Creative Commons
Blogs I Follow
Tag Archives: Law
Aaron Hernandez pre-trial discovery update
Bristol County prosecutors in the Odin Lloyd homicide case recently turned over to Aaron Hernandez’s defense lawyers 33 pages of text messages between Coach Bill Belichick (a/k/a Mr Grumpy) and Hernandez from February 2013 to May 2013–the four months prior to … Continue reading
Did Kurt Gödel really discover a loophole in the Constitution?
Our 2013 paper Gödel’s loophole considers two related questions: why have so few scholars taken Gödel’s alleged discovery seriously, and what was this possible logical contradiction in the Constitution? (Hint: it probably has to do something with recursion.) There is also … Continue reading
Open-source patents?
Elon Musk — co-founder and CEO of Tesla Motors — has this to say about Tesla’s proprietary patents: When I started out with my first company, Zip2, I thought patents were a good thing and worked hard to obtain them. And maybe they were good … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Elon Musk, Innovation, Law, Property, Strategy, Tesla Motors
3 Comments
Impeach Obama?
Seriously, since Republicans have a solid majority in the House, and since the House has the sole power of impeachment under Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution, what is the probability that the House of Representatives will, in fact, draw … Continue reading
Infinite regress in law (a theoretical critique of the Hand formula)
Adjudication is the process of making decisions in law, but decision-making is a costly activity. For simplicity, we can model the process of adjudication (and decision-making generally) as a function consisting of two costly inputs: (i) RESEARCH or information-gathering and (ii) … Continue reading
“Information hypocrisy” in law
Futurist Robin Hanson has written up another astute blog post on the subject of information hypocrisy. By way of example, Hanson points out the existence of such hypocrisy in law: We say court proceedings are to get information to decide guilt, but … Continue reading
The limits of law: an update on San Francisco’s tour bus ban
A flat-out legal prohibition (e.g. “thou shalt not …”) represents a coercive, non-market approach to a given social problem. So, why aren’t legal bans always effective? Consider, for example, the tour bus ban approved last November by San Francisco’s Municipal Transportation Agency, which … Continue reading
Is the USA less free than Putin’s Russia or Communist China?
Read the full report by Ernest Drucker here (pp. 61-69).
Is Google (potentially) more evil than the NSA?
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) … Continue reading
prior probability 