Author Archive | Todd Zywicki

Nate’s right, of course: Chapter 11 would have worked just fine for Chrysler and GM, and so the claim that somehow their recent financial success proves the value of the bailouts is misplaced.  (I had previously argued that they should file bankruptcy).  More to the point, chapter 11 would have accomplished the reorganization without the […]

This is an interesting new twist on the housing situation that I hadn’t heard of–but which makes perfect sense.  It is the “buy and bail”: you decide you want to walk away from your old underwater home and buy a new home using the extremely low mortgage rates we have today and greatly depreciated home […]

I briefly mentioned the CARE (“Comprehensive Regulatory Effectiveness”) Act a few weeks back giving the states heightened powers to regulate interstate commerce in alcohol.  Josh Wright has an excellent analysis of the law and its implications here.

because he opposes same-sex marriage.  So are Joe Biden and Hillary Rodham Clinton.  And millions of Californians of different races, sexes, and religious views.  Nelson Lund puzzles over the logic of Judge Walker’s Proposition 8 ruling.

I have a column in today’s New York Daily News with my Mercatus Center colleague Eileen Norcross, “How Public Worker Pensions are Too Rich for New York’s-and America’s-Blood.”

Dan Schmutter weighs in on the future of New Jersey’s strict gun control laws in the wake of McDonald. Dan was also on Freedom Watch with Andrew Napolitano this morning and I understand the show will re-air a few times over the weekend.  Eventually it will go up on the show’s website here, but as […]

The Washington Legal Foundation has posted its announcement for its “2010 Freedom and Justice Legal Writing Competition” for law students.  The topic is ““How have recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings on civil lawsuit pleading standards impacted litigation, and what are the potential implications of congressional efforts to repeal those judicial decisions?”  The essay focuses on […]

Geologic time makes you feel so sort of insignificant, doesn’t it? Via Tom Smith.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has organized a timely letter opposing the Comprehensive Alcohol Regulatory Effectiveness (CARE) Act.  The aim of the law is to largely overturn Granholm v. Heald by making it easier for states to sustain discriminatory barriers to interstate commerce by shifting the burden of proof to challenges to discriminatory laws.  It would […]

Some college readers might be interested in ISI’s College Student Essay Contest: “Totalitarianism, Tweets, and Turf: Human Community in an Age of Techno-Globalism.”  It is inspired by Robert Nisbet’s book, “The Quest for Community.”  I read it back in college and remember thinking it was a pretty interesting discussion of the importance of civil society […]

The Washington Post’s Ombudsman Andrew Alexander dedicated his column this week to the Post’s puzzling silence on the DOJ’s dismissal of the New Black Panther voter intimidation case over the past several months.  Alexander rebukes the Post for its failure to cover the story, but seemingly accepts the explanation of the paper’s reporters and editors […]

Josh Wright discusses the concerns of behavioral economists about using and misusing behavioral economics to make policy. Which leads me to a related question: Could it be that there is a bubble in the way in which behavioral law and economics has grown so rapidly in recent years?  Certainly the use–and more typically misuse–of behavioral […]

I sat down with Caleb Brown the other day to record a short podcast (10 minutes), “Repeal the Seventeenth Amendment?” You can download the Cato’s daily and archived podcasts here.

As a follow-up to David Post’s post last week on issue v. outcome voting, I direct you to a new op-ed in the National Law Journal by Cohen and Stearns. Did I happen to mention that David’s article with Salop (along with other contributions to the literature) are discussed in some detail in the book […]

This is an impressive list: Hayek, Friedman, Murray, Olson, and Postrel.  Perhaps even more amazing is that I believe him when he says he has actually read and appreciated these books, which is not something that I could say about most politicians.