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Tag Archives: History
Three questions for Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Note: this is part 1 of my review of Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (1754) Rousseau’s Discourse begins with a “Dedication to the Republic of Geneva” signed by none other than “J. J. Rousseau” himself and dated 12 … Continue reading
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Tagged enlightenment, History, Philosophy, political-philosophy, rousseau
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The use and misuse of history in (constitutional) law: some additional observations
How should history inform the study, practice, and interpretation of law, especially constitutional law? In a previous post I surveyed two radically different approaches to legal history: history as memory and history as evidence. (See here or below.) Today, I … Continue reading
History as memory versus history as evidence
How should history inform the study, practice, and interpretation of law? As I mentioned in my previous post (see below), professors Jack Balkin (Yale) and Randy Barnett (Georgetown) — two influential contemporary constitutional law scholars — presented competing theories of … Continue reading
Another Adam Smith Problem:
Alternate title: “The $64 Question: Part 2” (FYI: here is part 1) Note: Thus far, I have reviewed the first four chapters of Paul Sagar’s Adam Smith Reconsidered; today, I will conclude my review with Chapter 5 (“The Conspiracy of … Continue reading
Why isn’t April 9 a National Holiday?
On this day (April 9) in 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee formally surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant after the remnants of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia were decisively defeated at the Battle of Appomattox Court House by … Continue reading
“Dallas Killers Club”
That is the title of Nicholson Baker’s excellent review of the conspiracy-theory literature on JFK’s assassination. Here is an excerpt from the opening of Baker’s essay: There were three horrible public executions in 1963. The first came in February, when the prime … Continue reading
Can one man change the course of history?
Photo Credit: Stuart Franklin
What’s the probability that Russia will annex additional Ukrainian territory?
We think it is high, very high. After all, Russia has already annexed the whole of the Crimean peninsula without a real fight. Why won’t she annex other pro-Russian regions too, especially the eastern oblasts of Ukraine? Like Adolf Hitler after the 1938 … Continue reading
The most important date in history?
On March 12, 1989, the same year the Berlin Wall fell, Tim Berners-Lee, a researcher at CERN, wrote up and distributed a revolutionary proposal to improve information flows among computers: “a ‘web’ of notes with links between them.” (See diagram below from Berners-Lee’s proposal.) … Continue reading
Constitutional dataset
Check out this comprehensive constitutional dataset at the Comparative Constitutions Project or CCP. In the meantime, props go (once again) to economist extraordinaire Alex Tabarrok for bringing the CCP to our attention in his recent post “Constitutions Quantified.” Alex’s excellent post sums up the constitutional … Continue reading
prior probability 