http://www.odeo.com/channels/37482-The-University-of-Chicago-Law-School-Faculty-Blog no 40 Tue, 11 Aug 2009 08:44:08 -0700 Tue, 11 Aug 2009 08:44:08 -0700 http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24942779-Audio-Epstein-and-Lessig-on-Campaign-Finance-Reform Richard Epstein recently faced off with former Chicago prof Lawrence Lessig on campaign finance reform on the WRFU program The Logic Consortium. Professors Epstein and Lessig agreed heartily on the goals, somewhat less so on the means. You can listen to the program here. Richard Epstein recently faced off with former Chicago prof Lawrence Lessig on campaign finance reform on the WRFU program The Logic Consortium. Professors Epstein and Lessig agreed heartily on the goals, somewhat less so on the means. You can listen to the program here. Richard Epstein recently faced off with former Chicago prof Lawrence Lessig on campaign finance reform on the WRFU program The Logic Consortium. Professors Epstein and Lessig agreed heartily on the goals, somewhat less so on the means. You can listen to the program here. tag:odeo.com,2009-08-11,24942779 Tue, 11 Aug 2009 08:44:08 -0700 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog Audio/Video, Epstein, Richard http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24947177-Audio-Epstein-and-Lessig-on-Campaign-Finance-Reform Richard Epstein recently faced off with former Chicago prof Lawrence Lessig on campaign finance reform on the WRFU program The Logic Consortium. Professors Epstein and Lessig agreed heartily on the goals, somewhat less so on the means. You can listen to the program here. Richard Epstein recently faced off with former Chicago prof Lawrence Lessig on campaign finance reform on the WRFU program The Logic Consortium. Professors Epstein and Lessig agreed heartily on the goals, somewhat less so on the means. You can listen to the program here. Richard Epstein recently faced off with former Chicago prof Lawrence Lessig on campaign finance reform on the WRFU program The Logic Consortium. Professors Epstein and Lessig agreed heartily on the goals, somewhat less so on the means. You can listen to the program here. tag:odeo.com,2009-08-11,24947177 Tue, 11 Aug 2009 08:44:08 -0700 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog Audio/Video, Epstein, Richard http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24216754-Student-Blogger-The-Myths-of-Consumer-Protection-Law Update: Audio of this talk is now available. Professor Omri Ben-Shahar spoke on the "Myths of Consumer Protection" at this year’s annual Ronald H. Coase lecture for first year law students. Ben-Shahar discussed why he believes the modern consumer protection movement is largely misguided. Consumer advocates cite three things that consumers need: information about products, access to courts, and remedies for wrongs done to them. In the eyes of the consumer advocate, a consumer cannot compete with large corporations without these three things. It would be David versus Goliath; and Goliath would always win. Myth #1: Consumers will be better off if they have more information Warning labels are on everything. You can’t install a piece of software or use a web site without checking some box guaranteeing that you have read the Terms of Service. Do these forms of disclosure benefit consumers? Ben-Shahar believes not. Disclosures of information are often technical and hard to digest. People d... Update: Audio of this talk is now available. Professor Omri Ben-Shahar spoke on the "Myths of Consumer Protection" at this year’s annual Ronald H. Coase lecture for first year law students. Ben-Shahar discussed why he believes the modern consumer protection movement is largely misguided. Consumer advocates cite three things that consumers need: information about products, access to courts, and remedies for wrongs done to them. In the eyes of the consumer advocate, a consumer cannot compete with large corporations without these three things. It would be David versus Goliath; and Goliath would always win. Myth #1: Consumers will be better off if they have more information Warning labels are on everything. You can’t install a piece of software or use a web site without checking some box guaranteeing that you have read the Terms of Service. Do these forms of disclosure benefit consumers? Ben-Shahar believes not. Disclosures of information are often technical and hard to digest. People do not want to spend the time to read these disclosures. In a study of online viewing habits, 1/1000 people actually read a site’s Terms of Service, and that single curious individual only glanced at the complicated contract for an average of forty seconds—perhaps just a misclick. People would rather just be told if a product is “good.” They do not have enough time to digest technical information on all aspects of a product. A comparative rating service (for example, Zagat or Consumer’s Digest) is likely to be much more useful to a consumer. Unfortunately, mandatory disclosure laws do not and cannot facilitate this information. Mandatory disclosure laws require disclosure of specific facts and cannot disseminate the more subjective determinations desired by consumers. Too much mandatory disclosure may even be harmful by desensitizing consumers to warnings that may be helpful. Disclosure may be useful to the extent that these rating services, or other trusted sources, rely on that information. However, it’s not clear that the disclosure laws would even benefit these sources. After all, these sources specialize in collecting and digesting information. They do not require disclosure because they get the information in other ways. Myth #2: Consumers need access to courts Many boilerplate licenses—standard contract terms that are often reused—require mandatory arbitration or place the forum to settle abuses far away. These provisions make litigation an infeasible choice. The consumer protection advocates believe everyone deserves their day in court, making these types of contracts unenforceable. But even if we had broad freedoms to sue, would it help us? If everyone had the freedom to sue, some would exercise that right and others would not. The people exercising their right to sue for inadequate consumer products would raise the products’ price. People who do not utilize their right to sue would have to pay this higher price, in effect subsidizing the litigious group. It seems intuitive that only people who are informed of their legal rights will exercise them. Those that are informed would likely tend to be the affluent and wealthy users. Thus, instead of helping the class of people that consumer advocacy is most protective of—uninformed and poor consumers—broad legal rights serve as a subsidy from the have-nots to the haves. On the other hand, legal rights to sue for inadequate products may deter businesses from pursuing illegitimate tactics. This would benefit all consumers. But this assumes that litigation is a good mechanism to distinguish the unfair and deceitful practices. Many observers believe that the outcomes of consumer protection suits are impossible to predict, undermining any desirable deterrent effect. Myth #3: Consumers need special remedies for these suits to be worthwhile Individual suits are probably not worth that much money because the underlying products are not worth that much. To even make litigation an option, consumer protection laws may have to provide extra damages (treble damages, fixed civil damages, etc). But what if we went the other way? What if, instead of increasing legal sanction, we were to eliminate them altogether? If consumer have no monetary recourse against businesses, would things be worse? Not necessarily, claims Ben-Shahar. There are other ways to protect the integrity of the consumer bargain. For one, consumers can insure against the loss of the benefit of the bargain, through various intermediaries (like Square Trade) and even through insurance companies. Moreover, reputation can do much of the work. A typical person that feels aggrieved over their treatment by a company would share their experience with others. They would spread the word that the company does not provide a good product or service to consumers, so that other consumers will not make the same mistake. This harms the company’s reputation and may have a greater effect on the company’s behavior than a lawsuit would. From a corporation’s perspective it’s better to refund one customer who complains than to lose two future customers due to word-of-mouth. Extra damages for consumer protection law violations would shift resources from one type of enforcement (reputation) to another (litigation). If reputation is a greater deterrent against unsavory corporate practices, which seems plausible, then more litigation is not a good thing. Reputation also seems more effective because it can deter companies from making poor quality products (relative to their price), whereas a law suit based on the claim that “the product wasn’t worth what I paid” probably won’t succeed. Update: Audio of this talk is now available. Professor Omri Ben-Shahar spoke on the "Myths of Consumer Protection" at this year’s annual Ronald H. Coase lecture for first year law students. Ben-Shahar discussed why he believes the modern consumer protection movement is largely misguided. Consumer advocates cite three things that consumers need: information about products, access to courts, and remedies for wrongs done to them. In the eyes of the consumer advocate, a consumer cannot compete with large corporations without these three things. It would be David versus Goliath; and Goliath would always win. Myth #1: Consumers will be better off if they have more information Warning labels are on everything. You can’t install a piece of software or use a web site without checking some box guaranteeing that you have read the Terms of Service. Do these forms of disclosure benefit consumers? Ben-Shahar believes not. Disclosures of information are often technical and hard to digest. People do not want to spend the time to read these disclosures. In a study of online viewing habits, 1/1000 people actually read a site’s Terms of Service, and that single curious individual only glanced at the complicated contract for an average of forty seconds—perhaps just a misclick. People would rather just be told if a product is “good.” They do not have enough time to digest technical information on all aspects of a product. A comparative rating service (for example, Zagat or Consumer’s Digest) is likely to be much more useful to a consumer. Unfortunately, mandatory disclosure laws do not and cannot facilitate this information. Mandatory disclosure laws require disclosure of specific facts and cannot disseminate the more subjective determinations desired by consumers. Too much mandatory disclosure may even be harmful by desensitizing consumers to warnings that may be helpful. Disclosure may be useful to the extent that these rating services, or other trusted sources, rely on that information. However, it’s not clear that the disclosure laws would even benefit these sources. After all, these sources specialize in collecting and digesting information. They do not require disclosure because they get the information in other ways. Myth #2: Consumers need access to courts Many boilerplate licenses—standard contract terms that are often reused—require mandatory arbitration or place the forum to settle abuses far away. These provisions make litigation an infeasible choice. The consumer protection advocates believe everyone deserves their day in court, making these types of contracts unenforceable. But even if we had broad freedoms to sue, would it help us? If everyone had the freedom to sue, some would exercise that right and others would not. The people exercising their right to sue for inadequate consumer products would raise the products’ price. People who do not utilize their right to sue would have to pay this higher price, in effect subsidizing the litigious group. It seems intuitive that only people who are informed of their legal rights will exercise them. Those that are informed would likely tend to be the affluent and wealthy users. Thus, instead of helping the class of people that consumer advocacy is most protective of—uninformed and poor consumers—broad legal rights serve as a subsidy from the have-nots to the haves. On the other hand, legal rights to sue for inadequate products may deter businesses from pursuing illegitimate tactics. This would benefit all consumers. But this assumes that litigation is a good mechanism to distinguish the unfair and deceitful practices. Many observers believe that the outcomes of consumer protection suits are impossible to predict, undermining any desirable deterrent effect. Myth #3: Consumers need special remedies for these suits to be worthwhile Individual suits are probably not worth that much money because the underlying products are not worth that much. To even make litigation an option, consumer protection laws may have to provide extra damages (treble damages, fixed civil damages, etc). But what if we went the other way? What if, instead of increasing legal sanction, we were to eliminate them altogether? If consumer have no monetary recourse against businesses, would things be worse? Not necessarily, claims Ben-Shahar. There are other ways to protect the integrity of the consumer bargain. For one, consumers can insure against the loss of the benefit of the bargain, through various intermediaries (like Square Trade) and even through insurance companies. Moreover, reputation can do much of the work. A typical person that feels aggrieved over their treatment by a company would share their experience with others. They would spread the word that the company does not provide a good product or service to consumers, so that other consumers will not make the same mistake. This harms the company’s reputation and may have a greater effect on the company’s behavior than a lawsuit would. From a corporation’s perspective it’s better to refund one customer who complains than to lose two future customers due to word-of-mouth. Extra damages for consumer protection law violations would shift resources from one type of enforcement (reputation) to another (litigation). If reputation is a greater deterrent against unsavory corporate practices, which seems plausible, then more litigation is not a good thing. Reputation also seems more effective because it can deter companies from making poor quality products (relative to their price), whereas a law suit based on the claim that “the product wasn’t worth what I paid” probably won’t succeed. tag:odeo.com,2009-02-26,24216754 Thu, 26 Feb 2009 08:42:00 -0800 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog Audio/Video, Student Bloggers, Ben-Shahar, Omri http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24259289-Student-Blogger-The-Myths-of-Consumer-Protection-Law Update: Audio of this talk is now available and video is embedded after the jump. Professor Omri Ben-Shahar spoke on the "Myths of Consumer Protection" at this year’s annual Ronald H. Coase lecture for first year law students. Ben-Shahar discussed why he believes the modern consumer protection movement is largely misguided. Consumer advocates cite three things that consumers need: information about products, access to courts, and remedies for wrongs done to them. In the eyes of the consumer advocate, a consumer cannot compete with large corporations without these three things. It would be David versus Goliath; and Goliath would always win. Myth #1: Consumers will be better off if they have more information Warning labels are on everything. You can’t install a piece of software or use a web site without checking some box guaranteeing that you have read the Terms of Service. Do these forms of disclosure benefit consumers? Ben-Shahar believes not. Disclosures of information are often t... Update: Audio of this talk is now available and video is embedded after the jump. Professor Omri Ben-Shahar spoke on the "Myths of Consumer Protection" at this year’s annual Ronald H. Coase lecture for first year law students. Ben-Shahar discussed why he believes the modern consumer protection movement is largely misguided. Consumer advocates cite three things that consumers need: information about products, access to courts, and remedies for wrongs done to them. In the eyes of the consumer advocate, a consumer cannot compete with large corporations without these three things. It would be David versus Goliath; and Goliath would always win. Myth #1: Consumers will be better off if they have more information Warning labels are on everything. You can’t install a piece of software or use a web site without checking some box guaranteeing that you have read the Terms of Service. Do these forms of disclosure benefit consumers? Ben-Shahar believes not. Disclosures of information are often technical and hard to digest. People do not want to spend the time to read these disclosures. In a study of online viewing habits, 1/1000 people actually read a site’s Terms of Service, and that single curious individual only glanced at the complicated contract for an average of forty seconds—perhaps just a misclick. People would rather just be told if a product is “good.” They do not have enough time to digest technical information on all aspects of a product. A comparative rating service (for example, Zagat or Consumer’s Digest) is likely to be much more useful to a consumer. Unfortunately, mandatory disclosure laws do not and cannot facilitate this information. Mandatory disclosure laws require disclosure of specific facts and cannot disseminate the more subjective determinations desired by consumers. Too much mandatory disclosure may even be harmful by desensitizing consumers to warnings that may be helpful. Disclosure may be useful to the extent that these rating services, or other trusted sources, rely on that information. However, it’s not clear that the disclosure laws would even benefit these sources. After all, these sources specialize in collecting and digesting information. They do not require disclosure because they get the information in other ways. Myth #2: Consumers need access to courts Many boilerplate licenses—standard contract terms that are often reused—require mandatory arbitration or place the forum to settle abuses far away. These provisions make litigation an infeasible choice. The consumer protection advocates believe everyone deserves their day in court, making these types of contracts unenforceable. But even if we had broad freedoms to sue, would it help us? If everyone had the freedom to sue, some would exercise that right and others would not. The people exercising their right to sue for inadequate consumer products would raise the products’ price. People who do not utilize their right to sue would have to pay this higher price, in effect subsidizing the litigious group. It seems intuitive that only people who are informed of their legal rights will exercise them. Those that are informed would likely tend to be the affluent and wealthy users. Thus, instead of helping the class of people that consumer advocacy is most protective of—uninformed and poor consumers—broad legal rights serve as a subsidy from the have-nots to the haves. On the other hand, legal rights to sue for inadequate products may deter businesses from pursuing illegitimate tactics. This would benefit all consumers. But this assumes that litigation is a good mechanism to distinguish the unfair and deceitful practices. Many observers believe that the outcomes of consumer protection suits are impossible to predict, undermining any desirable deterrent effect. Myth #3: Consumers need special remedies for these suits to be worthwhile Individual suits are probably not worth that much money because the underlying products are not worth that much. To even make litigation an option, consumer protection laws may have to provide extra damages (treble damages, fixed civil damages, etc). But what if we went the other way? What if, instead of increasing legal sanction, we were to eliminate them altogether? If consumer have no monetary recourse against businesses, would things