prior probability

What is the most beautiful, haunting, and literary law review article of all time? In preparation for my upcoming talk on the life and legacy of Oliver Wendell Holmes (see my previous post), I want to say a few words about Holmes’s classic essay “The Path of the Law”, the first page of which is pictured below. To the point, my thesis is that Holmes’s work should be read as a short story or novella, for it is nothing less than a timeless masterpiece, along with the works of other great writers like Jorge Luis Borges and Ernest Hemingway.

As it happens, I explored Holmes’s seminal essay from a literary perspective in my article “Coase’s Parable“, which was published in a special symposium issue of the Mercer Law Review in May of 2023. (“The Problem of Social Cost” by Ronald H. Coase and Holmes’s “Path of the Law” are two of the most controversial, most cited, and most influential law review articles of all time.) Below the fold is an extended excerpt from my 2023 paper:

Two weeks from today (Friday, 27 October), three of my colleagues — Seema Mohapatra, Michael Morley, and Dan O’Gorman — and I will get together to speak about the life and legacy of the great North American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes. The student chapter of the American Constitution Society (ACS) will be hosting us at the Dwayne O. Andreas Law School in Orlando, Florida. Details below:

That is the title of this new book about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. As it happens, I already blogged about this new work, which finally hit bookstores earlier this week (see here or below), so I just want to pose two pithy but poignant questions for now:

1. Why did the author, retired Secret Service agent Paul Landis, wait 60 years to tell his story, and 2. Is his story a credible one? (Alas, I hate to be that guy, but Mr Landis was one of several Secret Service agents who stayed up late, partying and drinking in Fort Worth until the wee hours of the morning, just a few hours before the Kennedy assassination. See here and here, for example.)

Happy 21st Birthday, Kleber!

As I mentioned in my previous post, I was invited to present my work on “Outer Space Justice” at the LatCrit 2023 Biennial Conference, which is taking place this weekend. By coincidence, my colleague and new friend Dean Spade gave the Jerome M. Culp Memorial Lecture yesterday (Friday, 6 October), and at the end of his lecture he lamented in passing how some billionaires on Earth are considering creating colonies in outer space in response to ecological threats on Earth. This observation provides the perfect backdrop for my talk on “Outer Space Justice” later today. Although the focus of my talk is narrow and technical (see here, for example), my short slide deck is posted below: