the alternative, why don’t we have a single, across-the-board theory of liability (like negligence) for all injury-causing behavior?
That is the provocative question raised in this report by James B. Stewart in today’s New York Times. The Times’ report notes that Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple, was the “driving force” in a conspiracy to prevent competitors from poaching Apple employees, a felony under Section 1 of the federal Sherman Antitrust Act. So, why were charges never brought against Mr Jobs? Also, why did Jobs risk prosecution under the Sherman Act in the first place? (You may find some possible answers to these questions here, where we develop a formal “risk-regulation” model.)
Above the law, or just lucky?
That is the title of this photographic exploration of a divided country.
From the book’s dust jacket: In 2006, the German architecture photographer Dieter Leistner had both the opportunity and official permission to photograph public spaces in Pyongyang. His images show bus stops with long lines of people waiting, spruced up government buildings, bronze statues of Communist heroes, soldier cemeteries, flower markets, and wide avenues with only a few cars and people. In 2012, Leistner visited Seoul, where he sought and found similar locations with a very different feel. In Seoul, for example, the bus stops looked like oversized televisions, the bronze statues were of kings of the long-gone Korean empire, the flower markets neighbored on fish markets with a vast selection of wares, and the streets were choked with cars and people …
We can’t wait to have share one of these …
It’s a federal crime to “knowingly alter, destroy, mutilate, conceal, cover up, falsify, or make a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object” with the intent of impeding or obstructing a federal investigation (italics added). But does this provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (codified at 18 USC 1519, if you must know), apply to a commercial fisherman who throws three illegally-caught fish overboard to avoid detection? That is the main issue in the case of Yates v. United States, which the US Supreme Court has agreed to adjudicate. (If you’re really bored today, you can read more about this delicate controversy here and here.) Does anyone want to bet with us on what the outcome of this case will be?
Here is one hypothesis:
Because consumers want and value assigned seats. Overhead bin space is scarce as well, and airlines allocate that to their best customers through early boarding. In other words, there are competing business objectives. It turns out that the data on boarding processes is mixed. You can do simulations of faster boarding but it turns out that
* What’s fastest changes, you don’t actually get consistent results across airlines and over time
* There are switching costs, in terms of training agents and disrupting passenger routines
Do you agree with this analysis, or are airline managers just plain stupid? More here. (hat tip (yet again) to Tyler Cowen, Master of the Internet)
Article 6 of Chapter II of the United Nations Charter states that “a Member of the United Nations which has persistently violated the Principles contained in the present Charter may be expelled from the Organization by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.” Although the Russian Federation is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, the UN high council has 14 other members. Why wouldn’t a majority vote be sufficient for a “recommendation” of expulsion, or does Russia have the legal authority to veto its own expulsion? In the alternative, why don’t the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization consider imposing a NATO-wide travel ban on all Russian citizens, effective immediately?
This simple thought-experiment appears in the first draft of our latest paper:
Imagine a large square table [like the one pictured above] so level that any billiard ball thrown upon the table has an equal chance of landing on any part of the table. Also, imagine yourself blindfolded so that you cannot see the surface of the table. Now, imagine yourself asking a friend to throw or toss a cue ball onto the table. Your task in this thought experiment is to guess where the cue ball had landed … How would you make this guess without looking at the table (and without asking your friend to tell you where the cue ball is located)?
One possible solution, the Bayesian solution, is to ask your friend to throw a second billiard ball onto the table and then asking him to tell you whether the second ball landed to the right or left of the cue ball. If the second ball landed to the left of the cue ball, for example, then the cue ball is more likely to sit toward the right half of the table. In order to improve your guess, you should ask your friend to repeat this procedure many times, throwing n number of balls onto the table and reporting the relative location (i.e. left or right) of each subsequent ball in relation to the cue ball. Eventually, given a sufficiently large n, you should be able to narrow down the actual location of the cue ball …
Notice, though, that for Bayes’ solution-method to work the way Bayes himself intended, your friend must by willing to accurately and truthfully report the relative location of each subsequent ball thrown onto the table. That is, there is an implicit assumption in Bayes’ original thought-experiment–that the observer or information sender is always telling the truth … and it is this assumption that we wish to challenge here.
Our paper is titled “Bayesian manipulation of legal outcomes.” Can you see a direct analogy between Bayes’ thought-experiment and litigation generally? (Image of the square pool table courtesy of math.nyu.)
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