be worse? Not necessarily, claims Ben-Shahar. There are other ways to protect the integrity of the consumer bargain. For one, consumers can insure against the loss of the benefit of the bargain, through various intermediaries (like Square Trade) and even through insurance companies. Moreover, reputation can do much of the work. A typical person that feels aggrieved over their treatment by a company would share their experience with others. They would spread the word that the company does not provide a good product or service to consumers, so that other consumers will not make the same mistake. This harms the company’s reputation and may have a greater effect on the company’s behavior than a lawsuit would. From a corporation’s perspective it’s better to refund one customer who complains than to lose two future customers due to word-of-mouth. Extra damages for consumer protection law violations would shift resources from one type of enforcement (reputation) to another (litigation). If reputation is a greater deterrent against unsavory corporate practices, which seems plausible, then more litigation is not a good thing. Reputation also seems more effective because it can deter companies from making poor quality products (relative to their price), whereas a law suit based on the claim that “the product wasn’t worth what I paid” probably won’t succeed. Update: Audio of this talk is now available and video is embedded after the jump. Professor Omri Ben-Shahar spoke on the "Myths of Consumer Protection" at this year’s annual Ronald H. Coase lecture for first year law students. Ben-Shahar discussed why he believes the modern consumer protection movement is largely misguided. Consumer advocates cite three things that consumers need: information about products, access to courts, and remedies for wrongs done to them. In the eyes of the consumer advocate, a consumer cannot compete with large corporations without these three things. It would be David versus Goliath; and Goliath would always win. Myth #1: Consumers will be better off if they have more information Warning labels are on everything. You can’t install a piece of software or use a web site without checking some box guaranteeing that you have read the Terms of Service. Do these forms of disclosure benefit consumers? Ben-Shahar believes not. Disclosures of information are often technical and hard to digest. People do not want to spend the time to read these disclosures. In a study of online viewing habits, 1/1000 people actually read a site’s Terms of Service, and that single curious individual only glanced at the complicated contract for an average of forty seconds—perhaps just a misclick. People would rather just be told if a product is “good.” They do not have enough time to digest technical information on all aspects of a product. A comparative rating service (for example, Zagat or Consumer’s Digest) is likely to be much more useful to a consumer. Unfortunately, mandatory disclosure laws do not and cannot facilitate this information. Mandatory disclosure laws require disclosure of specific facts and cannot disseminate the more subjective determinations desired by consumers. Too much mandatory disclosure may even be harmful by desensitizing consumers to warnings that may be helpful. Disclosure may be useful to the extent that these rating services, or other trusted sources, rely on that information. However, it’s not clear that the disclosure laws would even benefit these sources. After all, these sources specialize in collecting and digesting information. They do not require disclosure because they get the information in other ways. Myth #2: Consumers need access to courts Many boilerplate licenses—standard contract terms that are often reused—require mandatory arbitration or place the forum to settle abuses far away. These provisions make litigation an infeasible choice. The consumer protection advocates believe everyone deserves their day in court, making these types of contracts unenforceable. But even if we had broad freedoms to sue, would it help us? If everyone had the freedom to sue, some would exercise that right and others would not. The people exercising their right to sue for inadequate consumer products would raise the products’ price. People who do not utilize their right to sue would have to pay this higher price, in effect subsidizing the litigious group. It seems intuitive that only people who are informed of their legal rights will exercise them. Those that are informed would likely tend to be the affluent and wealthy users. Thus, instead of helping the class of people that consumer advocacy is most protective of—uninformed and poor consumers—broad legal rights serve as a subsidy from the have-nots to the haves. On the other hand, legal rights to sue for inadequate products may deter businesses from pursuing illegitimate tactics. This would benefit all consumers. But this assumes that litigation is a good mechanism to distinguish the unfair and deceitful practices. Many observers believe that the outcomes of consumer protection suits are impossible to predict, undermining any desirable deterrent effect. Myth #3: Consumers need special remedies for these suits to be worthwhile Individual suits are probably not worth that much money because the underlying products are not worth that much. To even make litigation an option, consumer protection laws may have to provide extra damages (treble damages, fixed civil damages, etc). But what if we went the other way? What if, instead of increasing legal sanction, we were to eliminate them altogether? If consumer have no monetary recourse against businesses, would things be worse? Not necessarily, claims Ben-Shahar. There are other ways to protect the integrity of the consumer bargain. For one, consumers can insure against the loss of the benefit of the bargain, through various intermediaries (like Square Trade) and even through insurance companies. Moreover, reputation can do much of the work. A typical person that feels aggrieved over their treatment by a company would share their experience with others. They would spread the word that the company does not provide a good product or service to consumers, so that other consumers will not make the same mistake. This harms the company’s reputation and may have a greater effect on the company’s behavior than a lawsuit would. From a corporation’s perspective it’s better to refund one customer who complains than to lose two future customers due to word-of-mouth. Extra damages for consumer protection law violations would shift resources from one type of enforcement (reputation) to another (litigation). If reputation is a greater deterrent against unsavory corporate practices, which seems plausible, then more litigation is not a good thing. Reputation also seems more effective because it can deter companies from making poor quality products (relative to their price), whereas a law suit based on the claim that “the product wasn’t worth what I paid” probably won’t succeed. tag:odeo.com,2009-02-26,24259289 Thu, 26 Feb 2009 08:42:00 -0800 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog Audio/Video, Student Bloggers, Ben-Shahar, Omri http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24132689-Faculty-Podcast-Double-Header-Nussbuam-and-Wood-Epstein This week's edition of the Faculty Podcast is a double header of two recent Chicago's Best Ideas talks: Judge Diane Wood and Martha Nussbaum February 2nd discussion "Constitutions and Capabilities," in which the pair discuss practical implications for judges of Prof. Nussbaum's capabilities approach; and Richard Epstein's "The Coming Meltdown in Labor Relations," in which he discusses the Employee Free Choice Act, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and the Paycheck Fairness Act. You can read Bryan Hart's summary of the Nussbaum/Wood talk here, and download the audio here; Bryan's write-up of the Epstein event is here, and the audio is here. You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or with its RSS feed. This week's edition of the Faculty Podcast is a double header of two recent Chicago's Best Ideas talks: Judge Diane Wood and Martha Nussbaum February 2nd discussion "Constitutions and Capabilities," in which the pair discuss practical implications for judges of Prof. Nussbaum's capabilities approach; and Richard Epstein's "The Coming Meltdown in Labor Relations," in which he discusses the Employee Free Choice Act, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and the Paycheck Fairness Act. You can read Bryan Hart's summary of the Nussbaum/Wood talk here, and download the audio here; Bryan's write-up of the Epstein event is here, and the audio is here. You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or with its RSS feed. This week's edition of the Faculty Podcast is a double header of two recent Chicago's Best Ideas talks: Judge Diane Wood and Martha Nussbaum February 2nd discussion "Constitutions and Capabilities," in which the pair discuss practical implications for judges of Prof. Nussbaum's capabilities approach; and Richard Epstein's "The Coming Meltdown in Labor Relations," in which he discusses the Employee Free Choice Act, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and the Paycheck Fairness Act. You can read Bryan Hart's summary of the Nussbaum/Wood talk here, and download the audio here; Bryan's write-up of the Epstein event is here, and the audio is here. You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or with its RSS feed. tag:odeo.com,2009-02-13,24132689 Fri, 13 Feb 2009 09:58:17 -0800 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog Audio/Video, Epstein, Richard, Nussbaum, Martha, Wood, Diane http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24134755-Faculty-Podcast-Double-Header-Nussbuam-and-Wood-Epstein This week's edition of the Faculty Podcast is a double header of two recent Chicago's Best Ideas talks: Judge Diane Wood and Martha Nussbaum February 2nd discussion "Constitutions and Capabilities," in which the pair discuss practical implications for judges of Prof. Nussbaum's capabilities approach; and Richard Epstein's "The Coming Meltdown in Labor Relations," in which he discusses the Employee Free Choice Act, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and the Paycheck Fairness Act. You can read Bryan Hart's summary of the Nussbaum/Wood talk here, and download the audio here; Bryan's write-up of the Epstein event is here, and the audio is here. You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or with its RSS feed. This week's edition of the Faculty Podcast is a double header of two recent Chicago's Best Ideas talks: Judge Diane Wood and Martha Nussbaum February 2nd discussion "Constitutions and Capabilities," in which the pair discuss practical implications for judges of Prof. Nussbaum's capabilities approach; and Richard Epstein's "The Coming Meltdown in Labor Relations," in which he discusses the Employee Free Choice Act, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and the Paycheck Fairness Act. You can read Bryan Hart's summary of the Nussbaum/Wood talk here, and download the audio here; Bryan's write-up of the Epstein event is here, and the audio is here. You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or with its RSS feed. This week's edition of the Faculty Podcast is a double header of two recent Chicago's Best Ideas talks: Judge Diane Wood and Martha Nussbaum February 2nd discussion "Constitutions and Capabilities," in which the pair discuss practical implications for judges of Prof. Nussbaum's capabilities approach; and Richard Epstein's "The Coming Meltdown in Labor Relations," in which he discusses the Employee Free Choice Act, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and the Paycheck Fairness Act. You can read Bryan Hart's summary of the Nussbaum/Wood talk here, and download the audio here; Bryan's write-up of the Epstein event is here, and the audio is here. You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or with its RSS feed. tag:odeo.com,2009-02-13,24134755 Fri, 13 Feb 2009 09:58:17 -0800 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog Audio/Video, Epstein, Richard, Nussbaum, Martha, Wood, Diane http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24086506-Faculty-Podcast-Double-Header-Nussbuam-and-Wood-Epstein This week's edition of the Faculty Podcast is a double header of two recent Chicago's Best Ideas talks: Judge Diane Wood and Martha Nussbaum February 2nd discussion "Constitutions and Capabilities," in which the pair discuss practical implications for judges of Prof. Nussbaum's capabilities approach; and Richard Epstein's "The Coming Meltdown in Labor Relations," in which he discusses the Employee Free Choice Act, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and the Paycheck Fairness Act. You can read Bryan Hart's summary of the Nussbaum/Wood talk here, and download the audio here; Bryan's write-up of the Epstein event is here, and the audio is here. You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or with its RSS feed. This week's edition of the Faculty Podcast is a double header of two recent Chicago's Best Ideas talks: Judge Diane Wood and Martha Nussbaum February 2nd discussion "Constitutions and Capabilities," in which the pair discuss practical implications for judges of Prof. Nussbaum's capabilities approach; and Richard Epstein's "The Coming Meltdown in Labor Relations," in which he discusses the Employee Free Choice Act, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and the Paycheck Fairness Act. You can read Bryan Hart's summary of the Nussbaum/Wood talk here, and download the audio here; Bryan's write-up of the Epstein event is here, and the audio is here. You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or with its RSS feed. This week's edition of the Faculty Podcast is a double header of two recent Chicago's Best Ideas talks: Judge Diane Wood and Martha Nussbaum February 2nd discussion "Constitutions and Capabilities," in which the pair discuss practical implications for judges of Prof. Nussbaum's capabilities approach; and Richard Epstein's "The Coming Meltdown in Labor Relations," in which he discusses the Employee Free Choice Act, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and the Paycheck Fairness Act. You can read Bryan Hart's summary of the Nussbaum/Wood talk here, and download the audio here; Bryan's write-up of the Epstein event is here, and the audio is here. You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or with its RSS feed. tag:odeo.com,2009-02-13,24086506 Fri, 13 Feb 2009 09:58:17 -0800 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog Audio/Video, Epstein, Richard, Nussbaum, Martha, Wood, Diane http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24079388-Audio-Video-Fault-in-Contract-Law In September, Frank and Bernice J. Greenberg Professor of Law Omri Ben-Shahar and Fischel-Neil Visiting Professor of Law Ariel Porat organized a conference intended to reevaluate the role of fault in contract law. Speakers included Chicago faculty Saul Levmore, Eric Posner, Richard Epstein and Judge Richard Posner, along with experts in contract law from around the world. Subscribers to our Faculty Podcast may have already heard Judge Posner's "Let Us Never Blame a Contract Breaker," and audio and video of the entire conference is now available on the conference website. You may also watch Professor Ben-Shahar's introduction to the conference in the video embedded after the jump. In September, Frank and Bernice J. Greenberg Professor of Law Omri Ben-Shahar and Fischel-Neil Visiting Professor of Law Ariel Porat organized a conference intended to reevaluate the role of fault in contract law. Speakers included Chicago faculty Saul Levmore, Eric Posner, Richard Epstein and Judge Richard Posner, along with experts in contract law from around the world. Subscribers to our Faculty Podcast may have already heard Judge Posner's "Let Us Never Blame a Contract Breaker," and audio and video of the entire conference is now available on the conference website. You may also watch Professor Ben-Shahar's introduction to the conference in the video embedded after the jump. In September, Frank and Bernice J. Greenberg Professor of Law Omri Ben-Shahar and Fischel-Neil Visiting Professor of Law Ariel Porat organized a conference intended to reevaluate the role of fault in contract law. Speakers included Chicago faculty Saul Levmore, Eric Posner, Richard Epstein and Judge Richard Posner, along with experts in contract law from around the world. Subscribers to our Faculty Podcast may have already heard Judge Posner's "Let Us Never Blame a Contract Breaker," and audio and video of the entire conference is now available on the conference website. You may also watch Professor Ben-Shahar's introduction to the conference in the video embedded after the jump. tag:odeo.com,2009-02-12,24079388 Thu, 12 Feb 2009 08:31:17 -0800 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog Audio/Video, Epstein, Richard, Posner, Eric, Levmore, Saul, Posner, Richard, Ben-Shahar, Omri http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24132691-Audio-Video-Fault-in-Contract-Law In September, Frank and Bernice J. Greenberg Professor of Law Omri Ben-Shahar and Fischel-Neil Visiting Professor of Law Ariel Porat organized a conference intended to reevaluate the role of fault in contract law. Speakers included Chicago faculty Saul Levmore, Eric Posner, Richard Epstein and Judge Richard Posner, along with experts in contract law from around the world. Subscribers to our Faculty Podcast may have already heard Judge Posner's "Let Us Never Blame a Contract Breaker," and audio and video of the entire conference is now available on the conference website. You may also watch Professor Ben-Shahar's introduction to the conference in the video embedded after the jump. In September, Frank and Bernice J. Greenberg Professor of Law Omri Ben-Shahar and Fischel-Neil Visiting Professor of Law Ariel Porat organized a conference intended to reevaluate the role of fault in contract law. Speakers included Chicago faculty Saul Levmore, Eric Posner, Richard Epstein and Judge Richard Posner, along with experts in contract law from around the world. Subscribers to our Faculty Podcast may have already heard Judge Posner's "Let Us Never Blame a Contract Breaker," and audio and video of the entire conference is now available on the conference website. You may also watch Professor Ben-Shahar's introduction to the conference in the video embedded after the jump. In September, Frank and Bernice J. Greenberg Professor of Law Omri Ben-Shahar and Fischel-Neil Visiting Professor of Law Ariel Porat organized a conference intended to reevaluate the role of fault in contract law. Speakers included Chicago faculty Saul Levmore, Eric Posner, Richard Epstein and Judge Richard Posner, along with experts in contract law from around the world. Subscribers to our Faculty Podcast may have already heard Judge Posner's "Let Us Never Blame a Contract Breaker," and audio and video of the entire conference is now available on the conference website. You may also watch Professor Ben-Shahar's introduction to the conference in the video embedded after the jump. tag:odeo.com,2009-02-12,24132691 Thu, 12 Feb 2009 08:31:17 -0800 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog Audio/Video, Epstein, Richard, Posner, Eric, Levmore, Saul, Posner, Richard, Ben-Shahar, Omri http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24134757-Audio-Video-Fault-in-Contract-Law In September, Frank and Bernice J. Greenberg Professor of Law Omri Ben-Shahar and Fischel-Neil Visiting Professor of Law Ariel Porat organized a conference intended to reevaluate the role of fault in contract law. Speakers included Chicago faculty Saul Levmore, Eric Posner, Richard Epstein and Judge Richard Posner, along with experts in contract law from around the world. Subscribers to our Faculty Podcast may have already heard Judge Posner's "Let Us Never Blame a Contract Breaker," and audio and video of the entire conference is now available on the conference website. You may also watch Professor Ben-Shahar's introduction to the conference in the video embedded after the jump. In September, Frank and Bernice J. Greenberg Professor of Law Omri Ben-Shahar and Fischel-Neil Visiting Professor of Law Ariel Porat organized a conference intended to reevaluate the role of fault in contract law. Speakers included Chicago faculty Saul Levmore, Eric Posner, Richard Epstein and Judge Richard Posner, along with experts in contract law from around the world. Subscribers to our Faculty Podcast may have already heard Judge Posner's "Let Us Never Blame a Contract Breaker," and audio and video of the entire conference is now available on the conference website. You may also watch Professor Ben-Shahar's introduction to the conference in the video embedded after the jump. In September, Frank and Bernice J. Greenberg Professor of Law Omri Ben-Shahar and Fischel-Neil Visiting Professor of Law Ariel Porat organized a conference intended to reevaluate the role of fault in contract law. Speakers included Chicago faculty Saul Levmore, Eric Posner, Richard Epstein and Judge Richard Posner, along with experts in contract law from around the world. Subscribers to our Faculty Podcast may have already heard Judge Posner's "Let Us Never Blame a Contract Breaker," and audio and video of the entire conference is now available on the conference website. You may also watch Professor Ben-Shahar's introduction to the conference in the video embedded after the jump. tag:odeo.com,2009-02-12,24134757 Thu, 12 Feb 2009 08:31:17 -0800 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog Audio/Video, Epstein, Richard, Posner, Eric, Levmore, Saul, Posner, Richard, Ben-Shahar, Omri http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24034933-Student-Blogger-Is-Feminism-A-Live-Issue Last week Judge Posner and Professors Nussbaum and Case faced off in a much-anticipated debate entitled "Posner Answers the Feminists" (moderated by Professor Stone). The talk (which you can listen to here) was inspired by articles written by Nussbaum and Case for a Symposium published by the University of Chicago Law Review commemorating Posner’s 25 years on the bench.  