Category Archives: Uncategorized

According to this graphic from Mother Jones, the turnout wouldn’t be that great for a 99% movement, at least if we assume that the top 10% have loyalties upward. H/T Buzzfeed

Check out my post detailing the trailer of the upcoming “Moneyball” movie on prawfs.

On The Volokh Conspiracy Kenneth Anderson posts on the question of whether high debt makes a person less marry-able. Certainly SES can affect marriage rates, although not always in intuitive ways. However, I’m not aware of a good empirical study on this specific question and I imagine that it’s a complicated concern. You might check out the comments to the post – they are pretty amusing. For some reason this thread brings to mind TLC’s song “No Scrubs” .

The New York Times investigates the controversial process of ‘fracking’ for natural gas. (Not to be confused with the popular Battlestar Galactica use of the word). — [h/t property prof blog]

Some interesting thoughts on the Pareto 80/20 principle as applied to work efficiency here.

North Carolina experienced a very large ‘alienation of affection’ judgment recently. — Hell hath no fury … yada yada yada …. Only a handful of states still recognize this cause of action (suing someone for stealing your spouse).

The annual APSA meeting in Washington, DC is upon us and should be a very successful event. Look forward to some live Twittering from us on the event. Pssst … the twitter feeds are to your right.

We recently reported that there is a portion of Yellowstone National park in which it may be possible to commit crimes without viable prosecution. It was jokingly suggested that it might be a good time for that picnic in Yellowstone you’ve been thinking about. Now we hear that convicts have escaped from an Arizona correctional facility and may be hiding out in parts of Yellowstone. So, um, you might think about canceling that picnic.

See it here.

As I continue to be woefully late on an essay on how to reform the review and awarding of fees to professionals in chapter 11 bankruptcy cases (don’t worry, Maryland J. of Bus. & Tech. Law–it’s coming!), I’m trying to think of other areas in which those who are billing for professional services don’t really have to “push their bills across the table to a real client” but to a stand-in for a real client.  Lawyers who represent humans have to push their bills across the table (figuratively speaking) to those humans, who can then stare the lawyers in the eye and ask why the lawyers engaged in certain tasks.  Lawyers who represent even fictional people, like corporations, have to push their bills across the table to a live corporate officer/manager, who likewise can look at the bills and ask hard questions.  But lawyers who represent the debtor-in-possession or the creditors’ committee are representing fiduciaries, and those fiduciaries aren’t always all “across the table” in the same way that clients might be outside of bankruptcy.  Do these professionals have to do more defensive lawyering than lawyers are doing if they’re not representing fiduciaries?  Are lawyers who do class action litigation in the same boat?  Any thoughts?

(Posted by Nancy Rapoport)

On the right — you can do some simple (and free) online activities to help the cause — it just takes a few minutes.

We’ve touched on this topic before, but USA Today has a really interesting story on it, so we’re talking about it more – see my post on prawfsblawg here.

As in this scene from “Inglorious Bastards”

Find out why here.

Here.

Find it above or link here.

The proposed Coburn amendment to eliminate the political science division of the National Science Foundation and funding for political science research has once again raised the question of whether academic research is relevant to real-world problems.

The controversy over electing judges provides interesting insight into this question, particularly when examining the reactions of the advocacy community to scientific studies of judicial elections published in the nation’s leading academic journals, law reviews, and commercial presses. While there certainly are valid criticisms of empirical studies of judicial selection, it simply is the case that empirical findings that contradict political strategies and goals will not be acknowledged and incorporated into the public dialogue no matter how relevant or compelling.

It has not mattered, for example, that empirical evidence has shown for decades that there are no measurable differences between judges chosen in partisan elections and judges chosen by other “less political” methods. Nor have many in the “reform”  community demonstrated concern with the fact that nonpartisan elections effectively disenfranchise large segments of the electorate, raise the costs of seeking office, and open supreme court races to idiosyncratic forces. Similarly, recent evidence showing that confidence in courts is not lower in states using partisan elections has not been incorporated into the public dialogue, or the fact that elections are perhaps the most powerful legitimacy-conferring institutions in the world.

The bottom line is that contradictory evidence is irrelevant to actors pursuing their own agendas, an irony in the case of judicial selection since many of the most aggressive advocates against judicial elections are judges and attorneys. The same evidence also may seem, without effort to understand it, incomprehensible.

In fact, many advocates in the judicial selection controversy engage in forms of fact-finding quite removed from the standards and practices of scientific journals in political science, including the use of anecdotes to claim general tendencies or to discredit them, public opinion polls with biased question wording and flawed sampling strategies, incorrect and selective interpretation of poll results, and reliance on the opinions of “experts” as concrete evidence of problems that cannot yet be seen but nonetheless purportedly are looming. These are attempts to seek the truth but often produce evidence that does not withstand more rigorous scientific scrutiny.

There is another kind of problem, however, quite apart from sincere though flawed attempts to seek the truth. Best explained by Princeton University Professor Emeritus Harry Frankfurt in his illuminating essay On Bullshit, there is a distinct form of expression – “bullshit” – the defining characteristic of which is offering statements to suit one’s own purpose without much regard for whether the statements actually are true or false.  Given the instrumental nature of political action (no matter how altruistically the goals of many advocacy organizations are stated) and the willingness to argue positions that may lack empirical support, academic work is ignored or dismissed, usually with flimsy arguments not befitting a badly educated high school debate team (more on this in my next post). As part of this, econometrics become easy to caricature among non-academics as being divorced from reality or as having some fatal flaw. Thus, “bullshit” is a powerful countervailing force to science.

In short, science and politics often are not compatible, and no amount of careful study, scientific rigor, or attempts to contribute constructively to the political process will change that. Even so, truth intrinsically is important, and the difficulties political scientists may encounter when engaging political actors does not render the enterprise any less worthwhile.

Melinda Gann Hall

• Alcohol and Drugs History Society
• Kaufrman Foundation gives $10 million for law and economics

… of messages left on Sarah Palin’s answering machine after the debate.

While the satirical candidate public service announcement video (below), starring Tina Fey (as Sarah Palin) and Amy Poehler (as Hillary Clinton) is good fun, if you want to see the actual presidential candidate commercials they are available on “The Living Room Candidate.”

Sorry, I just couldn’t resist. This is an awesome photo. 

(hat tip to Volokh blog)