Over at Law School Innovation, Doug Berman suggests that Eugene’s laptop ban reveals he is not a true libertarian:
Although I am disinclined to assert that this alone shows how quickly professorial power can corrupt philosophical commitments, I do find remarkable the dramatic move to collectivism here. Not only is Eugene severely restricting laptop liberty, but he also is mandating that individuals share the fruits of their labor with a student collective all for purported good of the UCLA School of Law.
And it’s much worse than that. According to my sources, Eugene has structured his class much like a dictatorship. In particular, students cannot determine their own grades. They can’t even vote together for their grades, expressing the collective will of the people. Rather, Eugene gives himself the sole and complete discretion to assign grades according to his own personal measurement of achievement. That’s right: Self-appointed King Eugene thinks that he knows what is better for his “subjects” more than the people themselves. Sounds like a nanny state to me.