Both professors wrote on the topic of Posner’s sexual harassment jurisprudence. See here for Case’s article and here for Nussbaum’s. But what began as a discussion about specific sexual harassment opinions seemed to transform into a debate over the state of feminism in the United States. Posner questioned whether feminism is still a "live issue" in the United States given his view that women are outperforming men at all educational levels and forging ahead in all professions, including in the military. In Posner’s words, women are now dropping bombs on people "just like the boys." "If that isn’t equality,"... Last week Judge Posner and Professors Nussbaum and Case faced off in a much-anticipated debate entitled "Posner Answers the Feminists" (moderated by Professor Stone). The talk (which you can listen to here) was inspired by articles written by Nussbaum and Case for a Symposium published by the University of Chicago Law Review commemorating Posner’s 25 years on the bench.  Both professors wrote on the topic of Posner’s sexual harassment jurisprudence. See here for Case’s article and here for Nussbaum’s. But what began as a discussion about specific sexual harassment opinions seemed to transform into a debate over the state of feminism in the United States. Posner questioned whether feminism is still a "live issue" in the United States given his view that women are outperforming men at all educational levels and forging ahead in all professions, including in the military. In Posner’s words, women are now dropping bombs on people "just like the boys." "If that isn’t equality," he joked, "I don’t know what is." Nussbaum pointed out that although women have made great strides in the United States, the U.S. continues to have one of the lowest percentages of female representation in the legislature and one of the highest rates of sexual violence against women among developed nations. And in certain realms, Nussbaum noted, society’s technological progress has not been mirrored with social progress: the Internet is creating new problems for women who are the most common targets of online harassment. The extent of women’s progress in the United States seems like more of a sociological debate than a legal one. Posner’s claim that women are outperforming men at all educational levels seems at least anecdotally suspicious in certain fields. Let’s look close to home: in recent years, although women comprise about 50 percent of the incoming law school class at the University of Chicago, they tend to represent about 30 percent of law review members, about 25 percent of law review board members, and an even smaller percentage of the school’s federal circuit court clerks. The reasons for these disparities may be complex, but they continue to exist nonetheless. But beyond the sociological debate over women’s progress seemed to be a more nuanced debate over whether certain problems women currently face are the kind of grievances that deserve legal remedies. Posner quickly agreed with Nussbaum that women still face serious problems of sex discrimination, sexual harassment, and sexual violence. Posner noted that for these serious problems, we correctly have legal remedies in place. But, he challenged the idea (which he attributed to the "feminist agenda") that there should be legal remedies that go beyond these serious problems to deal with what he characterized as "fringe, esoteric areas" like worrying about the modesty of women, which he considered outdated. Posner indicated that he considered Case’s work on public toilets (which she discusses here) to be one of these "fringe, esoteric" areas. Case argued that Posner doesn’t see equal rights of women as much of a value based on her analysis comparing two of Posner’s opinions, one involving the failure of an employer to provide a female employee with bathroom facilities and another involving the rights of a male prisoner at risk of observation by female guards while showering or using the toilet. For a better understanding of their contentious disagreement, see Case’s symposium piece. Nussbaum’s critique of Posner’s sexual harassment jurisprudence focused, in part, on his willingness to consider power dynamics in evaluating the facts of some, but not all, sexual harassment cases. Nussbaum praised Posner for his decision in Carr v Allison Gas Turbine Division, General Motors Corp, in which he rejected General Motor’s claim (and the lower court’s ruling) that the sexual harassment at issue had been "invited" by the plaintiff’s own foul language and "unladylike" behavior. Posner, who felt it was clear that the men were trying to drive the woman out of the workplace, said it was necessary to consider the "asymmetry of positions" in analyzing the facts of the case. Because the plaintiff was a lone woman, working among many men, "her use of the word ‘fuck head’ could not be deeply threatening, or her placing a hand on the thigh of one of her macho coworkers intimidating," Posner wrote in the opinion. Nussbaum praised Posner’s for recognizing that "[i]f the vulgarism comes from the powerless, it is not intimidating; if it is from the powerful, as part of a campaign of intimidation and humiliation, it is." In other words, the identity of the speaker can be as important as the content of the words when analyzing the meaning of vulgar behavior. Nussbaum also praised Posner’s opinion in Carr for being both novel and theoretically important because she believed it established clearly, for the first time, that hostile environment sexual harassment can exist even when the harassment in question is not focused on sexual relations. The plaintiff’s coworkers harassed her because she was a woman, with remarks that were derogatory to women, but there was clearly no attempt to sexually proposition her or to treat her as a sexual object. Nussbaum praised Posner for "boldly go[ing] where no judge had gone before, into the very heart of sexual harassment: power, not favors; intimidation, not eroticism." But Nussbaum criticized Posner for forgetting these insights in the later case of Baskerville v Culligan International Co (which, for simplicity’s sake, could essentially be renamed Pam Beesly v Michael Scott). In that case, a secretary accused her supervisor, "whose sense of humor took final shape in adolescence," of sexual harassment based on a series of incidents over a seven-month period. For example, the supervisor repeatedly referred to the plaintiff as a "pretty girl," on one occasion made odd grunting noises at her when she turned to leave his office, and on another made hand gestures that intended to suggest masturbation. Although Nussbaum believed Posner correctly concluded that the "buffoonish" behavior most likely did not amount to sexual harassment, she noted with disappointment his failure to analyze the power dynamics between the plaintiff and her boss in considering the true meaning of the supervisor’s words and gestures. Posner insisted that there was simply no reason to consider power dynamics in Baskerville because there was no allegation that the secretary had "invited" the behavior by responding in kind. As a result, there was no reason to discuss an issue that did not arise. Nussbaum responded that context should always matter because the fact that the plaintiff was being harassed by her supervisor created an implicit threat that should have been considered. Moreover, she argued, the female-male power dynamic of the office as a whole might be important: a situation where the plaintiff was the only female employee in the office might look very different than a situation where the office employed many females in positions of significant power. Posner’s remarks indicate that he believes "asymmetry of position" is only relevant when analyzing a plaintiff’s vulgar behavior (as opposed to a defendant’s). It is interesting that Posner failed to include analysis of the relative power dynamics in Baskerville, because he was mindful of the importance of many other elements of context. In Baskervillehe wrote: Remarks innocuous or merely mildly offensive when delivered in a public setting might acquire a sinister cast when delivered in the suggestive isolation of a hotel room. So too remarks accompanied by threatening gestures or contorted facial features, or delivered from so short a distance from the listeners face as to invade the listener’s private space . . . . Even a gross disparity in size between speaker and listener, favoring the former, might ominously magnify the impact of the speaker’s words. It's unclear why it would be appropriate to consider a speaker's size but not his identity when evaluating the true meaning (or impact) of his words. Let’s again enter a familiar setting: would a sexual or derogatory comment made by one summer associate to another not gain an entirely more threatening meaning when made by a partner? Does it seem significant if this is the first female summer associate the firm has ever hired, or if she is one of 50 women in a class of 100? A failure to consider this context seems just as problematic as a failure to consider the speaker’s physical size or facial features. Ultimately, it is hard to disagree with Posner’s claim that women have made significant progress in the United States. The very nature of last week’s debate, two accomplished female professors criticizing one of the country’s most noted male jurists, illustrates the point. But that doesn’t mean that the debate over how to best interpret and apply the sexual harassment laws that have helped attain this progress is moot. As with most debates, the parties involved reached little consensus. But hopefully last week’s debate illustrated not only how far women have come, but also how important it is for us to maintain and consistently improve upon that progress. Last week Judge Posner and Professors Nussbaum and Case faced off in a much-anticipated debate entitled "Posner Answers the Feminists" (moderated by Professor Stone). The talk (which you can listen to here) was inspired by articles written by Nussbaum and Case for a Symposium published by the University of Chicago Law Review commemorating Posner’s 25 years on the bench.  Both professors wrote on the topic of Posner’s sexual harassment jurisprudence. See here for Case’s article and here for Nussbaum’s. But what began as a discussion about specific sexual harassment opinions seemed to transform into a debate over the state of feminism in the United States. Posner questioned whether feminism is still a "live issue" in the United States given his view that women are outperforming men at all educational levels and forging ahead in all professions, including in the military. In Posner’s words, women are now dropping bombs on people "just like the boys." "If that isn’t equality," he joked, "I don’t know what is." Nussbaum pointed out that although women have made great strides in the United States, the U.S. continues to have one of the lowest percentages of female representation in the legislature and one of the highest rates of sexual violence against women among developed nations. And in certain realms, Nussbaum noted, society’s technological progress has not been mirrored with social progress: the Internet is creating new problems for women who are the most common targets of online harassment. The extent of women’s progress in the United States seems like more of a sociological debate than a legal one. Posner’s claim that women are outperforming men at all educational levels seems at least anecdotally suspicious in certain fields. Let’s look close to home: in recent years, although women comprise about 50 percent of the incoming law school class at the University of Chicago, they tend to represent about 30 percent of law review members, about 25 percent of law review board members, and an even smaller percentage of the school’s federal circuit court clerks. The reasons for these disparities may be complex, but they continue to exist nonetheless. But beyond the sociological debate over women’s progress seemed to be a more nuanced debate over whether certain problems women currently face are the kind of grievances that deserve legal remedies. Posner quickly agreed with Nussbaum that women still face serious problems of sex discrimination, sexual harassment, and sexual violence. Posner noted that for these serious problems, we correctly have legal remedies in place. But, he challenged the idea (which he attributed to the "feminist agenda") that there should be legal remedies that go beyond these serious problems to deal with what he characterized as "fringe, esoteric areas" like worrying about the modesty of women, which he considered outdated. Posner indicated that he considered Case’s work on public toilets (which she discusses here) to be one of these "fringe, esoteric" areas. Case argued that Posner doesn’t see equal rights of women as much of a value based on her analysis comparing two of Posner’s opinions, one involving the failure of an employer to provide a female employee with bathroom facilities and another involving the rights of a male prisoner at risk of observation by female guards while showering or using the toilet. For a better understanding of their contentious disagreement, see Case’s symposium piece. Nussbaum’s critique of Posner’s sexual harassment jurisprudence focused, in part, on his willingness to consider power dynamics in evaluating the facts of some, but not all, sexual harassment cases. Nussbaum praised Posner for his decision in Carr v Allison Gas Turbine Division, General Motors Corp, in which he rejected General Motor’s claim (and the lower court’s ruling) that the sexual harassment at issue had been "invited" by the plaintiff’s own foul language and "unladylike" behavior. Posner, who felt it was clear that the men were trying to drive the woman out of the workplace, said it was necessary to consider the "asymmetry of positions" in analyzing the facts of the case. Because the plaintiff was a lone woman, working among many men, "her use of the word ‘fuck head’ could not be deeply threatening, or her placing a hand on the thigh of one of her macho coworkers intimidating," Posner wrote in the opinion. Nussbaum praised Posner’s for recognizing that "[i]f the vulgarism comes from the powerless, it is not intimidating; if it is from the powerful, as part of a campaign of intimidation and humiliation, it is." In other words, the identity of the speaker can be as important as the content of the words when analyzing the meaning of vulgar behavior. Nussbaum also praised Posner’s opinion in Carr for being both novel and theoretically important because she believed it established clearly, for the first time, that hostile environment sexual harassment can exist even when the harassment in question is not focused on sexual relations. The plaintiff’s coworkers harassed her because she was a woman, with remarks that were derogatory to women, but there was clearly no attempt to sexually proposition her or to treat her as a sexual object. Nussbaum praised Posner for "boldly go[ing] where no judge had gone before, into the very heart of sexual harassment: power, not favors; intimidation, not eroticism." But Nussbaum criticized Posner for forgetting these insights in the later case of Baskerville v Culligan International Co (which, for simplicity’s sake, could essentially be renamed Pam Beesly v Michael Scott). In that case, a secretary accused her supervisor, "whose sense of humor took final shape in adolescence," of sexual harassment based on a series of incidents over a seven-month period. For example, the supervisor repeatedly referred to the plaintiff as a "pretty girl," on one occasion made odd grunting noises at her when she turned to leave his office, and on another made hand gestures that intended to suggest masturbation. Although Nussbaum believed Posner correctly concluded that the "buffoonish" behavior most likely did not amount to sexual harassment, she noted with disappointment his failure to analyze the power dynamics between the plaintiff and her boss in considering the true meaning of the supervisor’s words and gestures. Posner insisted that there was simply no reason to consider power dynamics in Baskerville because there was no allegation that the secretary had "invited" the behavior by responding in kind. As a result, there was no reason to discuss an issue that did not arise. Nussbaum responded that context should always matter because the fact that the plaintiff was being harassed by her supervisor created an implicit threat that should have been considered. Moreover, she argued, the female-male power dynamic of the office as a whole might be important: a situation where the plaintiff was the only female employee in the office might look very different than a situation where the office employed many females in positions of significant power. Posner’s remarks indicate that he believes "asymmetry of position" is only relevant when analyzing a plaintiff’s vulgar behavior (as opposed to a defendant’s). It is interesting that Posner failed to include analysis of the relative power dynamics in Baskerville, because he was mindful of the importance of many other elements of context. In Baskervillehe wrote: Remarks innocuous or merely mildly offensive when delivered in a public setting might acquire a sinister cast when delivered in the suggestive isolation of a hotel room. So too remarks accompanied by threatening gestures or contorted facial features, or delivered from so short a distance from the listeners face as to invade the listener’s private space . . . . Even a gross disparity in size between speaker and listener, favoring the former, might ominously magnify the impact of the speaker’s words. It's unclear why it would be appropriate to consider a speaker's size but not his identity when evaluating the true meaning (or impact) of his words. Let’s again enter a familiar setting: would a sexual or derogatory comment made by one summer associate to another not gain an entirely more threatening meaning when made by a partner? Does it seem significant if this is the first female