Author Archive | Todd Zywicki

Yes, says Mark Tushnet, in this interesting essay, and see his Opinio Juris posts here and here. By globalization of constitutional law, he means

I have just posted a new paper on SSRN (co-authored with Marcus Cole), “The New Forum Shopping Problem in Bankruptcy.” Here’s the abstract: Abstract: The American bankruptcy system is a hybrid of state law and federal bankruptcy law. Under the Butner principle, federal bankruptcy courts preserve non-bankruptcy law substantive entitlements in bankruptcy unless bankruptcy policies […]

Like everyone else, I’ve been following the kerfuffle around “the wise Latina” remark. Here’s my short take on it: 1. I think she probably meant it when she said that she believed that her background and upbringing would make her a “better” judge than a white man (or white woman). I don’t think she meant […]

The manuscript for my new coursebook with Maxwell Stearns, Public Choice Concepts and Applications in Law, was sent off to West on Monday. We expect page proofs in September or thereabouts with hard copy shipping in October. It will be published by West. If you are interested in seeing the book for possible adoption to […]

My colleague Nathan Sales has posted an interesting working paper on intelligence agency information sharing. Congress has frequently told intelligence agencies to share more information among themselves. Nathan looks at the incentives of the various agencies to do that. Some useful public choice insights. Here’s the abstract:

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Michigan has posted a short interview (11 minutes) with me that was done a couple of weeks ago on the GM Bankruptcy.

Unfortunately for me and fortunately for him, it is not the size of our bank accounts. But as Anne Neal reports, we both did get reprimanded by our respective boards of trustees for speech crimes, Forbes for criticizing Princeton’s hiring of Peter Singer while he was serving on the board there. She also reports that […]

I see that my old friend Alex Acosta has been hired as the new dean of the young law school at Florida International University. He was for the past several years the U.S. Attorney in Miami and was at the DOJ before then. At 40, he must surely be one of the youngest law school […]

In an earlier post, I compared Judge Sotomayor with other judges, including Judge Wood, who were ranked in a paper by Choi and Gulati. Choi and Gulati focused on three statistics

Interesting–and colorful–column by Professor Ralph Rossum comparing Sotomayor and Souter. Rossum argues that even though their voting patterns are likely to be similar, the most notable element of Souter as Justice was his inconsequentialness: There is every reason to believe that Sotomayor will be an equally reliable member of the liberal team. The crucial question, […]

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education reports that this indeed happened, at the Community College of Allegheny County in Pennsylvania. At this point, the factual allegations are just the student’s, with no confirmation by the school (the school was asked for its side of the matter on April 29, and wrote on May 13 […]

Is there any evidence that choosing a Supreme Court nominee from a certain sex or race has any political impact? Jan Crawford Greenburg writes today, for instance: President Obama had been

Odysseas Papadimitriou has an informative summary of the likely effects of the credit card bill on his “Wallet blog” at cardhub.com, both the costs and benefits: In short the credit card legislation will significantly change the way credit card companies conduct business. Relative to the current landscape and once credit card companies reach full compliance […]

Well at least one set of secured creditors is objecting in Chrysler: The state of Indiana on behalf of the Indiana State Teachers Retirement Fund and the Indiana State Police Pension Trust. The objection is available here. The pleading indicates that the hearing date is May 27. Tom Lauria is one of the lawyers for […]

In my WSJ column on Chrylser last week I asked: Chrysler — or more accurately, its unionized workers — may be helped in the short run. But we need to ask how eager lenders will be to offer new credit to General Motors knowing that the value of their investment could be diminished or destroyed […]