summer associate the firm has ever hired, or if she is one of 50 women in a class of 100? A failure to consider this context seems just as problematic as a failure to consider the speaker’s physical size or facial features. Ultimately, it is hard to disagree with Posner’s claim that women have made significant progress in the United States. The very nature of last week’s debate, two accomplished female professors criticizing one of the country’s most noted male jurists, illustrates the point. But that doesn’t mean that the debate over how to best interpret and apply the sexual harassment laws that have helped attain this progress is moot. As with most debates, the parties involved reached little consensus. But hopefully last week’s debate illustrated not only how far women have come, but also how important it is for us to maintain and consistently improve upon that progress. tag:odeo.com,2009-02-04,24034933 Wed, 04 Feb 2009 09:48:00 -0800 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog Audio/Video, Case, Mary Anne, Nussbaum, Martha, Posner, Richard http://www.odeo.com/episodes/23820621-Audio-Richard-McAdams-on-the-Fourth-Amendment You may have noticed that it's been awfully quiet around here; It's the calm before the storm at the Law School as we prepare for classes to start on Monday. If you're looking to fill the hours between now and then, have a listen to the first Faculty Podcast of the new year. Recorded on October 6 of last year as part of the Law School's annual First Monday series, Bernard D. Meltzer Professor of Law Richard McAdams gave a talk entitled "The Fourth Amendment in Transition?" You may have noticed that it's been awfully quiet around here; It's the calm before the storm at the Law School as we prepare for classes to start on Monday. If you're looking to fill the hours between now and then, have a listen to the first Faculty Podcast of the new year. Recorded on October 6 of last year as part of the Law School's annual First Monday series, Bernard D. Meltzer Professor of Law Richard McAdams gave a talk entitled "The Fourth Amendment in Transition?" You may have noticed that it's been awfully quiet around here; It's the calm before the storm at the Law School as we prepare for classes to start on Monday. If you're looking to fill the hours between now and then, have a listen to the first Faculty Podcast of the new year. Recorded on October 6 of last year as part of the Law School's annual First Monday series, Bernard D. Meltzer Professor of Law Richard McAdams gave a talk entitled "The Fourth Amendment in Transition?" tag:odeo.com,2009-01-02,23820621 Fri, 02 Jan 2009 12:39:32 -0800 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog Audio/Video, McAdams, Richard http://www.odeo.com/episodes/23711483-Audio-Video-Lee-Fennell-Risk-Reversals This week's episode of the Faculty Podcast is a recording of Lee Fennell's October 22nd Chicago's Best Ideas lecture on "Risk Reversals" (video has also been added to Bryan Hart's writeup of the talk ). As a refresher, here's Prof. Fennell's description of the talk: Law often allocates risk, as through tort doctrines. Should people be able to undo or "reverse" such risk allocations by, for example, selling their rights to any claims that may later develop? Scholars have interestingly examined this question, as well as many other innovative ideas for rearranging risk outside of traditional insurance markets. This talk focuses attention on some related but underexplored questions surrounding risk reversibility itself—such as the optimal amount of stickiness in society's default risk allocations, the effects of heterogeneity in risk arrangements, and the implications (cognitive and otherwise) of starting from one risk baseline rather than another. This week's episode of the Faculty Podcast is a recording of Lee Fennell's October 22nd Chicago's Best Ideas lecture on "Risk Reversals" (video has also been added to Bryan Hart's writeup of the talk ). As a refresher, here's Prof. Fennell's description of the talk: Law often allocates risk, as through tort doctrines. Should people be able to undo or "reverse" such risk allocations by, for example, selling their rights to any claims that may later develop? Scholars have interestingly examined this question, as well as many other innovative ideas for rearranging risk outside of traditional insurance markets. This talk focuses attention on some related but underexplored questions surrounding risk reversibility itself—such as the optimal amount of stickiness in society's default risk allocations, the effects of heterogeneity in risk arrangements, and the implications (cognitive and otherwise) of starting from one risk baseline rather than another. This week's episode of the Faculty Podcast is a recording of Lee Fennell's October 22nd Chicago's Best Ideas lecture on "Risk Reversals" (video has also been added to Bryan Hart's writeup of the talk ). As a refresher, here's Prof. Fennell's description of the talk: Law often allocates risk, as through tort doctrines. Should people be able to undo or "reverse" such risk allocations by, for example, selling their rights to any claims that may later develop? Scholars have interestingly examined this question, as well as many other innovative ideas for rearranging risk outside of traditional insurance markets. This talk focuses attention on some related but underexplored questions surrounding risk reversibility itself—such as the optimal amount of stickiness in society's default risk allocations, the effects of heterogeneity in risk arrangements, and the implications (cognitive and otherwise) of starting from one risk baseline rather than another. tag:odeo.com,2008-12-05,23711483 Fri, 05 Dec 2008 14:12:10 -0800 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog Audio/Video, Fennell, Lee http://www.odeo.com/episodes/23616842-Student-Blogger-Chicago%E2%80%99s-Best-Ideas-Dean-Saul-Levmore-on-%E2%80%9CThe-Internet%E2%80%99s-Anonymity-Problem%E2%80%9D Update: Dean Levmore's talk is now available as an .mp3 file. The walls of the Law School's bathroom stalls used to display the student body's complaints about professors and fellow students, but the internet made those walls obsolete. Is the internet different from the bathroom stalls in some fundamental way? Does the internet mark a break from the paradigm of previous media? Dean Levmore does not think so. On Tuesday, November 11, Dean Saul Levmore gave a talk on "The Internet's Anonymity Problem" as part of the Chicago's Best Ideas lecture series. His main contention is that the internet is not different from other media and should be subject to the same legal regime. Currently, it is not; § 230 of the Communications Decency Act provides that internet service providers (ISPs) are not publishers with regard to user-generated content, so they are for the most part not responsible for online torts committed by their users. (One questioner pointed to Fair Housing Council of San Ferna... Update: Dean Levmore's talk is now available as an .mp3 file. The walls of the Law School's bathroom stalls used to display the student body's complaints about professors and fellow students, but the internet made those walls obsolete. Is the internet different from the bathroom stalls in some fundamental way? Does the internet mark a break from the paradigm of previous media? Dean Levmore does not think so. On Tuesday, November 11, Dean Saul Levmore gave a talk on "The Internet's Anonymity Problem" as part of the Chicago's Best Ideas lecture series. His main contention is that the internet is not different from other media and should be subject to the same legal regime. Currently, it is not; § 230 of the Communications Decency Act provides that internet service providers (ISPs) are not publishers with regard to user-generated content, so they are for the most part not responsible for online torts committed by their users. (One questioner pointed to Fair Housing Council of San Fernando Valley v Roommates.com (9th Cir 2008) (en banc), where Judge Kozinski wrote an opinion holding a website liable under the Fair Housing Act for discrimination committed by its users, but Levmore remarked that the case is an outlier because, after all, it was written by Judge Kozinski.) If a newspaper, on the other hand, publishes a defamatory letter to the editor, the newspaper may be sued. The most commonly cited reason for the nonpublisher rule in the legislative history of the Act is that the internet is a new medium, so it should be allowed to develop and flourish. But the Act was passed twelve years ago, and the internet has matured since then, so it is time to take stock. Levmore illustrated the problem with the website Juicy Campus, which I will not link to; obviously, many similar websites exist. The website categorizes gossip message boards by school: one for UCLA, one for Tennessee Tech, one for University of Chicago (which is rather sparse), and so on. The homepage advertises—right in the middle—that posting is completely anonymous, no registration required. Users may post whatever they like, and they do. Levmore gave an example of a typical message thread: Someone asks, "Who is the biggest sorority slut on campus?" Someone responds, "I saw Amy X doing such-and-such behind Biddle Hall." Seven people give props for the post and ask for more detail. Another person gives a modest defense and says that Amy X isn't so bad, to which a poster replies, "Not only is Amy X a slut, she's fat." Someone asks if anyone can think of someone fatter. Several posters throw out some names. And so forth. Thanks to the different legal regime, the internet does not exert the same controls on speakers as other media do. Television, for example, is subject to a fair amount of government regulation, and consumer demand constrains what appears on television as well. (Consumer demand is the real reason why Big Bird will not drop the f-bomb on Sesame Street any time soon.) Bathroom stalls are cleaned occasionally, and the harm is less because--unlike Juicy Campus--they are not searchable. Soapboxes, such as in London's Hyde Park, are regulated by social sanctions; everyone can see who the speaker is. Newspapers are occasionally subjected to defamation lawsuits, but they are more often protected from speech regulations. Consumer demand prevents them from publishing anonymous, defamatory letters to the editor. But the internet does not have any of those controls. Posting is anonymous, and ISPs usually refuse to give up the names associated with IP addresses. Thus, neither the ISP nor the speaker face legal liability, and the speaker is shielded from social constraints. Consumer demand does not help; a website can support itself with only niche demand, but any internet user may stumble across the page because the message boards are searchable. Levmore recommends eliminating the liability restrictions on ISPs and forcing them to divulge the identity of IP addresses if subpoenaed. The logic underlying his recommendation is a hypothetical bargain among all users of the internet. The benefit to each person is tiny from being able to post degrading insults about others, but the cost of being a target of these insults is very high. Even if the chance of being targeted is small, the cost is large enough that the expected value outweighs the miniscule benefit. Thus, the bargainers would not immunize such conduct. Levmore focused on differences in expected costs and benefits to each person while implicitly assuming homogeneous preferences, but an alternative formulation could depend on differences in preferences. No one wants to be targeted, but only a minority wants to target others, so the majority demands the minority give up its antisocial behavior. The present regime presents a conundrum: politicians tend to overreact to problems, yet here the reverse happened. Gangs are an example of the general principle. We do not really know what proportion of violent crime is caused by gangs, but politicians provide a wide array of legislation targeting the gang problem. Yet with the internet, the problem resulted in additional protection for the perpetrators. Levmore provided the classic public choice explanation. The people subject to the regulation are a small, passionate, organized group; the potential victims are the public at large, so their interests are diffuse. Organized groups typically trump diffuse groups when collecting government payouts. A possible addition to that explanation for exceptional rules for the internet is gender disparity. The victims are disproportionately female, and the unfettered internet's most vocal defenders are mostly male. Not only are the victims mostly female, the hurtfulness of many of the comments is premised on the target's gender. Levmore implicitly acknowledged these facts through his use of examples (though he doesn't discuss it): his paradigm example was "Amy X is a slut," and "fat" and "small-breasted" were other examples. He does not press further because the vast majority of examples would be too vile for the classroom. (This is not to say all remarks are directed towards women; sometimes speakers target businesses as "cheats," and sometimes speakers target males such as, for example, Levmore himself.) Those who want the internet to be completely unregulated, on the other hand, are much more likely to be male. As a rough proxy, more than 80 percent of undergraduate engineering students are male. Those with a more technical bent are keenly aware of the benefits of a free flow of information on the internet, but--since this group is mostly male--they will undervalue the costs of antisocial behavior on the internet. Disparaging comments are less commonly directed at them, and the most harmful comments lose their meaning if directed at males. A skewed understanding of the costs and benefits translates into the policy choices that the organized internet interest group lobbies for at the expense of the diffuse potential victim group. This additional explanation points to a gap in Levmore's framework: some theory explaining why posters post. Levmore takes the economist's approach of treating preferences as a given; essentially, he gets by on the assumption that if you build it, they will come. A more sociological explanation of why speakers have the preferences they do could be illuminating, and it may have policy implications. Traditional sanctions are inadequate if the motivation underlying disparaging speech differs on the internet than in traditional media; however, if the motivation is the same regardless of medium, then traditional sanctions should fit well. The basic outline of the behavior is the same in both cases, but the cost of engaging in it is significantly lower with the internet. Adding marginal members because of reduced cost may or may not change the group's characteristics. More investigation is needed on this point. To end, Levmore gave a prediction for the future: internet entrepreneurs will eliminate user-generated content or require registration to post. To attract consumer attention, the value of the information a website provides must be high. Since anonymous, insulting posts have zero value, the average value of the information on a website decreases when it permits those posts. Some websites are apparently already doing this. Wikipedia has an army of 75,000 registered editors to keep its entries in line. Amazon and CNet use robots to track swear words and other mechanisms to keep their customer reviews (relatively) high value. YouTube has always prohibited pornography and has recently become much better at keeping copyrighted content off its site. The University of Chicago Faculty Blog moderates its comment boards. Levmore provided the grounds to believe these developments are positive. Update: Dean Levmore's talk is now available as an .mp3 file. The walls of the Law School's bathroom stalls used to display the student body's complaints about professors and fellow students, but the internet made those walls obsolete. Is the internet different from the bathroom stalls in some fundamental way? Does the internet mark a break from the paradigm of previous media? Dean Levmore does not think so. On Tuesday, November 11, Dean Saul Levmore gave a talk on "The Internet's Anonymity Problem" as part of the Chicago's Best Ideas lecture series. His main contention is that the internet is not different from other media and should be subject to the same legal regime. Currently, it is not; § 230 of the Communications Decency Act provides that internet service providers (ISPs) are not publishers with regard to user-generated content, so they are for the most part not responsible for online torts committed by their users. (One questioner pointed to Fair Housing Council of San Fernando Valley v Roommates.com (9th Cir 2008) (en banc), where Judge Kozinski wrote an opinion holding a website liable under the Fair Housing Act for discrimination committed by its users, but Levmore remarked that the case is an outlier because, after all, it was written by Judge Kozinski.) If a newspaper, on the other hand, publishes a defamatory letter to the editor, the newspaper may be sued. The most commonly cited reason for the nonpublisher rule in the legislative history of the Act is that the internet is a new medium, so it should be allowed to develop and flourish. But the Act was passed twelve years ago, and the internet has matured since then, so it is time to take stock. Levmore illustrated the problem with the website Juicy Campus, which I will not link to; obviously, many similar websites exist. The website categorizes gossip message boards by school: one for UCLA, one for Tennessee Tech, one for University of Chicago (which is rather sparse), and so on. The homepage advertises—right in the middle—that posting is completely anonymous, no registration required. Users may post whatever they like, and they do. Levmore gave an example of a typical message thread: Someone asks, "Who is the biggest sorority slut on campus?" Someone responds, "I saw Amy X doing such-and-such behind Biddle Hall." Seven people give props for the post and ask for more detail. Another person gives a modest defense and says that Amy X isn't so bad, to which a poster replies, "Not only is Amy X a slut, she's fat." Someone asks if anyone can think of someone fatter. Several posters throw out some names. And so forth. Thanks to the different legal regime, the internet does not exert the same controls on speakers as other media do. Television, for example, is subject to a fair amount of government regulation, and consumer demand constrains what appears on television as well. (Consumer demand is the real reason why Big Bird will not drop the f-bomb on Sesame Street any time soon.) Bathroom stalls are cleaned occasionally, and the harm is less because--unlike Juicy Campus--they are not searchable. Soapboxes, such as in London's Hyde Park, are regulated by social sanctions; everyone can see who the speaker is. Newspapers are occasionally subjected to defamation lawsuits, but they are more often protected from speech regulations. Consumer demand prevents them from publishing anonymous, defamatory letters to the editor. But the internet does not have any of those controls. Posting is anonymous, and ISPs usually refuse to give up the names associated with IP addresses. Thus, neither the ISP nor the speaker face legal liability, and the speaker is shielded from social constraints. Consumer demand does not help; a website can support itself with only niche demand, but any internet user may stumble across the page because the message boards are searchable. Levmore recommends eliminating the liability restrictions on ISPs and forcing them to divulge the identity of IP addresses if subpoenaed. The logic underlying his recommendation is a hypothetical bargain among all users of the internet. The benefit to each person is tiny from being able to post degrading insults about others, but the cost of being a target of these insults is very high. Even if the chance of being targeted is small, the cost is large enough that the expected value outweighs the miniscule benefit. Thus, the bargainers would not immunize such conduct. Levmore focused on differences in expected costs and benefits to each person while implicitly assuming homogeneous preferences, but an alternative formulation could depend on differences in preferences. No one wants to be targeted, but only a minority wants to target others, so the majority demands the minority give up its antisocial behavior. The present regime presents a conundrum: politicians tend to overreact to problems, yet here the reverse happened. Gangs are an example of the general principle. We do not really know what proportion of violent crime is caused by gangs, but politicians provide a wide array of legislation targeting the gang problem. Yet with the internet, the problem resulted in additional protection for the perpetrators. Levmore provided the classic public choice explanation. The people subject to the regulation are a small, passionate, organized group; the potential victims are the public at large, so their interests are diffuse. Organized groups typically trump diffuse groups when collecting government payouts. A possible addition to that explanation for exceptional rules for the internet is gender disparity. The victims are disproportionately female, and the unfettered internet's most vocal defenders are mostly male. Not only are the victims mostly female, the hurtfulness of many of the comments is premised on the target's gender. Levmore implicitly acknowledged these facts through his use of examples (though he doesn't discuss it): his paradigm example was "Amy X is a slut," and "fat" and "small-breasted" were other examples. He does not press further because the vast majority of examples would be too vile for the classroom. (This is not to say all remarks are directed towards women; sometimes speakers target businesses as "cheats," and sometimes speakers target males such as, for example, Levmore himself.) Those who want the internet to be completely unregulated, on the other hand, are much more likely to be male. As a rough proxy, more than 80 percent of undergraduate engineering students are male. Those with a more technical bent are keenly aware of the benefits of a free flow of information on the internet, but--since this group is mostly male--they will undervalue the costs of antisocial behavior on the internet. Disparaging comments are less commonly directed at them, and the most harmful comments lose their meaning if directed at males. A skewed understanding of the costs and benefits translates into the policy choices that the organized internet interest group lobbies for at the expense of the diffuse potential victim group. This additional explanation points to a gap in Levmore's framework: some theory explaining why posters post. Levmore takes the economist's approach of treating preferences as a given; essentially, he gets by on the assumption that if you build it, they will come. A more sociological explanation of why speakers have the preferences they do could be illuminating, and it may have policy implications. Traditional sanctions are inadequate if the motivation underlying disparaging speech differs on the internet than in traditional media; however, if the motivation is the same regardless of medium, then traditional sanctions should fit well. The basic outline of the behavior is the same in both cases, but the cost of engaging in it is significantly lower with the internet. Adding marginal members because of reduced cost may or may not change the group's characteristics. More investigation is needed on this point. To end, Levmore gave a prediction for the future: internet entrepreneurs will eliminate user-generated content or require registration to post. To attract consumer attention, the value of the information a website provides must be high. Since anonymous, insulting posts have zero value, the average value of the information on a website decreases when it permits those posts. Some websites are apparently already doing this. Wikipedia has an army of 75,000 registered editors to keep its entries in line. Amazon and CNet use robots to track swear words and other mechanisms to keep their customer reviews (relatively) high value. YouTube has always prohibited pornography and has recently become much better at keeping copyrighted content off its site. The University of Chicago Faculty Blog moderates its comment boards. Levmore provided the grounds to believe these developments are positive. tag:odeo.com,2008-11-12,23616842 Wed, 12 Nov 2008 15:00:00 -0800 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog Audio/Video, Levmore, Saul, Student Bloggers http://www.odeo.com/episodes/23645521-Student-Blogger-Christine-M-Korsgaard-%E2%80%9CInteracting-with-Animals-A-Kantian-Account%E2%80%9D On Wednesday, Christine Korsgaard delivered the annual Dewey Lecture in Law and Philosophy. This year’s Dewey Lecture was one of many events planned for Animal Welfare Week at the law school. Korsgaard, unhappy with utilitarian approaches to animal welfare for reasons set out below, sought to provide a Kantian account of our obligations to other animals. Throughout the lecture, Professor Korsgaard used the words “other animals” and not merely “animals,” I imagine, so as to not let us forget that we are all animals. I will emulate her here because I think that it is particularly important to keep this in mind when tackling questions of how other animals fit into our conceptions of morality. There are clearly differences between humans and other animals, just as there are differences between dogs and cats; however, not all of these differences are morally relevant. It will not do us service in our investigation to use language that implies a denial of the animal nature of humans. Upda... On Wednesday, Christine Korsgaard delivered the annual Dewey Lecture in Law and Philosophy. This year’s Dewey Lecture was one of many events planned for Animal Welfare Week at the law school. Korsgaard, unhappy with utilitarian approaches to animal welfare for reasons set out below, sought to provide a Kantian account of our obligations to other animals. Throughout the lecture, Professor Korsgaard used the words “other animals” and not merely “animals,” I imagine, so as to not let us forget that we are all animals. I will emulate her here because I think that it is particularly important to keep this in mind when tackling questions of how other animals fit into our conceptions of morality. There are clearly differences between humans and other animals, just as there are differences between dogs and cats; however, not all of these differences are morally relevant. It will not do us service in our investigation to use language that implies a denial of the animal nature of humans. Update: Audio and video of the lecture are now available after the jump. [watch the lecture below, or download a .mov or .mp3 file] Korsgaard began by describing the features that all animals share. We are all homeostatic organic systems that must react to, and interact with, our environments in order to survive. We have evolved to perceive sensory stimuli and this evolutionary process presupposes that we have motivational states that drive us to action. The ability to see and hear would have no evolutionary effect if sounds and sights did not produce a reaction in us that made us want to go towards or away from their sources. These attractive and aversive motivationally states lead their possessors to see the stimuli that cause them as good and bad, respectively. The claim that other animals feel is uncontroversial, at least today. Descartes would deny this, but, as far as I know, his view that the other animals are merely complex organic machines is idiosyncratic. I have never met a person who denies the sentience of non-human animals. For this reason, it is generally held that animal cruelty with no purpose is wrong. However, many people believe that any human interest or desire, except the pure desire to cause pain, is enough to override this. There are a lot of people who would not characterize their views this way, but attention to widely practiced human behavior, such as the testing of cosmetics on animals, suggests more agreement than we might like to admit. There are two types of arguments, laid out by Korsgaard, that will help us evaluate the claim that any human interest is more valuable than any other animal interest. Both of these types of arguments must reference the differences between humans and other animals; however, it will not be enough to simply state a difference. A moral justification must rest on morally relevant differences. For example, it makes no sense to argue that we are justified in torturing certain animals, but not humans, because they have tails. On the other hand, it is perfectly reasonable to say that English speaking people are required to say “please” and “thank you” when requesting and receiving things, but cats and dogs are not. The first approach to evaluation is related to the good and bad that are pursued and avoided by humans and other animals. Behavior that discounts the pleasure and pain of the other animals might be justified if it can be shown that the way that they experience good and bad is different and inferior to the way that humans experience good and bad. The second approach is related to rights and obligations and how these arise. The arguments based on the natures of human and non-human animal goods are utilitarian. Sentience, to varying degrees, is one of many qualities shared by all animals. To the extent that a creature can feel pain and pleasure these feelings add, or detract, from the total utility that utilitarians seek to maximize. In this sense, there is no relevant difference between humans and other animals. We should not cause them to suffer, just like we should not cause human suffering. However, it is often said that animals lack the mental capacities, shared by most humans, to recognize their own continuity through time. They cannot plan, hope, fear, etc., in a forward-directed manner. Peter Singer, who delivered the Dewey Lecture in 2004, has argued that, for this reason, there is no disutility cause by painlessly killing a non-human animal. Nothing is lost. The utility that would have been created by the animal’s future pleasure can be added by breeding another animal to take its place. For Singer, this is not the case with humans because due to our ability, and tendency, to plan, etc., more is lost when one of our lives ends. When we die something (morally relevant) is taken from the world that cannot be replaced. Korsgaard believes that Singer’s view is mistaken. In order to explain this, she must explain why he holds it. For Singer, the value of an experience is derived entirely from its character, and not from its relation to the person or animal who experiences it. Sentient beings are merely locations where pleasure and pain happen. The boundaries between subjects are not morally relevant for utilitarianism. If good and bad are seen as tethered to the creatures that experience them, then it would make little sense to talk about maximizing and trading off utilities. This is what allows the utilitarian to do his utility calculus. Korsgaard explained that according to a utilitarian, what’s bad for you plus what’s bad for me is worse than each separately even though the union is not in any sense bad for anyone. This, Korsgaard argues, creates a major problem for Singer’s claim that there is something special about human death. He is not able to explain why the feelings of anticipation and planning, experienced only by humans, cannot be replaced by creating a new human. If accepted, the best his view can do is explain why it might be better to kill a non-human animal than a human one. But he gives no explanation as to why it is not morally acceptable to kill a person painlessly. Singer might reply that because a person has expectations and plans, awareness of the imminence of death causes more disutility for humans than for other animals. This cannot save his theory, however, because he can still not explain why it is wrong to kill a person quickly, painlessly and by surprise. Korsgaard’s proposed solution is the claim that things might be good or bad for humans in a way that is meaningfully different from how they are good and bad for the other animals. This, however, is an enormous variation. She is not claiming that Singer can be saved by arguing that there is a hierarchy of pleasures, those of humans being placed on top (a view that might be endorsed by John Stuart Mill). He would, instead, have to argue something very different, that human pain and pleasure is not replaceable in the same way as other pain and pleasure, a view that is entirely incompatible with utilitarianism. Korsgaard points out that under this view, value cannot be added across, or traded off between, subjects. Tiger death could not be meaningfully compared to human death because, if the character of an experience is tied to the subject, then a statement that one is worse than the other could only be deconstructed to mean that human death is worse for tigers than tiger death, or tiger death is worse for humans than human death; these claims are unintelligible. After rejecting Singer’s argument, Korsgaard put forth her own view. Since her approach is Kantian, or deontological, she is not focused on maximizing the good in the world, but on interactions between individuals. This is important because it allows her to get away from comparisons between the values of human goods and non-human animal goods. However, it is not intuitive how a Kantian account can explain why we are obligated to interact with other animals in ways that are mutually beneficial and fair, her ultimate conclusion. For Kant himself, humans cannot have obligations to animals. One essential concept for Kantian ethics is that people, in virtue of their capacity for rationality, are ends in and of themselves and must always be treated as such. They can be means to other ends as well, but it is immoral to interact with a person in a way that denies that he has intrinsic value. For example, it is not immoral to take a taxi, even though the driver is being used as a means to an end, as long as you do not act in a way that denies the humanity of the driver. This idea is translated into prescriptions for action through the categorical imperative: One must act in such a way that his maxims, or the principles that guide his action, could be willed as universal law. Kantians do not recognize a hierarchy of value, so acting in a way that implies that I am more valuable than other people is the same as denying that they have value at all. Because all of these claims are tied directly to the possession of a rational will, which only humans (and angels) have, he did not believe that humans could be obligated to non-human animals. For Kant, humans can treat the other animals as means. In fact, Korsgaard read a quote from his Conjectures on the Beginning of Human History, that stated this quite clearly: When [man] first said to the sheep, ‘the pelt which you wear was given to you by nature not for your own use, but for mine’ and took it from the sheep to wear it himself, he became aware of a prerogative which . . .he enjoyed over all the animals; and he now no longer regarded them as fellow creatures, but as means and instruments to be used at will for the attainment of whatever ends he pleased.” Kant’s view of obligation must be explained further before diving into Korsgaard’s central thesis. Obligation can only exist between two people if they are under the authority of shared laws, in the name of which they can each claim what the other owes them as a matter of right. These laws that guide behavior must be self legislated in every case. For Kant, a law that is not self legislated has no authority. Rational beings who are reasoning correctly through the use of the categorical imperative should come to the same conclusions; it is in this sense that the laws are shared. Korsgaard briefly sketched out this process of self legislation. It starts with some kind of natural drive towards what can be called a natural good. The agent must then determine whether or not to pursue this natural good. If the agent pursues the good, the act of pursuit confers absolute and normative value on the good that is pursued. The absolute value can be traced to fact that rational beings will only pursue things that are good for themselves or from their point of view; it would be irrational to do otherwise. The normative value can be traced to the categorical imperative. A rational being cannot pursue something that he would not will that everyone pursue. During this process, the moral agent has two aspects, the legislator and the subject. The subject has the initial drive towards the good and the legislator determines whether pursuit of this good could be willed as universal law. For Kant, it is the legislative aspect, the rational will, that has absolute worth. Non-human animals are like subjects without legislators. They are not rational, so for Kant, they do not have absolute worth; they are means, but not ends. Korsgaard accepts Kant’s view that animals are not rational agents. She explained, in response to a question, that intelligence should not be confused with rationality, which she defined as the capacity for normative self government. Normative self government requires awareness of one’s grounds for action, a capacity that she does not believe that even the most intelligent animals possess. Notwithstanding this agreement, she is still able to use his theory to explain why humans can be obligated to animals. She argues that there is a difference sense in which we can talk about obligation. One is not only obligated to those with whom she has shared laws, rational beings, but also to the source of interests that the law she is under was made to protect. Korsgaard notes that this formulation might sound incompatible with the Kantian account, because it sounds like value is being assessed independently from the moral law. However, this is not the case; the law is the source of value. And if we look at the way that the legislative process confers value, we will see that the question that the legislative aspect must answer is whether the natural good is good for the subject, not the legislator. This leads directly to Korsgaard’s thesis, which is formulated in a strong and weak version. The weak version is that some of the interests of our animal nature, that are given value by our rational nature, are shared by other animals and we must protect these. The strong thesis is that in order for the Kantian account to make sense, our animal nature must have absolute worth because otherwise we are left with a theory that holds that the source of human value is the ability to legislate regarding what is good for something that only has relative value. That is like saying that the absolute worth of people lies in our ability to take care of our children. Obviously, the analogy is not perfect because the subject cannot become a legislator, but the main idea remains. In order for the claim to make sense, children must have absolute worth as well. It follows that animals, even though they do not have a human nature, are ends in themselves. Korsgaard’s conclusion may be too hastily rejected by some, independent of its wisdom, for what they see as pragmatic reasons. She believes that this is a misconception. Recognizing the intrinsic value of all animals does not require that we maximize their happiness. That concept is incoherent to a Kantian. The idea is that we have an obligation to interact with all animals, human or otherwise, in ways that are mutually beneficial and fair. For example, we are not required to stop predation altogether in the animal kingdom even though, for Korsgaard, we may be required to eliminate it from our own lives. This rests on the fact that while humans can survive without meat, certain other animals cannot. Korsgaard’s thesis suggests several questions about the specific obligations of humans. In response to a question, Korsgaard stated that we might be obligated to restore the balance of nature in situations where we have created an unsuitable habitat, even though we would not be required to fix the problem if it had occurred naturally. She acknowledges, however, that this is a difficult question and the answer in a particular case will most likely depend on the details. Another interesting question is whether, under this theory, it would be permissible to breed, for food, an animal-like organism that did not have interests. The question was asked by an audience member who expressed a clear distaste for the idea. Korsgaard, however, responded that this is not so nightmarish if we re-frame the organism as a protein producing plant. She does not see a problem here as long we act in accord with our obligations to the other animals with which we must interact in order to create this new organism. The lecture ended with a question about how this theory can be used by a government that follows John Rawls in not grounding political principles in values that cannot be accepted by all reasonable citizens. Korsgaard’s response was that we must first look for overlapping consensus. In this case, that might be that senseless cruelty to non-human animals is not tolerable. Investigation then must be done into the basis for the legal rule that everything is either a person or a thing, which, given generally held ideas of animal cruelty, might not actually be the product of overlapping consensus itself. It is unlikely that this inquiry would lead to government prescribed vegetarianism; however, the creation of a third legal category would certainly produce some positive change in the way that animals are treated. On Wednesday, Christine Korsgaard delivered the annual Dewey Lecture in Law and Philosophy. This year’s Dewey Lecture was one of many events planned for Animal Welfare Week at the law school. Korsgaard, unhappy with utilitarian approaches to animal welfare for reasons set out below, sought to provide a Kantian account of our obligations to other animals. Throughout the lecture, Professor Korsgaard used the words “other animals” and not merely “animals,” I imagine, so as to not let us forget that we are all animals. I will emulate her here because I think that it is particularly important to keep this in mind when tackling questions of how other animals fit into our conceptions of morality. There are clearly differences between humans and other animals, just as there are differences between dogs and cats; however, not all of these differences are morally relevant. It will not do us service in our investigation to use language that implies a denial of the animal nature of humans. Update: Audio and video of the lecture are now available after the jump. [watch the lecture below, or download a .mov or .mp3 file] Korsgaard began by describing the features that all animals share. We are all homeostatic organic systems that must react to, and interact with, our environments in order to survive. We have evolved to perceive sensory stimuli and this evolutionary process presupposes that we have motivational states that drive us to action. The ability to see and hear would have no evolutionary effect if sounds and sights did not produce a reaction in us that made us want to go towards or away from their sources. These attractive and aversive motivationally states lead their possessors to see the stimuli that cause them as good and bad, respectively. The claim that other animals feel is uncontroversial, at least today. Descartes would deny this, but, as far as I know, his view that the other animals are merely complex organic machines is idiosyncratic. I have never met a person who denies the sentience of non-human animals. For this reason, it is generally held that animal cruelty with no purpose is wrong. However, many people believe that any human interest or desire, except the pure desire to cause pain, is enough to override this. There are a lot of people who would not characterize their views this way, but attention to widely practiced human behavior, such as the testing of cosmetics on animals, suggests more agreement than we might like to admit. There are two types of arguments, laid out by Korsgaard, that will help us evaluate the claim that any human interest is more valuable than any other animal interest. Both of these types of arguments must reference the differences between humans and other animals; however, it will not be enough to simply state a difference. A moral justification must rest on morally relevant differences. For example, it makes no sense to argue that we are justified in torturing certain animals, but not humans, because they have tails. On the other hand, it is perfectly reasonable to say that English speaking people are required to say “please” and “thank you” when requesting and receiving things, but cats and dogs are not. The first approach to evaluation is related to the good and bad that are pursued and avoided by humans and other animals. Behavior that discounts the pleasure and pain of the other animals might be justified if it can be shown that the way that they experience good and bad is different and inferior to the way that humans experience good and bad. The second approach is related to rights and obligations and how these arise. The arguments based on the natures of human and non-human animal goods are utilitarian. Sentience, to varying degrees, is one of many qualities shared by all animals. To the extent that a creature can feel pain and pleasure these feelings add, or detract, from the total utility that utilitarians seek to maximize. In this sense, there is no relevant difference between humans and other animals. We should not cause them to suffer, just like we should not cause human suffering. However, it is often said that animals lack the mental capacities, shared by most humans, to recognize their own continuity through time. They cannot plan, hope, fear, etc., in a forward-directed manner. Peter Singer, who delivered the Dewey Lecture in 2004, has argued that, for this reason, there is no disutility cause by painlessly killing a non-human animal. Nothing is lost. The utility that would have been created by the animal’s future pleasure can be added by breeding another animal to take its place. For Singer, this is not the case with humans because due to our ability, and tendency, to plan, etc., more is lost when one of our lives ends. When we die something (morally relevant) is taken from the world that cannot be replaced. Korsgaard believes that Singer’s view is mistaken. In order to explain this, she must explain why he holds it. For Singer, the value of an experience is derived entirely from its character, and not from its relation to the person or animal who experiences it. Sentient beings are merely locations where pleasure and pain happen. The boundaries between subjects are not morally relevant for utilitarianism. If good and bad are seen as tethered to the creatures that experience them, then it would make little sense to talk about maximizing and trading off utilities. This is what allows the utilitarian to do his utility calculus. Korsgaard explained that according to a utilitarian, what’s bad for you plus what’s bad for me is worse than each separately even though the union is not in any sense bad for anyone. This, Korsgaard argues, creates a major problem for Singer’s claim that there is something special about human death. He is not able to explain why the feelings of anticipation and planning, experienced only by humans, cannot be replaced by creating a new human. If accepted, the best his view can do is explain why it might be better to kill a non-human animal than a human one. But he gives no explanation as to why it is not morally acceptable to kill a person painlessly. Singer might reply that because a person has expectations and plans, awareness of the imminence of death causes more disutility for humans than for other animals. This cannot save his theory, however, because he can still not explain why it is wrong to kill a person quickly, painlessly and by surprise. Korsgaard’s proposed solution is the claim that things might be good or bad for humans in a way that is meaningfully different from how they are good and bad for the other animals. This, however, is an enormous variation. She is not claiming that Singer can be saved by arguing that there is a hierarchy of pleasures, those of humans being placed on top (a view that might be endorsed by John Stuart Mill). He would, instead, have to argue something very different, that human pain and pleasure is not replaceable in the same way as other pain and pleasure, a view that is entirely incompatible with utilitarianism. Korsgaard points out that under this view, value cannot be added across, or traded off between, subjects. Tiger death could not be meaningfully compared to human death because, if the character of an experience is tied to the subject, then a statement that one is worse than the other could only be deconstructed to mean that human death is worse for tigers than tiger death, or tiger death is worse for humans than human death; these claims are unintelligible. After rejecting Singer’s argument, Korsgaard put forth her own view. Since her approach is Kantian, or deontological, she is not focused on maximizing the good in the world, but on interactions between individuals. This is important because it allows her to get away from comparisons between the values of human goods and non-human animal goods. However, it is not intuitive how a Kantian account can explain why we are obligated to interact with other animals in ways that are mutually beneficial and fair, her ultimate conclusion. For Kant himself, humans cannot have obligations to animals. One essential concept for Kantian ethics is that people, in virtue of their capacity for rationality, are ends in and of themselves and must always be treated as such. They can be means to other ends as well, but it is immoral to interact with a person in a way that denies that he has intrinsic value. For example, it is not immoral to take a taxi, even though the driver is being used as a means to an end, as long as you do not act in a way that denies the humanity of the driver. This idea is translated into prescriptions for action through the categorical imperative: One must act in such a way that his maxims, or the principles that guide his action, could be willed as universal law. Kantians do not recognize a hierarchy of value, so acting in a way that implies that I am more valuable than other people is the same as denying that they have value at all. Because all of these claims are tied directly to the possession of a rational will, which only humans (and angels) have, he did not believe that humans could be obligated to non-human animals. For Kant, humans can treat the other animals as means. In fact, Korsgaard read a quote from his Conjectures on the Beginning of Human History, that stated this quite clearly: When [man] first said to the sheep, ‘the pelt which you wear was given to you by nature not for your own use, but for mine’ and took it from the sheep to wear it himself, he became aware of a prerogative which . . .he enjoyed over all the animals; and he now no longer regarded them as fellow creatures, but as means and instruments to be used at will for the attainment of whatever ends he pleased.” Kant’s view of obligation must be explained further before diving into Korsgaard’s central thesis. Obligation can only exist between two people if they are under the authority of shared laws, in the name of which they can each claim what the other owes them as a matter of right. These laws that guide behavior must be self legislated in every case. For Kant, a law that is not self legislated has no authority. Rational beings who are reasoning correctly through the use of the categorical imperative should come to the same conclusions; it is in this sense that the laws are shared. Korsgaard briefly sketched out this process of self legislation. It starts with some kind of natural drive towards what can be called a natural good. The agent must then determine whether or not to pursue this natural good. If the agent pursues the good, the act of pursuit confers absolute and normative value on the good that is pursued. The absolute value can be traced to fact that rational beings will only pursue things that are good for themselves or from their point of view; it would be irrational to do otherwise. The normative value can be traced to the categorical imperative. A rational being cannot pursue something that he would not will that everyone pursue. During this process, the moral agent has two aspects, the legislator and the subject. The subject has the initial drive towards the good and the legislator determines whether pursuit of this good could be willed as universal law. For Kant, it is the legislative aspect, the rational will, that has absolute worth. Non-human animals are like subjects without legislators. They are not rational, so for Kant, they do not have absolute worth; they are means, but not ends. Korsgaard accepts Kant’s view that animals are not rational agents. She explained, in response to a question, that intelligence should not be confused with rationality, which she defined as the capacity for normative self government. Normative self government requires awareness of one’s grounds for action, a capacity that she does not believe that even the most intelligent animals possess. Notwithstanding this agreement, she is still able to use his theory to explain why humans can be obligated to animals. She argues that there is a difference sense in which we can talk about obligation. One is not only obligated to those with whom she has shared laws, rational beings, but also to the source of interests that the law she is under was made to protect. Korsgaard notes that this formulation might sound incompatible with the Kantian account, because it sounds like value is being assessed independently from the moral law. However, this is not the case; the law is the source of value. And if we look at the way that the legislative process confers value, we will see that the question that the legislative aspect must answer is whether the natural good is good for the subject, not the legislator. This leads directly to Korsgaard’s thesis, which is formulated in a strong and weak version. The weak version is that some of the interests of our animal nature, that are given value by our rational nature, are shared by other animals and we must protect these. The strong thesis is that in order for the Kantian account to make sense, our animal nature must have absolute worth because otherwise we are left with a theory that holds that the source of human value is the ability to legislate regarding what is good for something that only has relative value. That is like saying that the absolute worth of people lies in our ability to take care of our children. Obviously, the analogy is not perfect because the subject cannot become a legislator, but the main idea remains. In order for the claim to make sense, children must have absolute worth as well. It follows that animals, even though they do not have a human nature, are ends in themselves. Korsgaard’s conclusion may be too hastily rejected by some, independent of its wisdom, for what they see as pragmatic reasons. She believes that this is a misconception. Recognizing the intrinsic value of all animals does not require that we maximize their happiness. That concept is incoherent to a Kantian. The idea is that we have an obligation to interact with all animals, human or otherwise, in ways that are mutually beneficial and fair. For example, we are not required to stop predation altogether in the animal kingdom even though, for Korsgaard, we may be required to eliminate it from our own lives. This rests on the fact that while humans can survive without meat, certain other animals cannot. Korsgaard’s thesis suggests several questions about the specific obligations of humans. In response to a question, Korsgaard stated that we might be obligated to restore the balance of nature in situations where we have created an unsuitable habitat, even though we would not be required to fix the problem if it had occurred naturally. She acknowledges, however, that this is a difficult question and the answer in a particular case will most likely depend on the details. Another interesting question is whether, under this theory, it would be permissible to breed, for food, an animal-like organism that did not have interests. The question was asked by an audience member who expressed a clear distaste for the idea. Korsgaard, however, responded that this is not so nightmarish if we re-frame the organism as a protein producing plant. She does not see a problem here as long we act in accord with our obligations to the other animals with which we must interact in order to create this new organism. The lecture ended with a question about how this theory can be used by a government that follows John Rawls in not grounding political principles in values that cannot be accepted by all reasonable citizens. Korsgaard’s response was that we must first look for overlapping consensus. In this case, that might be that senseless cruelty to non-human animals is not tolerable. Investigation then must be done into the basis for the legal rule that everything is either a person or a thing, which, given generally held ideas of animal cruelty, might not actually be the product of overlapping consensus itself. It is unlikely that this inquiry would lead to government prescribed vegetarianism; however, the creation of a third legal category would certainly produce some positive change in the way that animals are treated. tag:odeo.com,2008-11-06,23645521 Thu, 06 Nov 2008 12:37:26 -0800 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog Student Bloggers http://www.odeo.com/episodes/23582877-Audio-Video-Mary-Anne-Case-on-State-Recognition-of-Same-Sex-Marriages If you've ever wondered what Arnold I. Shure Professor of Law Mary Anne Case and former Chicago professor (and current Supreme Court Justice) Antonin Scalia might actually agree on, have we got a Halloween treat for you. The first Chicago's Best Ideas talk of the year, held on October 1, featured Professor Case discussing "Why Evangelical Protestants are Right When They Say that State Recognition of Same-Sex Marriages Threatens Their Marriages and What the Law Should Do About It." Video of the talk is embedded below, or you may download an .mp3 or .mov file for your portable media player. If you've ever wondered what Arnold I. Shure Professor of Law Mary Anne Case and former Chicago professor (and current Supreme Court Justice) Antonin Scalia might actually agree on, have we got a Halloween treat for you. The first Chicago's Best Ideas talk of the year, held on October 1, featured Professor Case discussing "Why Evangelical Protestants are Right When They Say that State Recognition of Same-Sex Marriages Threatens Their Marriages and What the Law Should Do About It." Video of the talk is embedded below, or you may download an .mp3 or .mov file for your portable media player. If you've ever wondered what Arnold I. Shure Professor of Law Mary Anne Case and former Chicago professor (and current Supreme Court Justice) Antonin Scalia might actually agree on, have we got a Halloween treat for you. The first Chicago's Best Ideas talk of the year, held on October 1, featured Professor Case discussing "Why Evangelical Protestants are Right When They Say that State Recognition of Same-Sex Marriages Threatens Their Marriages and What the Law Should Do About It." Video of the talk is embedded below, or you may download an .mp3 or .mov file for your portable media player. tag:odeo.com,2008-10-31,23582877 Fri, 31 Oct 2008 06:22:19 -0700 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog Audio/Video, Case, Mary Anne http://www.odeo.com/episodes/23519048-Financial-Crisis-Double-Feature Like most everyone else, the Law School faculty are talking about the current financial crisis and governments' attempts to resolve it. So we've combined last week's scheduled Faculty Podcast with this week's scheduled Open Minds podcast to bring you two recent faculty panels about the bailout plan. The first, recorded on October 9th and sponsored by the Federalist Society, featured Douglas Baird, Anupam Chander, Rosalind Dixon, and M. Todd Henderson. The second, recorded on October 15th, was sponsored by the Law School Democrats and Law School Republicans and included  Randy Picker, Douglas Baird, M. Todd Henderson, and the GSB's John Cochrane (you can also read a summary of the panel here). Like most everyone else, the Law School faculty are talking about the current financial crisis and governments' attempts to resolve it. So we've combined last week's scheduled Faculty Podcast with this week's scheduled Open Minds podcast to bring you two recent faculty panels about the bailout plan. The first, recorded on October 9th and sponsored by the Federalist Society, featured Douglas Baird, Anupam Chander, Rosalind Dixon, and M. Todd Henderson. The second, recorded on October 15th, was sponsored by the Law School Democrats and Law School Republicans and included  Randy Picker, Douglas Baird, M. Todd Henderson, and the GSB's John Cochrane (you can also read a summary of the panel here). Like most everyone else, the Law School faculty are talking about the current financial crisis and governments' attempts to resolve it. So we've combined last week's scheduled Faculty Podcast with this week's scheduled Open Minds podcast to bring you two recent faculty panels about the bailout plan. The first, recorded on October 9th and sponsored by the Federalist Society, featured Douglas Baird, Anupam Chander, Rosalind Dixon, and M. Todd Henderson. The second, recorded on October 15th, was sponsored by the Law School Democrats and Law School Republicans and included  Randy Picker, Douglas Baird, M. Todd Henderson, and the GSB's John Cochrane (you can also read a summary of the panel here). tag:odeo.com,2008-10-22,23519048 Wed, 22 Oct 2008 11:47:00 -0700 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog Audio/Video, Henderson, M. Todd, Chander, Anupam, Dixon, Rosalind, Picker, Randy, Baird, Douglas http://www.odeo.com/episodes/23523164-Student-Blogger-Bailout-Panel-Picker-Cochrane-Baird-and-Henderson Update: You can now listen to a podcast of this panel. The current financial period is--according to Professor Randy Picker--an "interesting time." On Wednesday, October 15, the Law School Republicans and Democrats co-hosted a panel on the bailout featuring Professors Doug Baird, Todd Henderson, and Picker from the Law School and Professor John Cochrane from the Graduate School of Business across the Midway. The panel demonstrated just how interesting these times are with a lively discussion. What academics try to do is understand, and Picker laid out a plan for doing so with respect to the bailout. He will teach a seminar winter quarter on bailouts with the help of Baird and Henderson, and the Law School will host a conference in the spring on the current crisis and response. The desire for an immediate response prompted this panel. If the seminar and conference are the final 451-page bailout package, this panel is like Paulson's 3-page proposal--only more successful. Picker starte... Update: You can now listen to a podcast of this panel. The current financial period is--according to Professor Randy Picker--an "interesting time." On Wednesday, October 15, the Law School Republicans and Democrats co-hosted a panel on the bailout featuring Professors Doug Baird, Todd Henderson, and Picker from the Law School and Professor John Cochrane from the Graduate School of Business across the Midway. The panel demonstrated just how interesting these times are with a lively discussion. What academics try to do is understand, and Picker laid out a plan for doing so with respect to the bailout. He will teach a seminar winter quarter on bailouts with the help of Baird and Henderson, and the Law School will host a conference in the spring on the current crisis and response. The desire for an immediate response prompted this panel. If the seminar and conference are the final 451-page bailout package, this panel is like Paulson's 3-page proposal--only more successful. Picker started with an overview of the legislation of the past 72 hours, presented through the medium of--surprise!--PowerPoint. First, the government executed the first level of the $700 billion Trouble Assets Relief Program (TARP) by buying $250 billion of preferred stock in banks. Originally, the government planned to buy distressed assets from banks rather than take a share but instead decided to follow Europe's lead. (Warren Buffett received much better terms from Goldman Sachs for his $5 billion. Picker noted, "Buffett is smarter than the government, but we knew that.") TARP has "shockingly broad" language covering "any other financial asset." Baird interjected that even language that broad may be insufficient because some instruments may not take the form of an IOU. Second, the FDIC took advantage of previously granted emergency powers to guarantee several new types of debts besides depository accounts. Third, the Federal Reserve commenced a new commercial paper program using its emergency powers under § 13.3 of the Federal Reserve Act. Cochrane first described what the problem isn't. He distinguished a credit crunch from a change in supply or demand of credit. In a credit crunch, borrower and lender preferences do not change, but something prevents the transactions from occurring, trapping the market at an artificially low amount of lending. He analogized a credit crunch to a situation where people want to buy corn, other people have corn to sell, but all the trucks are broken down. If the preferences of borrowers or lenders change, however, the market still reaches equilibrium; the change is that the equilibrium is at a lower level of lending. The takeaway is that a reduction in lending does not necessarily indicate a credit crunch. Banks may be unwilling rather than unable to make loans. During the question-and-answer period, a student asked the necessary follow-up: how do we know which is which? Cochrane indicated that the current situation is probably not a credit crunch because banks have access to money from each other and from the Fed, so the mechanisms are all in place. People just aren't using them. The real danger, according to Cochrane, is political risk, the uncertainties of constantly changing rescue plans, and a "contagion" of bailouts that will do nothing to help the banking system. As the economist on the panel, he offered a forecast: new bailout plans every 72 hours. Politicians do not know when to quit, or even what to do (go to 3:37). He did not express confidence about the plans, including a proposal for a second fiscal stimulus package. Cochrane quipped, "The premise of a fiscal stimulus is that Americans do not borrow enough and do not spend enough. Enough said." One source of the current problem, Cochrane continued, is bankruptcy law. While taking time to sort out all the obligations is fine for "Joe's Hardware Store," the system does not work so well for financial institutions. A bankrupt company should be quickly liquidated so others can make better use of its assets in the market. Baird, though not wanting to be defensive, rose to the challenge during his portion of the presentation and pointed out that Lehman Brothers went through bankruptcy in a single work-week, starting Monday and selling off assets Friday afternoon. Most financial instruments are not subject to an automatic stay, so they are not locked up for a long time. Cochrane wondered, if everything worked so well, why were so many people concerned about investment banks winding up in bankruptcy court. Baird admitted that many transactions will require the banks as necessary counterparties, which may actually tie them up in bankruptcy court for significant time. Henderson drew a troubling comparison between today's political climate and the Great Depression's. First, Hoover and FDR raised taxes in the wake of the crash. Today, complaints abound about rampant deficit spending, and raising taxes is an obvious way to correct that problem. Second, the government implemented protectionist measures such as the famous Smoot-Hawley Tariff. Today, NAFTA's popularity has declined since the 1990s, and concern is widespread about jobs moving overseas. Third, many people "prosecuted and persecuted" those who have done well in this market. Today, commentators often blame greedy capitalists and decry golden parachutes and growing income inequality. The solution is, of course, freedom. Free trade and lower (or at least not higher) taxes are a place to start. The government should let more institutions become banks; Wal-Mart, for example, wanted to enter the banking market a few years back. Increased immigration could absorb the excess housing in the market. (Henderson exclaimed, "I could break into a Neil Diamond song here.") An alternative Neil Diamond song is "Thank the Lord for the Nighttime": I'll talk about plans now Baby, I got plenty Nothing ever seems to turn out the way it should Talk about money, girl, I ain't got any Seems like just one time I'm feelin' good Update: You can now listen to a podcast of this panel. The current financial period is--according to Professor Randy Picker--an "interesting time." On Wednesday, October 15, the Law School Republicans and Democrats co-hosted a panel on the bailout featuring Professors Doug Baird, Todd Henderson, and Picker from the Law School and Professor John Cochrane from the Graduate School of Business across the Midway. The panel demonstrated just how interesting these times are with a lively discussion. What academics try to do is understand, and Picker laid out a plan for doing so with respect to the bailout. He will teach a seminar winter quarter on bailouts with the help of Baird and Henderson, and the Law School will host a conference in the spring on the current crisis and response. The desire for an immediate response prompted this panel. If the seminar and conference are the final 451-page bailout package, this panel is like Paulson's 3-page proposal--only more successful. Picker started with an overview of the legislation of the past 72 hours, presented through the medium of--surprise!--PowerPoint. First, the government executed the first level of the $700 billion Trouble Assets Relief Program (TARP) by buying $250 billion of preferred stock in banks. Originally, the government planned to buy distressed assets from banks rather than take a share but instead decided to follow Europe's lead. (Warren Buffett received much better terms from Goldman Sachs for his $5 billion. Picker noted, "Buffett is smarter than the government, but we knew that.") TARP has "shockingly broad" language covering "any other financial asset." Baird interjected that even language that broad may be insufficient because some instruments may not take the form of an IOU. Second, the FDIC took advantage of previously granted emergency powers to guarantee several new types of debts besides depository accounts. Third, the Federal Reserve commenced a new commercial paper program using its emergency powers under § 13.3 of the Federal Reserve Act. Cochrane first described what the problem isn't. He distinguished a credit crunch from a change in supply or demand of credit. In a credit crunch, borrower and lender preferences do not change, but something prevents the transactions from occurring, trapping the market at an artificially low amount of lending. He analogized a credit crunch to a situation where people want to buy corn, other people have corn to sell, but all the trucks are broken down. If the preferences of borrowers or lenders change, however, the market still reaches equilibrium; the change is that the equilibrium is at a lower level of lending. The takeaway is that a reduction in lending does not necessarily indicate a credit crunch. Banks may be unwilling rather than unable to make loans. During the question-and-answer period, a student asked the necessary follow-up: how do we know which is which? Cochrane indicated that the current situation is probably not a credit crunch because banks have access to money from each other and from the Fed, so the mechanisms are all in place. People just aren't using them. The real danger, according to Cochrane, is political risk, the uncertainties of constantly changing rescue plans, and a "contagion" of bailouts that will do nothing to help the banking system. As the economist on the panel, he offered a forecast: new bailout plans every 72 hours. Politicians do not know when to quit, or even what to do (go to 3:37). He did not express confidence about the plans, including a proposal for a second fiscal stimulus package. Cochrane quipped, "The premise of a fiscal stimulus is that Americans do not borrow enough and do not spend enough. Enough said." One source of the current problem, Cochrane continued, is bankruptcy law. While taking time to sort out all the obligations is fine for "Joe's Hardware Store," the system does not work so well for financial institutions. A bankrupt company should be quickly liquidated so others can make better use of its assets in the market. Baird, though not wanting to be defensive, rose to the challenge during his portion of the presentation and pointed out that Lehman Brothers went through bankruptcy in a single work-week, starting Monday and selling off assets Friday afternoon. Most financial instruments are not subject to an automatic stay, so they are not locked up for a long time. Cochrane wondered, if everything worked so well, why were so many people concerned about investment banks winding up in bankruptcy court. Baird admitted that many transactions will require the banks as necessary counterparties, which may actually tie them up in bankruptcy court for significant time. Henderson drew a troubling comparison between today's political climate and the Great Depression's. First, Hoover and FDR raised taxes in the wake of the crash. Today, complaints abound about rampant deficit spending, and raising taxes is an obvious way to correct that problem. Second, the government implemented protectionist measures such as the famous Smoot-Hawley Tariff. Today, NAFTA's popularity has declined since the 1990s, and concern is widespread about jobs moving overseas. Third, many people "prosecuted and persecuted" those who have done well in this market. Today, commentators often blame greedy capitalists and decry golden parachutes and growing income inequality. The solution is, of course, freedom. Free trade and lower (or at least not higher) taxes are a place to start. The government should let more institutions become banks; Wal-Mart, for example, wanted to enter the banking market a few years back. Increased immigration could absorb the excess housing in the market. (Henderson exclaimed, "I could break into a Neil Diamond song here.") An alternative Neil Diamond song is "Thank the Lord for the Nighttime": I'll talk about plans now Baby, I got plenty Nothing ever seems to turn out the way it should Talk about money, girl, I ain't got any Seems like just one time I'm feelin' good tag:odeo.com,2008-10-19,23523164 Sun, 19 Oct 2008 15:55:23 -0700 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog Henderson, M. Todd, Picker, Randy, Baird, Douglas http://www.odeo.com/episodes/23446787-Karl-Llewellyn-on-Marriage-and-the-Family For this week's Faculty Podcast, we invite you to step into the Wayback Machine for a glimpse of the Law School some 50 years ago. One of the leading legal scholars of his generation, Karl Llewellyn taught at Chicago from 1951 until his death in 1962. In this undated classroom recording, he takes an often light-hearted look at the implicit legal structures of what was at the time considered the "typical" American family. Listen to the end, and you'll also hear him discuss with his students their upcoming exam. For this week's Faculty Podcast, we invite you to step into the Wayback Machine for a glimpse of the Law School some 50 years ago. One of the leading legal scholars of his generation, Karl Llewellyn taught at Chicago from 1951 until his death in 1962. In this undated classroom recording, he takes an often light-hearted look at the implicit legal structures of what was at the time considered the "typical" American family. Listen to the end, and you'll also hear him discuss with his students their upcoming exam. For this week's Faculty Podcast, we invite you to step into the Wayback Machine for a glimpse of the Law School some 50 years ago. One of the leading legal scholars of his generation, Karl Llewellyn taught at Chicago from 1951 until his death in 1962. In this undated classroom recording, he takes an often light-hearted look at the implicit legal structures of what was at the time considered the "typical" American family. Listen to the end, and you'll also hear him discuss with his students their upcoming exam. tag:odeo.com,2008-10-03,23446787 Fri, 03 Oct 2008 10:20:02 -0700 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog Audio/Video http://www.odeo.com/episodes/23512846-Karl-Llewellyn-on-Marriage-and-the-Family For this week's Faculty Podcast, we invite you to step into the Wayback Machine for a glimpse of the Law School some 50 years ago. One of the leading legal scholars of his generation, Karl Llewellyn taught at Chicago from 1951 until his death in 1962. In this undated classroom recording, he takes an often light-hearted look at the implicit legal structures of what was at the time considered the "typical" American family. Listen to the end, and you'll also hear him discuss with his students their upcoming exam. For this week's Faculty Podcast, we invite you to step into the Wayback Machine for a glimpse of the Law School some 50 years ago. One of the leading legal scholars of his generation, Karl Llewellyn taught at Chicago from 1951 until his death in 1962. In this undated classroom recording, he takes an often light-hearted look at the implicit legal structures of what was at the time considered the "typical" American family. Listen to the end, and you'll also hear him discuss with his students their upcoming exam. For this week's Faculty Podcast, we invite you to step into the Wayback Machine for a glimpse of the Law School some 50 years ago. One of the leading legal scholars of his generation, Karl Llewellyn taught at Chicago from 1951 until his death in 1962. In this undated classroom recording, he takes an often light-hearted look at the implicit legal structures of what was at the time considered the "typical" American family. Listen to the end, and you'll also hear him discuss with his students their upcoming exam. tag:odeo.com,2008-10-03,23512846 Fri, 03 Oct 2008 10:20:02 -0700 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog Audio/Video http://www.odeo.com/episodes/23373145-Audio-Video-Anderson-and-Posner-on-Torture-Law-and-War This week's Faculty Podcast episode features a panel from the "Torture, Law, and War" conference held at the Law School earlier this year; the panel includes 2007-8 Law and Philosophy Fellow (and current Visiting Scholar) Scott Anderson, Kirkland and Ellis Professor of Law Eric Posner, and Rutgers University's Jeff McMahan. They discussed the questions:   Should the law absolutely ban coercive interrogation?  And can and should it really mean it? Video of the panel is embedded below, and you may also download an .mp3 or a .mov file. This week's Faculty Podcast episode features a panel from the "Torture, Law, and War" conference held at the Law School earlier this year; the panel includes 2007-8 Law and Philosophy Fellow (and current Visiting Scholar) Scott Anderson, Kirkland and Ellis Professor of Law Eric Posner, and Rutgers University's Jeff McMahan. They discussed the questions:   Should the law absolutely ban coercive interrogation?  And can and should it really mean it? Video of the panel is embedded below, and you may also download an .mp3 or a .mov file. This week's Faculty Podcast episode features a panel from the "Torture, Law, and War" conference held at the Law School earlier this year; the panel includes 2007-8 Law and Philosophy Fellow (and current Visiting Scholar) Scott Anderson, Kirkland and Ellis Professor of Law Eric Posner, and Rutgers University's Jeff McMahan. They discussed the questions:   Should the law absolutely ban coercive interrogation?  And can and should it really mean it? Video of the panel is embedded below, and you may also download an .mp3 or a .mov file. tag:odeo.com,2008-09-19,23373145 Fri, 19 Sep 2008 07:54:48 -0700 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog Posner, Eric, Anderson, Scott, Friends of Chicago http://www.odeo.com/episodes/23268366-Audio-Adam-Samaha-Muskets-and-Glocks-The-Second-Amendment-Reborn Back in May, Assistant Professor of Law and Herbert and Marjorie Fried Teaching Scholar Adam Samaha addressed the Law School's annual Loop Luncheon. In his talk, Professor Samaha made some rather accurate predictions about the outcome of the U.S. Supreme Court's then-pending decision in District of Columbia v. Heller . He also addressed the issues that would be raised by the Court's decision and made some predictions about the next stages of the battle over the Second Amendment. You can listen to the full talk here. Back in May, Assistant Professor of Law and Herbert and Marjorie Fried Teaching Scholar Adam Samaha addressed the Law School's annual Loop Luncheon. In his talk, Professor Samaha made some rather accurate predictions about the outcome of the U.S. Supreme Court's then-pending decision in District of Columbia v. Heller . He also addressed the issues that would be raised by the Court's decision and made some predictions about the next stages of the battle over the Second Amendment. You can listen to the full talk here. Back in May, Assistant Professor of Law and Herbert and Marjorie Fried Teaching Scholar Adam Samaha addressed the Law School's annual Loop Luncheon. In his talk, Professor Samaha made some rather accurate predictions about the outcome of the U.S. Supreme Court's then-pending decision in District of Columbia v. Heller . He also addressed the issues that would be raised by the Court's decision and made some predictions about the next stages of the battle over the Second Amendment. You can listen to the full talk here. tag:odeo.com,2008-09-04,23268366 Thu, 04 Sep 2008 11:46:33 -0700 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog Audio/Video, Samaha, Adam http://www.odeo.com/episodes/23268367-Audio-Richard-Epstein-and-Cass-Sunstein-Should-Conservatives-Vote-for-Obama Back in March, Chicago's chapters of the Federalist Society and the Black Law Students Association cohosted a very well-attended debate on the question of whether conservative voters should support Barack Obama's presidential bid. Cass Sunstein (then Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor of Jurisprudence, now Visiting Professor of Law, as well as informal adviser to the Obama campaign) discussed why he thought some conservatives would embrace Obama, while James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law Richard Epstein pointed out a number of Obama's economic positions that he thought would be troubling to conservative voters. You can listen to the discussion by downloading the .mp3 file. Back in March, Chicago's chapters of the Federalist Society and the Black Law Students Association cohosted a very well-attended debate on the question of whether conservative voters should support Barack Obama's presidential bid. Cass Sunstein (then Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor of Jurisprudence, now Visiting Professor of Law, as well as informal adviser to the Obama campaign) discussed why he thought some conservatives would embrace Obama, while James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law Richard Epstein pointed out a number of Obama's economic positions that he thought would be troubling to conservative voters. You can listen to the discussion by downloading the .mp3 file. Back in March, Chicago's chapters of the Federalist Society and the Black Law Students Association cohosted a very well-attended debate on the question of whether conservative voters should support Barack Obama's presidential bid. Cass Sunstein (then Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor of Jurisprudence, now Visiting Professor of Law, as well as informal adviser to the Obama campaign) discussed why he thought some conservatives would embrace Obama, while James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law Richard Epstein pointed out a number of Obama's economic positions that he thought would be troubling to conservative voters. You can listen to the discussion by downloading the .mp3 file. tag:odeo.com,2008-08-07,23268367 Thu, 07 Aug 2008 09:53:20 -0700 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog Audio/Video, Epstein, Richard, Sunstein, Cass http://www.odeo.com/episodes/23268368-The-2008-Fulton-Lecture-in-Legal-History-Gerhard-Casper-Forswearing-Allegiance Each year the Law School holds the Maurice and Muriel Fulton Lecture in Legal History. Created in 1985, the Fulton lecture brings a prominent legal historian to campus to discuss an issue in legal history. The 2008 lecture, presented on May 1, featured the return to Chicago of Professor Gerhard Casper, former Dean of the Law School (as well as President Emeritus of Stanford University). Professor Casper discussed the requirement that new citizens of the United States abjure prior allegiances and the way that requirement reflects upon historical concepts of citizenship. Video of the lecture is embedded below, or you may download a .mov or .mp3 file; a written version of the lecture is also available. Transcripts and recordings of past Fulton lectures are available on the Law School website. Each year the Law School holds the Maurice and Muriel Fulton Lecture in Legal History. Created in 1985, the Fulton lecture brings a prominent legal historian to campus to discuss an issue in legal history. The 2008 lecture, presented on May 1, featured the return to Chicago of Professor Gerhard Casper, former Dean of the Law School (as well as President Emeritus of Stanford University). Professor Casper discussed the requirement that new citizens of the United States abjure prior allegiances and the way that requirement reflects upon historical concepts of citizenship. Video of the lecture is embedded below, or you may download a .mov or .mp3 file; a written version of the lecture is also available. Transcripts and recordings of past Fulton lectures are available on the Law School website. Each year the Law School holds the Maurice and Muriel Fulton Lecture in Legal History. Created in 1985, the Fulton lecture brings a prominent legal historian to campus to discuss an issue in legal history. The 2008 lecture, presented on May 1, featured the return to Chicago of Professor Gerhard Casper, former Dean of the Law School (as well as President Emeritus of Stanford University). Professor Casper discussed the requirement that new citizens of the United States abjure prior allegiances and the way that requirement reflects upon historical concepts of citizenship. Video of the lecture is embedded below, or you may download a .mov or .mp3 file; a written version of the lecture is also available. Transcripts and recordings of past Fulton lectures are available on the Law School website. tag:odeo.com,2008-08-06,23268368 Wed, 06 Aug 2008 09:44:52 -0700 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog Audio/Video http://www.odeo.com/episodes/23268369-Audio-Video-M-Todd-Henderson-Predicting-Crime-without-the-Pre-Cogs In the absence of pre-cognitive superbeings and Tom Cruise, how are police and policy makers supposed to allocate scarce crime-fighting resources? There is a vibrant academic literature on predicting crime, with models of various types offered as the best way of estimating future crime rates. Many of these involve mapping software, which plots the past in the hopes of extrapolating to the future. Police use some of these techniques, but most are very crude, using things like weather or the location of liquor stores as "hot spots" to estimate crime rates. Police also use experience and gut instinct. All of the various methods, whether formal models or inside the head of the commissioner of police, are deployed in haphazard and isolated ways. In this lecture, recorded May 13, 2008 as part of the Chicago's Best Ideas lecture Assistant Professor of Law M. Todd Henderson presents an alternative. Video of the talk is embedded below, and a .mov file and .mp3 file are also available. Prof. ... In the absence of pre-cognitive superbeings and Tom Cruise, how are police and policy makers supposed to allocate scarce crime-fighting resources? There is a vibrant academic literature on predicting crime, with models of various types offered as the best way of estimating future crime rates. Many of these involve mapping software, which plots the past in the hopes of extrapolating to the future. Police use some of these techniques, but most are very crude, using things like weather or the location of liquor stores as "hot spots" to estimate crime rates. Police also use experience and gut instinct. All of the various methods, whether formal models or inside the head of the commissioner of police, are deployed in haphazard and isolated ways. In this lecture, recorded May 13, 2008 as part of the Chicago's Best Ideas lecture Assistant Professor of Law M. Todd Henderson presents an alternative. Video of the talk is embedded below, and a .mov file and .mp3 file are also available. Prof. Henderson's paper on this topic (written with Justin Wolfers and Eric Zitzewitz) is available from SSRN. In the absence of pre-cognitive superbeings and Tom Cruise, how are police and policy makers supposed to allocate scarce crime-fighting resources? There is a vibrant academic literature on predicting crime, with models of various types offered as the best way of estimating future crime rates. Many of these involve mapping software, which plots the past in the hopes of extrapolating to the future. Police use some of these techniques, but most are very crude, using things like weather or the location of liquor stores as "hot spots" to estimate crime rates. Police also use experience and gut instinct. All of the various methods, whether formal models or inside the head of the commissioner of police, are deployed in haphazard and isolated ways. In this lecture, recorded May 13, 2008 as part of the Chicago's Best Ideas lecture Assistant Professor of Law M. Todd Henderson presents an alternative. Video of the talk is embedded below, and a .mov file and .mp3 file are also available. Prof. Henderson's paper on this topic (written with Justin Wolfers and Eric Zitzewitz) is available from SSRN. tag:odeo.com,2008-07-25,23268369 Fri, 25 Jul 2008 11:53:34 -0700 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog Audio/Video, Henderson, M. Todd http://www.odeo.com/episodes/23268370-Video-Sunstein-and-Thaler-on-Nudge-and-Noodles Via the Research at Chicago site: [Richard] Thaler and [Cass] Sunstein reminisce at their favorite Hyde Park lunch spot, Noodles, where they say they did some of their best work on the book. Noodles was so important to the creative process, it even made the acknowledgments. The two talk about what each brought to the project, the origin of the elephants on the book cover, their fear of forms, and their hopes for a new political consensus in the country. Related Links: Nudge Blog Nudge Website Via the Research at Chicago site: [Richard] Thaler and [Cass] Sunstein reminisce at their favorite Hyde Park lunch spot, Noodles, where they say they did some of their best work on the book. Noodles was so important to the creative process, it even made the acknowledgments. The two talk about what each brought to the project, the origin of the elephants on the book cover, their fear of forms, and their hopes for a new political consensus in the country. Related Links: Nudge Blog Nudge Website Via the Research at Chicago site: [Richard] Thaler and [Cass] Sunstein reminisce at their favorite Hyde Park lunch spot, Noodles, where they say they did some of their best work on the book. Noodles was so important to the creative process, it even made the acknowledgments. The two talk about what each brought to the project, the origin of the elephants on the book cover, their fear of forms, and their hopes for a new political consensus in the country. Related Links: Nudge Blog Nudge Website tag:odeo.com,2008-07-22,23268370 Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:57:40 -0700 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog Audio/Video, Sunstein, Cass http://www.odeo.com/episodes/23268371-Audio-Video-Geof-Stone-The-World-of-the-Framers-A-Christian-Nation It has become commonplace in American political discourse for Christian evangelicals to assert that the United States was founded as a "Christian nation" and that in recent decades secularists have gained control and distorted our nation's founding traditions and values. In this lecture, Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor Geoffrey Stone examines the beliefs of the Framers on this question. What did they think about Christianity, about the role of Christianity in the American nation, and about the relationship between religion generally and self-governance? The answers to these questions are important not only to constitutional interpretation, but even more fundamentally to an understanding of who we are – and who we are supposed to be – as a nation. This talk was recorded April 21, 2008 as part of the Chicago's Best Ideas lecture series. Video of the talk is embedded below, or you may download a .mov file or .mp3 file. It has become commonplace in American political discourse for Christian evangelicals to assert that the United States was founded as a "Christian nation" and that in recent decades secularists have gained control and distorted our nation's founding traditions and values. In this lecture, Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor Geoffrey Stone examines the beliefs of the Framers on this question. What did they think about Christianity, about the role of Christianity in the American nation, and about the relationship between religion generally and self-governance? The answers to these questions are important not only to constitutional interpretation, but even more fundamentally to an understanding of who we are – and who we are supposed to be – as a nation. This talk was recorded April 21, 2008 as part of the Chicago's Best Ideas lecture series. Video of the talk is embedded below, or you may download a .mov file or .mp3 file. It has become commonplace in American political discourse for Christian evangelicals to assert that the United States was founded as a "Christian nation" and that in recent decades secularists have gained control and distorted our nation's founding traditions and values. In this lecture, Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor Geoffrey Stone examines the beliefs of the Framers on this question. What did they think about Christianity, about the role of Christianity in the American nation, and about the relationship between religion generally and self-governance? The answers to these questions are important not only to constitutional interpretation, but even more fundamentally to an understanding of who we are – and who we are supposed to be – as a nation. This talk was recorded April 21, 2008 as part of the Chicago's Best Ideas lecture series. Video of the talk is embedded below, or you may download a .mov file or .mp3 file. tag:odeo.com,2008-07-15,23268371 Tue, 15 Jul 2008 12:04:24 -0700 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog Audio/Video, Stone, Geoffrey http://www.odeo.com/episodes/16426633-Aging-Out-of-Foster-Care-An-Update-on-the-Chicago-Foster-Care-Project tag:odeo.com,2007-08-05,16426633 Sun, 05 Aug 2007 19:33:00 -0700 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog http://www.odeo.com/episodes/16042903-Aging-Out-of-Foster-Care-An-Update-on-the-Chicago-Foster-Care-Project tag:odeo.com,2007-08-05,16042903 Sun, 05 Aug 2007 19:33:00 -0700 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog http://www.odeo.com/episodes/16426623-Epstein-CBI-Intuition-Custom-and-Protocol tag:odeo.com,2007-07-30,16426623 Mon, 30 Jul 2007 19:24:29 -0700 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog http://www.odeo.com/episodes/16042893-Epstein-CBI-Intuition-Custom-and-Protocol tag:odeo.com,2007-07-30,16042893 Mon, 30 Jul 2007 19:24:29 -0700 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog http://www.odeo.com/episodes/13657873-Curtis-Bradley-Military-Detention-in-the-War-on-Terrorism tag:odeo.com,2007-06-14,13657873 Thu, 14 Jun 2007 15:07:08 -0700 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog http://www.odeo.com/episodes/12772543-Henderson-CBI-CEOs-are-Underpaid tag:odeo.com,2007-05-25,12772543 Fri, 25 May 2007 12:51:00 -0700 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog http://www.odeo.com/episodes/12772533-Epstein-vs-Epstein-Drug-Price-Subsidies tag:odeo.com,2007-05-18,12772533 Fri, 18 May 2007 12:00:00 -0700 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog http://www.odeo.com/episodes/11723263-From-the-Mercantilist-World-to-Market-Based-Liberalism-Money-as-a-Constitutional-Medium tag:odeo.com,2007-05-11,11723263 Fri, 11 May 2007 21:34:00 -0700 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog http://www.odeo.com/episodes/11723193-Malani-CBI-Valuing-Laws-as-Local-Amenities tag:odeo.com,2007-05-01,11723193 Tue, 01 May 2007 15:14:39 -0700 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog http://www.odeo.com/episodes/9712883-How-FDR-Paved-the-Way-to-Brown-v-The-Board-of-Education tag:odeo.com,2007-02-27,9712883 Tue, 27 Feb 2007 23:26:12 -0800 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog http://www.odeo.com/episodes/7192873-Strahilevitz-How-s-My-Driving-For-Everything-and-Everyone tag:odeo.com,2007-01-28,7192873 Sun, 28 Jan 2007 15:45:00 -0800 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog http://www.odeo.com/episodes/6981313-Coase-Lecture-Culling-Chickens tag:odeo.com,2007-01-25,6981313 Thu, 25 Jan 2007 18:15:00 -0800 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog http://www.odeo.com/episodes/5715363-Stone-Government-Secrecy-v-Freedom-of-the-Press tag:odeo.com,2007-01-11,5715363 Thu, 11 Jan 2007 20:34:23 -0800 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog http://www.odeo.com/episodes/3359753-Harcourt-Against-Prediction tag:odeo.com,2006-11-28,3359753 Tue, 28 Nov 2006 14:33:00 -0800 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog http://www.odeo.com/episodes/3302163-US-Involvement-in-the-Darfur-Conflict tag:odeo.com,2006-11-24,3302163 Fri, 24 Nov 2006 14:19:00 -0800 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog http://www.odeo.com/episodes/3302153-What-Do-and-What-Should-Judges-Do tag:odeo.com,2006-11-22,3302153 Wed, 22 Nov 2006 20:05:00 -0800 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog http://www.odeo.com/episodes/3302133-Cass-Sunstein-on-Thurgood-Marshall-s-Conception-of-Equality tag:odeo.com,2006-11-21,3302133 Tue, 21 Nov 2006 17:41:18 -0800 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog http://www.odeo.com/episodes/2181936-Martha-Nussbaum-Talks-with-Akbar-Gangi tag:odeo.com,2006-10-17,2181936 Tue, 17 Oct 2006 21:04:05 -0700 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog http://www.odeo.com/episodes/2133299-Samaha-Previews-the-Supreme-Court-Term tag:odeo.com,2006-10-11,2133299 Wed, 11 Oct 2006 11:51:00 -0700 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog http://www.odeo.com/episodes/2105468-Sunstein-Podcast-Libertarian-Paternalism tag:odeo.com,2006-10-06,2105468 Fri, 06 Oct 2006 11:44:00 -0700 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog http://www.odeo.com/episodes/1346297-Alschuler-on-Ryan tag:odeo.com,2006-06-14,1346297 Wed, 14 Jun 2006 14:00:00 -0700 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog http://www.odeo.com/episodes/1313315-A-Podcast-of-a-Different-Color-Currie-and-the-Constitution tag:odeo.com,2006-06-09,1313315 Fri, 09 Jun 2006 20:15:19 -0700 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog http://www.odeo.com/episodes/1284043-Ethics-and-Corruption-in-Business-and-Government tag:odeo.com,2006-06-05,1284043 Mon, 05 Jun 2006 04:58:00 -0700 no The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog